30. Mary Boleyn: Mistress of Kings by Alison Weir I've been fascinated with Mary Boleyn since I learned of her existence. Everybody knows the story of her sister, Anne Boleyn, whose charms caused the king of England, Henry VIII, to divorce his first wife and break with the Roman Catholic Church in order to marry her. Everyone also knows the sad end of that story, which culminated in Anne becoming the first of Henry's six wives to be beheaded. But what is known about Mary? Nothing much, until more recently, with the release of Philippa Gregory's bestselling novel The Other Boleyn Girl . Alison Weir points out that it is this novel, and the movies of the same name, along with the "Tudors" television series, that have propelled Mary out of obscurity, and into what Weir claims is undeserved notoriety. While I am a huge fan of Gregory's novel, it was not my first encounter with Mary Boleyn. My first knowledge of her stems from a book that is significant in ...
Life, Books, and SFF