Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > Boleyn Traitor > Status Update

'But I am glad of a letter that says nothing - it means he is thinking of his safety, not raging in defence of Anne. The accusation of adultery and treason will fall of its own overweight - it will crash down on those who raised it. The worse they try to paint us, the worse will be their defeat. All we have to do is say nothing.'

''If the marriage was invalid, then she is no wife,' I explain patiently. The duke is deadly at the head of his men, but not the sharpest blade when faced with ideas. 'If she is no wife, there is no adultery. As her uncle, as the head of our house, your task is to wait for them to make fools of themselves, and then take Anne away.''

'He limps with the pain of his leg, which has wors-ened, and he looks oddly furtive - like a man hiding a terrible secret. He has learned his own mortality.
Riding in the joust against young men to celebrate his first wife's death, he thought himself immortal.
Now, he learns that he, too, can die, in a moment, alone as she was, cold as she was, with a great weight crushing the breath out of him.'

'Anne spits a venomous reply; but the king raises his voice and goes on: 'You should know ...' He is drunk, but his speech is clear; they will hear every word even at the very back. 'You should know that it is in my power to humble you again, in a moment - in a moment! Just as I have raised you.''

'Anne has made herself into a new sort of queen, a new sort of wife: a beloved-wife, a love-queen. She has made a new age for women - recognised for our beauty and brains. Is such a queen, married for love, as secure on her throne as one pledged in a cold-hearted international alliance? Or should a marriage made for love, last only as long as love?'

'It is my hidden grief that we have been married ten years with no sign of a child. But I laugh as merrily as if I have never cried in George's arms. 'Ah, Sire, we can't all have our first child in the first year of marriage and a second in the second year! We are not all as happy as you and the queen!''

Feel like I may regret this, having written on Jane myself and vividly remembering parts of The Boleyn Inheritance, but here I go.