I’m Laura and I’m an illustrator, theatre-maker, would-be-writer and aspiring amateur historian. I like to explore forgotten histories and hidden voices, infusing my findings with my own experiences of chronic illness and disability. My current focus is marginalised voices at the court of Henry VIII, explored via the lives and marriage of Jane and George Boleyn. I also like WW2 messenger pigeons and classic literature.

My artwork | My play about Jane and George Boleyn | My Instagram

Deep within the woods of Alderley Edge, a wizened face stares out from the rock face above an ancient spring.

“Drink of this and take thy fill,
For the water falls by the Wizard’s will.”

The flow of the well is incredibly slow, little more than a trickle, yet whatever time of year you visit - however parched or dry the rest of the land might be - the stone trough that sits beneath the face is almost always full.

This is just one of the small wonders of the Edge. Once you pass into its trees, there is something different about the air, something different about the way light dances amongst the leaves; it is bound up with stories and magic and an ancient sort of inevitability.

The carving of the wizard’s face is said to have been made by local stone mason Robert Garner sometime in the mid 19th century. By 1843, at least, it was mentioned in a guide book of the area. Garner was the great-great grandfather of the author Alan Garner, who would later weave and embellish the myths of the Edge into his novel The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.

“As a child I lived in a cottage at the foot of the Edge. The hill was my playground, school and world. It was where I learned to see, hear and feel: the grassness of grass, the rockness of rock, the treeness of tree, the skyness of sky. From the cliffs of the Edge I saw fields, villages, hills, mountains, Manchester, Wales; but they were shapes and patterns that had nothing to do with me.” 1

Inspired by my recent slow read of Treacle Walker with of Footnotes and Tangents, I decided to head out with my camera and iPad, and attempt to craft a little illustrated short film of this famous local myth. It’s a new way of exploring ideas for me - combining acting, illustrating and history all at once - and the outcome is at the top of this post. Do you like this way of retelling history and folklore? Should I make more?

Here lies the Devil’s Grave

Stormy Point is the main outcrop of rock at the top of the Edge. It hangs over the Cheshire Plains and gives far-as-the-eye-can-see views of five counties.
The Edge sits atop ancient seams of copper, which were mined for hundreds of years. The woods and hills are littered with caves that disappear down into a web of tunnels beneath the earth. One of these is the ‘Devils Grave’, a cave entrance up on Stormy Point which is now blocked with iron bars. It is said that if you run around it three times anti-clockwise (widdershins), then the devil himself will appear.

And, because I can’t talk about anything without making it about Tudor history, here is one final curio from the Edge…

Found on top of an ancient Bronze Age burial mound is the site of an old Armada Beacon. During the 16th century, they were built across England to be lit as alarm systems in the event of invasion. Just think of the epic scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

“The Beacons of Minas Tirith! The Beacons are lit! Gondor calls for aid.”
“And Rohan will answer.”

During the invasion of the Spanish Armada in1588, the Armada Beacon of Alderley Edge was used as a warning across the Cheshire Plain. It’s said that it took 12 hours for the news that the Spanish Armada had been sighted to travel from the south coast of England all the way to York.2

There are so many legends and strange stories tied to the Edge that perhaps I’ll need to make a follow up film one day. But for now, I must disappear beneath the earth and let the iron gates of local myth and folklore close behind me…

Transcript of my retelling of the Legend of Alderley Edge:

Once there was a farmer with a milk white mare,
Who decided to sell her at Macclesfield Fair.

When the farmer reached the road to Alderley Edge, he was stopped by an old man with a long grey beard who asked to buy the horse.

But the farmer, thinking he would get a better price at market, declined. The old man said that no one would buy the horse that day and that he would wait for him.

The farmer carried on to the market, and although many people admired the mare, not one of them bought her.

When he was returning, the man was there and offered to buy the horse once more and this time the farmer agreed.

The Wizard told the man to follow him, for that is what he was, and they set off through the trees, deep into the forest, until they came to a large rock. The Wizard struck it with his staff and it split open revealing a large pair of iron gates, which opened, revealing a path into the hillside.

The Wizard told the farmer to follow him and not to be afraid, and so they set off, down into the earth.

They entered a cavern that was filled with many treasures and the Wizard told the farmer to take what he thought tot be a fair price for the horse.
AS he was leaving they passed through another cavern that was filled with countless sleeping knights in armour, each one with a white horse by their side, but for the last man.

The Wizard led the farmer’s mare to his side and now every man had a mount. They were sleeping, the Wizard said, until England was in great need and then they would wake and come to her aid once more.

The farmer left and behind him, the iron gates closed an disappeared into the hillside. Although he went back many times, he never found the gates again and they’ve never been seen since.

Do you have any tales of local folklore? Or have you recently read anything by Alan Garner? Let’s talk of myth and magic.

Leave a comment

I’m Laura and I’m an illustrator, theatre-maker, would-be-writer and aspiring amateur historian. I like to explore forgotten histories and hidden voices, infusing my findings with my own experiences of chronic illness and disability. My current focus is marginalised voices at the court of Henry VIII, explored via the lives and marriage of Jane and George Boleyn. I also like WW2 messenger pigeons and classic literature.

My artwork | My play about Jane and George Boleyn | My Instagram

On Sunday 17th May 2026, I got special permission to lay flowers in the royal chapel at the Tower of London for a Boleyn, but it wasn’t for Queen Anne…

I wanted to commemorate her brother, George Boleyn, who was unjustly executed 490 years ago in May 1536, just two days before his sister. I’ve been researching and writing about George (and his wife Jane, Lady Rochford), for the last six years and wanted to make sure his passing was respectfully marked. His death was part of a huge miscarriage of justice and George’s reputation has since been subject to sensationalised homophobic portrayals that twist his (potentially or symbolic) marginalised identity and non-conventional marriage into something violent and damaging.

Looking at how marginalised voices from history are represented is a huge part of my work and I will continue to advocate for their lives and stories. In response to my visit to lay flowers, I was asked a lot of questions about George’s sexuality and identity, and where these theories came from, so I thought I would put together some of my thoughts and research into a essay.

Before we begin, I want to clarify a couple of things:

This is not an article providing evidence that George Boleyn was LGBTQIA+.

There isn’t any definitive evidence, for a start. Just as there isn’t any definitive evidence he was heterosexual. The sexual identity of most historic figures, especially those from as long ago as the 16th century, is blurry at best, usually complex, and most often lost to time.

Instead, this is an essay exploring how George has become a symbolic representation for queer identities at the court of Henry VIII and the damaging way in which both popular media and historians have handled this over the years, highlighting the ongoing problematic biases that are still projected onto queer individuals and their communities.

When discussing queer identities in the 16th century (or throughout history in general) we have to be mindful of several things:

• Previous generations did not view sexuality in the same way that we view it today and trying to conflate modern ideas onto past societies can create dissonant outcomes

• Definitively attributing a historical figure with an identity that they themselves did not use or choose can be disrespectful and demean their personhood (this very much cuts both ways, including the huge prevalence of heterosexual bias that still occurs in modern scholarship/media)

• Queer lives and identities have long been forced to remain hidden - and kept off-record - due to on-going persecution, and are therefore harder to trace. However, this does not mean they didn’t exist.

• Historians (and society at large) demand an impossibly high burden of proof for same sex relationships in contrast to the limited amount of evidence required for heterosexual relationships. Even well-documented queer lives often face erasure or the reduction of their identities and loves.

With that in mind, let’s dive into this fascinating topic. As a content warning: this article will contain adult themes and historical language/attitudes to sexuality.

How was sexuality viewed differently in the 16th century to how it is today?

Broadly, it was seen not as an identity but as an act.

Tudor society lacked the idea of homosexuality (or other forms of queerness) as a distinct minority group, community, or marker of an individual’s nature. It was usually referred to by the term ‘sodomy’, which was seen not only as a ‘monstrous sin against nature’ but also one to which ‘men’s natural corruption and viciousness is prone’.1
Society believed it was something any man was capable of, much in the same way that any man might commit a murder if so provoked or tempted.

Sodomy - or ‘buggery’ as it was sometimes called; the words were often used interchangeably in legislation throughout the 16th century - was a broad term, covering a wide range of acts including sex between two men, but also any sexual act which wouldn’t result in a pregnancy, sex between a man and a woman that wasn’t in an accepted position, or bestiality.2

Until the reign of Henry VIII, these matters were governed by ecclesiastical courts and canon law. They were spiritual sins that required penance. But the growing religious reforms of the 1530s provided the catalyst for removing the power of the church and resulted in the Buggery Act 1533 which criminalised same-sex activity for the first time in civil law. Convictions under the Buggery Act were punishable by death.3

This Act was not designed specifically to police sexual activity - it was likely an expression of Henry’s political power as Supreme Head of the Church in England - but it had far-reaching consequences. ‘Buggery’ remained a capital offence until 1861 and the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK didn’t occur until 1967.

Based on information collected in 20244 we know that roughly 3.7% of the UK population today identifies as ‘lesbian, gay or bisexual or with another sexual orientation other than straight (heterosexual)’. The actual figure will likely be higher due to ongoing social stigma affecting participant’s ability to answer the questions safely and accurately. But that’s still well over 2 million people. It’s sometimes been suggested to be as a high as 10% of the population5.

Whilst there is no way to be certain of the exact historical transference of this percentage, the pattern set from modern data clearly indicates that there would have been thousands of people in Tudor England who had same-sex or queer sexual experiences and feelings. Court was a microcosm of society so it’s not really a question of if any of Henry VIII’s courtiers were (what we would today understand as) LGBTQIA+ but who?

But lives in the 16th century are extremely hard to trace, even before you start diving into the complex waters of sexual identity.

Before 1538 - when parish registers began - births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials were not officially recorded. Literacy rates were low, even among the upper classes, (twenty percent amongst men and five percent amongst women during the latter part of the sixteenth century6), and this limited the amount of letters and first-hand accounts created. Diary writing, for example, did not become a widespread practice until the 17th century.

So where did the theory about George Boleyn being gay or bisexual actually come from?

“The most important of the accused was her brother, who was to be given primary responsibility for her last pregnancy. Because he was central to the case against her and, as is being argued here, had committed sodomy with Smeaton, an examination of his life and that of his young friend needs to be made.” Sexual Heresy at the Court of Henry VIII by Retha Warnicke

In 1987, historian Retha Warnicke wrote a paper entitled Sexual Heresy at the Court of Henry VIII7 which put forward the theory that George Boleyn was gay and had a sexual relationship with Mark Smeaton.

Warnicke’s theory of George’s sexuality is based around three things:

• That in George’s scaffold speech “he went on to confess that he deserved to die ‘for more and worse shame and dishonour than hath ever been heard of before’ but refused to detail his sins out of fear that his listeners might imitate him”8 which, Warnicke concludes, indicates the sin referred to was probably sodomy.

• That George and Mark Smeaton shared a book containing Les Lamentations de Matheolus and Le Livre de Leesce translated by the French poet Jean Le Fèvre. Warnicke only mentions the first translation (Les Lamentations de Matheolus) which was a major work of late medieval anti-marriage and antifeminist literature in which the author “dated the beginning of all his torments from the day he was wed”.9 Warnicke fails to mention the Livre de Leesce, a systematic rebuttal to the misogynistic satire associated with Matheolus10, and the fact the book was also once owned by Sir Thomas Wyatt.

• That it’s the most plausible reason why his wife, Jane Boleyn, would have turned against him.11

“If in May, 1536 she had been told that he had taken a male lover, she could have felt dishonoured enough by the insult to her womanhood to be receptive to the charge that he had committed other illegal sexual acts. Modern studies of married homosexuals indicate that even if the husband can be described as bisexual, his same-sex inclination is a disrupting factor in the marriage.” Sexual Heresy at the Court of Henry VIII by Retha Warnicke

In my opinion, the arguments put forward here are very inconclusive and are propped up by extremely damaging homophobic stereotypes (i.e all gay men hate women and enjoy reading misogynist literature, all women married to queer men are uncomfortable at the idea that they have had queer relationships or partners). But nevertheless, the idea quickly took root in popular media and public perceptions.

This has created two enduring - equally damaging - outcomes:

• The suggestion that George was queer is frequently used by popular media to ‘sensationalise’ storylines, depicting him as devious, malicious, promiscuous or violent (and a valid reason for Jane to be horrified by him). Examples of this are explored below.

• Historians feel the need to ‘defend’ George from being LGBTQIA+, unconsciously propping up the idea that to be queer is something to be ashamed of and somehow denigrates his character or career. This ties into my earlier point that society still demands an impossibly high burden of proof for same sex relationships and continues to equate heterosexuality with ‘normality’. I’ve yet to see anyone defend George from being heterosexual - a concept as lacking in the Tudor era as homosexuality12 - although there is an equal lack of evidence for that.

Cultural depictions of George Boleyn

In the author’s note to the 2001 novel The Other Boleyn Girl, Philippa Gregory states:

“I am indebted to Retha M. Warnicke, whose book The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn has been a most helpful source for this story. I have followed Warnicke’s original and provocative thesis that the homosexual ring around Anne, including her brother George, and her last miscarriage created a climate in which the king could accuse her of witchcraft and perverse sexual practices.”

The book utilises many negative stereotypes in its portrayal of George’s queerness; he is predatory, promiscuous, sickened by women (despite his many encounters with “French whores, Spanish madams, and English sluts”) and hates his wife. His sexual encounters are presented as something sordid, culminating in the suggestion that he has committed incest with his sister, Anne. This draws a false equivalence between queer sexuality and sexual deviance.

But for me, this pales in comparison with the George Boleyn of Showtime’s TV series The Tudors (2007-2010).

In the series, George is portrayed as bisexual, having sex with women throughout Series One and then forming a relationship with Mark Smeaton in Series Two. But we never actually see much of their relationship. The most George and Mark do on-screen is move in for a kiss before the scene abruptly cuts away. This is in contrast to the male/female sex scenes (various) in which we see more of Henry VIII - or Charles Brandon - than any of us ever imagined, tiny Tudor boxer shorts and all. This perpetuates the idea that heteronormative sex is both exciting and tantalising for audiences, but same sex encounters are shocking, explicit and inappropriate.

George is written as a boorish audience-surrogate, who never seems to have a clue what’s going on. He won’t stoop at arranging a murder or committing violence, but cries big snotty tears all over Cromwell once arrested as he tries to throw his sister under the bus to save his own skin. This feels particularly disingenuous as George’s loyalty to Anne is one of the most enduring aspects of his actual character.

But the real travesty for me is how they portray his relationship (or lack thereof) with Lady Rochford. The characters don’t meet until episode six of Series Two when we see them entering into an arranged marriage (around ten years later than the real Jane and George were actually married). Jane is shown to be deeply uncomfortable, which is exacerbated by George laughing at her with Mark and making pointed comments about their impending consummation. Whilst The Tudors seemed to find portraying consensual gay sex a step too far, it does’t hesitate to show George violently raping Jane on their wedding night in graphic detail. The scene clearly positions George’s sexuality as both the reason for the assault and an insuperable barrier to them ever having a happy or companionable marriage. Sexual otherness is associated once again with sexual deviance, violence and a life of misery.

Whilst Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy doesn’t explicitly portray George as queer, it also leans into the idea of him possessing a sexual ‘otherness’ and this is portrayed as an inherently negative thing.

“But I am barren, you see. Or so I must believe. It may be that my husband’s seed is bad or weak. God knows, he spends it in some dubious places. Oh, he is a gospeller, is George, St Matthew be his guide and St Luke protect him. No man as godly as George, the only fault he finds with God is that he made folk with too few orifices. If George could meet a woman with a quinny under her armpit, he would call out ‘Glory be’ and set her up in a house and visit her every day, until the novelty wore off. Nothing is forbidden to George, you see. He’d go to it with a terrier bitch if she wagged her tail at him and said bow-wow.” - Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel, page 316

I adore the Wolf Hall trilogy and think it’s an undisputed masterpiece of historical fiction. But unlike so many other characters or events - which are reframed, revised or reinterpreted through Thomas Cromwell’s eyes - the portrayal of Jane and George Boleyn aligns with all the well-trodden tropes and I think this is a missed opportunity.

And now no more for lack of time…

The theories of Retha Warnicke, supported by Alison Weir in The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn (2009), alongside these three giants of Tudor media, have gone a long way in cementing the popular image of George Boleyn. If the question is asked: “was anyone at Henry VIII’s court LGBTQIA+?” The most common answer would probably be: George Boleyn. He has become the person we imagine when thinking of queer lives during Henry’s reign. But the way he’s been portrayed has also drawn a direct line between queerness and deviance, violence and misery.

There is no definite evidence about George Boleyn’s sexuality - we have no idea if he would today identify as heterosexual/straight anymore than we do as gay/bisexual/queer - but how popular media and historians continue to write about him is indicative of how our society still views LGBTQIA+ individuals and their place in our history.

When I decided to write a new play about Jane and George Boleyn, I knew at once that I wanted to portray George as LGBTQIA+. I wanted to write a version of George that was both queer and a good person; that was both queer and still had a deeply loving relationship with Jane. These things aren’t mutually exclusive and shouldn’t always be portrayed as so.

People in the 16th century may have understood and expressed their sexuality differently from how we do today, but their lives were just as nuanced and complex, and with the same potential for joy.

When writing about and portraying queer historical figures, it would be wonderful if we could reach a point where their sexuality and sexual relationships form only a part of their story, and explore their full multi-faceted lives.

Obviously, none of us can ever speak for George, but I’m strongly inclined to think that if we were ever able to ask him what the greatest passion of his life was, he would have said it was his passion for religious reform. Maybe one day we’ll get a portrayal that honours this alongside all the other elements of his extraordinary, eventful, and tragic life.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on George as a symbol of LGBTQIA+ identities and how you’d like to see him portrayed in future media!

Leave a comment

I’m Laura and I’m an illustrator, theatre-maker, would-be-writer and aspiring amateur historian. I like to explore forgotten histories and hidden voices, infusing my findings with my own experiences of chronic illness and disability. My current focus is marginalised voices at the court of Henry VIII, explored via the lives and marriage of Jane and George Boleyn. I also like WW2 messenger pigeons and classic literature.

My artwork | My play about Jane and George Boleyn | My Instagram

Herein lie the thoughts of a self-confessed parasocial aficionado of Jane Boleyn on Philippa Gregory’s 2025 book Boleyn Traitor.

The book centres on Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford - the wife of Anne Boleyn’s brother George - as she navigates the fall of the Boleyns in 1536 and continues to serve at court under Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard.

As most of you know, I have a lot of strong opinions on the ongoing representation of Jane and George Boleyn in popular media. (So strong, in fact, that I’ve written my own play about them, reframing their story, which is currently in development!) Over the years they have been consistently portrayed in a negative light, with depictions ranging from ignorant and unpleasant to homophobic, ableist and violent.

Particular emphasis is often placed on Jane and George enduring an unhappy marriage and on Jane’s inherently jealous, treacherous personality; a personality so devious that she’s often depicted as faking a bout of insanity to try to evade her eventual execution alongside Katherine Howard (more on that later. Much more.)

With this in mind, I was highly apprehensive about starting Boleyn Traitor, having previously read Philippa Gregory’s earlier novels featuring Jane, The Other Boleyn Girl and The Boleyn Inheritance.

“She sets my teeth on edge and she always has,” Anne said bluntly. “If ever there’s tittle-tattle or dangerous scandal, or someone telling tales of someone else, she’s always there. She hears everything and she watches everyone, and she’s always thinking the worst of everyone.” The Other Boleyn Girl, page 117

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed these books as a young teenager and found them a brilliant gateway into learning more about Tudor history, but - along with the TV show The Tudors - they definitely played a large part in cementing the 21st century mythology of Jane and George. Both depictions draw heavily on the ideas of historian Retha Warnicke1, including the idea that George might have been homosexual/bisexual (and this then being portrayed as a negative thing), that George and Anne actually committed incest, and that Anne’s final miscarriage was of a deformed foetus, offering potential proof of their incest.

Jane Boleyn was an unlikeable, devious character in both of these earlier Gregory books, bitterly jealous of her husband’s (overly close) relationship with his sister, often sexually frustrated or voyeuristic, and more than willing to give evidence against both of them.

“The other night she asked me if I would like a maid brought in. She offered to bring me in a girl and worse: she wanted to watch [...] I think she likes to arrange. I think she likes to listen at doors, to spy through keyholes. I think she likes to be the one that makes things happen and watches others at the business. And when I said ‘no’ [...] she offered to get me a boy.” The Other Boleyn Girl, page 144

I could write an entire essay on how queer or ‘other’ sexualities are twisted into something seedy and distasteful in these novels but that’s not today’s task.

The marketing and press for Boleyn Traitor made clear that it draws on newer revisionist ideas of Jane’s life, including the incredible work of Julia Fox. It also builds on the history of Jane’s father, Lord Morley, being a prominent scholar and how this might have shaped her character. With this is mind, I decided to take the plunge and give it a go.

I whizzed through the book during a week in April, making extensive notes along the way.

The book begins in 1534 a year into Anne Boleyn’s reign as Queen of England. She has a daughter, Princess Elizabeth, and is pregnant once more. The Boleyn’s are in a comfortable position of power and influence. Jane, our POV protagonist, is married to Anne’s brother, George.

George, once again, doesn’t shape up as a particularly nice character. He is shown to be shallow, ruthlessly ambitious and not much more. Perhaps him historically being into poetry and fashion and sport and politics and religious reform just isn’t enough to work up a multi-faceted character (she muses into the distance, with raised brows).

Jane is an established courtier and serves as chief lady-in-waiting to the Queen, in an almost-but-not-quite ménage à trois with Anne and George - who are far more wrapped up in each other than they are in Jane. This is proved when Jane is banished from court in Autumn 1534 and the siblings both drop her instantly like yesterday’s greasy chip paper.

The interactions between Anne and George feel similar to The Other Boleyn Girl, once more leaning into the ‘possible incest’ angle:

“Then he kisses her swiftly on the lips to give her courage.”

“We’re all in love with you,” George says lightly. “Now go to bed.” Boleyn Traitor, pages 43 and 70

If it was historically normal for siblings to kiss each other on the mouth all the time, then where are all the pages with Thomas or Edward Seymour giving Jane Seymour lingering kisses on the lips?

Cast off from the Boleyns, Jane returns to her childhood home and lives in exile with her parents for a year. She doesn’t have a strong relationship with either parent. She’s dismissive of her mother and underwhelmed by a father who has more interest in his translations and books than in his daughter. During this absence from court, Jane loses any love she may once have had for the Boleyns.

“I no longer imagine I am bound to the Boleyns by love. There is love between the two of them; but it excludes everyone else. I hardened my heart in my long exile, I dropped my longing for love, as they dropped me and I came back to court for ambition - not for love.” Boleyn Traitor, page 82

This cemented my feeling that the book probably starts in the wrong place. We don’t have a chance to see Jane falling in love with the Boleyns or developing a bond with them because there’s only 20-ish pages before she’s exiled from court.

At this point - 116 pages into the book - I wrote: I feel like I don’t know Jane yet. None of her relationships seem to have any pull on her character.

It’s very difficult not to contrast all Tudor fiction to the Wolf Hall trilogy but the inner world of Mantel’s Cromwell - the layers of memory and everything that happens to shape him - is just so beautifully rich. Within Boleyn Traitor we don’t get Jane’s personal opinions, or any anecdotes from her past, or little flashes of humour - so the events unfolding begin to feel just like any other retelling of this period of history.

This is a Jane Boleyn that things happen to, not a Jane that makes things happen and this becomes very evident when we reach the downfall of the Boleyns, around a third of the way through the story.

For a revisionist take on Lady Rochford, Boleyn Traitor makes the odd choice not to absolve her of involvement in Anne and George’s downfall, but to make her so naive that she can’t see which way the wind’s blowing. She serves everything up to Cromwell on a platter, seemingly completely unknowingly? The book reiterates that Jane has studied how to be a courtier all her life, read Machiavelli, spied for the always awful Duke of Norfolk, but at crunch time, she doesn’t even notice what’s going on?

And her reaction to George’s death is also - I’m sorry - such a wild take.

“I will never forgive him for this. It is the final betrayal of me. It is the final act of love towards his sister and her daughter [...] My husband has chosen to die with her rather than live with me.” Boleyn Traitor, page 168

This is retreading very old ground. And suggesting that George had a choice in his own death (let’s be real; state murder) feels uncomfortable to me too. Nobody had a choice once Henry made up his mind.

Jane’s relationship to George is almost inconsequential. It isn’t one of a husband and wife in love, or of best friends, or of enemies. He cares little for her and she let’s this go without much difficulty, shrugging off the impact of his death.

“I am a widow without grief.” Boleyn Traitor, page 208

The events of May 1536 were surely the most traumatic of Jane Boleyn’s entire life (up until her own imprisonment in 1541) but there’s very little at stake in how they’re played out here. The Boleyn’s downfall doesn’t seem to cost Jane anything; not heartbreak, or grief, or trauma, or loss of position, or anything. Why take such an explosive moment and have it mean next to nothing to her?

I do want to take a beat here to acknowledge something I did really love about this book. I thought the portrayal of Henry VIII was incredibly well captured. He moved through the story as a delusional, petulant man-child. Everyone had to feed him praise and maintain the precarious illusion that he was a benevolent, beloved King. Katherine Howard’s disgust at being forced into the bed of a deeply unpleasant man, nearly three times her age, felt uncomfortably real.

But whilst Henry is oozing characterisation, a lot of the other characters are quite same-y or forgettable. Jane Seymour is such a non-entity that she hardly speaks. She barely exists.

Which brings us to Jane’s relationship with Thomas Cromwell. Boleyn Traitor suggests that since her banishment from court in 1534, Jane has been on the payroll of Cromwell, working as his spy in the queen’s rooms. This is how she secures her return to court in summer 1535 and how she rides out the disgrace of 1536. I don’t actually mind fictional plot points like this - as long as they’re done well - because that’s exactly what this is; a work of fiction. It’s a space to creatively interpret historical events and fill in any gaps with what-ifs and possibilities.

However, this storyline isn’t particularly fleshed out or nuanced. Throughout the novel Cromwell uses a - seemingly unaware - Jane to gather evidence and send his enemies to the Tower. She often seems to think they’re speaking hypothetically and doesn’t realise the implications of what she says to him, which removes any of Jane’s agency.

The sections with Cromwell are also - I’m sorry (and I’m even more sorry for doing a mid-sentence ‘I’m sorry’ again) - full of incredibly clunky foreshadowing that made me almost hurl the book across the room.

“A madman cannot be executed,” he says, smiling. “Nor can a madwoman. But since you are accused of nothing, there’s no need for you to be mad, my dear Lady Rochford. You don’t need that refuge.” Boleyn Traitor, page 182

Maybe pop up a neon light because I think a few people at the back might have missed the hint. This is swiftly followed, on the very next page, by:

“I won’t lie with my husband in death!”
“Unless you’re executed for treason and buried in the Tower chapel!”

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

When it comes to Cromwell’s own downfall, Jane quickly changes her allegiance back to the Duke of Norfolk, instantly dishing the dirt. I understand speaking out for Cromwell would be impossible, but even her internal thoughts are very self-serving. Despite the best intentions, the Jane of Boleyn Traitor inadvertently becomes more and more two-faced. I’m sure many courtiers had to operate like this to survive - but how is this a revision of Lady Rochford?

The final section of the book focuses on Jane’s involvement with Katherine Howard. This is the hardest part of Jane’s history for any historian or writer to try to interpret, because why did she get involved? Why? After everything with the Boleyns? Jane, what are you doing girl?!

This story gives us a Katherine and Jane who just want to experience the beauty of true love in an ugly court full of falsehood. Whilst this feels believable for the teenage Katherine, who falls completely for Thomas Culpeper (a historic figure I personally loathe but who is presented here as a sort of cardboard-cut-out square-jawed romantic lead) it is much more of a stretch for Jane.

Jane wants to keep Katherine happy until she’s crowned Queen (with an eye to being the power behind Katherine’s possible regency after Henry dies) but this lacks plausibility. Whilst the King dropping dead would’ve felt increasingly likely to the courtiers of 1541, Edward and Thomas Seymour would’ve held the power in any regency for Edward VI (as actually proved to be the case). If Katherine Howard had given birth to a son then the Duke of Norfolk (and therefore Jane) may have held more political sway, but this child would still have been a Duke of York not the future king.

Despite the hardened-courtier-self-preservation thing this version of Lady Rochford has going on, she completely enables the entire Culpeper relationship. Jane doesn’t seem to realise that allowing one meeting between Katherine and Culpeper will naturally snowball into another and then another. The novel is littered with phrases like ‘before I had the chance’ or ‘I couldn’t say no’ highlighting a further lack of agency on Jane’s part. She is incompetent and naive rather than scheming but this doesn’t translate for me as a positive portrayal.

There is also a slight voyeuristic element to Jane’s role in their relationship. She seems pretty entranced with Culpeper and later there is a very uncomfortable scene (page 406) which has Jane sitting in the room, ‘burning and yearning’ with desire while a teenage Katherine has sex with Culpeper. No. Just no. The sexual ‘otherness’ of Jane and George Boleyn, so often twisted into something negative - the incest, the voyeurism - is a lot more present in The Other Boleyn Girl and The Boleyn Inheritance, but the same suggestions linger here, giving weight to the damaging misconception that to have a different sort of marriage or a different sexual identity equates to distasteful deviance.

We then reach the downfall of Katherine Howard and the beginning of the end of Jane’s story.

“A madman cannot be interrogated; a madman cannot be accused; a madman cannot be executed. How could I have forgotten this? I should have told Kitty, who is half-mad with natural silliness anyway. But I shall be mad until the king dies, and no one will accuse me of anything, and they will send me somewhere pleasant to stay, and I will - slowly - very slowly - recover my senses.” Boleyn Traitor, page 463

Our knowledge of Jane Boleyn’s madness comes from Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador serving at Henry’s court, in his letters back to his master, Charles V.

“Colpeper persisted in denying his guilt and said it was the Queen who, through Lady Rocheford, solicited him to meet her in private in Lincolnshire, when she herself told him that she was dying for his love. It is thought both will be beheaded to day. Lady Rocheford would have been sentenced at the same time, but that on the third day of her imprisonment she went mad. She recovers her reason now and then, and the King has sent her to be with the Admiral’s wife, and gets his own physicians to visit her, desiring her recovery that he may afterwards have her executed as an example.” Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, December 3rd 1541, Eustace Chapuys writing to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.

The Calendar of State Papers for Spain words it slightly differently and it is from here that we get the phrase ‘fits of frenzy’ that often occurs in discussions of Jane’s mental state:

“Dame de Rochefort would have been sentenced at the same time had she not, on the third day after her imprisonment, been seized with a fit of madness (frenesi) by which her brain is affected.”

Stories have power and how we choose to portray our characters - be they based on historical figures or purely fictional - has real world impact. Mental health is still hugely stigmatised and many women face additional barriers to accessing treatment for their mental health.

Today, women are three times more likely than men to experience common mental health problems2 and are also far more likely to be misbelieved. Many women with serious mental health conditions (as well as neurodivergent women such as those with autism or ADHD) go undiagnosed for years due to symptoms or behaviours being dismissed as hormones, anxiety or a ‘normal’ part of being a woman.

“Autism is still diagnosed between three and four times more often in boys compared to girls. Girls on average tend to be diagnosed 1.8 years later than boys, and it can take longer for them to get a diagnosis after parents or teachers first raise concerns. In other words, autistic girls are more likely to be ‘missed’ until later in life - even until adulthood.”3

This is true for physical illness and injury too. Almost every single country in the world has a gender health gap (which refers to the long-term differences in how healthcare is provided to and experienced by women compared to men). A 2024 study4 revealed 60% of women feel that they’ve had a health issue not taken seriously by a medical professional and over a third of women avoid seeking medical support at all due to a fear of being dismissed or because of past negative experiences.

These biases and beliefs are still putting women’s lives at risk today.

What we watch and read in popular media influences our opinions and unconscious biases. For this reason, I no longer think we should be encouraging the idea that Lady Rochford faked her mental illness.

And if we want to be pedantic about it, I also think there’s strong historical evidence that Jane was genuinely unwell.

There was a history of mental illness in Jane’s family. Jane’s paternal grandfather, William Parker, fell into ‘bouts of insanity’ both in 1493 and 1502.5

Then there’s the fact that Jane was actually removed from the Tower of London to the Russell House during her imprisonment in an attempt to help her recover her sanity. This has always indicated to me that her contemporaries believed absolutely in her ill health. Many condemned prisoners displayed erratic behaviour, severe mood swings, and even - in the case of Geoffrey Pole - attempted suicide. That it was deemed necessary for Jane to be removed from the Tower really shows the severity of her symptoms.

And, of course, the King felt it necessary to actually rewrite the law of England to ensure Jane would be executed. He gave royal assent for an act “for due process to be had in high treason in cases of lunacy or madness”, legislation which meant that “a person becoming insane after the supposed commission of treason, might be tried; or losing his rational faculties after attainder, might be executed”.

And so we reach the end of Jane’s life - complex, fascinating, and wildly tragic.

In the afterward to the book, Gregory reflects on Jane’s unfair position in history as a monster:

“A more liberal view of female sexuality has done her no favours, but instead has created a new lens of shame. The new, sexually liberated imagined Jane is driven by perverse desires as a voyeur. This Jane takes sexual pleasure from watching: first her husband with his sister, and then her young cousin with her lover. And there her reputation was fixed, until more recent publications began to assert the more common-sense view that Jane Boleyn could not have been a successful courtier […] in the grip of an uncontrollable sex addiction or murderous spite.”

This is all absolutely true - and necessary discourse in reshaping Jane’s legacy. But what Gregory fails to acknowledge is her own key part in fuelling the myth of ‘Jane the monster’ over the last twenty years. We all grow and learn, changing and revising our opinions as we encounter new research, but trying to rewrite the past instead of owning our previous mistakes feels disingenuous.

In the afterward for The Boleyn Inheritance, Gregory once said:

“The character of Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, is drawn from history - few novelists would dare to invent such a horror as she seems to have been. She did indeed give the crucial evidence that led to the beheading of her husband and sister-in-law, and there seems to be no explanation for this but jealousy and a determination to preserve her inheritance.”

When considering the rehabilitation of Lady Rochford, Boleyn Traitor is a book with all the right intentions but one which, nevertheless, somehow twists back into outdated or damaging stereotypes, particularly regarding her mental health. For the most part, though, it feels timid in its approach, as though imbuing Jane with any character at all might tip her into being offensive. Jane states on page 2136, “I am sane and cold and dry. I live my own life, and I want neither court nor love nor courtly love.”

That’s all very well, but what does she want then? As human beings, we all want something and most of us want love. Most of us have deep, knotty relationships with the people around us. Making Jane cold and loveless doesn’t feel like a revolutionary reinterpretation. As someone who’s been obsessed with Lady Rochford for years, I finished this book with the overwhelming question - why should I care about this Jane’s story?

Have you read Boleyn Traitor? What were your thoughts? Or perhaps there’s another media representation of Jane or George Boleyn you’d love to share with me!

Leave a comment

I’m Laura and I’m an illustrator, theatre-maker, would-be-writer and aspiring amateur historian. I like to explore forgotten histories and hidden voices, infusing my findings with my own experiences of chronic illness and disability. My current focus is marginalised voices at the court of Henry VIII, explored via the lives and marriage of Jane and George Boleyn. I also like WW2 messenger pigeons and classic literature.

My artwork | My play about Jane and George Boleyn | My Instagram

When you are five you watch Robin Hood for the first time. It’s the Disney version so Robin is a fox (both literally and metaphorically). It’s brightly coloured and wildly anachronistic: there are helium balloons, references to American Football, characters singing happy birthday, and a mishmash of accents from either side of the Atlantic, but it all hangs together as a joyous masterpiece. This - as far as memory runs - is your first introduction to period drama and the boundaries of what it can be.

As an (undiagnosed) autistic child, you start romping around in your own little green and brown felt outfit with a matching bow and arrows. You discover other versions of Robin’s legend and realise there’s more than one way of telling a person’s story. 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn is a particular favourite until eventually the 2006 BBC TV series, in all its camp early 2000s splendour, replaces it in your gothic teenage heart. (Could you write an entire essay on the gently queer-coded teatime BBC shows of the mid-2000s and how formative they were on your identity? Yes, you could.)

You become a devotee of period drama.

It is escapism, it is adventure, it is a completely different world and yet at the same time it’s still strangely familiar. It shows you the commonality of people; their recurring hopes and struggles, whilst managing to be distant enough from the very real worries of your very real life. And that’s important. Many people who enjoy period dramas also have a penchant for sci-fi or fantasy and this is no coincidence. There is a great feeling of anywhere but now.

You make the usual journey through the genre; Titanic, Pride and Prejudice (1995 in this house, thank you very much), that beautiful version of The Secret Garden where Maggie Smith plays Mrs Medlock. North & South. The hugely underrated BBC adaptation of Bleak House where Johnny Vegas spontaneously combusts. The might that is Downton Abbey.

Like most people, period dramas are your first real window into the past. They shape your perceptions of historical events long before you begin diving into the truth behind the fiction. And for this reason, debates surrounding authenticity and factual accuracy vs entertaining narratives and creative expression follow you as your submerge yourself in the genre.

In 2006, Sofia Coppola created divisive waves with her film Marie Antoinette. Branded in some quarters as ‘a vapid mistelling of a historical event that prefers style over substance’, the film nevertheless laid the foundations for a new era of ironic, anachronistic period dramas that began to play with style, humour, and subversive themes.

“Marie Antoinette - which, by this time is labelled a cult classic - paved the way for films to make 21st century point using historical backdrops. We can understand social dynamics through the lens of our past and make connections to those who came before us.” 1

Presentism
Noun

The practice of interpreting historical events and figures through the lens of contemporary values and understandings, often leading to anachronistic judgments that do not align with the norms of the past.

Presentism in historical drama can be a creative gift, harnessed as a political vehicle or a powerful means of expression and reinterpretation. It can also be heavy-handed, derivative and disappointing and, therefore, a huge point of contention. Is it disingenuous to analyse long-dead figures through a lens of contemporary morality? Is it unreasonable for artists to draw on the world they know and their own experiences?

You don’t watch Marie Antoinette at the time. Your own indoctrination into the intoxicating possibilities of alternative period drama comes much later, around 2017, once you’ve begun writing your own plays. You wilfully devour anything that might deepen your understanding of the genre; sparking ideas and prompting discussion. Your education comes via the likes of The Death of Stalin, The Favourite, The Personal History of David Copperfield, Emma. and finally (the series that will, in many ways, become your ultimate period drama) The Great.

Catherine: Ever since I was a child, I felt like greatness was in store for me. A Great life, I felt. Like God himself had spat me forth to land on this Earth and in some way transform it. That I was here for a reason, a purpose.

Marial: Why did He make you a woman, then?

Catherine: For comedy, I guess.

Why does The Great work?

The Great is light-touch history, very loosely inspired by real people and events but unconstrained in its approach, making this abundantly clear from the off with the tag line * An Occasionally True Story (and even in one episode as * An Almost Entirely Untrue Story). It is provocative and profoundly post-ironic.

Post-ironic
Noun

Media that use absurdist, ironic, or surreal, and deadpan scenarios to explore genuine, poignant emotions. It can include an ambiguous self-aware tone, surreal moments and striking visuals that may be at odds with the world we’re expecting to see.

But unlike many of the shows that have since tried to imitate its brilliance, The Great is still deeply rooted within its own world and - despite its irreverent, often absurdist tone - the characters operate within the expectations and understanding of their era. The Emperor and his power are absolute. There is an inherent - almost superstitious - belief in religion. The church wields great influence and people fear the wrath of God. The characters, both rich and poor, cleave to their existing societal hierarchy, even when it is defective or demeaning. It is all they have ever known and change is deeply feared, be it the printing press or education for women.

The show begins with Catherine’s arrival at court and although she is an agent for change, she is very much confined by the expectations of the society around her, as well as her own failings as a person. She is initially hugely naive, trying to change a court she doesn’t understand, condemning its people for being primitive and uncultured before learning anything about their way of living.

In other - lesser - shows, Catherine’s liberal ideals and early-form feminism would be depicted as unerringly right and ultimately rewarded with the backwards-looking characters around her catching up to her modern ways of thinking. However, The Great handles this with the complexity and nuance it deserves. The first time Catherine has to step into her husband’s shoes and temporarily rule the country, it it an unmitigated disaster. She quickly realises she knows nothing of Russia, its geography, its policies, and breaks out in a stress rash. Catherine is soon praying for a husband she hates to recover as she’s simply not ready for the burden of leadership.

This sits in contrast to a show like Amazon’s My Lady Jane, a fantasy reimagining of the life of Lady Jane Grey. This has a lot of promise, some excellent performances and even the occasional moment where the humour lands, but it doesn’t have the depth, wit or complexity needed to excel.

Yes, it’s a historical fantasy but it should still run true to it’s own rules. It chooses to present a patriarchal, religious society modelled on 16th century England but if the characters don’t face any of the consequences or restraints of that era, then why set it there at all?

Jane is an unfortunate example of the modern Strong Female Character. She is a Girl Boss, a Mary Sue. Her character is not only an expert herbalist and apothecary, an excellent linguist, a codebreaker, a sword fighter who’s better than all the boys and can easily overpower her own husband but also an eye-rolling twenty-first century feminist who doesn’t ever want to marry. We know she means business because she swears; a lot.

The Great is unrelentingly foul-mouthed - something that made a certain demographic of viewer jump and clutch their pearls - but the swearing is woven through the show in a way that serves the narrative, even if it tips into extremes. By far the sweariest character is Emperor Peter, along with his boo-yah boy’s club. Catherine hardly swears at all at first but slowly adopts the bad language of her peers the longer she stays at court and learns how to play the game. The swearing in My Lady Jane seems clunky or superfluous in comparison. There’s no pattern to who uses language in this way and who doesn’t, leaving it to feel as though its main purpose is to prove the show is modern and edgy.

“My Lady Jane is, in many ways, the textbook example of the modern historical drama. But in being so typical, it shows up the key issue with the genre. Shows like these want so badly to be the “cool” one that they’ll do anything to remind you of their edginess. But it all feels very try-hard, and in doing so takes away the unique style that it’s so loudly posturing about.” 2

As a theatre-maker you watch these shows with an open heart and mind. Even the ones that don’t chime with you often get a second or third viewing because there is always something to learn or to discuss, to remember or debate. But you begin to notice some of the criticisms they face - criticisms surrounding authenticity, presentism and a lack of historical accuracy - often carry an unspoken but unpleasant undercurrent.

Because when do these debates stop being about a reverence for the source material or a passionate attention to detail and start becoming an exercise in gatekeeping our expectations of the past; who we allow to inhabit it and how we allow them to behave?

“In more recent times some individuals or groups, who perhaps rightly or wrongly consider themselves marginalised, have been weaponizing history for their own interests or political aims.” 3

History is not absolute. It is transitory and elusive. However much you may research and love a historical figure (or develop a deep parasocial relationship with them) they are not yours to possess. History, in your own humble and not particularly learned opinion (without sounding too much like Mr Collins) is about interpretation. It is often a matter of opinion. Nothing, be it documentary or academic paper, will ever be truly accurate. They are invariably written and shaped by people, and people are the products of their own environments, experiences and biases.

The Great and My Lady Jane along with Bridgerton4, The Personal History of David Copperfield, The Decameron, the 2021 TV series Anne Boleyn and the 2018 biopic Mary Queen of Scots all utilise either colour-blind or colour conscious casting. Dickinson, The Great, My Lady Jane, The Decameron, Mary and George, The Serpent Queen and The Favourite include queer storylines or characters. These themes are explored with varying degrees of success but the increase in representation is hugely vital. Boldly stating ‘we’ve always been here and we always will be’ is something you’re personally so passionate about that you’re currently developing a play looking at marginalised lives at the court of Henry VIII.

Historical stories with a disabled lead character are still crushingly rare with 2024’s Shardlake being one of the only examples that comes to mind.

In an interview, Arthur Hughes (the actor who played the lead role) said:
“I was in rehearsals for Richard III at the time when I read the script. Being in the world of Richard III, which is quite a lot of hatred and self-loathing and cruel language about being a disabled person, I said to the writers, the director, the casting and the producers that there was some similar stuff in Shardlake, which was about how he sees himself, looking at himself in the mirror, and kind of not liking what he sees. And I was thinking ‘Another one of these characters?’. So we had some good conversations and they were really open to me saying how I wanted to have a positive experience portraying this disabled character.” 5

Social media has deepened the divides of these debates. It has fostered an environment in which hostile opinions can quickly take root, spreading outrage before a film or TV show is even released.

And so, finally, you reach Emerald Fennell’s recent Wuthering Heights adaptation.

If the world is divided into people that either grow up to be a Jane Eyre person or a Wuthering Heights person; you are a Wuthering Heights person. You first visit the Bronte Parsonage as a child. Their lives are grim and dark and wild, and furiously inspiring. You are particularly captivated by the idea that each sister took on a man’s name to enable their work to be published. You are too young to think too much about it but the idea of playing with gender - Emily Bronte, Ellis Bell - feels powerful and dangerous. You study Wuthering Heights for A Level and are deeply drawn to the uncontrollable emotions that rage off the page. It’s all a bit savage and disregulated, and this feels particularly entrancing to your teenage self.

Re-reading it as an adult, the experience is different but equally enriching. You still prefer the second half of the book. Hareton is still your favourite character. But you are most absorbed by the themes of trauma; how it becomes both intergenerational and cyclical, how it can be broken; themes of illness and gender; who is perceived as strong, who is perceived as weak, and how it affects their path through life.

The film puts the title ‘Wuthering Heights’ into quotation marks; it’s an interpretation - and promises to be big and bold and subversive.

But it fails.

The book is a very rare example of a 19th century British classic that features a non-white leading character and however you interpret Heathcliff’s particular race or identity, his ‘otherness’ in the eyes of the other characters is explicitly integral to his story. Choosing not to explore this, especially when most previous adaptations haven’t acknowledged it either, feels like a huge waste of potential. (Other voices have spoken on this subject with greater eloquence and lived experience, and they are linked below.)6

The trailer positioned itself as a deliberate provocation but the end result doesn’t answer it. Like most adaptations, the film only handles the first half of the novel - and not even the entirety of the first half. We lose the narrative device of Mr Lockwood and with him, all elements of the gothic, with Cathy’s famous ghost not making an appearance. The moment where Mr Lockwood repeatedly rips Cathy’s wrist back and forth over broken glass is one of the earliest and most viscerally shocking images of the book, but moments of moral complexity are eschewed in favour of a sprawling romance.

The film is marketed as a Valentine’s Day release and centres sex, lust and desire; and, in many ways, this feels like the least subversive statement of all. Western media repeatedly teaches us to value sexual, romantic relationships over all other forms of connection and has been using conventionally attractive, heteronormative couples to sell tickets for time out of mind. In a time of great division, to make art in any form is inherently political - even art that’s soul function is to entertain or bring joy - and this doesn’t feel like it’s making any strong points on race, gender, womanhood or relationships.

In her essay on Wuthering Heights, Virginia Woolf found: “there is love, but it is not the love of men and women.” Cathy and Heathcliff’s connection always surpasses the physical; it is about soul. They share a single spirit, split between two bodies. It is an intrinsic shared identity, a bond that transcends social conventions.

“In the end the tragic love of Catherine and Heathcliff is resolved. They are united at last in the afterlife, finding peace as spirits free to wander the moors for eternity. By making such a condition the expression and fulfilment of their true self, Emily Brontë argues for a notion of humanity that is more soul than body, a soul unfettered and ungendered.”7

The creative process is now harder than it ever has been. There is less funding and less willingness to allow stories time to find their feet, particularly period dramas which are complex and expensive to produce. If something is not easily marketable or instantly successful, it is cancelled - and this limits what creatives can bring into the world. Period dramas offer escape, but they are consumed in the here and now and you find a hollowness in media that does not make bold statements about the world around us. The past belongs to everyone, but you believe gatekeeping whose stories get told and who is allowed to tell them, risks keeping it closed to all but a few. If a fox can be Robin Hood then a little girl can play with a bow and arrow instead of dolls. Source materials must be honoured - their essence captured - but creative innovation is a tool of empowerment and we must not squander it.

Is there a post-ironic period drama you particularly love or one you think I might have missed?

Leave a comment

I’m Laura and I’m an illustrator, theatre-maker, would-be-writer and aspiring amateur historian. I like to explore forgotten histories and hidden voices, infusing my findings with my own experiences of chronic illness and disability. My current focus is marginalised voices at the court of Henry VIII, explored via the lives and marriage of Jane and George Boleyn. I also like WW2 messenger pigeons and classic literature.

My artwork | The play I'm developing about Jane and George | My Instagram

When you are 13 you become chronically ill. By the time you are 14 you can no longer leave the house; in fact you can hardly leave your bed. You will later refer to this period as the Dark Years. It is the time in your life when you should be growing more independent, experiencing new things, meeting new people - but instead you recede.

For most people, the national lockdowns that began in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic were a huge shock to the system; confinement, isolation, a loss of autonomy. But to you, they feel strangely familiar. You know how to navigate such waters.

When your access to the real world is cut off, the ones you create inside your mind must suddenly become all the richer. You live through stories, you live through imagination, you live through the lives of other people.

So in June 2020, you pick back up with an old flame of yours…

The girl from Essex meets the girl from Essex

You first encounter Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, during the Dark Years in the pages of Philipa Gregory’s novel The Other Boleyn Girl. You are probably a bit too young to be reading it but that just makes it all the more thrilling.

Henry VIII and his six wives aren’t a new concept. You have been blessed with a mother who loves history, and childhood trips to the Tower of London and Hampton Court still simmer beneath the surface, faded but not forgotten. The Tudors are widely celebrated, they are widely bemoaned; don’t they teach them anything else in school these days? But love and blood and treason - and ghostly footsteps running down corridors to beg for mercy - are always going to ignite interest in a certain sort of mind. For a man to send one loved one to the executioner’s block may be regarded as a misfortune, but to send several sparks enduring fascination.

You follow The Other Boleyn Girl up with its sequel The Boleyn Inheritance, and then discover that the BBC is about to broadcast a new series called The Tudors. This is a turning point. You don’t know enough yet to be horrified that they’ve merged Henry’s sisters into one homogeneous being - with a very 2008 haircut - called Margaret or that the increasingly bizarre fascinators they make Natalie Dormer wear are about as far from a French Hood as possible.

You are captured by the acting, the politics, the lurking sense of danger that seems to hang over every character. And there she is again; Lady Rochford.

Neither The Tudors nor Philipa Gregory present her in a flattering light. When it comes to her character you have a blunt choice: scheming bitch or bitter victim. She is generally unliked, universally unwanted. She doesn’t fit neatly into the typical tropes of the time. She’s odd. Her marriage to Anne Boleyn’s brother is odd; childless and not quite conventional. And then she has the gall to go mad.

And that does it. Because you’re just starting to go mad yourself.

Of course, you’re not. It’s the onset of OCD but that’s how you feel for a while. And that’s still very much the sort of language thrown around in the newspapers back then; in TV shows and in the school playground. Odd, unliked, mad, confined.

So you become captivated by this woman.

You read about her, you research her, you visit her final resting place. You follow the facts and pour in your own biases, and theories, and opinions until you feel you know her.

But of course, you don’t.

You never will.

Parasocial was the Cambridge dictionary word of the year for 2025.

Parasocial
adjective

Involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know. A relationship characterised by a one-sided, unreciprocated sense of intimacy felt by a fan or follower for a well-known or prominent figure.

The term was coined in 1956 but stayed within the confines of academic textbooks until the growing rise of social media and development of AI drove it into the mainstream.

Real relationships are defined by interaction, moments of back and forth, a mutual bond - but a parasocial one is an illusory experience; tangible but distorted. You will never actually meet the person you are drawn to. Especially if they are a historical figure who has been dead for five hundred years.

In some ways, this is preferable. If your figure of fascination is long beneath the ground they can’t do anything to disappoint you. They can’t act out of character. They can’t shatter the illusion. They are a finite point in time, with a definite beginning and end. In fact, they are certainty (and certainty, to someone with OCD, is everything.)

It is said that loneliness is a breeding ground for parasocial relationships. People often feel lonely when their need to belong is not satisfied and four times as many disabled people report being lonely than non-disabled people.1

A recent report2 exploring disability, loneliness and relationships - drawn directly from lived experiences on the ‘nothing about us without us’ principal3 - found that disabled people:

- often have smaller networks than non-disabled people

- are regularly made to feel as an ‘other’ by social perceptions and therefore do not feel like they fit in

- can face heightened stigma if they identify as LGBTQIA+ and, due to their dependency on smaller networks, are not able to explore their sexuality or gender identity in the same ways as non-disabled people

- seek greater independence and autonomy within their lives

A fascination with a historical figure who has faced their own - sometimes insurmountable - barriers can feel cathartic, comforting or even foster its own unique sense of community if you begin connecting with others who share your interest.

Through their lives, we are even able to understand ourselves better and explore elements of our own identity. For example, a recent study found that parasocial relationships might help reduce stigma around mental health conditions.4

We are inherently self-interested. We are all the centre of our own universe. It is only natural that the lives we fixate on often mirror something of ourselves, even if this is fragmented or not initially apparent.

Jane Boleyn grew up in Great Hallingbury, Essex5. You grow up just down the road.

Jane’s family estate bordered the western boundary of Hatfield Forest. You spend countless weekends there as a child, walking through the woods in your wellington boots, picking up interesting sticks and stones, and pretending to be Robin Hood. It is Britain’s best surviving example of a Royal Hunting Forest but at this age you don’t care; not that Henry VIII once hunted there or that Jane almost certainly played in parkland as a child.

But Jane Boleyn is also a villain. It is not just popular media, but historians and history books that tell you so. They say she brought down the Boleyns, accused her own husband of incest, spied for Thomas Cromwell, led Catherine Howard to her grisly downfall 6.

“Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n”

Perhaps this is still understandable. Since Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost (and inevitably before) we have felt the allure of a villain. They are unconstrained and expressive, allowed to break societal confinement and explore taboo topics in a safe environment. But we must also question how we interpret evil and which traits we qualify as bad.

There is a long-standing, damaging line drawn between disability and villainy. Those who are different are feared. They are mistrusted. They are marginalised and scapegoated. And such is the case with Lady Rochford.

The more you research her life, the more inextricably linked to the idea of ‘otherness’ you find her to be. Her marriage is childless - deeply unconventional for the era. Her husband is sometimes theorised to be queer7, and often portrayed as such in popular media. There are many ties to mental illness: her grandfather suffered bouts of insanity8, her father may have had a physical disability or chronic illness that kept him from military service9, her husband was the governor of Bethlem Hospital, the country’s first asylum. Jane’s own mental health collapsed towards the end of her life, although she is often accused of faking this episode in one final connivance.

Through your parasocial relationship with Jane, and her husband George, you have been forced to confront the way history records and remembers disabled, chronically ill and LGBTQIA+ individuals. You have found it educating, infuriating, but also empowering. In June 2020, it prompts you to start researching their lives in earnest so you can write a play about them. Stories hold power and prompt change, and theatre has woven its way into your life as a force for good.

You call the show VILE and in 2025 you get funding from Arts Council England to start initial development work on bringing it to life. You work with some wonderful people and even make new friendships thanks to your parasocial relationship with a ‘wicked woman’ who was executed for treason.

Until society removes the many barriers faced by disabled and chronically ill individuals - as well as those of other marginalised groups - we must recognise their increased need for parasocial relationships and embrace the benefits they can offer when undertaken in a healthy, non-reliant, way. From Anne Boleyn to Richard III, our parasocial relationships with the past have formed societies, provided community, sparked debate, and promoted a sense of belonging.

But until cultural institutions, popular media and society as a whole improves its access and representation - the stories we get to see celebrated and the stories that are left as footnotes or worse - we cannot be surprised that obscure, shadowy figures from the past are the most viable route for many people into self-identity, empowerment and escapism.

Are you drawn to a specific figure from the past? Or have you found a community through an obscure corner of history?

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