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Anne Boleyn (born 1500 or 1507, wedded 1533, executed 1536) - second and most influential wife of Henry VIII: reputed witch, disputed beauty, inadvertent cause of the Church of England, unkind stepmother, convicted traitor, condemned adultress, supposed martyr, beloved of the poet who created the English sonnet, mother of Elizabeth I.
"'noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am
and wild to hunt, though I seem tame'"
--Thomas Wyatt, "Whoso List to Hunt, I Know Where Is a Hind"
My headless body in an arrow-chest
laid, and I in life an arrow was - slim, dark
and sharp, and quick, and broken at the last,
in vain attempt to heal the wounded mark
a god's hands set me to.
I who was born to rise but made to fall?
An arrow's made to fall, even when sent
to kill a dear a king kept.
have little necks, we stepmothers, we queens!
we women who take power from a man
and bear his jeweled collar, which is seen
to say them, "touch me not." And yet they can
not read the death that's next.
a daughter for whom the very winds will fight.