Question: At the end of the movie it shows what happens to everyone. It shows Mary and William Stafford walking in the meadow and 3 children. There's a boy, presumably the boy Mary had with Henry and Anne's daughter Elizabeth. Does anybody know who the other girl is? She looks older than Elizabeth so I assume she's not Mary and Stafford's daughter.
Question: On the corrections page for this movie, someone stated that Henry was the father of both of Mary's children. How? Didn't he stop seeing her while she was still on bed rest during the pregnancy of their first child?
Answer: The information on the corrections page is inaccurate. Mary Boleyn married William Carey in 1520. Because her exact birth date is unknown, no one knows how old she was when she married. It was shortly after her wedding that she began her affair with Henry VIII. It is also unknown if either of the two children she bore during this time were fathered by Henry, though there was certainly a high probability that he sired one or both. However, Henry never publicly acknowledged either child, unlike the illegitimate son he had with another mistress. The events in the film and book are fictional, and they vary from the historical facts. It is never mentioned in the film that Mary had a second child, either by Henry or William Carey.
Question: Anne tried to get her brother to impregnate her so Henry wouldn't know about her miscarriage, but wouldn't this have obviously not worked? She mentioned that Henry already seemed to notice that her pregnancy wasn't showing. Even if she and George did sleep together and she became pregnant, she wouldn't start showing for another four months or so. By then, wouldn't Henry and everyone else expect her to look eight or nine months pregnant?
Answer: Of course they probably would have noticed, but Anne was desperate, thinking irrationally, and she would have done anything to regain Henry's favor and remain queen. She probably believed that if she became pregnant, it would be assumed that it must be the king's child. And if she could entice the king back into her bed, she could claim her earlier condition was a false pregnancy, but that she was now carrying the king's child.
Question: Why didn't George Boleyn like his wife, Jane?
Answer: It's never explained. Historically, little is known about George and Jane Boleyns marriage, though it is believed it was not particularly happy. At that time upper-class marriages were usually arranged by families to provide their offspring with the most advantageous situation - socially, politically, financially, and so on. It mattered little if the two parties were in love, though it was assumed the couple would eventually learn to care about each other. A woman, who was considered her husbands property, was expected to be a dutiful and faithful wife to her spouse, whose responsibility it was to provide for his family. George and Jane may simply have been incompatible, and as divorce was unacceptable then, they may simply have had to tolerate each other. Also, some historians have theorized that George Boleyn may have been either bi-sexual or homosexual, but there is no documented proof whatsoever that George was either. There is some evidence he may have been a womanizer, though having a mistress was hardly uncommon for someone in his station. Whatever their relationship, Janes testimony against her husband at his trial helped condemn him to death.
Question: Near the beginning of the movie, why did Anne think that having an affair with the king could help her get married to a rich man or a duke?
Answer: Becoming the king's mistress often granted you special "gifts." The king could "strongly suggest" or simply force someone to marry someone else and he would likely reward a pleasing mistress with a duke.
Question: At the end of the movie, it states that Mary married William Stafford, but wasn't she still married to William Carey (even though the king sent him away)?
Chosen answer: It is unknown who the older girl is, but probably the child of a close relative. In the movie (which significantly differs from the novel and from history), Mary is shown to only have given birth to one child (King Henry's son) before her marriage to William Stafford. Therefore, the girl could not be Mary's child by her first marriage.
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