In episode 121 of the Renaissance English History Podcast, I chat with the lovely Alison Weir, making her fourth appearance on the show, about Anne of Cleves and her new fiction book. We dispel some myths around looks, children, and more.
Buy Alison’s new book on Amazon here:
Amazon US (available May 14)
Amazon UK
And from the Tudor Fair shop:
The Anne of Cleves “Best Life” Tshirt
Or the Anne of Cleves Portrait Charm Bracelet
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Episode Transcript:
Heather:
Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English history podcast a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity.
This is Episode 121 and it is an interview with Alison Weir. This is her fourth time on the show and she is here to talk about her new book on Anna of Kleve, The Princess in the Portrait. Before that, though, I just want to make a very exciting announcement. I have received permission from the venue where Tudorcon is happening to film and stream the entire weekend. So for those of you who really want to come to Tudorcon, but you can’t make it to Pennsylvania, I now have a digital ticket available and you can check that out and learn more at Englandcast.com/Tudorcon2019. Go to the link to get you to Tudorcon so you can attend virtually. All the talks will be streamed. it will all be monitored so you can ask questions live, the parties will be streamed with hosts and special interviews just for the streaming attendees. And you even get a swag bag. So check it out Englandcast.com/tudorcon2019.
Now let me introduce you to Alison Weir. Alison Weir is the top selling female historian and fifth bestselling historian overall in the United Kingdom and has sold over 2.7 million books worldwide. She has published 18 history books including her most recent nonfiction book Queens of the Conquest, the first in her England’s Medieval Queens quartet. Alison has also published several historical novels, including Innocent Traitor and The Lady Elizabeth. Anna of Kleve, Queen of secrets is Alison Weir’s ninth published novel and her fourth in the six Tudor Queen series about the wives of Henry VIII which was launched in 2016 to great acclaim. The first three books in the series, Katherine of Aragon, The true Queen, Anne Boleyn, The King’s Obsession and Jane Seymour, The Haunted Queen were all Sunday Times bestsellers. Allison is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an honorary life patron of Historic Royal Palaces.
Alison Weir, thank you so much for being here, on my podcast for a fourth time. I’m just so thrilled to have you.
Alison:
It’s lovely of you to have me back here.
Heather:
So your new book on Anna of Kleve, so you start off right off the bat with an interesting theory about honor, right in chapter one. And I don’t want to have to give away too much for people who haven’t read it. But it kind of speaks to the idea that we have of her as this kind of innocent person. Can you talk to me about your research with that, and kind of what led to that?
Alison:
Well something Henry VIII said that gave me my storyline, because he kept insisting that Anna wasn’t a virgin on their wedding night. And he didn’t just say it once he kept saying it to anyone who would listen. He said he felt her breasts and her belly, and that by those and other tokens and the looseness of them, she should be no virgin. And I want to go ahead with that, because everybody thinks oh, Henry was just trying to wriggle out of the marriage. But finding your bride isn’t a virgin isn’t grounds getting out of the marriage. You can’t get an annulment on that basis. So I did wonder whether Henry was telling the truth. He’d been married three times he’d fathered about 15 children, I think he would have known the difference between a female body that borne children and one that hadn’t. And that just set me wondering, of course, that might be doing a huge injustice to because there are other things that could have caused this slackness or perhaps rapid weight loss. A lot of brides lose weight in the run up to their weddings. And if you’re going to leave your country and your family for good, and you’re marrying a man like him, well the stress levels must be absolutely astronomical. And so she could have lost that weight, you know, through stress. We don’t know for certain, but that is I mean, I pondered for a long while, to go with this theory. And because this is fiction, I’d be a lot more cautious writing it as history. But even so, there are sources that could be corroborated, sources as to her character and don’t think she was the quite the innocent that was traditionally she’s been thought to be.
Heather:
Right. And you kind of touched on that in a couple of places later on, even after she was single. Rumors that she was indulging a bit too much in alcoholic beverages. And yet in terms of entertainment, she–
Alison:
She became free with her favors when she did. And that that comes from her former secretary and the Imperial Ambassador Chapuys reported this conversation he had with the secretary and this is about a year and a half after Anna’s divorce, but even certainly to the secretary, it was clear that both of them were aware that this was well known information.
Heather:
Interesting. And then you also kind of hinted that in the very famous conversation that she has with the ladies about “he comes in and kisses me good night”, all of that.
Alison:
Yes, that’s very strange conversation, Heather, because a month later, her …, who have day to day dealings with her couldn’t understand what she was saying. And yet, in this account the ladies and the ladies’ statement, this is all in connection with her annulment, her English is fluent. She grew up speaking through an interpreter. That means they were clearly were briefed to get her to admit that her marriage hadn’t been consummated, because that was going to be one of the grounds for the annulment. So it’s a very strange conversation.
Heather:
I also thought it was interesting, you really showed the role of and I’ll just say Cleves, because that’s what people know it as, but the role of Cleves in the foreign policy kind of world. And that’s something that often gets lost when you talk about and in the context of England.
Alison:
You need to see her as she saw herself in this European context.
Heather:
So what can you tell me about her life as a princess in Cleves? And how she would have seen herself in this context?
Alison:
Well, Cleves was a fief, …. Holy Roman Emperor but it was pretty independent at the time of Anna’s youth. It had an army and it had a great culture, a lot of Italian culture came up the Rhine and there was France, not that far away to the west. So it was a court based on the new learnings of Erasmus. It was an enlightened court because it’s Dukes where Anna’s father and her brother, they were technically Catholics, but they were very tolerant. Even Protestants at a time when Lutheranism is seen as heresy. She grew up with this court. Her mother was a strict Catholic, and she brought her daughters up of strict Catholic. So Anna was always a Catholic. But she was brought up and were told never far from her mother’s elbow. Things like dancing and singing and making music were frowned upon for young girls. So it was a very constricted, perhaps suffocating existence for her.
Heather:
Right. And yet she did. You mentioned Erasmus, can you tell me a little bit about, it seems almost like, like a dichotomy, that there was this very cultural court and yet at the same time, she wasn’t able to take part in any of that.
Alison:
No, because the women were kept quite apart, were more or less isolated. Theprincesses, there were three of them but one married early. They were encouraged to entertain guests at table. But usually these guests were chosen for them by their parents.
Heather:
Right. Okay. Yeah. And you show an awkward moment where she wants to entertain people, and they all kind of in England, right? It was in the scene in …, was it?
Alison:
Yes, she wants to do this. She wants to recreate these dinner parties. The English ladies didn’t do that. Although they had a lot of freedom in other respects. You know, they have the sort of accomplishments that that had with …of modern women, they could dance, they could sing, they could make music, write poetry. Henry loved all that. Right? But Anna didn’t have it.
Heather:
Right. Can you talk to me about her religion which you touched on that she was raised a Catholic and that she’s often seen because she was German as this Protestant bride, but she she wasn’t really at all. Was she?
Alison:
Well, it’s easy to see why people have got this impression because she was brought up as a strict Catholic. And Henry, I don’t think Henry would have married her if she’d been a Protestant. And she observed the Catholic faith in that when she came to England, her father had broken with the Pope. Unlike Henry, he stayed friendly with the Pope, even after the break. So Henry has a sort of felt an affinity with Cleves. But we don’t know anything about how Anna coped with England turning Protestant … but obviously when Mary Tudor came to the throne, and there was a counter reformation, then obviously, Anna would have been, sort of reverted to. She’d paid lip service to the to the Protestant faith in Edwards reign as a lot of people did. She would have reverted.
Heather:
Right. Okay. And I also want to talk about obviously her relationship with Henry and how they they became quite good friends afterwards. And yeah, it’s interesting because sometimes you see them in the TV shows like in the Tudors, there’s the idea that maybe they were together and there are those rumors that they actually had a child.
Alison:
Oh yes!
Heather:
Well, yeah and so what can you tell me about their relationship afterwards. They didn’t have any children, so..
Alison:
I pretty much doubt that Henry was the father of any children a month after… because he was too exhausted with Catherine Howard at the time. I think it was inconceivable he would have slept with Anna at a time when he’s very much in love with Catherine Howard. But the rumors persisted beyond Catherine Howard’s execution and right up towards the end of Henry’s reign, there was talk that he would take Anna back. But some strange transformation have taken place with the divorce, because suddenly they discovered they really liked each other, they became friends. And this is evident, Henry made a very generous divorce settlement on Anna. But the friendship becomes evident because this is a time of rampant inflation prices doubling in that decade. Anna’s divorce settlement was worth less and less… And Henry supplemented it. He paid for her officers, he paid out expenses when she was ill. And in one margin of his accounts, he’s got payment expenses for his own hand, he wrote in payment expenses for my beloved sister Anna. So this was a relationship, they became friends. And he looked after her, but it was after his death, that things went very wrong for her.
Heather:
Right, because she didn’t have his friendship anymore.
Alison:
No she didn’t. And she was sort of like the spare aunt. Spare stepmother for Edward VI who clearly didn’t have too much affection for her, and wasn’t close to her. And she was just an added drain on raw resources.
Heather:
Right? Sure. So was it her choice to stay in England afterwards? Because I’ve also read that it was almost like she was there as a hostage for good behavior. But I don’t know how much truth is there. Can you talk to me a little bit about that? That decision?
Alison:
No, I don’t think so at all. The choice was hers. She was frightened of going home, because the Alliance had collapsed. While she thought that they didn’t collapse, actually, there was no longer the need for it, because Henry was no longer isolated in Europe. But she thought that the Alliance had failed, and she would be blamed for it. And she really thought that if she went home, her brother would kill her. But then just put yourself in Anne’s position. You had a constricted upbringing, you’ve not had any freedom, six months of a rather miserable marriage, and suddenly you’re rich woman with freedom at your fingertips, great houses to live in. And you know, would you go home?
Heather:
No, of course. Just the idea that she was afraid her brother would kill her, did he have a reputation like that?
Alison:
No, as it turns out, he was very sympathetic. He said all the right things, made all the right diplomatic noises because he too wanted this alliance to be preserved. But he needed Henry’s friendship. But privately, he was pretty nasty about Henry VIII, he wasn’t very impressed with him at all, as you can imagine.
Heather:
Sure. Interesting. So then, the great mystery of her looks and the painting. You do hint in the book that Holbein went out of favor a little bit after the painting. And I’ve always heard that as a reason why the painting was a good likeness, because you know, he wasn’t punished afterwards. And then people thought it was a good likeness. What can you tell me in general about the painting? And
Alison:
They did. That’s true. But that means they can’t really tell whether that it is possible to say that but he didn’t get so many commissions from Henry after that, but that’s not conclusive evidence. But note that there’s no record of Henry complaining that Holbein deceived him. And as I say that the English envoy and Cleves thought that Anna thought that it was a good likeness. And I think what was missing was Henry and Anna, was the chemistry and what makes a relationship work. And also, think he was dismayed when he saw her. He complained it wasn’t a … representative. He didn’t say that in regards of what she looked like, he was saying it more or less, or had the praise of her that he’d received. And on the wedding night … Because then he came up with the complaints that you know, she wasn’t a virgin. But the strange thing is that the wedding was delayed for a couple of days because he was trying to get out of it. And when he couldn’t, the wedding went ahead, but at the altar, he was asked by Archbishop Cranmer, if he knew of any impediments to the marriage, and he said no. And he also initiated sexual relations on the wedding night, which suggests that he intended to consummate the marriage. And then I think he felt Anna’s body. He felt these tokens that he thought it suggested she wasn’t a virgin. And as he put it himself, I had neither will not courage to prove further. And I think he perhaps sort of instinctively thought of a way out when it really wasn’t.
Heather:
You also then talk about her role in Wyatt’s Rebellion during Mary’s reign. Without giving too much away. I had never heard that about her and about her role in that. So what can you tell me briefly about that?
Alison:
Well, in the years after her divorce, she came into the orbit of a very unscrupulous man, a quite a dangerous man calls at Thomas Cawarden. And he was originally her keeper or steward at Bletchingley in Surrey, and he wanted Bletchingley I mean, he was keeper of the rebels intent, he was quite a mover and shaker at court. And he was involved. He was a closet Protestant under Henry VIII. He was involved with Katherine Parr in a secret plot, Protestant plot. He was attached to the whims of martyrs who were burned at the stake. He was actually arrested and freed, but an under Edward of cause he did very well because he was a Protestant, and Protestants were in high favor. But under Mary, of course, he was considered as obsessive. He was involved in probably every single plot against Mary. And because he was close to Ann, because he was her tenant and they had lots of dealings, she visited him in London. Anna became sort of tainted by association. I don’t believe she was guilty at all. But she was opposed to it, with the aid of in future Elizabeth I. Anna was accused of having incited her brother to make war as more or less as big because Henry had divorced her. It’s not since she lived very happily in England for several years.
Heather:
Interesting. So your book is just fantastic. I had posted in one of my Facebook groups telling people I was gonna be talking to you and asking for questions like I normally do. I’ve got a couple questions, some of which we already covered. But I do want to read this one, too, that somebody posted. She said, “This isn’t a question, but I would like to thank her. I recently finished Isabella, Queen of England, She-Wolf of France. And it was just amazing. I liked the way she differentiated facts and built up myths about the queen. I also appreciate the amount of research she did. As a 17-year-old moving to college in a totally different country, I am taking the books authored by her with me as moral support.” So I thought you might enjoy hearing that.
Alison:
That’s lovely to hear something like that. It really is.
Heather:
I’m going to write a comment here and tell her to listen to the podcast because I read it to you.
Alison:
Yes, please do. That’s lovely.
Heather:
So somebody asks, “How long do you spend in research on your historical fiction? And also, what’s the coolest, most interesting thing you’ve discovered about any of the people you’ve written about?”
Alison:
I spent years you could say, because I mean, the novels, the fiction I’m writing now is based on research I did over a long period of time, mostly for nonfiction books. Some of it is unpublished as well. And so yeah, an awful lot. And then what was the other question?
Heather:
What’s the coolest, most interesting thing you’ve discovered about any of the people that–
Alison:
Oh my goodness. It was discovering various things about Anne Boleyn’s execution, I think. It just came, I was finishing researching a book called The Lady in the Tower, which is a nonfiction about Anne Boleyn’s fall. And literally a month before I was delivering the book, I found just one thing after another. Different and new evidence came up about Anne’s execution and her burial, and it was really exciting.
Heather:
Interesting, that book stayed with me just the end, The Lady in the Tower, in your graphic descriptions of her beheading–
Alison:
It was grueling. So my editor said he needed a drink after it–
Heather:
I know! I woke up with nightmares to it because I finished it before I went to bed and I was like, “Oh, that’s awful. No, it’s okay. It’s fine.” It was very gripping.
Alison:
Thank you. It’s all based on truth and everything. That people quoted from everybody, from these particular sources, but they didn’t quote from the whole source. And so there was swathes of material that had never been used or looked at.
Heather:
Somebody here, Susan says, “Do we know anything about what her family felt about the divorce, and also did she remain in contact with her family in the following years?” Well, you answered that quite a lot.
Alison:
She did remain in contact with her family, yes. As I said earlier, her brother was … diplomatic noises. But privately he was quite scathing about Henry. And in later years when things did get bad in England, because Anna was very … after Henry’s death, the poverty kicked in. Anna’s brother sent ambassadors to help her out and made representations to the English government. Generally was very supportive.
Heather:
Yeah, yeah. There are a couple of people here asking about her relationships after the divorce, if she could have remarried. And there’s a couple here asked “Did she have anyone later in life romantically?”
Alison:
Not outside, not outside the novel, no. But you got to remember that for some six years after she married, there were rumors that Henry might take her back. They kept resurfacing, even though I don’t believe there was any foundation to them. But while those rumors were current, is any man likely to come forward to suggest marriage to her?
Heather:
Right. And you also talked in the book about the way the annulment or the divorce was written that it seemed as if he was more liberty to …because the pre-contract, that was part of the reason for the divorce, which meant that the pre-contract still existed for her then in theory.
Alison:
Well, it’s very strange because of a contradiction in the actual documentation of the divorce. When the convocation dissolved the marriage and the Parliament later confirmed it, it was said that both parties were free to remarry. But the whole …there were three grounds for the annulment. One was nonconsummation, which Henry played down. And the main one was this precontract that hadn’t been formally dissolved. And the other one was the king had not consented to the marriage. But you got it. I’ve lost my train of thought now. I’m completely sorry.
Heather:
We’re talking about if she could remarry, and the pre-contract.
Alison:
Yes. She’s still married to the son of the Duke of Lorraine. And on the other hand, she’s free to remarry. It doesn’t make sense. Yeah, technically, she was, I mean, that the Duke of Lorraine’s son, …actually married. And the whole point was that Anna and Duke of Lorraine’s son when they were pre-contracted, they were children, they were under the age of consent, which was 12 for girls and 14 for boys. And therefore, it had been assumed by their fathers that when this alliance was broken, that they didn’t have to formally dissolve the betrothals, didn’t have it broken properly. But Henry was rather concerned. You can understand Henry’s concerned because if at any time it turned out she’s married to someone else, that could compromise English succession.
Heather:
Right, right. Of course. And his track record wasn’t that great. So he needed to make sure it was right on.
Alison:
Absolutely, yes, he may look a fool. But it was also like a question of security. If she bore him a child, for example, in the future, if Edward VI had died, her child had been first in line to the throne, right? And if somebody comes along and says, oh, she wasn’t properly married to the king because she was precontracted to somebody else, that could bastardize her child. Looking at the question of remarriage, there is this… but also, the fact that certainly, nobody’s likely to sort of trespass where the king might go.
Heather:
Sure, sure. Here’s one that says, “Did Anne know about Henry’s interest in Katherine Howard right from the beginning? Or how did she discover it?” You showed that in the book as well. So people should read the book–
Alison:
I fictionalized that, because we just don’t know. I think she didn’t know, I think later on, a little while.
Heather:
“Looking forward to reading this book when it’s available.” That’s nice. And somebody said here, where was the comment? They were at a …by you at the …about six months ago, and you mentioned you were going to be publishing a revised version of Six Wives of Henry VIII book. “I’d love to know when that will be coming out. Really keen to read her new research.”
Alison:
Nobody knows. Because I mean, I’ve researched and written about all five of the wives now. It’s been greatly expanded. And I do know that my UK publishers, nonfiction publishers suggested republishing it as a series of six biographies. Now, whether that will happen, I don’t know when it will happen. It can’t happen to compete with the current books. So something to the future. And I need to do more work on it because I’ve got these revised biographies. But I still have this want to go on researching. So these novels are sort of entering project to use the research that I’ve done already in the new theories.
Heather:
Right, interesting, fascinating. Somebody says here, “How does she get in the mindset of these characters, she’s so good at it, I feel like I’m in the room with them when reading their words, even though I know they’ve been fictionalized.”
Alison:
Oh my goodness. That’s lovely, to get that kind of feedback. It’s just I think I’ve lived with them for so long, and do a lot of background research on them. You look up, you find out about the character, the characters in the book as much as you can, and try to imagine how they would feel like. Working on each of these books have been written solely from each queen’s point of view. So you have to sort of get inside her head.
Heather:
Do you ever struggle with the shifting when you go from one to the other? How do you get in Catherine of Aragon’s head to getting into Anne Boleyn’s?
Alison:
No, because Anne Boleyn was the biggest challenge. And I discussed that with my editors. Because I was a bit concerned. As a historian, I take a bit dim view of Anne Boleyn because the evidence shows. I think she’s important historically, but she doesn’t seem to be a particularly nice person. I can’t understand why she’s so a heroine for so many people. Because there are so many issues around it. And the whole mythology is built up about it, too. I went back to original sources, and found some quite very interesting things about her. But I was worried that I was going to write a book that wasn’t sympathetic to the heroine. And my editor said she think about how, what her motives were how she got from A to B, basically, think of everything from her point of view. And that’s what I should have done on what I did do, and it was easier. And my agent, when I delivered the book, he said, you’ve written a really sympathetic biography, or novel. And a lot of people don’t like my view on Anne Boleyn. She’s almost a superstar.
Heather:
Right. Yeah. Well, there’s that whole kind of modern cult around her being almost like a feminist, when it’s hard to put a–
Alison:
Yeah I think people … by default, because when I was researching Anne Boleyn, I was talking to Sarah Gristwood who wrote a book called Game of Queens–
Heather 27:33
Yes, she’s been on my show as well.
Alison: 27:35
And I said to her, I was complaining, people are saying Anne Boleyn is a feminist icon. But you I don’t get that at all. Well, actually, she said, you can see why she was. Anne Boleyn was the courts of Margaret of Austria and the future Margaret of Navarre. And they were eager participants in this feminist debate that was actually going on in Europe at that time, but not in England. And it was questioning. It was saying that women should be more equal with men, you know, autonomy and more power. And Anne was exposed to this very early on, and it must have been part of what shaped her.
Heather: 28:18
Sure. That’s another Anne. Here I have, let’s see. There’s just a couple more questions. I want to go through here quickly, because I know we’re running out of time. This is, I almost don’t want to mention it. But I feel like if I don’t, it’ll be a disservice because some other people might be thinking, too. “It’s been inferred that she was a lesbian. Is this true?” I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that one. And she was also a strict Catholic. So
Alison: 28:42
I’ve never heard of this!
Heather: 28:44
Okay, so we’ll just say no to that. And then someone here says they were at a book signing of yours at …, and you were lovely and they loved meeting you. So there’s that going as well. And I think if I missed anybody’s questions here, I’m so sorry. There’s a lot of questions about her looks and her parents, which we kind of talked about. So I think I caught them all here. And if I didn’t, I apologize. And you have to read the book, and you’ll get answers to everything in the book.
Alison:
No problem. It’s all there.
Heather:
Perfect. So thank you for coming in.
Alison:
We covered a lot.
Heather:
We tried to get a lot in here. Right? Thank you so much for your generosity with your time. I know for so many of us, myself included, you were our entrée into this Tudor world and it’s just such a joy to always speak with you and to have you share your time.
Alison: 29:39
You are very, very kind. Thank you.
Heather: 29:43
Thank you so much to Alison Weir for being here on the show. I can’t wait until next year to talk to her about her book on Katherine Howard. In the meantime, go buy Anna of Cleve book. It’s amazing. It’s such a good book. You will really enjoy it, I promise. You can get show notes with links and all of the links to buy the book everything like that at Englandcast.com and also remember to go to Englandcast.com/Tudorcon2019 to check out your Tudorcon digital ticket. I cannot wait to see you either in person or virtually at Tudorcon. It’s going to be so much fun. All right, I’ll be back in about two weeks. Thank you so much for listening!
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.