Anne Boleyn’s Portrait
In The Tudors, Anne is portrayed by the oh so sexy Natalie Dormer.
Anne (Natalie)
King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn (Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Natalie) 
Sexy Natalie Dormer as Queen Anne Boleyn 
I just can’t get enough.
Seriously though, her history is pretty amazing. And that’s what makes this whole thing so sexy. Visually, Showtime is giving us some delicious candy, but the woman had many great attributes and her influence brought on some very important changes.
It’s not like I hadn’t heard about her before. I even took a class in college about the Restoration to the Reformation and read a lot about Queen Elizabeth I (Anne Boleyn’s daughter of course). Another amazing woman. So I had some information about that time period. And before college we certainly learned about some of it, but I always remember from history class just brushing over King Henry’s 6 wives and not ever really being asked to pay much mind to Anne Boleyn. We learned in school that she was Henry’s Mistress with great ambitions to become queen and then when she didn’t produce a son, Henry had her beheaded. And then Elizabeth’s half sister treated Elizabeth poorly and had her imprisoned in the tower of London because of the tension between Mary and Anne Boleyn. That was the story. It’s sad how I never really looked deeper into her own role during Anne’s time with the king.
She was a very intelligent woman who stood up for herself. Among her many faults was that once married, Anne Boleyn failed to become the obedient wife the king expected and ignore his infidelities — as had Queen Catherine of Aragon. She had opinions and she knew how to voice them.
In any case, I am now on my way to buy The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. I’ve actually been finding myself quite obsessed with Anne Boleyn’s history after watching the first season of the Tudors and then watching the atrocity of The Other Boleyn Girl (I’m not even going to link this I’m so upset I watched it), which is filled with a bad script, too many historical inaccuracies to even name them all, bad acting (probably because of the millions of lies) and just an all around travesty and insult to the people who gave their lives to change the course of history. Okay, I will mention some of the issues I have with that movie:
- Mary Boleyn was NOT that influential to the king
- Mary Boleyn was known to sleep around a lot and certainly was not as “virtuous” as they portray her in the movie - it seemed to me like this was just meant to show off Scarlett Johansson’s looks. That certainly doesn’t make me see Scarlett in such a great light anymore. I’m totally over that. To think that she would agree to do this movie…
- Anne Boleyn didn’t fight her sister Mary for the king’s affections
- Mary Boleyn did not come back to try to save her sister from execution
- Anne Boleyn did not break down and cry in the last moments leading to her execution. In fact she was very composed and dignified (not that you would blame someone for not being dignified in that moment, but the I’m merely stating that according to all accounts I’ve read, Anne did not fall apart as Natalie’s acting would have us believe). Well, Natalie is definitely no longer one of my favorites either. In her defense however, it was a movie based on a dumb book with the same name, so for that I should really blame the author.
Okay, well that’s as far as I will go. Read up on Anne Boleyn and get the facts. Especially if you stubbornly decide to watch that dumb movie. Go to PBS or Showtime or Wikipedia, or Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble, but just please, get the facts. Strong minded women in history… now that’s sexy.
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