Faces of Two of Henry VIII's wives...

Amici,

Interesting. Anne Boleyn, center of so much intrigue, mystery, and utter destruction, as how she might have looked. The "google-eyed whore" as some called her. Certainly a "gold-digger" or "social climber". God will sort all these people, that's for sure. (Henry might have suffered brain-damage at one  point that could possibly explain his cruelty. Maybe. But the nobles of England should have put a sword through him and ended his blight.) Here she is at this YouTube site, as reliably recreated as probably she can be.

At the site, the artist, who sells these copyrighted portraits, explains a bit of Boleyn's life and what images she built the portrait on. I like Boleyn here in modern dress, rather that early 16th century get-up. She was either 29 or 35 when that pig Fat 'Arry 8th ("I am, I am") had her killed. That hog actually had all his wives killed, one way or another, if you think about it, except for the German, Anne of Cleves, who lived longer and better-off than all the others, and the last, the widow Catherine Parr, who lived a bit more than a year longer than Henry.

Certainly, Anne Boleyn fulfills the old dictum: Be careful what you wish for.

Although I don't know, of course, her daughter Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth I, might not have been 'Arry's daughter at all. Especially compared to "Bloody Mary", Elizabeth looked nothing like Henry VIII, in the face, body-build, or hands. And she didn't have the chronic bad health the Tudor's possessed. But anything is possible. St. Thomas More might have gone to his death primarily because he would not recognize Elizabeth to be Henry's actual daughter, and Queen Mary might have eventually thought so, too. Strangely, Mary Tudor could have married Elizabeth off to a Spanish or French or (Catholic German) Grandee, but she absolutely refused. Odd, that. It would have been a good move for her sister, IF Mary thought Elizabeth Henry's daughter. But Mary was proud enough not to do so if she thought Elizabeth a "bastard".

Then again, because Henry had Anne Boleyn executed for adultery, Elizabeth would have been considered illegitimate by both Protestant and Catholic. The Cecils, father William and son Robert, who actually ran England (as a brutal police state) during all of Elizabeth's reign, knew that and that was why they totally controlled Elizabeth I as queen. She was their puppet, not the proud, independent ruler of Elizabethan England.

So, how did Henry include his second daughter in the line of the throne? Some say it was the humble Anne of Cleves who got him to do that. 

Here's Ann of Cleves, in period dress.  

Shy and quiet, this German-born Anne had to be one "sharp cookie" to survive that $@#^###& Henry, and end up as wealthy has she did. She eventually became a friend of Henry, a "sister" of the king's and a member of the royal family, and certainly of his daughters (well, she fell out with Mary but that wasn't hard to do). But the best thing about her is that by picking her for a wife for Blooy Henry, Henry's henchman, Thomas Cromwell, ended up being executed on his master's orders. Sweet.

At the website, you can apparently purchase these and many other such recreated images, which, while not perfectly true to life, at least gives on an idea of how these people looked. FWIW

    An Préachán

Psalm 146 of the Douay-Rheims: verse 9:

Who giveth to beasts their food: and to the young ravens that call upon Him.