#idt hviii was a one-note bully and idt AB was a relentless harpy

[fideidefenswhore]

I think the problem with Chapuys is that the ambassadors aren't really seen as "people", if you will, with agency and biases like everyone else, but just disembodied voices narrating the story, and so for a long time historians and writers just accepted reports at face value, because there wasn't "thought" behind it. You should write a book on him as a response to the other one. You've got a lot of interesting observations.

Omg, you're too kind. But thank you ❤️

Yeah, I actually made a similar observation to you, elsewhere, expanded a bit:

Unfortunately, the practice of using Chapuys' dispatches as the emotional blueprint for all these historical people has become rather prevalent. I think he had credible insights at times, but what's sort of forgotten is that while many of his reports are of what these people said and did (according to, a noblewo/man, or Cromwell, or a physician of a nobleman, or a servant of a gentleman, or 'several reliable quarters', or COA or Mary themselves), many others are simply what he's assuming they thought or said or felt, and have no specific incident or quote or source given. One particularly egregious example informed a lot of subsequent portrayals of Thomas & George Boleyn, namely that upon the death of COA in Jan 1536, they "must have said to themselves, what a pity it was that the Princess had not kept her mother company", with the 'must' (ie, speculation, rather than an actual report of what any of his sources claimed to have overheard) omitted.

[To wit]:

"The King’s mistress had from the very beginning resolved that the Princess should act as her train-bearer, and that she would cause her and her mother all manner of annoyances; but considering that her singular beauty, goodness, and virtue, might possibly induce the King to change his purpose, and that if the Princess were to attend Court, and be seen there continually, she might daily gain the hearts and favour of the courtiers, she has not allowed her to come." Jan 1534, Chapuys to Charles V

[Also, literally a month after this report Anne does invite her stepdaughter to court, the first of three recorded attempts, so...awkward.]

Now, as 'resolved' is not 'said' (it's also interesting that his concern seems to have shifted from the report of the year prior, in which making Mary her trainbearer was the least of what Anne threatened: 'I hear she has lately boasted that she will make of the Princess a maid of honour in her household, that she may perhaps give her too much dinner on some occasion [ie, poison], or marry her to some varlet [a low-ranking servant of poor birth, Chapuys would later refer to Mark Smeaton as a 'varlet']), this would be a case of the 'mind reading' I meant; insofar as some explanation as to why Mary was sent to Princess Elizabeth's household, which was a satellite of the the King's court, rather than the centre of everything, the King's court itself. Granted, I think AB fearing her stepdaughter's popularity is more likely, but the likelier explanation overall would be that Mary was not invited to court for the same reason her own household was dissolved; she defied Henry's appointment and determination of her illegitimacy. Youth and beauty and envy thereof was hardly the determinate factor here, considering [...] that Margaret Douglas, of almost identical age and equal in beauty (according to their contemporaries), was one of AB's preeminent ladies and much in favour...the determinate difference was that MD and her mother acknowledged Anne as Queen, and, for obvious reasons, Mary and hers did not. Rich pickings for the narrative trope casting Mary as Snow White and AB as her wicked stepmother, tho......