RedHanded - ShortHand: Anne Boleyn – The "Great Whore" Queen

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, changed the course of English history – despite being queen for just 1,000 days before her beheading at the Tower of London. And despite being one of the most infamous and influential figures ever to sit the throne, people still get Anne wrong. This is the Tudor ShortHand.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

Hello. Hello. We've got a poem to kick us off. Let's do it. How high, bra. Is it? Can we even call it a poem? A rhyme. Some couplets. Actually, it's just six words. Anyway, here in the UK, where we only learn about the Nazis and the Tudors. Sometimes ancient Egypt. There is a rhyme drilled into every child on this island. Divorced, beheaded died. Divorced, beheaded. Died. survived. I love the Tudors. I love the Tudors. Who's your favorite wife?

Oh, my favorite wife. Anne's up there. Amberlin's up there, right? She is a very, very interesting character. Like, that's a fucking hot take. But I think when we went to go watch Sixth the Musical, which I fucking loved, Anne of Cleese was my favorite.

I can't remember her song, House of Cleaves, that was it? It was like the House one. Yeah, something like, something out of castle, something. Yeah. Anyway, go watch it. It was really good. Yeah, six is good.

Six was very good. Edinburgh show. Fantastic. Outstanding work. But I think, yeah, I think, like, Catherine of Aragon, she's a bit boring. She's a bit, boring. She's a bit quiet. Like, I think she's a very strong woman because she at so many points could have just

been like, yeah, Henry, here's a divorce. I'll go fuck off and, like, die and wherever. But she doesn't. She's like, no, I am your wife and you are not fucking getting rid of me. So I'll give her that. I give her that. She's a very strong woman. And then you've got Anne.

Like, Anne is Anne. We're going to talk about Anne. She's, you know, top bitch. And then who's the third wife, the third wife? Jane Seymour. Jane Seymour. And the thing with Henry is like each wife is like the polar opposite of the wife before. That's like he's just like pendulum swinging all over the place.

You've got Pius, Catherine of Arrigan. You've got, you know, Anne who's like this sexy witchy Anne. And then you've got. And she's French. Jane C. Seymour. No, she's English, but she goes to France. She speaks French. She's raised in the court in France. And then you've got Jane Seymour, who is very like. I don't know how much she actually is, but she definitely plays that part of like, subservient wife. I will do what you want. She's also the only wife to give him a son. And then out of cleaves, I think then, who is, comes along and he's like, I don't like you. I don't like you. We called her a Flemish horse. He did. We can get into Y in another episode because I don't know if it was actually because. because he thought she was ugly. But anyway, he gets rid of her.

And she's very smart. She's like, all right, I'll just take all this money and I'll go and I'll like live in England and have a great fucking free life. And he actually basically gives her the status of almost like King's Sister. And she actually lives a very, very nice life. They also never actually got married. Yes, an old. There you go.

Whatever happened there. And then Catherine Howard was the next one. And she's like basically a teenager and she's just Henry sees her as like a sexy nymph, basically. And then finally we have Catherine Parr, who there was that movie that came out starring Monica Vennander, or am I confusing? out with the jury. I don't know. I'm not in your brain. She's married to Fassbender. Alicia Vacanda, I think that's her name. Anyway, and it's called firebrand. Because Catherine Parr was actually a very, very intelligent woman and a real firebrand,

but she kind of gets overshadowed by Anne a lot. But that's it. But I would say, yeah, they're all good. I don't know if I have a favourite, but I definitely think about Catherine Howard more than I think about the other ones. Okay. Because, I mean, I think it's just really horribly tragic, and she, like, practices before they overhead her. I think The Tudors is such an enduring, it's such a compelling story because you've all of these personalities. You've got Henry at the middle of it who was just like this. It was like a young, attractive, fiery guy who then turns into this tyrant. It's got everything you need.

And I have watched the Jonathan Rees-Meyers Tudors at least three times. And I love it. I also think Catherine Howard's one of the best ghost stories that she's supposed to just run down that corridor again and again and again and again. Anyway, now go and sit. Your GCSE in history, you will pass. That's all you need. Okay. I think we should do one all of the six wives, because I'm obsessed.

But we'll start with that. Let's start with Bobo. Within Henry VIII's six marriages is a story of such staggering political and emotional drummer that it sent the country into an absolute meltdown. And the chaos would take centuries to untangle. We're told in school, hundreds of times, that Henry's power-mad, reckless, horny king, who sacrificed his country so he could chase a bit of skirt. But today we are going to put the spotlight on probably

the most intriguing, enigmatic and downright dangerous of Henry VIII's six wives and Berlin. We're also going to look at her family's sky-high dynastic ambition and how a high-achieving political force was reduced to a baby-making machine. And how when she didn't deliver, she paid with her head. Here is the short hand. Anne Boleyn was probably born in Norfolk,

or Kent, probably in about 150-0-1. No one knows for sure. And the Berlin's were serious social climbers. Only a few generations back, they'd been pretty unremarkable provincial gentry. But Anne's great granddad made an impressive fortune as a merchant in London and even rose to become Lord Mayor of London. And from then on, they were a bona fide dynasty.

Anne's father, Sir Thomas Berlin, was a well-respected courtier and his ambitions for his small family were sky high. Think of him as a kind of 1500s Christiana. That's very funny and also a very good example. Sir Thomas had all right. married up. His wife Elizabeth Howard was the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, one of the most powerful men in the country. They had three surviving children, Mary, George and Anne Berlin. Thomas was a humanist and had some pretty progressive ideas, one of which was that his daughter

should be educated to the same level as his son. So he decided to pull on some strings with his royal connections and get Anne a gig as a handmaiden. So in 1513, 12-year-old Anne was sent to the court to Margaret, Arch-Duchess of Austria. And Anne stepped up. Before long, Margaret herself gave the following glowing review. I find her so bright and pleasant for her young age. After a few years, Anne secured a spot within the French court and served under two French queens. She was eventually ordered home by her father, just as soon as a spot opened up in the English courts. It was all part of the Berlin master plan. By this time, Anne's older sister, Mary Berlin, had become the king's mistress.

Wasn't Catherine of Aragon, didn't she marry Henry's brother before him and then he died? Yeah, that's like the whole basis on which Henry says he tries to get the marriage with Catherine annulled. He says, she slept with my brother and therefore she never should have married me and that's why God won't give us a son. But Catherine says, when she marries Henry's older brother, they're like teenagers and she says we never had sex we never ever had sex so that becomes like a big question about whether that actually happened or not blah blah blah but yeah she she was married to her brother first so i have a lot of siblings swapping going on not unlike the cardashians it's true Travis barker went out with Chloe maybe we can yeah do a whole thesis on the parallels

between henry the eighth and christian don't even fucking tempt me with a good time mate like because that would take over my whole life and then I would never get anything else done. Let's do it. Maybe it's our shot at the big times. Finally getting a documentary. Anyway, so both Berlin girls became ladies and waiting to Henry the 8th's first wife, Catherine of Aragon. At English court, Anne was a sensation. She spent her teenage years fuzzling around the hoity-toity French court. So she came back speaking French and playing a mean lute.

with her six fingers. And she brought back with her all sorts of fun new dances and fashions. She was worldly, cultured, witty and above all the most important thing anyone can be, sheke. And she was a hell of a flirt. She was said to have dark eyes that she well knew how to use with effect. And she was soon courted by various lords and highfalutin poets around the court. Though important to say everyone said she was quite plain looking.

Yes, I've read that. She was quite plain looking. They said she had quite like sallow skin and dark eyes and dark hair. And nobody was, and I think people even said like she wasn't much of a beauty. But she is a very charismatic character. One suitor, Lord Henry Percy, actually made moves to marry Anne. But his attempts were officially blocked. And Lord Percy was bad a shed from London.

And that order had come all the way from the very top. Anne's father's plan had worked. Anne had attracted the attention of King Henry VIII himself. In March 1522, when Anne was in her early 20s, she was in a play for Shrove Tuesday. The play was what was known as a court to mask, a bonkers pageant that's very specific to the Tudor era, and it's very difficult to explain.

The play went like this, eight gentle women wearing silk to represent the eight virtues, and they were waiting for eight gentlemen to show up, storm the tower, and liberate them from vice. the king was naturally in attendance at his own court, his own court little play, and he liked what he saw. So let's meet England's most famous king. If you know one thing about Henry the 8th, it's probably, well, the whole six wives thing. But a close second is that he really, really, really wanted a son.

And I think wanted isn't strong enough. He needed a son. Henry needed a son. He was very nervy about his lineage and there were lots and lots of people who were buying for the crown. The tutors were very early in their day at this point and there were lots of people, some people, who had much stronger claim to the throne than Henry did.

And he knew if he didn't have a son, there was no way he was going to secure the future for the tutors. By the 1520s, he had been married to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, for a decade. And by this point, Catherine was in her 40s and so far had only given birth to one surviving child. and that was a girl. By this point, Henry was going off his wife

and his mistress, Mary Bullen, and pretty soon he was going after Anne. His surviving love letters show his growing infatuation. One said his heart belonged to Anne alone and hoped his body would soon too. He said he'd been stricken with a dart of love, and he signed it off with a love heart around Anne's initials. And when Anne fell ill for her,

a mysterious sweating sickness. Henry had her escorted back home to Kent and sent his best doctor to care for her. The sweating sickness is so interesting. It just went away. Yeah. So one of those things that it used to be absolutely everywhere

and then it just vanished. Yeah. But Anne's masterstroke here, or death warrant, depending on how you look at it, was that she played extremely hard to get. Which to an insecure and sensationally Randy King

who's used to getting his way was fucking fuel on the fire. me. And again, look, there is a lot of talk of this. And up until this point, it is true. Anne refused his offers to become a mistress, like her sister. She was in it for the big time. Though I do have to say a lot of people say later, she like doesn't have sex with him. She won't have sex with him until they actually get married. And a lot of people like, look, she's so devious. The thing is, we don't have a lot of the letters. So we don't actually know what was going on. This is just what's assumed. I also think Anne is not fucking stupid. She knows that if she gets

pregnant before they get married, that kid's a fucking bastard. And she is like, no, no, no, no, no, no. The fruits of my loin will wear the crown. And so I think she's also very smart. And, you know, as any woman who has lived in the world will know, nobody in the world is nicer to you than a man who hasn't fucked you yet. Knowing Henry was getting twitchy about his lineage and gave the king an ultimatum, she'd only give herself physically to him if it was as his wife,

which put Henry the eighth in a... very tight spot because he was already married to a big fat Catholic. And England had followed the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church for a thousand years. It expressly forbade divorce as a cardinal sin against God. Any moves to the contrary would plunge the country into centuries of political and religious turmoil. But then on the other hand, Henry really wanted to marry Ambelin. So for the decade or so after, Henry first saw Anne, there followed probably the most awkward atmosphere in all of our royal palaces until early 2026.

Living in the palace was the king's current wife, a devoutly Catholic pious woman, and also there was Anne, who was slowly being very publicly promoted from sidepiece to de facto queen. All the while, Henry was running around plotting ways in which he could make it all official. He made Anne into the Lady Marquise of Pembroke, which gave her the status she needed to accompany Henry on all of his trips abroad. And her political influence only grew and grew. She became a trusted advisor to the king in key matters of state. And from her time in the Austrian and French courts,

Anne also had strong reformist ideals, wanting to separate the state from the church and rewrite the religious rulebook. And she gave Henry all sorts of reformist books to read. These books argued that according to the Bible, kings had the divine right to supreme authority and shouldn't be ordered around by some Pope. Sometimes this story seems to be a bit cartoonish and exaggerated. So is it really true that Henry VIII messed the whole country up for centuries causing bloody wars and monumental political arrest just so he could get a divorce?

Well, kind of. But Reformation wasn't just cooked up by Henry as an excuse to ditch his Catholic wife. It was a very real growing movement. Henry just seized on it because it suited his agenda and also fed his ego. And predictably, there were a lot of slimy political machinations associated with reformation. People who saw the King's Royal Horniness as an opportunity and one of those was Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell had a bold new plan for Henry to move forward without the Pope. Marianne start our very own version of church

with added divorce and make England great again for this brave idea Thomas Cromwell was made the King's deputy So between Anne's tactical reading list The Promise of finally bedding his paramour And Tody Courte is promising him the world If he sacked off the Pope Henry was all in

He spent six years petitioning the Pope To annul his marriage He was trying to argue As Sir he said because Catherine had been his brother's widow, it was all illegitimate from the very start. But the Pope stayed firm. So Henry pulled the trigger. Catherine of Aragon was dismissed from court. And before he was even divorced, Henry married Anne-Belain secret. By their official marriage in January 1533, Anne was already pregnant.

In May, Henry made his new Archbishop of Canterbury pronounce his marriage to Catherine, null and void. And also another thing just to quickly add, like the risk he is taking with that. Not an easy throwing off the Pope. He's also divorcing Catherine Navaraghan, who is the fucking aunt of the emperor of Spain at the time. Who is the most powerful force in Europe at that time. You know, the Spanish Armada, etc., etc. And he's like, sorry what? You're divorcing my aunt?

Big, big risk, big risk. Henry made plans for a new church, the church of England. And he would be its supreme leader, and the Pope was furious. Anne was escorted by boat down the Thames to the Tower of London. She stayed there for a month preparing for her coronation. On the 1st of June 1533, in a white cloth of gold over fur-trimmed purple robes. Her hair flowed freely to symbolise her purity and virginity, despite the fact that she was very visibly, very heavily pregnant.

Details. Symbolism is much more important. She was paraded through the streets all the way to Westminster. Along the way, various spectacles and pageants had been prepared for the Queen's journey. And she was crowned in a spectacular ceremony at Westminster Abbey. For the next few weeks, there were feasts, balls and jousting. And all of this pomp and ceremony was very important. The public were going to take some winning over on this whole divorce thing.

But for Henry, it was all going according to plan. He was absolutely convinced his male heir was. was finally on the way. When Anne's due date approached, more tournaments, processions and week-long celebrations were planned. But it was a girl. It was Margot Robbie. Henry's disappointment was palpable.

And the celebrations were all quietly cancelled. But despite this shaky start, Anne's time as Queen was impressive. She contributed some sharp political strategy, had huge influence over the court. But if you know anything, about Anne Boleyn, it's definitely that she was number two of six, so her days in the palace were numbered. Yeah, and if you remember the rhyme from the start of the episode, it's divorced, beheaded.

For all her contributions in court, in the king's eyes, Anne was there for one purpose and one purpose only, making them boys. Just months after Elizabeth's birth, Anne was pregnant again. But she miscarried. And by the time her third pregnancy kicked in, tensions were already growing. This time, success was essential. They'd torn the country in half over the second chance to try for a Tudor air. The pressure was immense.

And then... One day out jousting, Henry was knocked off his horse. He fell hard, lay motionless for hours. And somehow Anne, pregnant, vulnerable and under immense strain, heard a rumor that the king had died. She collapsed and miscarried the same day. And it was a boy. This miscarriage would have been devastating for an already strung out, Anne.

But the accident that had caused it also changed Henry for the worst. It left him with permanent damage and he could no longer mount a horse without help. He became angry and volatile and more suspicious and paranoid. When he learned of the miscarriage, he whispered, I shall have no sons by her. He was a superstitious man and started to question his decision more and more. It's a tale as old as time. Cheated, got what he wanted, lost interest.

And his royal eye started a roving. His new infatuation was a lady-in-waiting called Jane Seymour. It was also Anne's second cousin. And again it was tense. Once when Anne saw Jane wearing a picture of Henry around her neck she snatched it off so violently that she injured her own hand. Fair enough. They are still married. And it wasn't just love rivalries playing out in the palace.

The politics of Henry's big beautiful church bill were catching up to him. European connections started to fall apart as leaders that were still loyal to the Pope refused to acknowledge the new marriage. Anne already had her enemies at court there were plenty of traditionalists who were still sore about what she did to Catherine of Aragon and once it was clear that she was on the way out the propaganda machine kicked in

one of Berlin's detractors claimed that she had a devilish spirit while another imaginatively called her a goggle-eyed whore oh dear I don't know what goggle-eyed means far apart close together big small Big? Wonky? Big and wonky? Hmm. At least big. Plus, ever since Anne's third pregnancy ended in a stillborn boy, rumours of witchcraft followed her wherever she went.

As did the still quite prevalent rumor that she had six fingers on her right hand. The old guard started whispering to the king about how Anne had caused all of this upheaval with her pesky reformist ways. until in 1536 Henry pulled the trigger again. On the 30th of April 1536, a court musician named Mark Smeaton confessed, confessed, confessed in air quotes,

to a sexual relationship with Anne. And I say confessed, with a little smattering of skepticism, because he was tortured until he confessed to this sexual encounter. Social climate, Anne Berlin, It's not going to be fucking a musician. Yeah, you would think so.

I think Anne was smarter than that to give in to some sort of carnal desire for Marksmeaton. Marksmeaton, who was also, and again, don't know, this was 500 years ago, rumoured to be not into ladies, let's just say. So when Anne herself was interrogated, she mentioned the name of another man who'd once professed his love to her. Suddenly, an accusation of an affair with this man

was also added to the list. She denied this one. on the grounds that he was the worst-dressed man in the palace, however. And it is true, I think, again, that's a very long time ago, but Anne hadn't been a virgin coming into Henry B.8's bed, let's just say. She had had a love affair with a man before who was quite obsessed with her. Again, who the fuck knows? But the accusations continued, and it even got incestuous, because pretty soon there were fingers being pointed to Anne that she was even sleeping with her own brother, George,

as well as plotting to kill the king. Now obviously the reasons for this, it's like wanted some even more despicable things that we can say, incest, but also how can we tear down the whole Berlin family? Right? Yeah, chucked George in there too. So following this, Anne was arrested for adultery and treason. And once again, Anne found herself on a barge,

travelling down the Thames to the Tower of London. But this time, she wouldn't have a grand procession through the streets of London. In fact, she's still there today. I do think one of the most London-y moat. You know, sometimes London just catches you off guard is when you walk down the river and you just catch sight of Traitor's Gate.

And you're like... Yeah, I love that. And actually, where I used to work in St. Catherine's Dock, We used to get off at Tower Hill and walk and he used to walk past the place where Ambellin was executed every day on the way to work and I was just like, yeah, obviously horrible

but I was like that is fucking cool. It's cool. Let's call for Anne. A sham trial was conducted at the tower itself and she was found guilty on all counts and Ambelin was sentenced to death. She awaited her sentence in the same apartment she used to prepare for her coronation

but three years before. Oh, that's got a half. The night before her execution and still had the wherewithal for a classic Berlin Zinger, saying, I heard the executioner was very good. And I have a little neck. Apparently she held her hands around her neck and then burst out laughing herself. You've got to laugh. Executions were usually pretty public affairs, especially one's this high profile.

But Henry's court knew that they had to be very careful. with PR on this one. So it was done inside the tower with a small crowd of courtiers and tower officials. And they also changed tack on the method of murder. The regional plan had been to burn her at the stake, a standard sentence for women accused of treason. But in the end, Henry saw that he had to be shown to be merciful.

I also do wonder, I mean, I think he did really love Amberlin, and I do think he is like, I gotta get rid of you. You're bad news. You're fucking me off now. And you haven't even given me a son. I don't know if it was just to be shown to be merciful or if he really didn't want to make her go out with the most pain possible.

Yeah. So it was decided that instead of being burnt to death and would have a head chopped off, but not with a big, breeches axe like usually happened, which is a long and gruesome process with lots of hacking. Instead, they got an swordsman from France for a much cleaner process. So, on the 19th of May, 1536, the 35-year-old Anne knelt on Tower Green. She said her last words, which were, I come hither to die,

for according to the law and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I pray God save the king, for a gentler, nor a more merciful prince was there never. The swordsman stepped up behind her and severed her head off with one clean blow. She'd been queen for just over a thousand days when she was buried in the chapel of St Peter, advinicular, within the tower walls. And actually it's very interesting the way he did it,

which again, historical record, imperfect, but apparently what the swordsman did and why he was so skilled, as if he had a fucking massive, very, very sharp sword, so it would be clean, but also what he does when he comes out. Anne's kneeling there, and he doesn't want to panic her.

She's kneeling, but she's not got her head down. And she's expecting to be told to do that. But what he actually does is he calls out and she turns around and looks and he does it then. So again, it's like with the element of surprise so she doesn't even know it's coming. And again, if Henry really did just want to make it a little bit less brutal than being burned at the stake, why go to the effort of bringing in someone from France to do it in such a like, as merciful a way as possible? Now that day her brother was also killed alongside her, and her father Thomas was stripped of his position as Lord Privy Seal.

Henry, who was now very much shacked up with his next soon-to-be wife, Jane Seymour, tried quite literally to wipe Anne's name from history. Her heraldry, an emblem, which was a white falcon, were replaced with Jane Seymour's, wherever they were found in royal palaces. 11 days after Anne's head hit the grass of Tower Green, Henry married Jane. And ten months later, it was announced that Jane was pregnant. And on the 12th of October 1537, Jane gave birth to Edward, a baby boy. But after all that, even that long, promised air couldn't straighten things out.

Jane died in childbirth. Henry was convinced into a tactical marriage with Anne of Cleves, the sister of a German duke, and tried to warm Europe back up. But when Henry saw her, he wasn't happy. He said to Thomas Cromwell, she is nothing fair and has very evil smells about her. The marriage was never consummated and successfully annulled, so there weren't technically six wives.

Undeterred, the king started chirpsing Catherine Howard, Amberlin's teenage cousin, and my favourite, and then he married her as well, probably just out of habit by this stage until she had an affair with a courtier allegedly and was beheaded. Finally, he married a wealthy widow, Catherine Parr. She was actually quite a calming influence

reuniting him with his estranged daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. And even getting them back into the line of succession which worked for one of them. Yes. So like we said, the next few decades were certainly rocky and you can listen to our shorthand on Lady Jane Grey the nine-day queen for that story. But very briefly, let's talk about Edward Henry's longed-for boy.

Unfortunately, he was very weak, a very sickly boy. And he became king at the age of nine when Henry died. But it wouldn't last long because just six years later at the age of 15, Edward also died. And this absolutely opened the floodgates. and all the chaos culminated in Mary I, the daughter of Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, waging a mad, bloody war trying to drag the country back into being Catholic. But finally, when she died, in came Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn's daughter,

and with her came what's known as the Elizabethan settlement, in which Elizabeth I did her very best to just calm everyone the fuck down. The Elizabethan era brought Shakespeare, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the dawn of the British Empire and fancy new American imports like potatoes and tomatoes. And tobacco. Interesting. I think Elizabeth I think Elizabeth I first is maybe my favorite queen or favorite royal.

I just think she was a very, very interesting person. She rules for such a long time. And I love that after all the like Protestant Catholic, like fighting, burning people, like all of that. She's just like, I do not wish to make windows into men's souls where she's like, I don't want to know. I don't want to know. What do you care about? I do, yeah, I take all of those points. I just, she did kill a lot of Catholics and I am one. So I can't really be like, yeah. Sure. Sure. But again, you know.

But I get it. Yeah, I think it's a bad time. But she does. She, she drags England out of that, like, as much as possible out of that petty fighting and into like, let's focus on like a bit more prosperity and it was a golden age. It was a golden age. And yeah. And she did have very long fingers. So I think that Amberlin just had really long fingers and that's where the six finger rumour comes from. Because we've got Elizabeth's gloves like they're fucking massive. And she's a very interesting person and like her life was very, you know, she never, we can do a whole short hand on her so I'll say that for them. So let's wrap up. Okay dokey. That's enough of Bobo. That about does it for Ambelin. The often skimmed over 1,000-day queen whose life had a

monumental impact on centuries of English history and musical theatre. So, before we go, what about her sister? After being spurned by Henry, Mary Billin opted out of the family's maddenistic ambition and chose a quiet life. While Mary's sister was still queen, she met a man 12 years her junior, way below her station, and she married him. And she wrote at the time, I had rather beg my bread with him than be the greatest queen christened, which, with hindsight, probably a good idea. But do I wish he turned out to be someone amazingly famous? Yes.

Do I wish their children went on to invent loads of stuff? Yes. Exactly. But what do I know? What do I know? I'm just a Catholic. So that's it, guys. That is the story of Ambelin.

We'll see you next time, where we will. definitely do shorthands in the future about all of the rest of it that we can't stop talking about. Goodbye. Bye.