Book Description

A groundbreaking and beautifully written biography of Queen Anne Boleyn, the ill-fated second wife of England's Henry XVIII, focusing on her transformative years in France and how they shaped her into one of history’s most notoriously vilified and misunderstood queens Anne Boleyn has mesmerized the English public for centuries. Her tragic execution, orchestrated by her own husband, never ceases to intrigue. How did this courtier's daughter become the queen of England, and what was it that really tore apart this illustrious marriage, making her the whore of England, an abandoned woman executed on the scaffold? While many stories of Anne Boleyn's downfall have been told, few have truly traced the origins of her tragic fate. In Thorns, Lust, and Glory, Estelle Paranque takes us back to where it all to France, where Anne learned the lessons that would set her on the path to becoming one of England's most infamous queens. At the court of the French king as a resourceful teenage girl, Anne's journey to infamy began, and this landmark biography explores the world that shaped her, and how these loyalties would leave her vulnerable, leading to her ruin at the court of Henry VIII. A fascinating new perspective on Tudor history's most enduring story, Thorns, Lust, and Glory is an unmissable account of a queen on the edge.