Anne Boleyn was crowned queen on 1 June 1533.
It was a day of many mixed blessings for the new queen. She was publically acknowledged as Henry VIII’s wife, adored by her husband, and she was heavily pregnant with the baby she felt sure would be a boy. On the other hand, supporters of the Henry’s first wife, Katherina of Aragon, were still calling her a doxy and were refusing to cheer for her or admit the validity of her marriage.
For Katherina of Aragon, however, the day must have been one of unrelieved hell. Katherina considered herself married to the king, but she could only weep helplessly while the woman she believed “stole” her husband now “stole” her throne as well. I have explained, at length and possibly ad nauseum, that Anne Boleyn did everything she possible could to escape Henry VIII’s attentions, and that she only capitulated to his suit under duress. Nevertheless, just as my proofs frequently fall on deaf ears today, the reality of whom-pursued-whom was elided in the sixteenth century as well. Katherina of Aragon hated, and I mean hated, Anne Boleyn — because it was all that strumpet’s fault Henry wanted an annulment.
Katherina’s hatred for Anne was a normal psychological response; it is harder to hate someone you love and Katherina still loved Henry, but she could hate Anne without reservation. A wife who is being cheated on frequently convinces herself that her husband only strayed because the other woman made it too easy or too tempting for him to resist. A wife who loves her cheating husband will come up with a multitude of excuses for his immoral betrayal, and those excuses usually centre on the ‘real’ culpability of the woman who ‘stole’ him. We’ve all seen this phenomenon on the world stage – Jennifer Anniston clearly blamed Angelina Jolie for the dissolution of her marriage to Brad Pitt – and closer to home, either personally or for a friend.
Anyone who loved Katherina likewise hated Anne for her sake. The sniping from the ladies at court, most of whom were both loyal to the first queen and unhappy at the idea a wife could be replaced with a younger model on a whim (in an age where a woman had no other security but what a man gave her, being securely married was of utmost importance), must have been hard for Anne Boleyn to endure. Even her own relatives were happy to slut shame her, either behind her back or subtly to her face. Katherina’s friend and the Imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, often referred to Anne as “la putaine”, or “the whore”, in his letters, and even after Katherina’s death in 1536 he would still refer to Anne as the concubine or the “English Messalina”.
Supporters of Henry’s first queen — and Katherina was still immensely popular with the common people of her adopted kingdom and abroad in her native Spain — despised Anne Boleyn as a homewrecker. Many of English mocked “Nan Bullen” and jeered at the king’s affection for this jumped-up hussy. Londoners even called Anne a “naughty paikie”, which was a very coarse and vulgar word for a prostitute, a word that made “whore” seem tame in comparison. A paikie was a woman who serviced men sexually for alcohol while standing against a wall near the docks. The Spanish had to really reach to go lower in their condemnation of Henry’s new love, but they did it — the new queen was so reviled that to this day there is a demon by the name of Ana Boleyna in Spanish mythology.
Did it make things easier for Katherina to know that the “false” queen was despised by so many? Or was it a meagre and cold comfort compared to the fact the woman she considered an evil whore was crowned with her belly bulging with Henry’s baby, a child that would possible supplant Katherina’s own daughter, Princess Mary? Did Katherina pray that Anne’s baby would not be a boy? Did she lower herself to hope the baby would die, as her own children had perished? Could any mortal woman not wish catastrophe on Anne from Katherina’s vantage point? After all Katherina had suffered, and even after the Pope declared her Henry’s true wife, her husband was still putting the crown that was rightfully hers on Nan Bullen’s unworthy brow. How could the unfairness of it all not eat away at Katherina’s soul? How could she not be bitter? Was this bitterness, and the acid stomach that often accompanies great stress, the reason Katherina became unable to eat anything but the most bland fare? Or was the cancer that killed her already effecting her appetite?
While I don’t think Anne was to blame for Henry’s actions, it is impossible to think of Katherina of Aragon’s intense emotional suffering without great sympathy for her hatred of Anne. The coronation of Henry’s second queen, a day of triumph for Anne Boleyn, may have been the absolute nadir of Katherina’s life, which was already filled with unspeakably tragic losses and pains. It is no wonder Princess Mary would one day rejoice in the judicial murder of the woman whom she saw as the well-spring of her mother’s agonies.
It must have been a terrible shock to Mary when she discovered after Anne’s death that the wellspring of cruelty toward her had actually been her father all along. It was always the king who had — perhaps because he was no longer mentally healthy — chosen to divorce her mother, prevented Mary from seeing her mother, and demanded that Mary agree she was illegitimate. Katherina of Aragon, however, had died in the serene knowledge that all of Henry’s misdeeds were Anne Boleyn’s fault … a belief that is surprisingly common even today.