Historian Alison Weir builds a case for Anne Boleyn’s innocence in the charges of adultery and treason that lead to her death sentence, in her new book The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn (Ballantine, 464pgs). Boleyn has remained a striking historical figure through the centuries, and volumes have been written about her life and marriage to King Henry VIII. “She’s the Other Woman in an eternal triangle,” states Weir in an interview with NPR, “and Katherine of Aragon is the Good Wife whom Henry dumps for her.” In this latest book, Weir conducts “a forensic investigation” of the queen’s downfall and focuses on the last four months of her tragic life.

The author was surprised at what her investigation uncovered, and now believes that Boleyn was likely framed. “The executioner, I now know … was sent for before her trial, thus preempting the verdict.” Weir also contends that blame for Boleyn’s downfall falls squarely at the feet of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s principal secretary. Cromwell and the Boleyn family had previously been united in their push for church reform, but the relationship between the secretary and the queen had become adversarial. Cromwell needed the Boleyns out of the way, in order to increase his influence with the King.

Weir’s take on the woman branded by history as the “scandal of Christendom” and referred to by some of Henry VIII’s courtiers as “the Concubine”, is fascinating and redeeming. Yet, Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall, a novel that follows Thomas Cromwell’s rise to power, questions some of Weir’s assumptions. In Mantel’s New York Times review of The Lady in the Tower, she sites an issue with Weir’s interpretation of research materials, presenting as corroborated evidence, what may have come from just one source. However, she also applauds Weir’s “brave effort to lay bare, for the Tudor fan, the bones of the controversy and evaluate the range of opinion about Anne’s fall.”

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