Henry never really wanted to marry Anna von Kleefes in the first place. He was cajoled and coaxed into it by his council. He was, after all, a king and his marriage ought to bring some benefit his kingdom. Henry whined about it. he even tried to get other nations to send their princesses so he could look them over in person before deciding, something that would cause deep personal embarrassment to the women rejected and to their kingdoms, but Henry thought he should be an exception to a thousand years of royal marriage traditions.
Their first meeting was a disaster of epic proportion. He wouldn’t wait for Anna’s party to arrive and for them to be formally introduced. He was impatient to meet her and wanted to “nurture love” by getting to know her before she reached London. He decided to play one of the pranks of his youth, the games he used to play with Katharine of Aragon. In those long-ago days, he would dress up as a highwayman and invade Katharine’s chamber, demanding to dance with the queen. Katharine always pretended to be surprised when he took off his disguise.
Henry dressed himself in a “mottled,” or ragged, cloak and hood, and went to Rochester. He called aside her steward and announced he had come to meet his new wife. Henry may have been remembering the romantic stories of French and early English monarchs who had first checked out their brides while in disguise and then revealed themselves to them. The romantic outcome was that the princess was supposed to fall in love with the “stranger” because their hearts would know one another, even if their eyes were fooled.
Did anyone tell the king it might not be a good idea to “introduce” himself in such a way to a girl who came from a far away land that didn’t have the same courtly traditions, and hadn’t read the same romances he had? If they did, it didn’t deter him.
Anna was in her chamber, gazing out her window, watching a bear-baiting outside staged for her amusement. Henry entered and announced he had a gift for her from the king. With that, he grabbed her into his arms and kissed her.
Anna was shocked at being manhandled by this obese, uncouth peasant. It’s not hard to imagine she had a look of disgust on her face as she recoiled. She turned away from him and stared out the window, likely unsettled and unsure of what to do.
It was probably the only time Henry had ever seen a look of repulsion aimed in his direction. He was surrounded at all times by trained courtiers who gazed at him in adoration and assured him he still was the most handsome prince in Christendom. Anna brutally shattered that illusion in a single moment. She did not swoon and fall instantly in love with him. She did not pretend coy delight. She showed him - stripped of courtly pretense or artifice - what she thought of him, and it wasn’t flattering.
What must Anna have been thinking? It must have been bewildering and frightening to her. She was a royal princess who had just been assaulted in her new homeland, and no one was doing anything about it. Her servants hadn’t thrown out the stranger. Was this the kind of lack of respect she would have to learn to expect here?
Henry left the room and returned dressed in his kingly robes. Anna was deeply embarrassed; Henry probably was, too. But he played his part.
And when the lords and knights saw his grace they did him reverence…. and then her grace humbled herself lowly to the king’s majesty, and his grace saluted [kissed] her again, and they talked together lovingly…
Behind the scenes, Henry was fuming. His pride had suffered a brutal blow, and as Henry usually did when hurt or angry, he deflected it on others. Anna was the one who was repulsive, not him!
“I like her not! … She is nothing as well as she was spoken of.”
Henry had a litany of complaints about his new bride. She looked old. She smelled bad. Her clothes were terrible. He added darkly, “I am not well handled.”
He began to blame those who had “deceived” him into marrying her, and as his courtiers usually did, they hastened to agree with him that Anna was hideous. However, disinterested parties such as the French diplomat, Charles de Marillac, described Anna as beaulté moyenne, “medium beauty,“ which is better than he rated Katheryn Howard, who Henry thought was a knock-out.
Henry tried to wriggle out of the marriage, scrambling to find reasons why it might be invalid. But nothing could be uncovered. All of her paperwork was in order. Henry whined:
“Is there no other remedy, but that I must needs, against my will, put my neck in the yoke?”
Henry was deeply resentful when forced to do anything, but in this case, there was no escaping it. To annul the proxy marriage that had already taken place when she reached English shores and eject Anna from England would be to alienate his new German allies, whom he needed desperately since the Emperor was now allied with the French. Another way would have to be found to rid himself of her.
Oddly, he never blamed the portrait’s artist, Hans Holbein, or said the portrait was inaccurate. Henry continued to give him commissions. It was Cromwell who would bear the brunt of the king’s displeasure.
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