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One of my favourite common historical inaccuracies is the idea that the fourth wife of Henry VIII, Anne of Cleves, was horrendously ugly. The rumour: After Henry VIII's third wife Jane Seymour died of a fever after giving birth, Thomas Cromwell advised Henry to marry a woman known as Anne of Cleves. The marriage would help further Cromwell's Protestant agenda, not to mention build a much needed alliance for England at the time with the Germans. For a myriad of reasons, Henry and Anne could not meet, and so a portrait of Anne was painted and sent to Henry, who was so smitten with her that he agreed to marry her despite having never met. However, once they were wedded, their marriage was never consummated because Anne repulsed Henry so much with her ugly horse face that he wound up getting a divorce and then beheading Cromwell for "I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse."  So here's what really happened. Henry VIII was a hopeless romantic. He wanted to surprise his queen-to-be by dressing in disguise and kissing her unexpectedly because to him, true love would mean that they would recognize each other despite not ever having met. Of course Anne did not respond so well to being kissed by a complete stranger, you know, especially when she's betrothed to the King of England, the same king who divorced his first wife because he believed her to not be a virgin when they had married and for having the second beheaded for her supposed licentiousness. Anyway, Henry was not pleased with Anne's unromantic response, and became especially bitter towards her. So much that he a fuss of not wanting to marry her. On their wedding night he decided he liked her even less than he did before, and started going on about how ugly she was, how she smelled bad, and how her sagging breasts were proof that she wasn't a virgin. The reports and evidence about Anne suggest that whatever disgruntled Henry was simply not true, and that he was just acting in a rather spiteful manner. Anne of Cleves had an incredibly sheltered life and was so naive of what takes place in the marriage bed that she was blissfully unaware that anything was amiss. She dutifully allowed her husband to kiss her every night and she was shocked to later learn that these nightly duties involved a bit more than that and became quite distressed as a result of learning about the birds and the bees. After all, this was a king who had already rid himself of two queens who had displeased him. So much for sagging breasts indicating sexual experience, she certainly had a complete lack thereof. Anne's portrait shows a moderately pretty and slender woman with full breasts, and on the side she was reported to be tall. In all fairness, Henry VIII seemed to have a thing for smaller and more petite women, as was the case with the three former queens so perhaps Anne really just not his type. If he were in the itty bitty titty committee, then it's unlikely he would have liked Anne's "sagging" breasts. As for having "evil smells" about her, this is literally a case of pot kettle black because Henry had some especially noisome ulcers on his leg that were often infected and leaked pus everywhere. So was Anne of Cleves actually super fugly? Probably not. Most reports suggest that she was of "middling beauty" and Henry was certainly known for throwing hissy fits. Sounds just like the sort of thing that happens today when a dude says or does something inappropriate via some lame dating site, gets a mild rejection from a girl, and then starts calling her a fat ugly bitch that he never wanted to have sex with in the first place. Anne held her head up all throughout the insults and the divorce and ended up an independent woman with a rather comfortable income in the end, a true rarity in the mid 1500's. Not a bad trade-off for going down in history as being the ugly queen. Sources: Anne of Cleves – Flanders Mare? Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII contains much of what I have already said as well.
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Apr 6, 2016 08:05
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 21:22 |
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