Thursday 7 November 2019

Stop treating Anne Lovell badly!

This is going to be another installment in something about which I have spoken before; my deep-seated problem with the horrible, historically inaccurate and very sexist way Anne Lovell is treated in fiction. Her portrayals in fiction are so nasty that the novels most friendly to her simply ignore her existence, while those in which she is mentioned seem to be vying for the best way to portray her as the most horrible person anyone has ever encountered, and the most horrible character in the entire novel. There are novels which are sympathetic to Richard which portray Anne Lovell with more vitriol than Henry Tudor.

Now, being all for historical accuracy, I don`t condone inventing any inaccurate portrayal of Henry Tudor, either. Of course, in a novel about Richard, he is by necessity not a sympathetic character, but there need to be no inventions for it. But it`s more than a bit weird that authors who choose to invent nasty qualities for characters would do so for the wife of Richard`s best friend rather than for someone who actually did something bad to Richard, in a novel sympathetic to him.

There are three ways in which Anne Lovell is treated in novels, and none of them is good.


(1) "Yesterday upon the stair, I met a girl who wasn`t there".*

This is the most wide-spread version in non-fiction, and in the more sympathetic fiction, as at least it doesn`t slander her. For non-fiction it is somewhat explicable, as even Francis is often barely mention. It is a missed opportunity, as it ignores Anne`s very likely participation in Francis`s rebellions, that she committed treason for him and was considered dangerous by Henry VII`s government, but it is only logical that such subjects will not be addressed in non-fiction which barely mentions Francis`s rebellions. (Or doesn`t mention one of them at all, as often happens with the 1486 rebellion). In fiction, it is somewhat more jarring, as in non-fiction it can at least be assumed he probably was married at some point, while fiction of that sort sometimes glosses it over so much even Francis never thinks about it. In some of these cases, he has affairs with or outright relationships with other women, without him, them, or anyone else ever thinking about his wife, or even the fact he had a wife, at all. For all intents and purposes in those novels, it is as if she never existed.


(2) "She wasn`t there again today. Oh how I wish she`d go away."

This is a more common take in fiction; of Anne Lovell who is mentioned in passing as being Francis`s wife, but whose existence then never influences the plot, Francis`s actions, or even his thoughts and feelings again. Usually, this is explained by casual mentions of Anne being horrible, but at least it isn`t expanded upon and her supposed horrible horribleness made a plot point. A typical example is one novel in which it is claimed that her mother would not let her live with Francis as man and wife. This baffling statement is never explained, and in the whole rest of the novel, Anne is only brought up occasionally to be quickly dismissed (at various points as "weepy", "limp" and similar adjectives) and provide an excuse why Francis can`t marry his OC mistress, the author obviously being angry her existence stopped such a plot development. Another typical novel has Francis bring her up shortly to say his marriage isn`t as good as the supposedly perfect one of Richard and Anne Neville, and she`s never mentioned again. 


(3) "And every tale condemns me for a villain."

This is the worst, and sadly the most wide-spread version of Anne Lovell in fiction: a horrible woman who has all the bad qualities the author can think of. Various novels have called her ugly in colourful (and massively sexist) language, have insisted she is "unlikeable", "one of those miserable creatures who is happiest when pulling another soul to pieces" and other completely far-fetched and historically inaccurate claims. (And to make this whole thing even worse, more often than not, such qualities are told, not shown, which makes it seem like an excuse by the other characters for their relentless bullying of Anne Lovell.) Fairly often, this also comes at the expense of actual facts about Anne. Many novels age her up so Francis can state at a time when she was twelve in real-life that his marriage has failed, even that it is "hell". One claim that is found especially often is that she is frigid and sexless, and/or that she is so horrible Francis can`t bring himself to consummate the marriage, to explain why she and Francis had no children, as if infertility was an invention of the 20th century. (See below.) Also found often is the claim that she is so very religious, which somehow makes her bad. It`s all absolutely nasty (and this doesn`t even go into the implications of a woman apparently being bad when she doesn`t want sex for some reason).


Now, all of this would be bad enough if this was all there was to Anne`s portrayal in fiction. But it is not, because a lot of these portrayals do not only try and fill gaps in our knowledge in the worst possible way for Anne and based on no evidence, a lot of them actually take things we do have evidence for and which show her in a very good light, and claim the opposite.

The most obvious example for this is her and Francis`s childlessness. The most obvious explanation for this would be that one or both of them were infertile, and that it had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of their marriage. With a fair bit of digging, however - or reading my book, which I just mentioned here to advertise it and which of course couldn`t be done until three months ago - it becomes clear that Francis somehow knew it was his fault they couldn`t have children (which, given the lack of exact knowledge about reproduction at the time, almost certainly means he and Anne had to stop having sex at some point, possibly because of sickness or trauma), that she wanted children and that he was very sorry about this. It is perhaps expecting too much of novelists to do that much digging about what is essentially a side-character, but it also means that when these novels portray their childlessness as caused by Anne being horrible, they take an issue that was obviously painful for her and her husband, that was caused by something nasty for Francis and during which Anne supported her husband and stood by him, and use it as evidence she was horrible.

It`s similar with her being so religious and therefore horrible. It is not only offensive in itself, as if religiosity was somehow inherently wrong, it not only imposes modern values on medieval characters, whose understanding of and attitude towards religion was completely different to ours, it takes a sign of Anne`s love and loyalty to her husband and somehow turns it into the opposite. At some point before December 1489, age just 29, Anne took a religious vow of some sort, which meant she would never be able to marry again. It came after years of Anne committing treason to find Francis, committing treason to help Francis`s rebellions, standing by him through difficult time and being known to be an influence on him, and therefore clearly meant she didn`t want to be married to anyone but Francis. This is not as hard to find out as the issue with fertility above, and yet, somehow, her effectively making it clear that she did not want any other husband but Francis, gets presented as proof she hated him and didn`t want to be married at all.


The bottom line of all this is, I`m really sick of Anne Lovell`s portrayal in fiction.








*Yes, I know, it`s "man who wasn`t there", but it made neat headlines for these two subsections of poor Anne`s treatment in fiction.

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