#Anne of Bohemia

[fawnvelveteen]

The oldest surviving crown of an English queen, 1370-80. Gold, enamel, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, diamonds, pearls. Recorded in England in a list of jewels and plate drawn up in 1399. Probably belonged to King Edward III or Anne of Bohemia, the wife of King Richard II, who was deposed that year by Henry IV. Henry's daughter, Princess Blanche, married the Palatine Elector Ludwig III in 1402 and the crown passed to the Palatine Treasury in Heidelberg as part of her dowry.

[gemville]

Gold Fleuron Crown, Circa 1380, Made For Anne Of Bohemia (1366-1394), Queen Of England

Blue and Pink Sapphires, Pearls, Other Precious Gemstones

Photo: Bayerische Schlösserverwaltung

Source: jewelryconnoisseur.net

[ardenrosegarden]

Shakespeare’s English Queens Simplified in Easy-to-Memorize Gifs

Eleanor of Aquitaine:

Philippa of Hainault:

Anne of Bohemia/Isabella of Valois:

Katherine of Valois:

Margaret of Anjou:

Elizabeth Woodville:

Anne Neville:

Elizabeth of York:

Katherine of Aragon:

Anne Boleyn:

Elizabeth I:

[glorianas]

Plantagenet Queens: 1382-1422

[heavyarethecrowns]

Pearl crown, Germany, Munich, In The Munich Residence, Treasury Circa Estimation is 1399, The original suspected owner was Anne of Bohemia.

[bbcumbercutey]

“Anne of Bohemia died [ on 7th of  June 1394 ] at her favourite palace of Shene; the king was with her when she expired. In the frenzy of his grief, Richard II imprecated the bitterest curses on the place of her death, and, unable to bear the sight of the place where he had  passed his only happy hours with this beloved and virtuous queen, he ordered the palace of Shene to be levelled with the ground.

The deep tone of Richard’s grief is apparent even in the summons sent by him to the English peers, requiring their attendance to do honour to the magnificent obsequies he had prepared for his lost consort. His letters on this occasion are in existence, and are addressed to each of his barons in this style: “Very dear and faithful cousin, — Inasmuch as our beloved companion, the queen, (whom God has hence commanded) will be buried at Westminster, on Monday the third of August next, we earnestly entreat that you (setting aside all excuses) will repair to our city of London the Wednesday previous to the same day, bringing with you our very dear kinswoman, your consort, at the same time.  We desire that you will, the preceding day, accompany the corpse of our dear consort from our manor of Shene to Westminster; and for this we trust we may rely on you, as you desire our honour and that of our kingdom.  Given under our privy seal at Westminster, the 10th day of June 1394.”

We gather from this document, that Anne’s body was brought from Shene in grand procession, the Wednesday before the 3rd of August, attended by all the nobility of England, male and female; likewise by the citizens and authorities of London, all clothed in black, with black hoods, and on the 3rd of August the queen was interred.“

Source: Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman Conquest

[shredsandpatches]

So hey, if you ever wanted to leaf through Anne of Bohemia’s Book of Hours, it turns out you can. 

(That’s her kneeling before the Virgin and Child in the bottom right picture; the book’s info page points out that she isn’t crowned so the book may well predate her marriage to Richard II, though presumably not by much given the appearance of St. George and the English royal arms on the top right pic!)

[cesareeborgia]

Queen Consorts of England + Anne

[athousandtales]

“Richard and Anne are a great match, and the queen is cleary a good influence on him.”

[tiny-librarian]

Illustration of Anne of Bohemia, Queen of England as the first wife of Richard II. It was done by Percy Anderson, for the book “Costume Fanciful, Historical and Theatrical.”

Source

[edwardslovelyelizabeth]

Anne [of Bohemia] had spend much of he marriage traveling at her husband’s side. They were rarely separated, and whatever their private relationship may have been, Richard [King Richard II] loved her. She died at Sheen on 7 June 1394, aged just 27, and Richard ordered that the palace to which he had devoted so much attention be ripped down. He vowed that for a year he would enter no building except a church in which he he had spent time with the Queen. Anne’s funeral was delayed for two months while Richard prepared in characteristically grand style, ordering a hundred wax torches from Flanders. On 3 August, her body was carried from Sheen to St.Paul’s and then to Westminster Abbey. Determined that the ceremony should be fully attended, Richard had summoned the magnates to London for 29 July, but Richard FitzAlan, the Earl of Arundel, still managed to arrive late and the overwrought King hit him so hard that he fell bleeding to the ground.

Queens Consort. England’s Medieval Queens by Lisa Hilton

[catherinesboleyn]

My mom: Is there anything else you want for Christmas?

Me: Nothing 😊

What I really mean to say: the oldest surviving English crown that dates back to the 12th century that also most likely belonged to Anne of Bohemia with 91 pearls, 63 balas rubies, 47 sapphires, 33 diamonds an-

[joyfullywizard]

At an uncertain date, most probably sometime in the mid-1380s, Anne of Bohemia sent a letter in Latin to her half-brother Vaclav, king of Germany and Bohemia, which is the only extant letter from Anne to her family and is thus of much interest. Anne, addressing Vaclav as 'magne celsitudinis' or ‘great highness’ and referring to herself as ‘by the grace of God queen of England and France, your sister’, began by congratulating him on his successes in Hungary and Poland. This seems almost certain to be a reference to Vaclav’s campaigns on behalf of Anne’s younger full brother Zikmund, who was trying to secure control of those countries by right of his wife Maria of Hungary. Although he never took control of Poland, Zikmund succeeded in Hungary in 1387 and was crowned king at Szekesfehervar, a town south-west of Budapest and then the capital of the kingdom, on 31 March that year with the holy crown of Saint Istvan.       After congratulating Vaclav and reporting that England was at peace, Anne went on to tell him that two of her lady attendants had died but that she hoped Vaclav would send her three more, called by their initials L, I and F, to console her, and informed him that a ‘Lord Nicholas’ had found favour with Richard II. The penultimate sentence expresses her sorrow that she had not yet borne a child, but hoped to do so soon. The letter provides some useful insights: that Anne was politically active and astute, informed about the activities of her brothers on the other side of Europe and in contact with them, and that she and Richard evidently had an active sex life which she was hoping would produce children.      She told Vaclav that she had everything in her life that she needed and was mostly happy, but that 'we were grieving that still we are not rejoicing in our puerperio', i.e. childbirth. She added a pious hope that she was healthy enough in the near future for this to change, if God permitted. It is also not impossible – the Latin of the letter and especially this part is complicated and not easy to unpick – that the queen was telling her brother that she had suffered a miscarriage. Richard II’s own feelings on his and Anne’s continuing childlessness are not recorded, but Anne herself stated that she was 'grieving' and that everything in her life brought her happiness except this. If the letter to Vaclav does date to around 1384 or 1385, Richard and Anne were heading towards their late teens and had been married for about three years, and perhaps were growing more than a little concerned that their close, contented marriage had not yet proved fertile and were worried – correctly as it turned out – that it might never do so.

“Richard II: A True King's Fall” by  Kathryn Warner

[bbcumbercutey]

Queen Anne of Bohemia was a very kind person and it made her popular with the people of England; for example, she was well known for her tireless attempts to "intercede" on behalf of the people, procuring pardons for participants in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, and numerous other pardons for wrongdoers.

She also made several high-profile intercessions in front of the king. Anne saved the life of John Northampton, a former mayor of London, in 1384; her humble begging convinced Richard II to merely commit the offender to lifelong imprisonment. Anne's most famous act of intercession was on behalf of the citizens of London in the ceremonial reconciliation of Richard and London in 1392, which resulted in a spectacular royal progress through the city with the King and Queen on horseback wearing their crowns. The queen's role has been memorialized in Richard Maidstone's Reconciliation of Richard II with the City of London. Anne also interceded on behalf of Simon de Burley, Richard II's former tutor during his minority, in the 1388 Merciless Parliament. Despite her pleas to the Lords Appellant, Burley was executed. Some chronicles record that Anne knelt before the Earl of Arundel,  while others indicate Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester.[x],[x] 

Illustration:  “Queen Anne intercedes with Gloucester and Arundel for Sir Simon Burley” by  James E. Doyle from "A Chronicle of England BC 55 to AD 1485" (1864).

[une-sanz-pluis]

(l-r, the Palatine Crown, the coronet of Margaret of York)

[stardust-pond]

So, Richard III // Anne Neville had some eerie similarities to Richard II // Anne of Bohemia:

                -Each Anne was married to their Richard Plantagenet for 12 years

                -Each Anne died at the age of 28 from an illness

                -At time of death had no living heirs/children

                -Each Richard died at 33/32 while being usurped by a Henry

                -Each Richard also each got their crown from an Edward

                -Each Richard gave up a fortune so that they could marry their Anne

 I'm sure there is more. But fact that they were married for 12 years, no heirs and each Anne dying at 28 is just... eerie.