History remembers Anne Boleyn’s lost love. It forgot the woman who had to live with the consequences.
Lady Mary Talbot was still a child when she was promised to Henry Percy, heir to one of England’s greatest noble families.
By the time they married, Percy had already been forced to give up the woman he loved - Anne Boleyn.
Bound to her husband by duty rather than affection, Mary soon found herself living in the shadow of a love that was never hers.
As Anne Boleyn rose from lady-in-waiting to Queen of England, Mary watched from the shadows, trapped in a marriage that grew colder with every passing year.
Desperate for freedom, she petitioned to have her marriage annulled, arguing that Percy’s earlier precontract to Anne made their own union invalid.
But in Henry VIII’s England, the wishes of powerful men outweighed the wishes of wives.
Mary would survive the Tudor monarchs whose ambitions shaped her fate. And, in her later years, she would quietly align herself with another doomed queen. After a lifetime spent living with the choices of others, Mary would finally make one of her own.
History remembers Anne Boleyn. It remembers Henry Percy as the young nobleman whose love for her was broken by duty. Mary Talbot is remembered only as the wife who stood between them.
Told in Mary’s own voice, this historical fiction novella imagines the life of the forgotten woman caught in the wake of one of Tudor England’s most famous romances. It is a story of duty, heartbreak, resilience, and the quiet courage to survive.
This work is part of the
Women of Tudor Scandal
series but can be read as a standalone. It is meant to be a short escape to another place and time.
