VF: Anne Boleyn was a big tennis fan, just like the Duchess of Cambridge

To coincide with the Wimbledon Championships, Vanity Fair published a somewhat bonkers story comparing and contrasting tennis-lovers Anne Boleyn and the Duchess of Cambridge. What’s kind of funny is that while Anne Boleyn and Kate Middleton have a lot of stuff in common, Anne actually comes across so much better than Kate? Anne comes across as forward-thinking, a genuine political asset, and a woman of depth and education. Kate… um, does not come across that way. One of the similarities between the two women is that they are/were big tennis fans. In Boleyn’s day, she would go to Greenwich to watch tennis matches. Kate is a tennis-enthusiast, although she mostly just loves Roger Federer specifically. Some highlights from this very weird story:

Anne was arrested at a tennis match: Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge and England’s future queen consort, is an avid tennis fan and the royal patron to the club that hosts Wimbledon. Every year, tournament spectators eagerly look forward to what Kate will wear, and who will join her. Nearly 500 years ago it was Queen Anne Boleyn who reigned supreme in royal boxes, though her tenure came to a dramatic end in 1536, when she was arrested and charged with adultery and treason while watching a match at Greenwich.

Reputations. “[Anne] was a controversial figure, and that stigma remains for her,” Elizabeth Norton, author of Anne Boleyn: Henry VIII’s Obsession, tells Vanity Fair. Kate, on the other hand, “is immensely popular,” says Robert Lacey, historical consultant of Netflix’s The Crown and author of Monarch: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth II. “She’s a pillar of the royal family [and] very much seen as a future queen consort.”

Anne was educated: Both women received an excellent education, which was rare in Boleyn’s time. A student of music and art, the queen may have spoken and written several languages, and she attended the court of Margaret of Austria. Kate went to some of the U.K.’s best private schools, among them Marlborough College.

The Middletons were just as strategic as the Boleyns: Vanity Fair royal correspondent Katie Nicholl notes that Kate and Prince William met through a mutual friend in the summer of 1999, when Kate was 17. The next year, Kate was ecstatic when she was accepted to University of Edinburgh, where her best friends were also attending, and she planned to enroll in the prestigious art history program. Jasper Selwyn, Kate’s career adviser at school, tells Nicholl that Edinburgh was the first choice on her Universities and Colleges Admissions Service form: “As far as I am aware she had a place confirmed at Edinburgh.” However, Nicholl writes, “Kate had a dramatic and sudden change of heart. She decided to turn down her place at Edinburgh, take a gap year…and reapply for St. Andrews.” At the time, the palace had just announced that William would also take a gap year and attend St. Andrews as opposed to Edinburgh, which was originally his first choice. Society journalist Matthew Bell reported in The Spectator that “although at the time of making her application to universities it was unknown where the prince was intending to go, it has been suggested that her mother persuaded Kate to reject her first choice on hearing the news and take up her offer at St. Andrews instead.”

Royal patronages: The Windsors currently support around 3,000 organizations, with Kate committed to 24, and Queen Anne took her charitable duties quite seriously as well. Weir writes that “when visiting a town or village, she sent her almoner ahead to find out…if there were any needy families in the district.” Anne would then instruct him to assign each family a sum, and she often gave poor individuals clothing she and her ladies had sewn.

[From Vanity Fair]

You mean to tell me that Anne Boleyn’s staff did advance work to learn about the needy families and she brought clothes and money for them? Meanwhile, Kate and William constantly show up empty-handed to events. They don’t even donate to charity directly. It’s also pretty clear that Anne really was educated, political and wise, a true intellectual partner for a king. That… is not clear when we’re talking about Kate. Still, the tennis stuff is news to me. I really didn’t know that Anne was a tennis fan or that she was arrested at a tennis match. Also: is this article weirdly threatening? Like, are they telling Kate “watch out, or you could get Boleyn’d”? Imagine Kate being dragged out of the Royal Box in handcuffs, wiglet askance.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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89 Responses to “VF: Anne Boleyn was a big tennis fan, just like the Duchess of Cambridge”

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  1. C says:

    This is so nonsensical I don’t even know where to start. Anne Boleyn was the most intelligent middle child of Sir Thomas Boleyn who was a respected and hardworking courtier – she served in various royal courts from adolescence and was extremely smart and clever. I don’t agree with the perception that she or her sister were thrown into the King’s path and part of her appeal for him early on was her intelligence at interpreting religious texts and skill with French and Latin as well as her attractiveness and sociability. Anne took queenship very seriously and often donated even larger sums than her predecessor and a number of reform-minded scholars praised her to the skies. The one who had the obsession with sports was Henry, but watching it was a popular royal pastime at court – tennis doesn’t go any deeper into Anne’s life than that.
    Furthermore, back in the day of the Boleyns, getting closer to the royal sphere was the only thing you could do to amass power and influence. That is absolutely not the case today nor is it similar to Kate and her mother scheming to insert themselves into this archaic world.

    • MeganC says:

      The Midds are much more like the Howards.

      • C says:

        I think they’re like the less attractive and intelligent versions of the Woodvilles, personally.

      • Becks1 says:

        I think they’re closer to the Woodvilles as well..

      • Flowerlake says:

        Good comparison.

        The Woodvilles didn’t do the unity in House York any favors…and that’s putting it mildly 😀

      • MeganC says:

        The Howards were famous for using their daughters for strategic marriages and trysts.

      • C says:

        MeganC- yes, but I don’t think they did that any more than any other noble family at the time. They were mostly notable because they were one of the highest-ranking and oldest families.
        The Woodvilles on the other hand had a much less glittering family heritage and yet were more rapacious than most nobility which is saying a lot, lol.

      • MeganC says:

        Yes, the Howard’s were notorious for pimping out their women. It was a joke in the Middle Ages that brothels were filled with Howard women.

        I’m quite familiar with the Woodvilles.

      • C says:

        I haven’t read anything like that. But if you have any information please let me know! In particular the Howards began holding the Norfolk dukedom in the 1390’s and they were pretty proud. It was considered a big comedown for Elizabeth Howard to marry Thomas Boleyn and I doubt they would have offered any other daughters etc to be pimped out. But I’m unfamiliar as to what the Howards were up to before inheriting the Norfolk title, so feel free to reference anything to me!

      • C-Shell says:

        @C! I was just coming along to say the Midds are the low rent version of the Woodvilles!

    • sunny says:

      Also Anne was said to be magnetic, and charming. She was a great favourite at more than one European court. This is such a stretch of a comparison.

    • Becks1 says:

      I love the musical SIX, but I hate the line about Anne Boleyn where she says she just wants to dance and sing, “politics – not my thing” because Anne Boleyn was so much more than that. I was literally thinking about her on my run just now (as I was listening to SIX lolol) and how she is such a fascinating figure in history.

      • Stephanie says:

        I mostly like SIX (I got to see the original London cast) but the portrayal of Anne turned me off so much. It was my first comment to my sister when the show finished and even today I like the songs for most of the other queens way more.

      • Becks1 says:

        I cant help but love it because its such a fun song (LOL! say oh well!) but I have to ignore the actual history to enjoy it, you know? Kind of the same way I read Philippa Gregory, LOL. the portrayal of Anne in the musical is so off that I just figure they had the hook first and went from that.

    • Popsicle W says:

      @C – thank you for all of this! Very helpful summation of Anne Boleyn and the stark differences from Cannot.

      @Kaiser. Agreed. What a bizarre and yet interesting comparison. Maybe Kate wants to push the narrative that she is actually intelligent and clever, again. Perhaps the “ Che Guevara, Kingmaker, Top CEO” campaign 5.0?

      Meghan was just in the UK. She is probably feeling “threatening” again. She wants to tell everyone how smart she is but not actually smart enough to see the pitfalls in this analogy.

      Am I off the mark with seeing the similarities with Meghan and Anne Boleyn?

  2. Rapunzel says:

    Those unphotoshoppex photos…. oof.

    • Wiglet Watcher says:

      And yet this is still Kate’s face with fresh work. Without work Kate has more prominent deep forehead wrinkles, jowls, double bags under her eyes and very gray hair. Which, I love grays, but once you start coloring the adjustment to let it grow out can be tough for people.

      Worse, Kate is too thin. The work done will look less convincing as she ages and it will ripple her skin giving a bumpy texture. Her nerves will sustain damage.
      Lastly, pretty sure she’s messed with her upper lip. That seems fuller. Even more than when she was young and healthier or pregnant.

    • The Recluse says:

      Since cameras add pounds….can you imagine how stringy and gaunt she looks in person?!
      She isn’t even a real athlete, like a marathoner or bicyclist. That’s just unhealthy and it ages her, as Catherine Deneuve pointed out long ago: Older women must choose between their face or their figure.

  3. ClaireB says:

    I can’t tell whether this article is threatening toward Kate and her position, or just an ill-advised comparison sanctioned by the Middletons. Being likened to a queen who was executed for the convenience of her husband is not the flex Kate and Carole might think it is.

    • Hic says:

      Things to make you go ummm 🤨

    • equality says:

      Surely the Middletons wouldn’t mention the stalking part. Maybe this is a warning shot from PW.

    • Becks1 says:

      This is a weird comparison, for sure. comparing her to Anne Boleyn because they both liked/like to watch tennis? (I have heard the tennis thing before about AB). No other queen in the 500 years since Anne’s death has liked tennis? none except the queen who was beheaded for the convenience of her husband like you said?

      Kate, you in danger girl.

    • CC says:

      I feel like this is the editor of Vanity Fair having an existential crisis. “Look, we’ve got a magazine to fill. What more do you want from me?”

  4. Merricat says:

    Lol, hilarious.

  5. equality says:

    So the RF supports 3000 organizations and Kate is committed to 24. With only 8 full time “working” royals and all but one older than she is this isn’t a flattering picture.

    • Wiglet Watcher says:

      Thank you for these numbers. You can also expect Kate to visit them annually, maybe.

    • Shawna says:

      If there are only 9 working royals and the distribution were fair, she’d have over 300!

    • Deering24@ says:

      Does anyone know how many organizations H&M were committed too? One suspects Harry alone had more than Kate.

      • equality says:

        Found an article that listed PH as having 16 patronages. They didn’t list African Parks, Heads Together, Endeavour Fund, Walking with the Wounded, Diana Awards or HALO Trust. Meghan had 4 patronages. Of course, PH wasn’t a full time “working” royal as long as W&K.

      • Deering24@ says:

        Thanks!

  6. Eurydice says:

    So weird. At least, Kate was able to produce a male heir, which Anne was not. Then again, Henry was having an affair with Jane Seymour while married to Anne… But hey, they have tennis in common.

    • Wiglet Watcher says:

      Tennis, marriage to royalty and cheating husbands. This is the comparison.

      Geez. Of all the royal women and wives out there they picked Anne of a thousand days.

      • Eurydice says:

        Yes, well, I don’t see anything sinister in this, just stupidity. It’s amazing how incurious and uninformed the press can be – they just google things and print them. And if anybody tries to correct them, they’re just “whatever” and moving on to the next story.

  7. sunny says:

    Thanks for the laugh @Kaiser. Aside from each having notoriously scheming families and frankly the Boelyns were better at it(note a second Howard cousin marrying Henry after he murdered Anne), these two have very little in common.

    Anne not only received an education, she was noted to be brilliant. Something no one but Carol would say about Katy Keen.

    But lol for the article and the loose Wimbledon tennis tie in.

  8. ThatsNotOkay says:

    This is a veiled threat. Like, Kate is soon to be out on her keister because someone else has caught William’s eye. The British press is toying with Khate.

    Kopy, you in danger, girl!

  9. Mslove says:

    Toward the end of Anne’s reign, Henry wanted to be rid of her to be with Jane Seymour, so there’s that.

  10. Well Wisher says:

    Maybe the idea was to contrast Anne and Kate. Anna’s parents were happy to have her be Henry’s mistress, she personally refused and did not consummate the relationship until they were married.
    The problem was that she couldn’t produce a son as an heir, miscarriages, and a jealous sister- in-law was her undoing.
    Anne was the mother of Queen Elizabeth 1, has become a more sympathetic figure.
    History has been kinder than her eventual fate, Kate does not share Anne’s fears.
    Laws were introduced to limit the powers of the absolute monarch.

    • ncboudicca says:

      I love all of the interpretations everyone has. The only comparison I’d draw between the two is that they are/were both married to petulant rage monsters

      • Feeshalori says:

        Who also suffered significant blows to the head. Henry had a personality change following a serious jousting accident where he was thrown from his horse that then fell on top of him. He was unconscious for two hours and in addition to suffering other medical issues, his personality afterwards had a 180 turn from jovial and generous to vicious and paranoid. And this accident occurred just before his estrangement from Anne Boleyn. William had a skull fracture after being hit by a golf club. So maybe likely that William suffered some personality changes as well due to his head injury.

      • C says:

        Historians are divided as to whether the jousting match left him unconscious and whether his personality really changed. The thing is that Henry had a personality that was both charming and ruthless even when young – when he came to the throne he executed his father’s tax collectors just to increase his own popularity and his execution of the Duke of Buckingham in 1521 also showed that he could be cruel.
        I don’t think injuries have anything to do with Henry or William personally. Henry was still more forceful and intelligent than William is which is a pretty sad state of affairs, lol. William was always a brat which is why Diana called him the Basher.

      • Feeshalori says:

        Interesting about the divided reports about the joust. But even if history is conflicted about a brain injury, Henry did sustain leg injuries that he suffered through the rest of his life which made him very irritable and short-tempered. He actually re-aggravated an ulcer from a previous jousting injury which increasingly got worse. And there’s no doubt that if William were king back in the good old days, he’d undoubtedly fill up all the dungeons with certain people he’d like to keep under lock and key because no one dares to defy the king lol.

      • Flowerlake says:

        @C indeed.

        Henry was well-educated, as per the fashion of that time.
        High-born sons and daughters often got fluent in several languages and got a broad (as far as was possible) education on other subjects as well.

        Elizabeth I is known for her erudition, but her brother Edward also had a great education, as well as Jane Grey who was famous abroad as well as a great scholar by the time she was a teenager.

        Don’t get the sense William or Kate have anywhere near the same intellectual capacity or interest as these people in the 16th century did.

      • Feeshalori says:

        All these Renaissance rulers were so learned at such young ages and their education had such depth and covered a broad spectrum. Elizabeth and Lady Jane were indeed brilliant scholars in their teens, also translating tracts from one language to another, had them bound and covered these books with their own skilled needlework. They were both tutored by the leading scholars of the age and they reveled in their learning. Anne Boleyn and Katherine Parr were also well educated and brilliant women of their time.
        And here William could barely get through his geography course at St. Andrew’s and neither he nor Kate exhibit any curiosity outside their own bubble. A sad commentary on a future monarch and his consort.

      • CourtneyB says:

        @feeshalori royal education really nosedived in the recent generations. Prince Albert had very strict standards and his son, Edward VII HATED it. His wife, Alexandra, didn’t care for schooling. His son George V couldn’t speak German or French when he became heir in 1892 and had to be brought up to speed. And he probably had the best education of their children! His wife, Victoria Mary of Teck (Queen Mary) despaired of her children’s lack of interest in education save the Duke of Kent. Edward and Alexandra took control of the kids when George and May were on tours and would cheerfully dismiss their tutors. Mary tried with the queen and Margaret, her granddaughters, to no avail.

      • Flowerlake says:

        Would just like to add the following ladies as 16th century intellectual powerhouses.

        Margaret Roper: She was a writer and translator, but also well-versed in other subjects. Her father was Thomas Moore (writer of Utopia).

        Marguerite de Valois-Angouleme: Not only was she a famous writer, she also negotiated with Emperor Charles V, to get her brother Francis I of France released from prison.

        Xue Susu: Not just a writer and artist, but also great at archery while riding a horse.

        Isabella Andreini: Also had a great education, spoke several languages and was also a great actress.

        In fact, it’s easy to find more intellectual women in the 16th (or whatever century you like), by going on Wikipedia and look by categories like 16th century women writers.

      • Stacy Dresden says:

        1000%

  11. Snuffles says:

    “Also: is this article weirdly threatening? Like, are they telling Kate “watch out, or you could get Boleyn’d”?”

    That’s the message I’m getting. You and your Mum may think you’re clever but we can take your asses out in a heartbeat if we wanted to.

    Coincidentally, I’m a descendant of Mary Boleyn by way of her daughter Catherine Carey and her daughter Anne West. Several of her children settled in America (Virginia). P.S. I think Mary was used and abused them thrown aside when she was no longer useful. She also committed the cardinal sin of marrying for love to a man “below her station.”

    • C says:

      Wow Snuffles! That’s really cool. By all accounts Elizabeth I was absolutely devoted to her cousin Catherine Carey – the drama between her and Carey’s daughter Lettice Knollys (for marrying Robert Dudley) is so interesting.

      Personally I wouldn’t say I thought Mary was used and abused per se. But she definitely wasn’t given the same attention as Anne or George, so maybe Thomas Boleyn felt she didn’t have a courtier’s real aptitude. (Obviously I don’t believe the stories about her being promiscuous at the French court) They often blame Anne for Mary’s banishment after marrying William Stafford but it wasn’t really her doing. It is worth noting that while she did incur her family’s wrath by marrying him, Thomas Boleyn willed many of his manors and holdings to Mary which the king granted.

      • Snuffles says:

        @c

        I personally think Mary received those holdings because one or both of her children were secretly King Henry’s. Weren’t they granted around the time her children were born? I’m no expert, but that’s some of the little information that I gleaned whole researching my family’s history on my father’s side (which is a whole ass soap opera in itself).

      • C says:

        That’s what they say but I’m not convinced. Perhaps the daughter but not the son, because Henry quite happily acknowledged his son by Elizabeth Blount and I think he would have done so with Mary Boleyn in order to prove he was still capable of fathering an heir even if he couldn’t get one with Katherine of Aragon. It really depends on a number of factors that we don’t know – if Mary was sleeping with her husband at the time as well as Henry, if Henry’s rewards to her husband were because of the children or because William Carey was indeed a close friend, and a number of other factors.

        As for the inheritance, the king granted it because wills had to have his approval but Thomas Boleyn designed Mary as one of the heirs. I think it was mostly because the Boleyns were completely destroyed as a family – the Howards weren’t but the Boleyns were done, and Thomas Boleyn only had two options as heirs: Elizabeth (who was deemed illegitimate and so his lands left to her reverted to her father) or Mary. Personally I think it does intimate some type of remaining closeness that he didn’t just let all of it revert to the crown.
        Sorry to go on, haha.

      • Becks1 says:

        I agree that I’ve always thought at least one of Mary Boleyn’s children was Henry’s, but not the son. Henry acknowledged Henry Fitzroy and made him a duke; nothing indicates he would have done anything differently with another male child, even illegitimate.

        It really is fascinating to sift through what we know for sure about the Boleyns and Henry VIII and what we think or believe, considering the centuries’ worth of propaganda about Anne.

      • Snuffles says:

        @c @becks

        Interesting point of view that Henry would only be willing to acknowledge an illegitimate male child but not a female one. I never thought about it that way. Hmmm…something to ponder.

        I would crack a joke about how my family should be on the throne, but our relationship to any of these people is by way of illegitimate bi-racial children of rich, powerful white men during slavery.

      • Becks1 says:

        @Snuffles I feel bad saying its interesting considering how you’re related, but i bet its still weirdly fascinating to have conversations about these historical figures that you’re related to.

      • Snuffles says:

        @becks

        No worries. I find is fascinating too. Not many African Americans can trace back their ancestry that far. It’s been an ongoing process for the past decade. Starting with oral history and eventually backing it up with some DNA evidence. I guess I’m lucky in a sense that the white people I’m related to were minor historical figures from the Confederacy. There are tons of books and historical records to sift through. It’s like piecing together a mystery.

    • Kiera says:

      @Snuffles based on my understanding there is a chance that one or more of her children were Henry’s but at the time they were acknowledged by her then husband as his. Given that Henry had acknowledged another son from outside of his marriage it has been thought that the children weren’t Henry’s, however I don’t think Bessie Blount was married when she had Henry Fitzroy which might be the difference.

      My guess is that because she was married the children had to be her husband’s publicly for appearances sake. But there are some historian’s that say that she and Henry had cooled off prior to her having the children, others say that they had continued on but were being more discrete/he was seeing someone else, not Anne, and didn’t want to claim the child(ren) and piss off the other mistress. There’s a lot of conflicting stories about Mary from what I have found.

      I love the Tudor period and have spent way to much time researching them over the years. I even wrote a paper on Elizabeth’s use of the pearl in portraiture and in fashion as a propaganda tool. It was so much fun!

  12. Charfromdarock says:

    I can’t wait for the Tudor cosplay.

  13. America Chavez says:

    “The Middletons were just as strategic as the Boleyns.”

    **chokes**

    I must not have checked my forecast because I was not expecting this much shade today.

  14. CC says:

    She’s like Amelia Earhart because they’ve both worn pants! She’s like Lucrezia Borgia because they’ve both eaten olive oil! She’s like Lady Murasaki because…because…they both wrote “The Tale of Genji?”

    • Eurydice says:

      She’s like Enrico Fermi – both have played tennis and made charts.

    • Deering24@ says:

      Hey, she’s like Jill Biden and Michelle Obama because…oh. Never mind. 😈😎🤣🤪

  15. Cerys says:

    A ridiculous article and a ridiculous comparison. Kate is not fit to lace Anne’s shoes. It’s a pointless piece of fluff on the surface unless reading between the lines, it’s a warning shot to a particular set of scheming royal in-laws. Strange……

  16. Amy Bee says:

    I don’t get this piece. Why didn’t they write a piece about Kate being tennis fan over years and her work as Patron of Wimbledon? If they wanted some drama they could have written about how she wouldn’t let Meghan go to Wimbledon alone and the one time she was allowed to go with her friends, Kate got Wimbledon members to smear Meghan.

  17. Digital Unicorn says:

    Oh the snark – where to begin.

    – This is VF trolling Keen and Mummy by comparing them to the notorious climbers that the Boleyn’s were (the Howards were just as bad)
    – Anne also stalked Henry
    – Anne also started off as a mistress
    – Anne and her sister were groomed to marry rich and titled men and used by their families to climb
    – Henry came to hate Anne and moved heaven and earth to divorce her

    This is clearer another Tatler Meddleton approved hit piece.

  18. Mel says:

    Anne got her head lopped off when her husband got tired of/wanted to get rid of her. So there’s that…….

  19. candy says:

    “Katie Nicholl notes that Kate and Prince William met through a mutual friend in the summer of 1999, when Kate was 17. ”

    I have always been fascinated as to why this quite well-known fact is overlooked in the press, but not this time? Kate said that they first met at university. You don’t remember meeting the future king before that? The stalking stories went from a quiet whisper to a regular talking point in much of the coverage lately. Hmm…

    • C says:

      That detail actually came out a few years ago in Nicholl’s book, but yes, nobody mentions it as much as they should. It puts into relief how she knew to stalk him!

    • Becks1 says:

      And its interesting that this article also emphasizes how Kate changed her college plans to try to be with William.

      • Digital Unicorn says:

        Indeed – it again mentions the stalking – this is a burn article in the same vein as the Tatler one.

      • candy says:

        Yeah, she also did the exact same service program in the same country. It’s honestly scary the lengths they went to.

    • Nic919 says:

      William does not admit to remembering her from that time. But she got in the circle at least enough to know where he was going to uni and plans were switched right around then.

      I forgot the name of the girl who got her into that circle, but it is one of the few female friends that still seems to be considered a “friend” to this day, even if this woman was originally William’s friend first.

      • candy says:

        It was Emilia Jardine Patterson. They went to Marlborough together and I think Kate stalked her too. This was pre-internet days, so I don’t know how Kate would have made the connection, but it’s a small circle and people probably knew who was hanging out with Prince William. Emilia is blue-blooded through and through, very well connected.

  20. India says:

    I wonder if these photos of Kate are photoshopped. She looks extremely hard in them.

  21. Jay says:

    Ouch! In my imagination, Carole pestered reporters to write about “Kate being so reminiscent of past queens” but failed to specify which queen, exactly – and this is the reporter’s revenge!

    I think the only real eyebrow raiser here is that this article makes the link between Kate switching her university plans to pursue William explicit – usually, these articles try to pretend that she just wanted a change, no reason.

    It tells me that even the rota is bored to tears of constantly embiggening Kate, they couldn’t even be bothered to dust off the “she’s sporty!” In advance of Wimbledon and, of course, the news that this time she’s FINALLY coming into her own! At last!

    • Shawna says:

      It’s amazing that they emphasize how excited she was at being accepted at Edinburgh. I don’t remember seeing that before. So this is even worse than I’ve ever read in terms of confirming the reason for the switch.

  22. Anna says:

    Are they implying that one day Prince William will behead her? Why the comparison?!

  23. Jaded says:

    Wow…just wow. For starters, as others have mentioned, the Boleyn family was a prominent English family in the gentry and aristocracy — Anne’s father was an Earl. The Meddletons were middle class folk who started off working as a flight attendant and flight dispatcher respectively. Anne was given a very good education, spoke several languages, and was extremely popular at a variety of courts including the French court where she spent seven years serving Queen Claude, the wife of François 1. Kate half-assed her way through art history but apparently doesn’t know that Fabergé eggs aren’t made anymore. Anne resisted Henry VIII’s attempts to seduce her, refusing to become his mistress as her sister Mary had previously been. Kate stalked William from the moment they were introduced and his RPOs referred to her as “the mattress”. Any comparison between the Boleyns and the Meddlesomes is ludicrous, and trying to compare Anne to Kate because they BoTH liKE tENnIS is risible. So much shade!

  24. Cha Cha Slide says:

    This article is not giving what they thought it would give.

    Why compare FFQC to a QC who is most famous for being beheaded?

  25. Puppy1 says:

    As the Duke of Kent stepped down as the President of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club last year, maybe their going to set Kate up as it’s patron?

  26. Beach Dreams says:

    😂 That’s because Kate’s face IS hard and rough. When she doesn’t have her favorite royal photographer and the British media in general editing her photos to oblivion, this is what’s left. This is her true appearance.

  27. JanetDR says:

    I love reading about the Tudor period and at this point in my life I can’t tell if what I’m recalling is from fiction or a legit biography. But yeah, any comparison to Anne Boylen is not good for Kate!

  28. Bunny says:

    “Robert Lacey, historical consultant of Netflix’s The Crown and author of Monarch: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth II. “She’s a pillar of the royal family [and] very much seen as a future queen consort.””

    Above, from the VF article. “Very much seen as a future queen consort”. There seems to be a bit of uncertainty there. Not that she will be William’s queen consort or that she will be England’s queen consort, but that she’s seen as ‘a’ future queen consort.

    Like, she’s a candidate. Maybe, maybe not. What an odd article and odd phrasing.

    Huh.

  29. jferber says:

    Wasn’t Anne Boleyn the mother of Queen Elizabeth 1, the greatest monarch England has ever known?

    • India says:

      Yes, Anne was the mother of Queen Elizabeth I. Henry the Eighth never realized what he had.