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A review by hewlettelaine
Mary Boleyn: The Great and Infamous Whore by Alison Weir
4.0
Alison Weir admits herself that evidence for the life of Mary Boleyn, sister of Henry VIII's famous second Queen, is scant. We know that she was the King's mistress for a time before her sister caught his eye but when, why and what the result was is difficult to say with any certainty. Despite this, Mary has earned something of a reputation for being a "loose" woman, easy with her favours both in France and at home and used as an example for her sister to avoid.
Weir's task with this book is not so much to chart the life of Mary, which is almost impossible because of the lack of evidence, but to attempt to rescue her reputation from the slanders that have been laid against her. Weir spends the book examining the various claims made about Mary - she was the French King's mistress, she was Henry VIII's mistress discarded in favour of her sister, she had children by the King - and attempts to look at the evidence that exists for them. As Weir says, this book is also about the historiography of Mary and Weir looks at what historians have said about her since her own era which has led to such a skewed picture of the woman in question.
The picture that emerges is of a different person than traditional history might suggest. She does indeed seem to spend the first part of her life in a string of bad decisions that compromise her reputation and leave her as the shame of her own family. But she also becomes the only Boleyn sibling to survive and even thrive in her later life after making the bold decision to carve out her own future. Weir makes a convincing case that one of her children may well have been Henry's illegitimate offspring - and she also shows evidence for another unconnected illegitimate child belonging to Henry VIII of whom I had never heard before reading this book.
Altogether, as a reader with an interest in the Tudor era, I found this book to be very interesting, both in its subject matter and in the way that it illuminates how history is constructed - and how wrong that can sometimes be.
Weir's task with this book is not so much to chart the life of Mary, which is almost impossible because of the lack of evidence, but to attempt to rescue her reputation from the slanders that have been laid against her. Weir spends the book examining the various claims made about Mary - she was the French King's mistress, she was Henry VIII's mistress discarded in favour of her sister, she had children by the King - and attempts to look at the evidence that exists for them. As Weir says, this book is also about the historiography of Mary and Weir looks at what historians have said about her since her own era which has led to such a skewed picture of the woman in question.
The picture that emerges is of a different person than traditional history might suggest. She does indeed seem to spend the first part of her life in a string of bad decisions that compromise her reputation and leave her as the shame of her own family. But she also becomes the only Boleyn sibling to survive and even thrive in her later life after making the bold decision to carve out her own future. Weir makes a convincing case that one of her children may well have been Henry's illegitimate offspring - and she also shows evidence for another unconnected illegitimate child belonging to Henry VIII of whom I had never heard before reading this book.
Altogether, as a reader with an interest in the Tudor era, I found this book to be very interesting, both in its subject matter and in the way that it illuminates how history is constructed - and how wrong that can sometimes be.