The Boleyn Inheritance

Jane Boleyn, Greenwich Palace,
January 6, 1540

I am one of the last to leave, and I close the door quietly on yet another marriage of the king’s that I have seen progress through courtship to the marriage bed. Some, like that young fool Katherine Howard, would think that this is where the story ends, that this is the conclusion of everything. I know better. This is where the story of a queen begins.

Before this night there are contracts and promises, and sometimes hopes and dreams; rarely there is love. After this night there is the reality of two people working out their lives together. For some, it is a negotiation that cannot be done; my own uncle is married to a wife he cannot tolerate, and they live apart now. Henry Percy married an heiress but could never free himself from his love for Anne Boleyn. Thomas Wyatt hates his wife with a vengeance, since he fell in love with Anne when she was a girl and he has never recovered. My own husband… but I will not think about my own husband now. Let me remember that I loved him, that I would have died for love of him – whatever he thought of me when we were put to bed together for the first time. Whoever he thought of when he had to do the deed with me. God forgive him for holding me in his arms and thinking of her. God forgive me for knowing that, and letting it haunt me. In the end, God forgive me for having my head turned and my heart turned so I liked nothing more than to lie in his arms and think of him with another woman – jealousy and lust brought me so low that it was my pleasure, a wicked sinful pleasure, to feel his touch on me and think of him touching her.

It is not a matter of four bare legs in a bed and the business done. She will have to learn to obey him. Not in the grand things, any woman can put on a bit of a show. But in the thousand petty compromises that come to a wife every day. The thousand times a day when one has to bite the lip and bow the head and not argue in public, nor in private, nor even in the quiet recesses of one’s own mind. If your husband is a king, this is even more important. If your husband is King Henry, it is a life-or-death decision.

Everyone tries to forget that Henry is a ruthless man. Henry himself tries to make us forget. When he is being charming, or setting himself out to please, we like to forget that we are playing with a savage bear. This is not a man whose temperament is tamed. This is not a man whose mood is constantly sweet. This is not a man who can manage his feelings; he cannot keep constant from one day to another. I have seen this man love three women with an absolute passion. I have seen him swear to each of them an eternal, unchangeable fidelity. I have seen him joust under the motto “Sir Loyal Heart.” And I have seen him send two to their deaths, and learn of the death of the third with quiet composure.

That girl had better please him tonight, and she had better obey him tomorrow, and she had better give him a son within a year, or I, personally, would not give a snap of my fingers for her chances.