When limerence changes history

I recently spent a week in Kent.

For those who are not so familiar with British geography, Kent is the county south east of London that includes the coastline at Dover that faces France across the English channel.

There’s a lot of history in Kent. Centuries of battles, castles, invasions, intrigues, politics and scandals.

Perhaps the most striking feature of Kentish history is Canterbury cathedral.

Canterbury has always been the heart of the Christianity in England. St Augustine established a church at Canterbury in 597 AD, and for nearly a thousand years people worshipped there under the authority of Rome.

But, things changed in 1534.

Henry VIII declared himself head of the church in England, and broke with Rome.

At Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer was installed as Archbishop, managed the transition towards what would become Anglicanism, and annulled Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon against the ruling of the Pope.

And it was all because of limerence.

Anne Boleyn, LO

Most people know the story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. At school, English kids are taught a rhyme of what fate befell Henry’s six wives:

Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived.

Anne was the first “beheaded”.

The ancestral seat of the Boleyn family is also in Kent. It’s called Hever Castle.

The castle contains a treasure-trove of information about Anne and Henry and the history of their torrid love affair.

Looked at with the practiced (jaded?) eye of a limerence obsessive, here’s the quick summary:

• Anne was described as being not especially beautiful in a classic sense, but elegant, alluring, and with dark, bewitching eyes. Perfect glimmer trigger.
• She stood out from her peers because of her dark hair, eyes and olive skin, and her wit and charisma. She was Special.
• Henry quickly became besotted, and was already at a point of frustration about not having a male heir with his first wife Catherine. Barriers intensify limerence.
• Anne made her interest in Henry clear, but also refused to become his mistress. She gave lots of hope, but there was built in uncertainty: Henry was married, his queen was popular, and the Pope was unwilling to annul his marriage. Barriers, uncertainty and hope.
• Henry constructed an elaborate explanation for why God had not granted him a son, because his marriage with sinful (he had sought special dispensation from Rome to marry his late brother’s widow, which is frowned upon due to a passage in Leviticus). Rationalisation.
• Henry was so consumed by desire for Anne that he chose to literally destroy the religious foundations of the Church in England rather than accept the Pope’s refusal to grant an annulment.

Accordingly, Henry and his enablers annulled the marriage to Catherine despite the Pope’s objection, allowed him to marry Anne in secret, and then announced the changes in government of religious life in the country.

The history of England was changed irrevocably.

Lots of people died as a consequence.

Including, of course, Anne, who also failed to provide Henry with a living male heir, and once the limerence passed, had to deal with a man who could see that he had thrown his country into turmoil over an infatuation.

Predictably, Henry did not use this as a moment for reflection and self-examination.

He decided that Anne must have used witchcraft on him, a belief eagerly affirmed by many of Anne’s enemies in the court. She was accused on many foul and treasonous acts and put to death after her marriage to Henry was also annulled.

He went on to try another four times to marry and produce a male heir who survived. He failed, but fate is not without a sense of irony, and it ultimately turned out that Anne’s only surviving child, Elizabeth, would become one of our most consequential and longest-serving monarchs.

He’s now a man remembered by history for his intemperance, and inability to resist his destructive passions.

Was this really limerence?

Obviously, there is a big old fog of propaganda around this story. As fortunes shifted back and forth through time, the dominant factions in the English establishment embellished, misrepresented, or outright invented details to help their case.

Inventions such as Anne having physical deformities, practicing witchcraft, sleeping with her brother, and so on.

One curiosity I learned on visiting Hever castle is that we don’t actually have any real idea what Anne looked like. Most of the famous portraits of her were painted many years after her death, barely resemble each other, and many were only validated as being Anne by modern art historians.

Henry ordered a purge of all portraits after her execution, and many noble families (including the Boleyns and Howards) destroyed their own paintings of the late queen for fear of Henry’s wrath.

The portraits we have are mostly from the reign of her daughter, Elizabeth I, and are strikingly similar to Elizabeth’s own physiognomy.

But, other artefacts did survive.

Some of Henry’s letters to Anne still exist, and were described as being more like the needy ramblings of a lovesick schoolboy than the words of a King who ruled one of the major powers of Europe.

He even ended one with a sketch of “AB” drawn within a heart.

The intensity of his infatuation is also not in doubt. Many courtiers, councillors and diplomats commented on it. It was a source of bitter resentment that this unremarkable noble girl had so much more power over the king than her “betters”, and that her family was advanced so far and so fast as a consequence.

And there is the scale of both the almighty infatuation and an equally almighty devaluation after he had sated his desire and had time to repent of his choice. You can almost sense the shock at his own actions.

As recovering limerents have lamented all through history.

What on earth came over me?

So, to me, limerence is the obvious explanation for Henry’s irrational behaviour.

He also seemed to repeat the pattern again with Catherine Howard (Anne’s cousin), who met the same grisly “beheaded” fate once the infatuation passed.

His infatuation for Jane Seymour also had signs of limerence, although he seemed to revere her, and she died before the limerence could run its natural course.

He was a man of animal passions and greedy appetites.

It was always likely to end badly.