The Boleyn Misfortunes: Pt. 2
Setting:
A week after Anne Boleyn's death, and Mary Boleyn-Stafford, her dear sister is both grieving and counting the blessings that she's gained and lost from her family's death. Though she was never close with her sister, there were still irreplaceable bonds between the two of them that could never be redone, but at the same time. She misses and blames the death and downfall of the family upon her sister's shoulders, particularly of the loss and execution of her brother; George Boleyn; also tried and executed for supposedly charges of incestuous activity with Anne, as well as calling the King 'impotent.'
She now lives on a small farm countryside, way afar from the court of Great Henry VIII, who by now has already found another wife in the Boleyn-Howard family natural born Rival the youngest Seymour; Jane. Mary is desperate to keep her family, particularly her son and daughter, as well as husband close to her; and refuses to allow either of them to ever leave her though the time is coming for Catherine to be sent downstream to court. Catherine, awaiting twelve years old, and bears the Tudor illegitimacy, not to mention her Boleyn blood; is someone that is now denied legitimacy by Great Henry.
As Mary and William struggle with making peaceful tidings and communications with Mary's family who excommunicated her after marrying below her status to somebody apparently ordinary and with no value to her whatsoever, she struggles to regain enough composure and energy enough for her to bear a kid. She's already miscarried one, a daughter that was to be named Anne, and she is desperately in want of another.
Time & Season:
26th of May, 1536; Mid-spring –
Perspective: Mary Boleyn-Stafford's
"I've grown up in an aristocratic family, which is something that many have not been able to say with right and proper meanings. The Howard and Boleyn families are infamous for getting what they want, and using their ambition as far as they can go, just as my dear sister Anne has. I once was her husband's mistress, the great golden blonde prince Henry at least, at least until she started getting the ambition for her own self to become the Queen of England whilst I only wanted to become close. I was lady in waiting to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon after all, and I never thus wanted to betray her dismay her trust and happiness with me around. Unfortunately, because of my relations ambitions, I lost my younger son so that Anne could marry and also have my illegitimate son as the heir to the throne, which would satisfy Henry. I lost the golden prince who had once named one of his war vessels after myself, and I also lost the only family member that I could any bit relate and confide to. Dear, dear George.
Perhaps I'm now being rewarded for stepping out of the way in the knack of time, for listening to my husband William Strafford – whom I married out of love, not ambition and not out of money which dismayed my family and brought my exile from court, because I've managed to escape with my own head and my new family's. Will, dear Will, he never deserved to be brought into the ambition and strife that my spiteful Uncle desired for the well being of his family, and furthermost, himself. We now live a happy live, only a few days after my sister was beheaded. Sure, she never showed kindness to me, but it's not respectful to show no remorse for the dead. But now, because of her death, I have gained one of the only things close to me: my son.
What had Anne ever done for me besides provide me with charitable profits and earnings, and giving my husband a poor ransom, without any sort of title? What has she done that hadn't been in some way for herself, or for her uncle's pleasure? George once said, that we would all fall if she failed, and all rise if she succeeded. It's clear, that that is in many ways perfectly true, though I beg to pay ransom on the contrary. I've gained more out of the 'downfall,' and shame brought on the Boleyn family. I no longer consider myself a part of that family, I belong in William's Stafford family tree, and as shameful as it sounds; I will be the one that receives the profit from my family's deaths. There is no longer a male heir, that had once been George, and all the good tidings will fall to me. I, the one who never dared to step a toe out of line, even for a court full of love and tidings, that I knew which fortune could be brought down as much as it could be raised.
My life with William is pure bliss, we've made love from the Twelfth night onward, and we've been trying for another kid. I daresay that it shall be a great joy, rather than a bundle or weight on her shoulders, if we successfully give birth to another 'love child,' as William likes to label all of the children regardless that he is not the father of my younger two. He is admirable in the sense that he becomingly loves them regardless of their blood and heirlooms, their inheritance that's in store for them, and their illegitimacy.
A legitimate one for his family, and one that we could rightfully shroud our love and admiration with; I know that our kid wouldn't be any kind of royal prince, but I knew the courtier life was indeed going to be set out for a few members of our family. My niece Elizabeth, despite being proclaimed a bastard and being constantly shamed and looked upon as a Lady as a demotion from Princess, will rise to great heights; with much more of the same determination as in her mother. My son and my own daughter, Catherine and Henry, I know will be desperate to go back to the place that they were once raised and bred in.
As William once told me, how can two children with both Tudor and Howard/Boleyn blood in them deny any of the pleasures and gifts that life as a courtier could gratify them with?