Anne Boleyn

(c. 1507 - 1536)

The daughter of an earl, Anne Boleyn spent her teenage years as maid of honor to the Hapsburg archduchess Margaret of Austria. On her return to England in 1521, she joined the court of Henry VIII. She married him in 1533; in 1536 he accused her of adultery, incest, and treason. Boleyn was unanimously convicted by a jury and beheaded. Though promptly declared illegitimate, Boleyn’s daughter, Elizabeth, was Henry’s only child to survive to adulthood; she would rule England for forty-five years.