Mary Boleyn

"I have read just about every book there is out there about mary boleyn or has reference too her. Id like to believe from everything that i have read about her that at 1st she was very much in love with the king. she loved the attention, the compassion and so many more things that he gave her. I think that after the birth of her son that she realized what she really was to him someone to pass the time and warm the cold nites. she continued the affair i think for her family only then. As for henry being in love with her i think henry loved her company and how she made him feel but i do not think he was in love with her. she was the one person in a court full of people who were always asking something of him that never asked anything from him and i think he found that very refreshing. I do not believe that anne was jealous, she had her own mission with henry percy and when that didn't work out for her as she thought it would then she made herself in the way so that henry noticed her. i believe the best thing anne ever did for mary was "take" henry from her. "

Fiction or non-fiction? I've been able to find comparatively little on Mary in the latter category and, as a result, her portrayal in the former will inevitably be based far more on the author's personal theories and inventions than on fact and should therefore be treated with a very healthy dose of scepticism.

Historically, Mary's liaison with Henry seems to have more or less passed under the radar, the timing of it can't even be pinpointed. The two books I've read about Mary, TOBG and Karen Harper's "The Last Boleyn", both portray a long-term relationship which is well known in court circles - in TOBG, Mary is treated with as much deference as Queen Katherine by the ladies of the latter's household, ambassadors bow as low to her as they would to a princess, etc. - but that simply doesn't tally with the contemporary evidence, or lack thereof. I would say that the relationship is far more likely to have been discreet and short-lived, enabling it to pass below the radar.

She doesn't seem to have derived much material benefit from the relationship so I would say that there's a good chance that she was undemanding as you suggested, a refreshing change for Henry.

As far as Anne is concerned, I doubt very much that she set out to capture Henry's affections, much less that she took Henry away from Mary. Depending on the timing of Henry and Mary's affair, he may have left her to move on to Anne but she certainly doesn't seem to have wanted his attention, not at first.

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