#he also lied about george's last speech on the scaffold.

[fideidefenswhore]

There is an article by Lauren Mackay saying that Chapuys was usually just telling the truth and that some negative things that he wrote about Anne apparently weren’t written by him and that he wasn’t the only person to say anything negative about her or called her “the concubine” in his letters. Thoughts?

Chapuys has been erroneously maligned for his opposition to Anne, and his reputation and character are now twisted into something dark, insidious, and misogynistic. This is far from the truth. Chapuys referred to Anne as the concubine once in 1533, and then more frequently from 1535, but more often than not he referred to her as Lady Anne, or Marchioness. The Anne of his original letters is perhaps more human than depictions in popular fiction. It’s too easy to perpetuate the outdated myth that Chapuys was violently opposed to Anne and her family, and would stop at nothing to bring her down. The image Chapuys’ letters left me with was a man opposed to an ambitious woman, but who felt so strongly about her arrest and execution that he was willing to tell Charles V, the most powerful man in Europe: What Henry has done here is unconscionable. Her execution weighed heavily on his mind in the weeks following that bloody May.

This article, right? I think there might have been a similar one in AB Files, too, I remember something of a back and forth in the comment section btwn her and Claire Ridgway...

My research has demonstrated that Chapuys did not only refer to Anne as the Concubine. Even when he referred to her as the Lady, it is said that he “disgustedly” referred to her as such. But Chapuys referred to other women the same way, it does him a disservice to force such a hostile tone into his words. From 1529 to 1533, Anne was referred to as Anne Boleyn, The Lady, Mademoiselle Anne, Lady Anne etc. From 1533 to 1536, he refers to her as the Concubine once. The title crops up when he is under emotional stress.

Don’t you hate it when emotional stress causes you to call women whores? It’s so unfortunate! /s

So...yeah, the comment section isn’t loading, but if memory serves, as Claire corrected, the “referred to her as the Concubine once” is not true? I also don’t think referring to her as ‘the she-devil’ is much better, but...anyway, so I see now the former article was published later than the latter, I suppose there was either an edit there, and/or the second she realized she hadn’t specified. 

It’s not an ‘outdated myth’ that he was violently and implacably opposed to Anne and her family, though? Like...it’s simply not, even if we start off earlier than 1535. He pushed for her excommunication and hoped it would lead to her ruin. That shows someone that is very deeply and emotionally involved in their hatred of another person:

If in the meanwhile His Holiness could but be persuaded to fulminate a complete excommunication against the Lady, in case she refused to leave court, the King would have less occasion to complain than if the excommunication was decreed against him; the people of England might then wreak their vengeance upon her, remonstrate with the King, and make the interdict follow her wherever she went.

February 1533

Like...what does this remark show us? Disdain for Henry over Anne, as she’s argued elsewhere? Because he’s arguing here that the excommunication should specifically be fulminated against Anne, not Henry. In all the outcomes he lists, Anne is the focus, Anne is the one he wants the people of England to ‘wreak their vegenace upon’, nothing about this is casual, and I feel it’s an insult to my intelligence to insist considering such dispatches ‘hostile’ is to ‘force a hostile tone’ where there is none.