Audiobook of the week

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part 2 part 3 part 4

full of bodice ripping sex, naked ambition, and melodrama. Usually I don't enjoy this type of book/ film (e.g. Game of Thrones, the White Queen) because everyone is nasty and hateful. 

But here, the character of the older sister, Mary, is sympathetic: and despite rumors in history that she did more sleeping around than her younger sister, nevertheless, she did make a love match and stood up to her family's ambitions after Anne became queen....and was essentially exiled from court for doing so (you go, girl)... which is ironically one reason she survived the blood bath of her sister and her brother and many of Anne's friends...

yes, the historians said the author got it all wrong: Anne Boleyn was a nice girl, and a virgin. But unlike the stories she "never had sex" before she married Henry, this book brings up that this is true if you accept the Clinton definition of sex, which is a lot more believable than earlier books.

Another controversial point is that their family was using the girls to get power by pressuring them to become mistresses or wives of important men. But this was the way a lot of families manipulated their girls back then, so it is believable. So again it is about raw power.

And of course the ending is sad, but hints that Anne was reaping what she had sowed:
One reason Anne couldn't get justice in court was because during her quest to become queen, she encouraged the king to destroy the civil law and the church's power, both of which stood in the way of the king's divorce and being able to marry her. And the result was that Henry became power hungry and a tyrant who thought his desire was God's will, so those who stood in the way could just be killed (and not just of VIP's, but of ordinary folk including those who protested the destruction of their churches and the monasteries that helped the poor: Things usually left out of the history books of course).

So when Anne was the innocent victim of a absurd and unproven crime, because of the king's whim that he needed to marry again, she could not rely on the law to protect her.

which reminds me of this warning by Thomas More: (go to minute 6.00)

Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!

More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast- man's laws, not God's- and if you cut them down-and you're just the man to do it-do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

hmm... sound familiar?