Anne Boleyn was notoriously executed before the age of 35, having been falsely accused on fabricated charges of treason, adultery and incest with her brother (who was likewise beheaded).
She endured weeks of imprisonment in the Tower of London and originally faced death by burning at the stake, before Henry VIII had her sentence reduced to beheading. She was laid to rest in an unmarked grave and for many decades thereafter was denounced as a witch.
An author has argued that Meghan Markle underwent a “brutal exit” with one particular parallel when she and Prince Harry stepped down as working royals and relocated to California.
Catherine Mayer has authored a new book chronicling eight royal women, including Anne, Meghan, Princess Diana and Kate Middleton, alongside queens Elizabeth I, Victoria, Elizabeth II and Camilla (a queen consort). Writing in the Mail on Sunday, she said: “Meghan’s exit has been at least as noisy, and you don’t have to look far to find echoes in history.
“Consider the following description: ‘A commoner raised to royalty, she is a heroine to some, a hate figure to others. Her adherents trumpeted her potential to refresh the monarchy. Her enemies disparaged her as an interloper… Still the wedding went ahead – accounts differ on the number of ceremonies – but soon she was gone, her exit brutal.
“‘Fans maintain that prejudice and plotting did for her. Critics hold her solely responsible for her own downfall.’ If you assume this to be a description of Meghan, you’re right – but here’s the thing: the same details apply, word for word, to Anne Boleyn.”
She continues by characterising the Duchess of Sussex as “least popular royal except for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor”, stating: “But if your feelings for her go beyond disinterest to active dislike, even hatred, ask yourself why.
“Might it be that, like royal predecessors, she has been damned as a strumpet, and pitted against other royal women by insidious palace briefing and a culture hostile to women with opinions?”
American-born Mayer, the co-founder and President of the former Women’s Equality Party, asserts the Sussexes have “lived in exile since 2020” – in an £11million Mediterranean-style mansion overlooking the Pacific Ocean from the super-rich enclave of Montecito.
She portrays Meghan as the “family’s first biracial member, first declared feminist and, in a sign of institutional shift, the first divorcee permitted to marry a Windsor in the Church of England”.
The author also poses: “To those who clamour for Meghan to be expunged from public life like a latter-day Anne Boleyn, I’d ask one question: what exactly has she done to earn such hostility?”