The Other Boleyn Girl Effect

Fantastic news and demonstration of the power of the Internet. Well done, Claire and I hope this pushes your books into the stratosphere!!!

Although it is good that The Other Boleyn Girl caused so much of a debate yet again, I am totally amazed at the growing number of people who see historical fiction as historical fact without doing any research to find out the real story behind it.

Now some fiction is just that: fiction and is meant to be fiction: Carry On Henry, the Prince and the Pauper, the Scarlet Letter and so on. They are classic books, films or comedy, but they do not pretend to be anything else but a parady of the times or historical fiction for entertainment only. Even when one is about a real person, many of the facts are changed or invented to make it more dramatic, especially these days as such a thing could be made for TV. In fact I think some authors write historical fiction with its dramatic affect in mind. Yes, TV take liberties with books and authors do not have control over productions, but people need to have more common sense than to believe TV films as direct evidence for fact.

It is the sort of thing you did 40 years ago while at school, take a film as fact: our teachers were too lazy to decipher things otherwise. Fortunately I knew more about history than my history teacher and was not that stupid. I read, read, and read, fiction, but good fiction: Jean Plaidy was the fiction Queen in those days, but also some books on the people: Anne for example. Marie Louise Bruce was my favourite full biography I read on Anne and The Court of Henry VIII by Neville Williams was lent to me by a teacher that encouraged my love for history. I think history was in my DNA.

I may have enjoyed historical fiction and most of it is very good, but these days I find I have to be more discerning not just about historical fiction but fiction in general. The Other Boleyn Girl is fine if you look at it in that light that it is a good story based on a theory and nothing to do with fact. This is a book that Philippa Gregory believes put a true fact to the test: and has the theory that Anne had relations with her brother George in an incestual manner. That is fine if that is what she believes and the book is meant to be presented as that. However, there is a problem as Ms Gregory has been set up by documentaries as an expert on history: Anne Boleyn and Queen Elizabeth in particular, and that gives her books more authority. So, people read them and watch the film and see it as a true depiction of the life of Anne Boleyn. That is a pity because it takes away the pleasure of simply looking at the film as a piece of entertainment and historical drama.

However, there is value in the questions that the film raised and that are in your main article. The parentage of Mary’s children has been of some debate for many years; and the question around Anne and Mary’s sexual experience were looked at in a new light, but of course the idea of Mary being a virgin when she got married was ridiculous. The relationship between Henry Percy and Anne was actually handled in an interesting manner. I believe that Anne was engaged to Percy and wanted to marry him, but that Cardinal Wolsey broke them up so as King Henry could pursue his own plight to her. But that she had the power to entrap the son of a noble house, while an entertaining idea, is of course nonsense. The film went much further having them secretly married and having copulated, consumating that marriage, which would have made the marriage lawful. The marriage is ignored by the Boleyn schemers as you call them, Anne’s family and the Duke of Norfolk somehow has a way to make sure that it is annulled and the Percy wedding to Mary Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, that carries on. But this does not come up again later in the film, as it should have done.

The so called pre contract with Henry Percy was raised by Mary Talbot later on and Henry had Northumberland as he was then in 1536 declare as to the truth of any pre contract. The Earl denied it and swore before two bishops and several clrgy and offcials. But there was nothing about any actual marriage and yet in the Other Boleyn Girl Film Anne entraps Henry Percy and marries him. A spiteful and holier than thou Mary reports them to their father and some ridiculous mean girl rivalry grows up for the rest of their lives. Mary and Anne did fall out in 1534 when Mary married William Stafford without royal approval and was sent from court, but before this there is no evidence of this rivalry or mean spirited relationship.

Finally, the ending of the film is the worst of all with Mary slipping into court and taking Princess Elizabeth home with her. She had been forced to give her own children up to Anne, which is not true, and this seems to be a reverse role. Princess Elizabeth had her own establishment and although it was reduced when her mother was executed, she had plenty of food to keep her well and alive. She may have out grown her clothes but I am sure that someone saw to it that she did not go naked. Compared to most children of her day, she was well provided for, even if love was missing. In some ways it is a pity that Mary was not given the care of Elizabeth as I am sure she would have loved her as a mother.

A good story, but the film was aweful to be honest, even the sets were gloomy and cold, not the grand courts of Henry VIII’s England; but it is only meant to be seen as a promotion of a theory; not to be taken too seriously, certainly not as a source for the life of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII.