Fairy Tale Queens: Representations of Early Modern Queenship (18 page)

Kings could generally comment on women with impunity, but ambassadors scouting out queen candidates had to choose their words cautiously, keeping both accuracy and diplomacy in mind, as did the careful envoy in d’Aulnoy’s “The Hind in the Woods.” Frequently, ambassadors searching for the most precise language to summarize their findings resorted to comparisons. This was an especially useful strategy when more than one prospect was being reviewed, but it also contributed to a climate that pitted one woman against another. When Henry VIII was considering several prospective successors after Jane Seymour’s death, he ordered John Hutton, an ambassador in the Netherlands, to compile and research a list of candidates. Hutton reluctantly told Cromwell, “I have not much experience amongst ladies, and therefore this commission is to me very hard; so that, if in any thing I offend, I beseeche your Lordshipe to be my mean for pardon. I have written the truth as nigh as I canne possibly learne, leaving the further judgment to others that are better skilled in such matters.”
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But Hutton gamely completed the task, reporting that one candidate, Margaretha van Brederode, a 14-year-old daughter of a nobleman from Netherlands, was “womanly” and “of good stature,” but her beauty was considered merely “competent.” Against her, Hutton listed another, the widow to the Count of Egmond who was “of goodly personage” but her age, forty years, was a disadvantage, even though her years do not “appeareth in her face.”
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The most appealing candidate, according to Hutton, was Christina of Denmark. Hutton wrote to the Earl of Southhampton that Christina “is not so pure white as the late Queen, whose soul God pardon; but she hath a singular good countenance, and when she chanceth to smile there appeareth two pittes in her cheeks and one in her chin, the which becometh her right excellently well.”
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He told Cromwell that Christina was tall and she also “resembleth much one Mistress Shelton, that sometime waited in Court upon Mistress Anne Boleyn.”
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This account gives specific information about Christina but it does so through comparisons: Christina’s complexion is judged against the late queen’s, and her overall appearance is likened to Mary Shelton, who was most likely Henry’s mistress for a brief time and thus provided a frame of reference assumed to impress the king favorably.
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Although the comparative impulse emerged from the pressure to report fully and accurately, this also contributed to a larger culture in which queens and queen candidates were repeatedly described and measured against one another.

Henry also asked his envoys to arrange a meeting so that he could personally scout out some of the French women who were on his short list of potential wives. François rejected Henry’s request to have his sister, Marguerite de Navarre, accompany possible candidates to Calais where the former could view them. One of François’s ministers complained that Henry wanted to examine the women as though they were horses on display for sale, much as the king did in Basile’s “The Bear.”
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Henry VIII’s extraordinary serial marital history provides a window into how early modern queens were viewed as objects of beauty. Henry’s wives have been studied individually and collectively; though recent scholarship has credited them as being more than Henry’s mere consorts, much interest in the six queens still focuses on their part in Henry’s monumental political choices during his 37-year reign. Although a number of characteristics determined Henry’s successive choices of wives—expected fertility, submissive demeanor, and compatibility—physical attraction was a factor in his selections. Thus, a portrayal of each queen must take into account her appearance, which was of such importance to Henry and of such interest to his subjects.

At the beginning of their marriage, Catherine of Aragon was already at a disadvantage because she was viewed against the more dazzling backdrop of Henry’s handsome majesty. The king, not quite 18 to Catherine’s 23, was highly praised at that point of his life for his own impressive appearance: in this sense, Catherine’s first rival was her husband.
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Upon Catherine’s arrival in England for her marriage to Prince Arthur, King Henry VII wrote to her parents Ferdinand and Isabella that we “have much admired her beauty, as well as her agreeable and dignified manners.”
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At the beginning of Catherine’s marriage to Henry, Fray Diego called her “the most beautiful creature in the world,” though as her confessor he was hardly impartial.
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The ever tactful Thomas More wrote of Catherine that “there is nothing wanting in her that the most beautiful girl should have,” again describing her within a comparative framework.
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Later in Catherine’s reign, more backhanded praise came from another Venetian, Mario Savorgano, who said, with diplomatic caution, “If not handsome, she is not ugly; she is somewhat stout and has always a smile on her countenance.”
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But by the time she was 30, Nicolo Sagudino, secretary to the Venetian ambassador Giustiniani, referred to Catherine as “rather ugly than otherwise.”
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Francois commented rudely a few years later that Henry “has an old deformed wife, while he himself is young and handsome.”
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Not only was Catherine compared to her husband but to her ladies-in-waiting. In the protracted marriage negotiations before Catherine’s first marriage to Arthur, one of the English monarchy’s requirements was that Catherine’s ladies should be of high birth “for the English attach great importance to good connexions” and they should be beautiful.
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However, this arrangement could be risky: whereas beautiful ladies were meant to enhance the queen’s own splendor, too much glamour could diminish the queen by contrast: the completion of the comment by Giustiniani’s secretary that Catherine was “rather ugly than otherwise” was “but the damsels of her court are handsome and make a sumptuous appearance.”
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Considerations of the harsh assessments of Catherine’s appearance must also keep in mind that Henry’s first queen reigned much longer than any of his other wives. The overall impression we receive about Catherine’s looks is that she was attractive as a young queen but that successive pregnancies, illness, and worry precipitated early aging.

Of Henry’s six wives, the appearances of Anne Boleyn and Anne of Cleves have engendered the most colorful assessments as well as the most staggering misrepresentations. During Anne Boleyn’s reign, but also in the centuries following her execution, Anne’s detractors linked blemishes in her physical appearance to failures of character, a pattern also evident in numerous fairy tales. On the other hand, Anne of Cleves’s downfall as a queen did not require such attribution of character flaws as her perceived unattractiveness was seen as sufficient explanation for her demise.

One French ambassador’s report claimed that Anne Boleyn “was very beautiful” but offers no other information.
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A more critical edge marks the two most detailed sixteenth-century reports of the queen. The Venetian ambassador Francesco Sanuto saw Anne on a visit to Calais in 1532. He wrote that “Madame Anne is not one of the handsomest women in the world. She is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised, and in fact has nothing but the King’s great appetite, and her eyes, which are black and beautiful.”
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Sanuto’s loyalty to Catherine of Aragon may have colored his emphasis on Anne’s possession of “the king’s great appetite.” Moreover, he describes her as “not one of the handsomest women in the world” rather than on individual terms: the comparative mode appears instinctual.

Years later, Nicholas Sander, whose anti-Reformation agenda also made him unsympathetic to Anne, wrote: “Anne Boleyn was rather tall of stature, with black hair, and an oval face of a sallow complexion, as if troubled with jaundice. She had a projecting tooth under her upper lip, and on her right hand six fingers. There was a large wen under her chin, and therefore to hide its ugliness she wore a high dress covering her throat…She was handsome to look at, with a pretty mouth, amusing in her ways, playing well on the lute, and was a good dancer. She was the model and the mirror of those who were at court…But as to the disposition of her mind, she was full of pride, ambition, envy, and impurity.”
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Sander’s description was written almost 50 years after Anne’s death, so his report appears to be based on secondhand information. But the framing of his observations is telling. As Retha Warnicke points out, “An enemy of her daughter, Queen Elizabeth, Sander attempted to ridicule the English Reformation by clothing Anne with the outer appearance that he thought best reflected her inner nature…Sander gave her the invented monstrous features of a witch.”
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Sander’s alignment of exterior and interior qualities mirrors the paradigm so common in fairy tales. Furthermore, as current queen, Anne would have been seen as the arbiter of beauty and fashion, or as Sander describes her, the “mirror of those who were at court”: even as a metaphor, we are reminded of the powerful reflective properties that the mirror possesses for the queen.

A contemporary report about Anne’s appearance reveals the terms on which she was assessed: in a conversation with foreign diplomats, chaplain and emissary John Barlow was questioned about the status of Henry’s divorce and about Anne as well as Elizabeth Blount, another of Henry’s mistresses and the mother of his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy. Barlow’s companions “asked him if he knew these two ladies, and whether they were beautiful, worth leaving his [the king’s] wife for.” In this brief episode of sixteenth-century gossip, two points emerge: that given how much was at stake in Henry’s divorce of Catherine, Anne was expected to be beautiful and thus “worth” Henry’s “leaving his wife for.” Throughout England and across Europe, all eyes were on Anne and they expected that exceptional beauty must have precipitated Henry’s “great matter.” Second, definitions of beauty are again rendered through comparative practice: Barlow said that whereas Bessie Blount was “still more beautiful,” Anne was nonetheless “eloquent and gracious,” though still “competement belle” (reasonably beautiful).
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Many people appeared to have trouble reconciling Henry’s obsession for a woman who was attractive but not overwhelmingly so, reminding us again of how much speculation circulated over a queen’s appearance.

There are no such queries or contradictory reports about Anne’s successor, Jane Seymour. In fact, there are very few descriptions of her at all, which lends credence to the popular opinion of Henry’s third queen as a “Plain Jane.” Chapuys wrote, “She is of middle height, and nobody thinks she has much beauty. Her complexion is so whitish that she may be called rather pale.”
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The pale skin, so admired in others such as Henry’s sister Mary, was not seen as an asset in Jane.

Sir John Russell wrote to Lord Lisle that Jane “is as gentle a lady as I ever knew, and as fair a Queen as any in Christendom.”
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In fairy tale fashion, invoking inner virtue could by extension imply outer beauty, saving one from the need to prevaricate, though Russell also describes Jane comparatively: “as fair a Queen as any in Christendom.” Russell’s vague compliments were not elsewhere endorsed, but any lack of beauty on Jane’s part was mitigated by her childbirth success. As successor to Anne, Jane’s alleged plainness may have been an asset in contrast to Anne’s allegedly bewitching attractiveness. As sympathizers and detractors continued to grapple with the causes of Anne’s traumatic demise, assessments of her appearance and character became increasingly intertwined. Jane’s relative unobstrusiveness was evident in her submissive demeanor and her unassuming looks.

Figure 3 Portrait of Christina of Denmark
(PHD 29767)

Beauty resurfaced as a criterion in the selection of Henry’s fourth wife, whose appearance has suffered more speculation and criticism than most early modern queens. Just as Henry’s father dispatched agents to assess the appearance of Joanna of Naples, Henry VIII’s secretary Cromwell sent ambassador Christopher Mont to inquire about “the beauty and qualities of [Anne], the eldest of the two daughters of the duke of Cleves, her shape, stature and complexion.”
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Even though John Hutton had earlier reported that he had heard “no great praise of either her personage or her beauty,”
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others gave more positive reports. Christopher Mont wrote: “Everyone praises the lady’s beauty, both of face and body.” His postscript compared Anne to another woman Hutton had investigated but Henry had failed to win, Christina of Denmark, then Duchess of Milan: “she [Anne] excelleth as far as the Duchess, as the golden sun excelleth the silver moon.”
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Henry’s court painter, Hans Holbein, was dispatched to paint Anne; although we have no reports of Henry’s response to the portrait, nothing about it prevented the marriage negotiations from proceeding, nor was Holbein punished later for his work.When plans were made for the new bride’s voyage to England, the Cleves envoys wanted to minimize Anne’s time at sea, arguing that she “is young and beautiful, and if she should be transported by the seas they fear how much it might alter her complexion...she might...take such cold or other disease, considering she was never before upon the seas, as should be to her great peril and the King’s Majesty’s great displeasure.”
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Concern about how Anne would appear to Henry upon her arrival was prophetically justified as their first meeting did not go well. The king arrived unexpectedly and in disguise shortly after Anne’s landing, catching her off guard. Anne’s confusion and insufficient obeisance caused Henry to dislike her instantly, a response which quickly worsened. Henry repeatedly attributed his revulsion to Anne’s appearance rather than to her behavior, and he never acknowledged any missteps on his part. Henry soon complained to Cromwell: “Say what they will, she is nothing as fair as she hath been reported.”
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Nor did Henry’s estimation of Anne improve after their wedding night, when Henry made his harsh accusations about Anne’s unmaidenly body for which he blamed his impotence.