When talking about Mary, the sources are a bit lacking. The BBC documentary hinted that Mary may have been welcomed back into the fold by her father after Anne and George's execution in 1536 but Weir argues that they were likely never reunited.
Scapegoat speculation aside, I found it sad that Mary did seem to be in and out of her family's affections throughout her lifetime until her final banishment from court by her sister Anne, when she was queen. It seems clear that Mary was much less ambitious than Anne, George or Thomas and mistakes she made early in her life might have set the scene for this judgement. The one that maybe isn't cut from the same cloth as the rest of the family and attracts a more negative attitude from them. I was left wondering whether Mary might have been a family scapegoat - one that is often blamed and singled out when something goes wrong, by the others. She also investigates the potential estrangements between Mary and the rest of her family. She looks at the differing opinions about Mary over the centuries, and what historians have written about her, which has often swung between her being a sultry vamp and a dim-witted, reluctant lover. Here, Weir discusses the likely dates for Mary's birth, the probable places she spent her childhood and her years in France, where she was reported to have been a mistress of King Francis I. Her writing style is easy to follow and I like it. She weighs up arguments clearly, stating the fact she's talking about as well as the reasons it is or isn't likely true, before weighing it all up and telling you what she thinks. Now, I loved The Lady in The Tower, Weir's book about the fall of Anne Boleyn, and so I was familiar with her thorough, questioning style. I downloaded the book on Audible and pressed play. And one, written two years later but saying in the introduction that it was 'the first full' biography of Mary, by Alison Weir, called Mary Boleyn: 'The Great and Infamous Whore.' One by Josephine Wilkinson, called Mary Boleyn: The True Story of Henry VIII's Favourite Mistress. So I set about finding a biography of Mary Boleyn, and found two. Not the bewitching, ambitious Anne but her shy, reserved sister, Mary. After watching the BBC series The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family I became quite fascinated with one of them in particular.
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