Weir does try, and, more so than in her other books, provides alternative viewpoints or explanations, giving due weight to previous scholars and novelists (I suspect she's received several questions about The Other Boleyn Girl, book and movie, given the number of times this book is mentioned here.) Nonetheless, the hatred – almost venom – for Anne Boleyn slips through here, more than once. But all of this time spent in Tudor archives has created one slight problem that has appeared in previous books: Weir has developed a hatred for Anne Boleyn, which keeps spilling over into other works, and makes it particularly difficult for her to write an unbiased biography of her sister. Her works are usually competently written and well footnoted. If you're unfamiliar with Alison Weir, she's a biographer who in the last couple of decades has made a nice career out of writing biographies of British royals, primarily from the Tudor period. Let's catch up, with some chatter about Alison Weir's Mary Boleyn, Henry VIII's mistress – and the sister of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, executed after a few years of married life, since by that point Henry VIII wanted to make the ending of that marriage very, very final. MarinessHave I really let about two years pass without a discussion of a Tudor biography? Yes? How awful.
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