Mary Boleyn: the Mistress of Kings

I suspect that no one would have cared about Mary Boleyn if she weren't The Other Boleyn Girl.  Alison Weir's biography shows that Mary was clearly the "other" sister - less intelligent, less ambitious, less interesting.  That doesn't make Weir's book any less interesting, though.  She uses this biography of a somewhat-famous-by-reflection as a way to explore lower profile aspects of court life and to show the mechanics of her job.

Mary's life was marginally recorded at best.  Weir spends much of the early chapters reconstructing Mary's life, proving that she was indeed the older sister, and outlining the life of an inconsequential member of a prominent family. Mary spent time at the French court as one of Queen Mary's attendants and was briefly the mistress of Francois I.  Today, we wonder how consensual the affair between a king regnant and the lady in waiting to the queen emerita could be.  In the 16th Century, it damaged Mary's reputation and could have had repercussions for the entire Boleyn family, which was already considered a bit dodgy.  She spent several years in obscurity before marrying her cousin Henry Carey, a courtier, and joining him at Henry VIII's court.  There, she again became the mistress to a king, securing her place if not in history, in historical fiction.

I know this sounds very dry and dull, but I found it fascinating.  I also saw sections of Weir's book as a rebuttal to Derek Wilson's biography of Henry VIII.  Wilson's theory is that Henry VIII was a bad king because he was a lousy lover, and he was a lousy lover because he only had one acknowledged illegitimate child.  Weir argues that Henry was discreet, rather than sexually inept.  She also argues that he did have two illegitimate daughters, and that he didn't claim them for logical reasons.  Acknowledging the first, by the daughter of the court goldsmith, would bring him no political advantage, and the second, by Mary Boleyn Carey, make his marriage to Anne Boleyn illegal on the same grounds he was using to annul his marriage to Katherine of Aragon.  Leaving aside how male and female researchers may have different views on the connection between a king's sexual aggression and his competence, Weir's argument makes sense.