the recent outpouring of s.eymour apologism i’ve witnessed on twitter recently seems a bit like goalpost moving...

im not going to link it bc i really don’t care . that much (any of y’all can dm me if you really want); but i’ve looked into the dynamic being spoken of a lot and i think ‘no words of b.oleyn’ speaks a lot to how this family saw themselves and what they had taken part in. 

im going to try to put this more succintly / abbrev version of what i messaged a friend recently:

as to the levied charge of hypocrisy, the emotional reality when we speak to c.atherine of aragon vs a.nne boleyn vs j.ane seymour is just vastly different...

while i don't think anyone would say c.atherine’s reproductive history was not sad, there was at least, a buffer...

did the boleyns take advantage of the fact that she had no surviving sons? absolutely, without a doubt. arguably that is rather morally grey

but there is a HUGE difference btwn taking advantage of an opportunity that presents itself nine years after the queen's last pregnancy & stillbirth

and taking advantage and discrediting one ...what, a week? a month?  after her last miscarriage... i judge the circumstances differently because they are different...

& im just not about humbly accepting this false equivalency being banded about , like...

there is a huge difference btwn encouraging a trial into the validity of a royal marriage again, near-decade after, vs a woman being arrested FOUR MONTHS after she has had a miscarriage

& whether or not the s.eymour involvement encouraged arrest specifically, clipping along at a nice pace to accept it and enjoying your sister living & dining in style as queen-to-be while the woman with that title about to be tried is confined in the tower...  they're not the same, i do find it egregious and very different than the 1st scenario.

there were people ousted from power in every promotion the b.oleyns and their affinity rose. anne was made marquess after c.atherine’s exile. cranmer was promoted after warham died of natural causes. im sure g.eorge was made viscount at the expense of ... someone, certainly t.homas b.oleyn was made earl of ormond at the expense of some relatives. anne became queen after c.atherine’s demotion. e.lizabeth became princess after mary’s. 

there were people executed for not recognizing the royal supremacy, which one could argue was the same as denying the b.oleyn marriage (it’s a grey area, arguably they were connected, but it’s hard to argue anyone was executed for eschewing the act of succession alone, more and fisher both pointedly said they were not against that element). but there’s hardly the brutal 1:1 that exists in regards to the b.oleyn downfall. henry & jane received a dispensation to wed on the day anne was executed, they were betrothed the next, wed ten days after that, and j.ane was queen. e.dward s.eymour was made viscount eighteen days after his technical predecessor (brother to the queen) , the viscount rochford, was beheaded. 

‘but you’re just a hypocrite for admiring the b.oleyns and not the s.eymours’, eh, i think the reason that there are more fans of the former than the latter is that they operated differently & there were different circumstances surrounding their respective rises to power. to ‘win’ in this system always required ruthlessness, and it always meant someone else lost. ‘to the victor, the spoils’, sure, but ‘to the victor, the spoils’ hits different when the ‘spoils’ are inextricably tied to the reality of the orphaned children & widows of the judicially murdered upon the exact moment of victory (respectively, the moment of the betrothal of h.enry&a.nne, & the moment of betrothal of h.enry&j.ane...only true of the latter, and essentially-- what, thirteen days gone-- only true of the latter, even if one switches ‘betrothal’ to ‘wedding date’- -the closest it comes to for the former is the arrest of bishop fisher in march 1533, previous to annulment of henry’s 1st marriage).

& that’s what bothers people, as far as i understand it. this wasn’t game of thrones, this really happened. whether or not someone ‘agrees’ with the kind of language used to describe what happened, there isn’t any denying the order in which it did, nor the coinciding events. if it doesn’t disgust you, it’s your prerogative. if you believe animus towards the complicit actors/beneficiaries is mutually exclusive to animus towards the principal agent/s (depending on which theory you go by, henry himself vs henry and cromwell vs cromwell alone, although any besides the middle is a bit of a stretch imo-- henry was at the very least the final say/ultimate power), well, that is, too, but you would be incorrect, even if you have, at times, personally come across one or the other.