FAVORITE OTMA PHOTOS: ANASTASIA
It was the first time I had seen any of the four. The two older ones were in simple white, each with a single string of small pearls, and with their heavy dark hair hanging over their shoulders looked very girlish and sweet. Olga carried a little bunch of violets, and Marie and the ten-year-old Anastasia had boxes of silver-wrapped chocolates. Anastasia sat down nearest me and gave me a demure little smile as she set the chocolates on the railing between us. She was not a beautiful child, but there was something frank and winning about her. Music behind the curtain was playing in a very low key, and she began to hum the air softly to herself. It was a haunting air, with a minor strain suggestive of the Volga Boat Song. "What is that song you are humming?" I asked. "Oh," she said, "it is an old song about a little girl who had lost her doll." The music faded out then, the people were crowding in from the foyer, and she was biting into another chocolate. Her white gloves were now quite hopeless, but when I went to sleep that night her song was humming away tantalizingly in my head. "The little girl who had lost her doll." That was more than forty years ago. - Post Wheeler, Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (1955)
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YOU TURN ME INTO NOTHING, WOE UPON YOU
The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel / Ana Torrent in The Other Boleyn Girl / Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel / memorial for Catherine of Aragon’s children at Hampton Court / Henry VIII, William Shakespeare / Love Slowly Kills, borda / Catherine of Aragon: Infanta of Spain, Queen of England, Theresa Earenfight / Houses of Power, Simon Thursley / Portraith with a serpent, X-Ray , unknown painter / Henry VIlI and Anne Boleyn's initials, King's College Chapel, Cambridge / Catherine of Aragon: Infanta of Spain, Queen of England, Theresa Earenfight / 29 January 1536 – Anne Boleyn “Miscarried of her Saviour”, Claire Ridgeway / Natalie Dormer in The Tudors / The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel / Postcard, Amazon Quarterly / Roman Marble Relief of the Three Graces, circa 2nd Century A.D. / Catherine of Aragon: Infanta of Spain, Queen of England, Theresa Earenfight / Poster for Mother!, James Jean / The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel / Unfinished portrait of Jane Seymour, after Hans Holbein the younger / This Is Not The Portrait Of Jane Seymour, Edoardo de Falchi / The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel / Emma D’Arcy, House of the Dragon / The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel / Henry VIII’s vault, A.Y. Nutt / The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel / Saiorse Ronan in Mary, Queen of Scots / 1782 depiction of Katherine Parr’s lead coffin, unknown / The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel / a piece of hair cut from the head of Katherine Parr, collection of Sudeley Castle / a piece of Katherine Parr’s burial gown, collection of Sudeley Castle / The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel
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Silver and bronze medals of Elizabeth of York engraved by Daniel Friedrich Loos (18th century). The latin inscription says: ‘Elizabeth of York wife of Henry VII Queen of England’ (obverse) and ‘Hence have our roses grown’ (reverse).
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- Anne Boleyn's Sleeve by Juliana Gray, "The End"
However understandable the impulse to universalise Anne Boleyn’s story might be, these attempts mostly fail to account for the very historic specificity of her narrative. How can we account for a woman who apparently had so much sexual and emotional appeal she had the power to cleave King and country from the control of the Catholic Church, yet whose downfall was so complete she became the first English queen consort to face the executioner?
The story of Anne Boleyn is about dissenting from and challenging the dominant cultural norms; her example is that of the woman who created herself and, for a brief time, through her brilliance and her beauty and her will, maintained herself in a society in which quasi-independent female empowerment and agency were relatively unknown. She continues to speak to us as an avatar of feminine power.
- Stephanie Russo, The Afterlife of Anne Boleyn: Representations of Anne Boleyn in Fiction and on the Screen
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