This is a rather more sympathetic portrait of Anne Boleyn than many others. It is widely acknowledged Henry had an affair with Anne’s sister Mary and fathered a child with her before beginning a relationship with Anne. Weir suggests in this novel that Henry’s relationship with Mary began with him raping her, leading Anne to loathe Henry until she is slowly and reluctantly persuaded to commence a relationship with him by the strength of his attraction to her. Weir’s suggestion that Mary was raped by Henry is an odd narrative choice; Henry becomes a rapist and Anne the kind of person who can ignore her sister’s rape to secure her own advancement. If Weir is striving to paint a more sympathetic portrait of Anne, it fails.
More convincing is the post marriage portrait of Anne; insecure, flailing, struggling with her inability to bear Henry a son and viciously vindictive towards the former queen Katherine and her daughter. The final chapter, dealing with Anne’s beheading, is astonishingly good and the rest is able enough though it often tends towards melodrama; a letter from Henry ‘plunges [Anne] into perplexity’; later she “surrendered joyfully to [Henry’s] embrace.” Personally I prefer Philippa Gregory’s multiple tomes about Henry’s wives, but Weir’s are also readable.
