Women as Political Currency in Boleyn Traitor

The Transaction of Flesh and Blood

Philippa Gregory’s Boleyn Traitor strips away romantic myth to expose a Tudor court where noblewomen function as instruments of dynastic ambition. The novel asserts that women are political currency: their bodies are valued for fertility and connections, discarded when they cease to serve a purpose, and executed when they threaten the succession. This thematic claim threads through every major plotline, from the concealment of a queen’s miscarriage to the training of a child bride, and it is articulated most nakedly in the courtier-world of Machiavelli’s The Prince—a world where “nothing is given for love: everything is traded for power.” By tracking how Anne Boleyn, Jane Boleyn, Katheryn Howard, and Margaret Pole are each treated as assets to be spent, the novel reveals a system in which women’s value rises and falls like a currency on a volatile market.

The Queen’s Body as a Political Asset

Anne Boleyn’s reign demonstrates the stark calculus of royal fertility. In summer 1534, she is secretly five months pregnant; the Boleyn-Howard faction’s power hinges on a living son. When Anne miscarries, her mother Elizabeth immediately orchestrates a cover‑up: the pregnancy never existed, only a late course. Jane Rochford is dispatched to report the crisis to the Duke of Norfolk. Within days, a lie is spread, and the king is brought to Anne’s bed to try again. The queen’s body is not her own—it is the vessel of Tudor succession, and the miscarriage is a financial loss that must be hidden from the market. Gregory reinforces this transactional view when Anne must recapture the king’s attention after he turns toward Jane Seymour. The entire Boleyn network “muster[s] to return Anne to her throne” by making her once again the most desired woman at court. Her power depends entirely on holding the king’s whimsical desire, a fickle asset that can be devalued overnight. Once Anne fails to produce a male heir and Henry’s interest shifts to Jane Seymour, the faction promptly pivots; the queen herself becomes a liability to be discarded, and eventually executed in the Tower of London. The progression from concealed pregnancy to public spectacle on the scaffold maps the lifecycle of a depreciated political currency.

The Discarded Courtier: Jane Boleyn’s Exile

Jane Boleyn’s exile to Morley Hallingbury after the Agnes Trent scandal crystallises the novel’s theme. She is dismissed not for a moral failing but because she has become a liability in the faction’s game. Her internal monologue during that long winter is a brutal education: “I am dropped – I don’t know if I will ever be picked up.” She realises that “to be used is not the same as to be loved.” The men who shaped her—her father, the scholar and translator of Machiavelli; her uncle the Duke of Norfolk; even her husband George Boleyn—valued her only as a tool. Her father’s later exchange with Thomas Cromwell over the English translation of The Prince sharpens the point: when Cromwell asks if the “pretty daughter put[s] the pursuit of power over the pursuit of love,” her father answers, “I hope no daughter of mine would pursue love.” In this court, love is an unaffordable luxury, and Jane’s worth is measured in espionage and service. Even her marriage to George was a land-and-dowry transaction conducted with beautiful manners but no genuine affection. Jane learns to teach herself the cold theorem that she was never cherished for herself, and she reflects that she, too, “spoke words of love but preferred secrets,” confessing her own complicity. The masque and disguise are not only entertainment but a way of life: the “glazed smile, the false face, the sweet word” that reduce every relationship to a calculated performance. Jane’s banishment from court—and the silence of her patrons—illustrates how speedily a woman who fails to perform her assigned political role is cast off.

Training the New Currency: Katheryn Howard

The brief, turbulent reign of Katheryn Howard repeats the pattern with a younger, more malleable woman. The novel shows Katheryn being selected, groomed, and deployed to restore Howard influence. On progress in summer 1540, Jane describes her task bluntly: “The king has bought himself a little pet… it is my task to train her to do pretty tricks to please him. She dances like an angel; she walks as if she was dancing. Purkoy used to beg, sitting up on his hind legs, most prettily. I teach her to beg.” Katheryn is bored by the old king, and Jane bribes her with sweetmeats to maintain the smiles and blushes that keep the currency afloat. The appointment of ladies-in-waiting—many of them informants who served previous queens—reaffirms that a queen is never a private individual but a public resource monitored by a council of watchers. Gregory’s afterword proposes that Jane later enabled Katheryn’s affair with Culpeper for a rational purpose: with Henry frequently impotent, a pregnancy by the king’s favourite might elevate Katheryn to regent and secure Jane’s future. Even the queen’s sexual body could be repurposed for political survival. The tragedy, of course, is that Katheryn’s value plummets when the secret is uncovered, leading her to the block. The royal barge that once carried a new bride to the king now becomes a symbol of the swift journey from favour to oblivion.

Disposable Enemies: The Silencing of Margaret Pole

The theme extends beyond the king’s wives to any noblewoman whose lineage posed a threat. Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, is a Plantagenet princess, and her very blood is an alternative claim to the throne. In spring 1539, Cromwell brings her case before parliament with a single silk tunic embroidered with the old crusader badge of the five wounds. There is no proof that she sewed it or that it was connected to the Pilgrimage of Grace; but “a single silk banner is enough for this cowed parliament to condemn her to death without trial.” Cromwell had earlier promised Jane she would be released, but her imprisonment in the Tower and eventual execution eliminate the Spanish party’s figurehead. Her age and royal status are irrelevant; she is a political contaminant that must be purged. The execution of Margaret Pole, like that of Anne Boleyn, demonstrates that women are not only investments in fertility but also liabilities whose elimination stabilises the succession. The letterlocking and secret correspondence that threads through the novel underscore this reality: letters are intercepted, decoded, and weaponised to justify the removal of any inconvenient woman.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel does not paint women as simple victims. Jane Boleyn both illustrates and embodies the contradictions of the system. She is acutely aware of being used, yet she has been a spy, a manipulator, and a trader in secrets herself. She reports Anne’s dead baby to Norfolk, sells out her aunt the duchess, and thrives for years by serving whichever queen wears the crown. Her epiphany in Norfolk is that “I, too, spoke words of love but preferred secrets… I have never been true to any one of them.” She clings to the small comfort that she never betrayed George, but even that loyalty is freighted with pragmatism. The novel’s repeated invocations of Machiavelli—the father’s translations, Cromwell’s Venetian-style dark chamber, the acknowledgment that “a perfect king must enjoy perfect power – so, logically, he must be a tyrant”—position the entire court as a marketplace where every relationship, including marriage and queenly service, is a transaction. The tragedy of Jane is that she internalises this lesson completely, losing her capacity for love even as she masters survival. She is at once a woman discarded and a woman who discards others, and that doubleness makes her the most vivid proof of Gregory’s thesis.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the cover-up of Anne Boleyn’s miscarriage illustrate the theme of women as political currency?
   The concealment shows that Anne’s body was primarily valued as a vessel for a Tudor heir. A failed pregnancy would devalue her and her faction, so the loss was erased from public memory to preserve her political standing and keep the king tied to the marriage.

2. In what ways does Jane Boleyn’s exile force her to confront her own role as a tool?
   Isolated in Norfolk, she reflects that her father, uncle, and husband all used her for their own ends. She realises that her need for their approval made her complicit; she, too, traded secrets for power and mistook strategic alliance for love.

3. Why does Gregory use Machiavelli’s The Prince as a recurring reference, and how does it connect to the treatment of women?
   The philosophy that power must be pursued over love mirrors the Tudor court’s treatment of noblewomen as instruments of succession and influence. Women are exchanged like property, and their reputations are managed with cold calculation, not affection.

4. How does the fate of Margaret Pole differ from the queens, yet still confirm the theme?
   She is not valued for fertility but eliminated because her royal blood poses a threat to the succession. Her execution without trial demonstrates that noblewomen’s lives can be terminated when they become political liabilities, regardless of age or previous loyalty.

5. What contradiction does Jane Boleyn embody regarding the theme of women as political currency?
   Jane is both a victim of the system and an active participant in it. She is discarded by her family yet has spied on and betrayed other women. Her self-awareness that she “preferred secrets” to love reveals that even those who are used can become users, perpetuating the cycle of exploitation.