Has anyone ever wondered what he might have meant? On the wedding night Henry pawed Anna’s breasts and belly, but ventured no further, for, by their looseness and other tokens, he was to declare many times, she was no virgin. The marriage took place in January 1540, but was not consummated. The King showed Anna every courtesy, while doing his best to wriggle out of the marriage contract, but it was seemingly watertight, and he ‘needs must put his neck in the yoke’, as he gloweringly put it. Preparations for the marriage went ahead. Few, however, have paused to wonder what Anna thought of Henry… It was the most disastrous of beginnings. Learning of her coming, the ardent suitor rode through the winter night to Rochester to meet his bride, to nourish love, as he told everyone.Īll the world has heard how Henry, seeing Anna for the first time, felt a deep aversion to her. Her arrival in England was delayed by storms, fuelling the King’s impatience. Yet he was enchanted by her portrait and pressed ahead eagerly with the marriage negotiations. An ambassador vouched that it was a good likeness, but Anna did had no talent for any of the courtly accomplishments that Henry admired in women. He sent his court painter, Hans Holbein, to paint her portrait.

At length Henry decided upon a German princess, Anna of Kleve, of whose beauty he was assured. When, within a month of Jane Seymour’s death, Henry VIII was ‘framing his mind’ to marry a fourth time, for the good of his realm, there was a long search for a suitable bride. But it was all snatched from her, for reasons that are still not fully clear. Having re-researched her story in depth for Anna of Kleve: Queens of Secrets, the fourth novel in my Six Tudor Queens series, I am not so sure that is true.Īnna should have had it all: a crown, a great marriage to a powerful king, wealth, influence and popularity. Most people think of Anna of Cleves – or Anna of Kleve, as she should be known – as the luckiest of Henry VIII’s wives.

Anna of Kleve by Alison Weir