historical women + instagram | olga, tatiana, maria, and anastasia nikolaevna romanova

insp.

happy (belated) birthday @tiny-librarian​!

“At the moment of placing the crown on his head the ceremonies of the church were interrupted by the most touching acclamations. I could not restrain myself; my tears flowed in spite of all my efforts.” [Marie Antoinette to her mother]

The Duc de Croy noted [that] “the Queen was so stirred with joy that she shed a flood of tears; she was obliged to wipe her eyes with her handkerchief.” Louis noticed Antoinette’s emotion and was deeply touched. Afterwards he spoke about it repeatedly to his courtiers and, according to Mercy, gazed at his wife adoringly. 

— Vincent Cronin, Louis and Antoinette

Empress Maria Theresa, Marie Antoinette, and Marie-Thérèse Charlotte–mother, daughter, and granddaughter–depicted at approximately the same, or close, ages*

(*click on the images to see the lady’s age at the time of each sitting!)

Under analysis, the case presented by the Crown in May 1536 collapses. But one decisive argument for innocence remains–the evidence the Crown was unable to produce. The queen would normally be attended, day and night. In no way could she pursue a liaison unaided. But where was Anne Boleyn’s accomplice? Here is ‘the dog that did not bark’. Anne could simply not have behaved as alleged.

Clearly informed by his friend Nicolas Bourbon, the French reformer Etienne Dolet published an epigram declaring Anne falsely condemned and beheaded for adultery. Chapuys did not believe her guilt–‘condemned on presumption not evidence, without any witness or valid confession’ was his conclusion. 

Innocent but a prisoner, guiltless but condemned, Anne awaited her fate. [S]he called for Kingston to hear mass with her soon after dawn on Thursday [18 May], It was then that, at the damnation of her immortal soul, she swore on the sacrament that she had never been unfaithful to the king. She did so twice–before and after receiving the body of Christ–and the constable duly passed on her oath, as she knew he would.

—Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn

Anne and George Boleyn in The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970)

I love my brother. Aye, I love my brother! Would any of you that have brothers deny that you love them? It is your duty before God. It is also my inclination, my lords, for we were born of the same parents…we played together, ran free in the fields; we rode together; I watched him as he learned to hunt, to shoot, to dance–I watched him in his learning, and I watched him in the closeness of our family. He was my friend, my lords, as much as my brother, and I did love him for that. I loved him as any sister loves her brother.

My eyes welled with tears and I held him even closer. “Remember when…you told Papa Roi that you loved me? Did you really mean it?”

My husband became so silent I could hear the rapid beating of our hearts as they pressed together. Finally he replied, almost incredulously, “Do you doubt it? I love you sincerely, Antoinette. And,” he added, our faces nearly touching, “I respect you even more.”  He stroked my face so tenderly that I nearly bathed his hand with tears.

— from “Becoming Marie Antoinette” by Juliet Grey

16 May 1770 • The Wedding of Louis-Auguste, Dauphin of France, and Marie Antoinette of Austria

“Give this ring to the queen; tell her that I part from it with pain and only at the last moment.”

“The queen was…in command of herself and clearly of the situation. Her sparing and effective answers quietly dominated the court. Her manner [carried] conviction. […] Charles Wriothesley, who was temperamentally inclined to Katherine and Mary, expressed the common view: ‘She made so wise and discreet answers as to all things laid against her, excusing herself with her words so clearly as though she had never been faulty to the same.’ […] She knew that she had not been the waxen wife of conventional expectation, to be moulded or impressed a her husband’s will. What she did not say was that the king had pursued her precisely because of this; he had needed her steel and was only where he was because of it. | Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn

“She managed, at her trial on May 15, after nearly two weeks in the Tower and the certain recognition…that she would be found guilty, to summon her renowned pride and dazzling confidence for the grim occasion. Dressed in black velvet over a scarlet petticoat…she ‘presented herself with the true dignity of a queen, and curtseyed to her judges, looking round upon them all, without any sign of fear…impatience, grief, or cowardice’ according to Crispin de Milherve, whom Alison Weir cites as an eyewitness at the trial but who may have been Lancelot de Carles.” | Susan Bordo, The Creation of Anne Boleyn

On 15 May 1536, Queen Anne Boleyn was put on trial for adultery with five men, including her brother, and high treason. Her behavior impressed her enemies and allies alike. The queen arrived “in fearful beauty” and “as though she were going to a great triumph.” Even after the preordained guilty verdict, she “preserved her composure.” There was less fortitude among the jury members, however: Henry Percy–Anne’s former suitor–collapsed, and her uncle Norfolk was said to have wept as he condemned her “to be burnt or beheaded at the King’s pleasure.”

The [pattern] commonly reproduced today has Anne in a French hood with a gold letter ‘B’ hanging from a pearl necklace. Several examples survive. Neither pattern, however, can be regarded as authoritative since neither is earlier than fifty or sixty years after Anne’s death or linked to the portrait medal [struck during Anne’s life], either directly or via a common ancestor.

There is, however, a resolution of this pictorial game of ‘find the lady’. The key is an Elizabethan ring belonging to the Trustees of Chequers, the prime minister’s country residence. The head of the ring is hinged and opens to reveal two enamel portraits, one of Elizabeth circa 1575 and one of a woman in the costume of Henry VIII’s reign. wearing a French hood. [N]ot only is Anne by far the most likely woman of the previous generation to be thus matched with Elizabeth, the face mask is quite clearly that of the sitter in the Hever and National Portrait Gallery paintings. […] There is thus an authenticated sequence for Anne Boleyn, comprising the medal, the Chequers enamel and the Hever/NPG pattern.

Fortunately, the sequence also has the effect of corroborating a seventeenth-century miniature…Charles I had this copied as ‘Anne Boleyn’ by John Hoskins the elder, and it is endorsed ‘from an ancient original’. How ‘ancient’ it is impossible to say. Although the relationship to examples in the NPG pattern is evident, these works were only thirty years old or perhaps less. It is more likely that Hoskins had access to an earlier image of the kind from which the NPG image originated. A full-length portrait of Anne was owned by Lord Lumley in 1590 and existed as late as 1773.

Speculation aside, the Hoskins is important because it preserves what a highly talented seventeenth-century miniaturist made of the image, and though again further softened, it is the best depiction of Anne we are ever likely to have, failing the discovery of new material. Portrait medal — Chequers ring — Hever/NPG pattern — Hoskins miniature: the chain is complete. We have the real Anne Boleyn.

Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn

“It hath pleased the goodness of Almighty God that we be delivered with good speed of a prince!”

In the summer of 1536, Queen Anne delivers her second child: a healthy baby boy at last. An overjoyed Henry VIII orders lavish celebrations to commemorate the birth of his long-awaited male heir, though the precocious two-year-old Princess Elizabeth often steals the show. The king and queen continue to break with tradition by naming their newborn son Edmund. The little prince’s name honors Henry’s grandfather, Edmund Tudor, as well Saint Edmund the Martyr, an East Anglian king who became the original patron saint of England.