I am on The Anne Boleyn Files email list, and I got an email today that has an interivew with Elizabeth Norton, a Tudor historian who has written several books about the wives of Henry.

Here is an excerpt of the interview:

The Tudor series portrays Thomas Boleyn as a manipulator who used his daughters to gain favour and titles yet to Joanna Denny he is some kind of Reformation hero and caring father who strove to protect his daughters, what do you think?

From what is known about them both, I would say that Thomas Boleyn and Anne were very similar characters and Anne was very influenced by her father in her youth. It was Thomas Boleyn who first recognised Anne’s potential and secured a place for her with Margaret of Austria and, as the best French speaker at the English court, it is also likely that he instilled in Anne an early interest in the French language and French culture. Anne’s earliest extant letter (written in school girl French) is addressed to her father.

Thomas was ambitious for his family as a whole and benefited from the rise of first Mary and then Anne. It is difficult to see his influence as a manipulator behind either Mary or Anne’s relationships with the king and, the evidence for Anne at least is that she won and held the king by herself.

Thomas, like Anne, was influential in the early religious reform movement and so, to a certain extent, can be seen as a Reformation hero. However, his court career and ambition were certainly the driving forces in his life and he was prepared to make use of his daughters’ positions in order to further his ambition, and distance himself from them when they fell into disfavour.

Mary Boleyn has been called Henry VIII’s ‘favourite mistress’ and Henry VIII himself called Jane Seymour his true love, but who do you think was really Henry VIII’s true love?

Looking back over his life with the benefit of hindsight, it is likely that Henry himself would have said Jane Seymour. From a dynastic point of view, she was his only successful wife and the wife with whom he requested to be buried. It is clear however that she was not so cherished during her marriage and Henry is known to have mentioned soon after his marriage to Jane that, after seeing two new beauties at court, he wished he had not been so hasty in making his choice. Jane was also very aware that, like her two predecessors, her position was vulnerable until she bore a son.

Henry VIII believed himself to be in love with Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard at the time of his marriages to them. His relationship with Catherine Parr was also a fond one. The length of his relationships with Bessie Blount and Mary Boleyn also suggest that he may have been in love with them. I think it is difficult to see Henry VIII as having one true love and various women filled that post at different points of his life. Henry’s relationship with Anne Boleyn was the greatest love affair of his life and she may well merit the title of his true love but, given that he eventually had her executed, it is clear that he would not himself have considered her to have that honour.

Henry VIII was unusual for a king of his time and he chose to marry women who, for most kings, would have been merely mistresses. There is no doubt that he was a romantic at heart and he built up romantic ideals of most of the women with whom he was involved, including Anne of Cleves before he actually met her. It is Jane Seymour with whom he had the most enduring affection, albeit mostly posthumously.

Read more: http://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/interview-with-elizabeth-norton/3694/#more-3694#ixzz0ZJb4BhUA