The Other Boleyn Girl

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This thread was created to discuss the novel by Philippa Gregory.

I've never read the book but I wanted to see the movie.

From the books description, it looks absolutely terrible.

Coincidently just saw the movie two nights ago and I highly suggest it.

The only one I know is Anne...

It is actually an excellent book, very well researched, and for historical fiction, very well written. However, there is an aspect of it which I find thoroughly disgusting, and just put in for the purposes of titillation. As you probably know, Henry 8th accused Anne of having an incestuous relationship with her brother. This was obviously a stitch up, nobody actually believed it to be true. The author, unforgiveably in my opinion, suggests that this was true, and that they had a still born bastard child with a flayed open spine, whose body was burned.

That I found disgraceful. These were real people, and yes, they may be long dead, but you can't go saying things like that about people who lived, suffered and died. She was slandered and abused enough in her life, I don't like the thoughts of her pervert husband being freshly bandied about nowadays. Most people are so ignorant of history that they would assume it was fact, and the brother and sister who were falsely accused and murdered as a result of this lie have their reputation even further trashed.

I don't think she was a good woman, particularly, she was certainly over ambitious and manipulative, but she didn't have sex with her brother and bear his bastard child.