55 pages • 1-hour read
The Other Boleyn Girl
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Character Analysis
Mary Boleyn
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination, death, antigay bias, and graphic violence.
Mary is the chief protagonist and first-person narrator of the novel. She is the eldest daughter of Thomas Boleyn, a baron and a trusted member of Henry VIII’s court who served as ambassador and diplomat. The Duke of Norfolk, the head of the powerful Howard family, is her uncle, the brother of Mary’s mother. Mary is blonde and considered quite beautiful. She was born at Hever Castle, the family’s country estate in the county of Kent. As a young child, Mary was part of the court of the Queen of France, but she was summoned home to be married at the age of 12. Her first husband, William Carey, was a member of the king’s household, and Mary became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine. The queen had an affection for the young girl and favored Mary until Mary caught the king’s attention and became his mistress.
Mary’s nature is warm, affectionate, honest, and loyal, with a streak of stubbornness and a mischievous sense of humor. She admires her sister and generally supports her, but she also considers Anne her rival for attention, favors, and prestige, thus developing the theme of Support and Rivalry Among Women. Mary takes great pleasure in her time being the king’s favorite, however, she doesn’t thereafter feel the need to compete for the king’s attention. Mary is only 14 when she falls in love and begins a sexual relationship with the king and around 16 when she has her first child. Her infatuation is a youthful affection that wanes when giving birth to Catherine changes the focus of Mary’s ambitions. Where before she enjoyed the lively entertainments of court and liked being the center of attention, when she becomes a mother, Mary wants to spend time with and raise her child. It is a source of grief to her throughout the novel that she is separated from her children, and she feels particularly hurt when Anne tries to adopt Henry.
The narrative portrays Mary and Anne as stark opposites, and Anne says of Mary, “You’re like a big butter ball, always oozing love for someone or other […] It’s always seep seep seep with you: passion and feeling and desire” (168). Mary’s softer, sentimental nature makes her a foil to Anne, who is more guarded in her manner. Mary’s relationship with her brother, George, is not complicated by rivalry; they are friends and confidantes and offer one another emotional support.
Mary defines herself by her family and, as a young girl, she doesn’t question or oppose the authority of her father or uncle to dictate her life, even with whom she has sex. Mary’s character matures with motherhood, however. When she falls out of love with Henry, whom she comes to view as selfish and grasping, she is willing to repair her relationship with her husband. When Carey dies, Mary mourns only that she barely knew him. Falling in love with William Stafford, a confident, self-assured man, shows Mary’s maturity. Her struggle to assert herself against the wishes of her family and resolve The Cost of Conflicting Loyalties defines much of her character arc, as does her loyalty to Anne. While she does what she can to help her sister, Anne, for much of the novel, Mary longs for a simple life in the countryside with her family. In the end, she escapes being ensnared in Anne’s fate and receives her wish.
Anne Boleyn
Anne is an important character in the novel. Her character is viewed through Mary’s eyes, for whom she serves as a foil and contrast. Where Mary is fair, Anne has dark hair and eyes, and where Mary is easy-going and good-natured, Anne is more elegant, sophisticated, and reserved. Where Mary is concerned about the feelings of others, Anne is ruled by ambition and has her eye on self-advancement. She initially supports Mary in her relationship with the king because her family directs her to do so, but Anne primarily serves her own interests. She is passionate, determined, and ruthless in pursuit of what she wants.
Her secret marriage with Henry Percy shows Anne’s cunning, strategy, and The Price of Personal Ambition. This youthful liaison offers the novel’s only glimpse at a softer side to Anne, who loves the young man she decides to marry. When Cardinal Wolsey parts them, Anne’s heartbreak and disappointment make her bitter, and she vindictively delights in punishing Wolsey later. The narrative never suggests that Anne loves or is even much attached to Henry; instead, her ruling ambition is to become queen, and her every action is part of her calculated strategy to secure his sexual interest.
Anne’s hard-heartedness gains her the queenship but costs her relationships, comfort, and ultimately safety. She is cruel and dismissive to Queen Katherine, seeing the woman as an obstacle to be removed, and later, she suffers a similar fate. Another of Anne’s ruling qualities is stubbornness. Even when she sees that her temper displeases the king, Anne maintains that she must be herself. This costs her his affection, as her jealousy over his affairs and critical comments about him awaken Henry’s spleen. Mary observes at one point that the only person Anne seems to truly love is George, even though she is cruel to and demanding of him as well. Anne doesn’t wish for affection from others, but she wants admiration, envy, and sexual interest, which she believes gives her an advantage.
Gregory suggests at various points that Anne’s self-interest has a demonic aspect, and she further suggests that Anne did indeed engage in witchcraft and incest to conceive the much-desired prince. In this way, Anne is the architect of her downfall. Her trial and execution, though tragic in their outcome, are not, in this novel, unfounded charges. This makes Anne an antagonist, though she is a complex and well-rounded villain with believable motivations.
George Boleyn
George is the son of Thomas Boleyn and heir to his title and estates, including the elevations that Thomas secures as a consequence of Mary’s relationship with the king. George is the consummate courtier: handsome, well-spoken, witty, graceful, and careful about showing his emotions. George is sexually attracted to men and falls in love with a fellow courtier, Francis Weston. This relationship is considered taboo and criminal by the Catholic Church, which means they must be careful to keep their relationship a secret. George is affectionate and loyal to his sisters, always serving their and his family’s interests. It is that loyalty that leads to his death, as the torture of the court singer, Mark Smeaton, implicates George in criminal behavior, earning George the same sentence Anne receives.
George is a good-natured and generally optimistic person. In ambition, he falls between the spectrum of Mary and Anne. He doesn’t question the obedience he owes his family, but he does resent how this makes his happiness impossible. George is playful and kind toward his sisters but truly dislikes his wife, whom he views as mean-spirited and vindictive, the exact opposite of George’s warm, affable nature. In a final irony, it is his own wife’s testimony that helps damn George to execution; Jane’s jealousy over George’s devotion to his sisters, it’s implied, leads her to make accusations about him. George’s death is such a profound loss to Mary that she doesn’t know how to live in a world without George in it.
Henry VIII
As the King of England, Henry is central to the narrative, and he has some relationship and influence on most of the plot. Little mention is made of Henry’s father, Henry VII, who began the Tudor lineage, or his mother, Elizabeth of York. Equally little is said of Henry’s older brother, Arthur, who was first married to Katherine of Aragon. Henry’s younger sister, Mary Tudor, was briefly married to a king of France and at his death returned to England and married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, which made Suffolk Henry’s brother-in-law. Arthur died in 1502, and seven years later, when he became king, Henry married Katherine after a lengthy discussion over whether her marriage to Arthur was consummated. It was officially decided that Katherine had never had sex with Arthur, which meant she was free, by church law, to marry Henry. Henry later revisits this discussion looking for a way to invalidate his marriage to Katherine.
In 1521, when the novel opens, Henry is 30 years old and has been king for 12 years. He is healthy, vigorous, strong of body, and completely ruled by his desires. His affair with Bessie Blount, another of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting, resulted in a son, Henry, whom Henry acknowledged and granted the name surname Fitzroy. While he granted young Fitzroy titles, by law, an illegitimate child could not inherit his father’s title. Henry’s obsession to have a legitimate son to rule after him, continuing the Tudor line, is his motivation for breaking with the Roman Catholic Church, divorcing Katherine of Aragon, and marrying Anne Boleyn. It is equally the reason he executes Anne so he might marry Jane Seymour.
Early on, Anne notes that the king is “greedy and he’s spoiled” (53), and she suggests that his wife would have the challenging task of managing his thoughts, which would take strategy and skill. Mary notes his stubbornness, thinking, “the king’s conscience was a domesticated beast, given to easy herding but prone to sudden stubborn stops” (59). Henry’s will and capriciousness guide him. Mary thinks, “Henry was first and foremost a spoiled child” (177).
Mary thinks of him as “a man of intense vanity, of dangerous whims” (487). He is also cunning and selfish like Anne. The two of them seem a match in will and character for a time, but as Mary observes, Henry can turn dangerous when he doesn’t get what he wants. Gregory portrays this pettiness as the heart of his tyranny. It is also the reason Mary’s affection for him doesn’t last. As Mary tells William, “when I had a child of my own, a real child, I found I had no patience with a man who wanted to be diverted like a child. When once I saw King Henry was as selfish as his own little son, I couldn’t really love him any more” (428). Henry doesn’t mature throughout the novel. Rather, he increasingly becomes subject to his whims and passions. Gregory portrays his injury in the joust as a turning point in Henry’s relationship with Anne; when he doesn’t get the devotion and attention from her that he wants—for Anne is as selfish as he is—Henry looks elsewhere. He’s not an admirable character, but he is a powerful one. Gregory shows the cost to the people around him when a man of Henry’s temperament and morals has no check on his authority.
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