I always think Anne had been a victim of Henry's selfishness. When he was ready to throw her away he basically allowed her enemies to come up with monsterous slander of her

Poor Anne, it's awful how many lies get told about her all these years after her unjust execution!

This really hits home. I had my twins prematurely at 22 and 24 weeks and I can’t imagine that pain and the magnitude of that loss.

Catherine and Ann both only produced one child but had many miscarriages. Their common thread is Henry. I believe it had something to do with Henry's DNA or disease.

I wish it was known back during these times that it wasn't the woman's fault no male heirs were born. It's the men who determine those things. A woman as two XX chromosomes while a man has an XY chromosome to give. The women can only give an X to the child. Whichever one either it be an X or a Y determines the sex. If X a girl, if Y a boy. If only they knew that back then there would be a lot of women not fed to the executioner's block. How tragic is all of this?

I believe the problem lay with Henry, always have as every wife has had difficulty in coming to term.

my favorite quote of "Anne Boleyn" in The Tudors, was : My Elizabeth shall be queen, and my blood, would be well spent"

Poor Anne! She was wrongfully villified by a series of very spurious men. I think she was pretty damn fabulous.

Anne is a tragic figure in English history. I personally believe she was wrongfully accused by the fickle monarch Henry.

Thank you for putting this straight. I was so upset when I read this obvious and disgusting lie in The Other Boylenn Girl that I haven't read Gregory since. It is disgusting that people are still smearing that poor woman's memory and accusing her of incest centuries after her husband murdered her. Many women miscarry - you would think in this day and age we would have stopped, literally, demonising them for it. Apparently not, at least when it comes to selling books. Glad to see the record corrected.

The Other Boleyn Girl made my blood pressure high. So many people take that book as fact and then they made it into a movie. I dont see how people dont see that its fiction! 1. P. Gregory totally lays the blame on Anne and excuses Henry. She makes out like her not agreeing to sleep with him would have made him lose all reason and have no other choice but to divorce his wife and leave the church.

I like to take a scientific lens to the trouble of Queen Anne's pregnancies. She had no trouble in conceiving and quickly but had only one living child, Elizabeth, which was her FIRST child, notably....perhaps because Anne had an Rh- blood type. Any other subsequent pregnancies after could have been met with antibodies; if the fetus were Rh+, a miscarriage would be almost certain in Tudor times. Spontaneous abortion because of an Rh- mother typically happens in the second or third trimester of pregnancy. First child healthy, others not. The pieces fit. It's a possibility.

There is also the fact that she probably got pregnant to soon after Elizabeth’s birth, many fertility and infant doctors agree that it’s best to wait 12-18 months after giving birth to get pregnant again because too little time between pregnancies increases risk of premature birth and miscarriage as the mother’s body needs time to recover from the previous pregnancy

Claire, I have always found it profoundly karmic that Anne miscarried on the day Katherine was buried. I am surprised no contemporary chroniclers noted that, as unpopular as Anne was. I had thought Henry's accident was also the same day, but I believe you stated it happened six days earlier.

If the fetus was a shapeless form, why would contemporary sources say it was male? Obviously it was formed clearly enough to show it was a male, making it's loss of greater importance than had it been female. And if gender could be determined, it couldn't have been shapeless.

I'm American, but I find Tudor history endlessly fascinating. Not to mention the majority of my ancestors were still in Britain & Ireland at that time so I feel it belongs as much to me as anybody else. Despite it being historical fiction I particularly love the Showtime series "The Tudors." The scene when Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn miscarries is so horrific. In that moment you feel her absolute anguish, despair, and terror. Her entire position as Queen was conditional on her providing a male heir. In that moment you literally see her child, and her only hope, pass through her hands.

Even as a teenager, when I first became fascinated by Anne Boleyn and her story, I didn’t believe that this account of the foetus being malformed could be true. There were simply too many people with agendas to take one person’s word for it. As you state, none of the contemporary sources document this happening, and so I feel it has to be taken with a grain of salt. I love this series, Claire. Thank you so much for doing this 💕

There's so much bad press about Anne Boleyn it's hard to see the wood from the trees. In those times maternity care was pretty nonexistence so highly possible, as you have said, it was a miscarriage plain and simple.

Having Henry unconscious for hours must have been a terrifying time for Anne pregnant or not. He was her only safety.

Anne B had the disadvantage becoming Henry VIII’s replacement for the much loved Katherine of Aragon. STRESS!