#coa had died and so her adherents focused their efforts on promoting the interests of her daughter | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fideidefenswhore · 3 months

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re: that last quote, i feel like there is this predominant take that the boleyn downfall was inevitable in one guise or another, always, due to anne's unpopularity specifically, which i feel like underrates...that her unpopularity, as it were (at least, outside of court) seems to have...for lack of a better word...plateaued? by that year.

#im sure it reached a spike in the aftermath of fisher and more's and the carthusians' executions #and yet at the same time her progress with henry that year was considered very successful; and has been so by historians as well #coa had died and so her adherents focused their efforts on promoting the interests of her daughter #and the legitimacy of more questionable marriages had been grudgingly accepted in similar circumstances; historically ; before this #(ie; yes there would always be some that would assert theirs was illegitimate because it took place when coa was alive #but they had what many canonists and lawyers would have considered a common law marriage by that point for years #and coa was no longer. so.#retroactive legitimacy is kind of a thing; again depending on who judges it ; of course #but the reason henry's annulment was not granted in the final judgement #was that he had lived with her for so long as to 'deprive himself of the right to protest against it'#ie lived on the assumption of the soundness of that dispensation for long #and he had been granted a similar dispensation to marry anne (of course; only to be applied in the case of either coa's death or the #annulment of that marriage)#(one that elizabeth would ask for a copy of later...btw)#he had not been living with her as his wife for nearly as long; of course #but diplomacy and the need for allies meant that conceivably some european powers were likely going to be willing to either...#airbrush out those technicalities or ignore them #of course he would not have had an actual marriage ceremony with anne which would've been what the papacy would require ; in 1536 #because that would suggest elizabeth's illegitimacy and that he'd been an adulterer for three years and that wasn't his belief #but it is all very...things that make you go hmmm

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