Queen Anne of Cleves.

WI she were a raving beauty, instead of the Flander mare that Henry VIII describes her as?
 
Henry consumates the marriage. Offspring is anybodies guess. If she can't produce a son it's either divorce or off with her head.
 
I have always wondered why, if Henry was as concerned for the future of his dynasty as he was, he didn't swallow his disgust for Anne a la Charles X. I mean, he was another man cursed with a (supposedly ugly, unhygenic [if her sister, the Comtesse de Provence was, it doesn't take much to believe she was too]) wife, and soldiered on to produce four children. Or by this stage was Henry to a la Louis XVIII (obese, gouty etc) that even the children he produced (the Comtesse was pregnant twice, but miscarried both times) wouldve been neonatal fatalities or as sickly as Edward VI and Mary I (who IIRC, it is speculated one or both had congenital syphilis)
 
A) Henry was likely impotent at this time.

B) Henry's declaration of Anne's ugliness likely had more to do with the fact that he was, by this time, a fat ugly man who smelled bad due to bits of him rotting, and who expected to be treated as the dashing young prince he'd been.
 
The tales of Anne of Cleves being ugly are undoubtedly fiction as a princess in the public eye, as Anne of Cleves certainly was, would be known to be unattractive if this was actually the case.
 
A) Henry was likely impotent at this time.

B) Henry's declaration of Anne's ugliness likely had more to do with the fact that he was, by this time, a fat ugly man who smelled bad due to bits of him rotting, and who expected to be treated as the dashing young prince he'd been.

Now I have this delightful image of Henry's libido being killed by his own stench.
 

J.D.Ward

Donor
a princess in the public eye, as Anne of Cleves certainly was, would be known to be unattractive if this was actually the case.

Was that in fact the case, before the invention of the camera, never mind the television and the internet?

IIRC, about 250 years later, the future George IV went into a state of shock the first time he met his future wife.
 
Was that in fact the case, before the invention of the camera, never mind the television and the internet?

IIRC, about 250 years later, the future George IV went into a state of shock the first time he met his future wife.

After her marriage (and its end)? Yes. Maybe not before, but certainly afterwards.
 
I know Showtime's The Tudors plays fast and loose in places with history (Margaret's marriage to Charles Brandon; Henry Fitzroy anyone?) But there IIRC its Cromwell instructs Holbein to flatter the princess in the painting. Since it was open season on Cromwell if the match failed, this IMHO couldve really happened.
 
I thought it was widely believed that Henry did consumate his marriage with Catherine Howard [but not with Catherine Parr].
A) Henry was likely impotent at this time.

B) Henry's declaration of Anne's ugliness likely had more to do with the fact that he was, by this time, a fat ugly man who smelled bad due to bits of him rotting, and who expected to be treated as the dashing young prince he'd been.
 
His problems with Anne of Cleves weren't readily discernible via a portrait - her loose "tokens" and "evil smells" etc.
 
The Holbein portrait of Anne isn't unattractive (see below).

How accurate was the painting? We know that Holbein's mission was to paint Anne so that Henry knew what he was getting into, so he shouldn't have deliberately made her look prettier than real life (but we can never know for sure).


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Anne of Cleves Portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, c. 1539. Oil and Tempera on Parchment mounted on canvas, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

I have heard it said that Holbein fell in love with her, and painted her as he saw her, not as she was.
 
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