Book Review: Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I by Tracy Borman ****

Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I by Tracy Borman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I doubt that anyone could read of the execution of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, without feeling sympathy for her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, demoted in one fell swoop, as she herself noticed even at that young age, from Princess Elizabeth, heir to the English throne, to Lady Elizabeth, the king’s bastard daughter by a disgraced mother.

Often, books about Elizabeth gloss over the effect of this double loss on her, noting that she rarely spoke about her mother even after she ascended to the throne, briefly mentioning a ring she owned with portraits of herself and another woman who may have been Anne, or speculating that her mother’s fate might have contributed to her own antipathy toward marriage. In Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I, however, Tracy Borman digs more deeply into the relationship between the two (brief as it was in life) and Elizabeth’s later life to show that a strong influence did exist and that there is enough evidence to show that Elizabeth did indeed honor and revere her mother’s memory

While many hated and despised Anne Boleyn, few seem to have disputed her pride in her daughter, despite the disappointment (to her father, at least) of her gender, or her active involvement in Elizabeth’s early upbringing within the constraints of her position. (Queens did not nurse their own children, and royal offspring were given their own households early on.) Even as she faced death, one of her main concerns was for her daughter.

As Elizabeth grew up she no doubt heard little good about Anne from most people, but Borman believes that there is evidence that an alternative, positive view was also provided to her, most notably by her relatives on her mother’s side, including her beloved governess, Kat Ashley. When she became queen, she notably kept these relatives close to her and actively promoted many of them, as Borman documents, as well as pointing to the presence of her mother’s emblems (notably the falcon) in her palaces and portraits. Also, while she never, unlike her sister Mary, reinstated Anne’s marriage to her father by an act of Parliament, it appears to have been well known that praise of Anne’s virtues was a way to gain her favor. The psychological influences are also examined in some detail, from the effect on her refusal to marry (no doubt exacerbated by the execution of her father’s fifth wife, and Anne Boleyn’s first cousin, Katherine Howard, when Elizabeth was only 8, as well as the unhappy marriages of her sister Mary and their last stepmother, Katherine Parr) to her use of her charm on men as queen.

On the whole, even with my considerable (though not extensive) knowledge of the period, I found Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I to be an informative and eye-opening look at the relationship between these two fascinating women.

I received a copy of Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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