Did Elizabeth ever mention Anne?
Rating: +3
As far as I know, Elizabeth did not mention her mother but she did wear a locket ring which contained miniatures of both herself and her mother, which to me means that Anne was important to her.
Elizabeth was under 3 when Anne was executed so it is hard to know what she remembered of her mother, if anything, and one wonders what she was told.
Some believe that she wore the crown that Anne Boleyn was crowned in. Thanks to karenof bethany from the Tudors Wiki for the following quote from Elizabeth I, Somerset, Anne; p. 72:
"...and she was crowned, first with St. Edward's crown, and then with the Imperial Crown of England, which weighed over seven pounds. It was too heavy for the Queen to wear for any length of time, and so in turn it too was removed and replaced with a lighter one, which (may have been) that which had been made for Anne Boleyn at her coronation in 1533."
I would have thought that Elizabeth knew it was better not to mention her mother because Elizabeth had enemies and did not want to remind people of her mother's fall and demise.
Do you suppose one of the reasons Henry loved Jane so much was because she reminded him of his mother, Elizabeth of York?
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Hi LadyinWaiting,
Yes, perhaps so, I think Henry was always looking for the perfect wife, someone like his mother, and Jane may have been the closest although Catherine of Aragon may have been too.
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But she did not give him the son he wanted and that is in my opinon the reason why he loved Jane the most.
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if jane had lived it would have only been a matter of time before things would have turned sour
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I read somewhere that Elizabeth basically thought of Anne as a martyr and Henry as a god, so she obviously spoke about both of them. She probably never really spoke of Anne in public, though.
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It’s hard to know how Elizabeth felt about Anne as she never spoke openly about her but she wore that locket ring and surrounded herself with Boleyn relatives and I think that shows clearly that Anne was important to her. Yes, I think she looked up to her father. She feared him and had seen him do dreadful things but he was her father and she was “the lion’s cub”.
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I’ve never believed he loved Jane the most. I think she was perhaps easier to idolise, since she died producing his only legitimate son, and thus never ran into the problems that Catherine of Aragon and Anne did. I think Henry loved all three of the afore mentioned very deeply, though very differently.
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anneboleyn Reply:
May 3rd, 2011 at 6:54 pm
Catherine of Aragon acted as his most trusted friend, confidante, almost as an older sister, too, since she was years older than him; Anne Boleyn… well, I think he was mostly lusting for her, and/or completely fell in love with her wits and charms; Jane was loved, as far as I know, because of her being the sole prince’s mother.
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Ironic that after Henry’s incessant longing for a son, and Anne’s soul destroying grief for not providing him a male heir, it was their daughter Elizabeth who walked in his shoes far better than most men could have done.
In retrospect, Elizabeth was the son Henry the VIII never knew he had.
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