MARY BOLEYN : MISTRESS OF KING HENRY VIII

First published in January of 2012, a month dedicated to Mary Boleyn as Mistress of the Month.

Go to January 2012 using archives on the side bar of the start page to read all the posts about Mary Bolyn (aka Mary Boleyn).

HENRY VIII had so many mistresses, including Elizabeth Blount before her, and Mary's sister Anne Bolyn was one of them too. Mary is the one who had a happy ending to her life - marriage to a man she loved who loved her without so very many complications - and who SURVIVED. Anne's the one who married the King and got beheaded.

Henry married Anne after he finally gave up on his wife of many years, Katherine of Aragon, try as the poor woman did, to give him a legitimate MALE heir. (We know so many men still dwell on having a son!)

Then, unhappy with a mistress as wife, it was Anne Bolyn that he sent to the block - beheading!

Mary seemed to have survived all this and have his child, a daughter named Katherine Carey, while she was married to William Carey. Henry sent William Carey off somewhere so he wouldn't interfere in their affair. She was devastated when the King dumped her for her sister.

Because of their daughter, Katherine Carey, there are a few people alive today who are blood related to Henry. If the book author Alison Weir is right, today's decedents of Mary Bolyn include Camilla Parker Bowles and Princess Diana!

Alison Weir's latest book called "MARY BOLEYN - Mistress of Kings" is fascinating. She has to tease out the details but is good at pointing out where other authors of the subject have run on assumptions. The term Kings is used because Mary may have been the mistress of the French King Francois I when she was a young teenager at his court. (The subtitle "The Great and Infamous Whore" turns out to be wrong)!

Mary, for all the details and historical research Weir did, remains a bit of a mystery. Was she simply compliant? Yet twice she married for love! Was she boring and without opinion or is it that she knew how to survive?

The book came out 2011 published by Ballantine Books and should be on your mistress bookshelf!

C 2012-2014  Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

TIME MAGAZINES TOP TEN MISTRESS LIST

TIME MAGAZINE'S LIST : TOP TEN MISTRESSES OF ALL TIME !?  link here

Do we agree with their list? 

Lucy Mercer  -  YES!
Camilla Parker- Bowles  YES YES YES!
Monica Lewinsky - NO! 
Amy Fisher - NO!  (I will never feature Amy as a Mistress of the Month!)
Anne Boleyn - YES!
MARILYN MONROE - NO!
Rielle Hunter - YES!
JAIME GRUBBS - MAYBE...

Using the Google Blogger Search feature, you can pull up past posts on some of these women who have been Mistresses of the month!  Missy

THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL starring NATALIE PORTMAN and SCARLETT JOHANSSON and ERIC BANA

If you aren't up to reading or you want to watch a film about the ambitious Bolyn family and King Henry VIII, you may love "THE OTHER BOLYN GIRL." I did! (Just keep in mind that this film isn't Alison Weir's book and she may have come to different conclusions about Mary Bolyn.)

The film shows that Anne tried to seduce her own brother hoping to concieve a child when she was married to Henry and he was through with her. That this brother could not go through with it. That his wife, ambitious for herself at court and frustrated in her arranged marriage with him because he would not have sex with her told the King what she saw. And so The Boleyn brother was then beheaded.

I'm linking to the IMBd (movie database) so you'll have a bit more information. Maybe if you read the book or watched the film, or done both, you will leave a comment - an opinion!

MARY BOLEYN : DID SHE LOOSE HER VIRGINITY TO FRANCOIS I ?

Page 78 ( years 1514-1515 approx.)

"Everything points to her (Mary's) affair with Francois I (of France) having been "extremely brief" - a moment, episode or one night stand even - and there is no evidence at all that, when Francois "soon tired" of Mary, he "passed her on to his courtiers," not that this "shocked" or "frightened" Anne Boleyn. And it may be unsafe to assert that it was probably at this point that Anne discovered "how women really could be exploited and mistreated, that she decided to protect her greatest asset, her purity, at all costs, for Anne herself, as we presently discover, had been "corrupted" at the French Court..."

Page 79

"It makes sense of the later events and course of Mary's life to assume that her family did find out what had passed between her and Francois I. It is unlikely that Mary herself told them - what girl of gentle birth would confess to compromising her honor, unless there were to be consequences that had to be dealt with discreetly? We don't of course, know that there were not, and it would be fruitless to speculate; but for the rest of her life, as will become clear, there is intermittent evidence to suggest that Mary was held in little account or affection by her family; and one gets a sense that she was a continuing disappointment to her "outstandingly learned" father, and probably to the rest of the family too."

ALISON WEIR BOOK EXCERPTS!