'She was dead meat' : Imagining the execution of Anne Boleyn in history and fiction

There are tropes common to narratives about Anne Boleyn, many of which focus on execution. G. W. Bernard, Suzannah Dunn, Eric Ives, Philippa Gregory, Hilary Mantel, and Alison Weir have each written narratives of Boleyn’s life and, whether fiction or nonfiction, these texts all demonstrate similarities in their approach to execution. A Tudorist reading reveals how the exhaustive discussion of beheading speaks to a macabre indulgence in the detail of execution, whilst archetypes and characterization—rather than evidence per se—shape these twenty-first-century narratives. The brutality of this past is romanticized and common motifs have significant sway over representations of cruelty and culpability.