Anne of Denmark

## **Name**

Portrait by John de Critz (1605).

**Anne of Denmark** (Danish: *Anna*; December 12, 1574 – March 2, 1619) was Queen consort of Scotland, England, and Ireland by marriage to King James VI and I.

The second daughter of King Frederick II of Denmark, Anne married James in 1589 at age 14 and bore him three children who survived infancy, including the future Charles I. She demonstrated an independent streak and a willingness to use factional Scottish politics in her conflicts with James over the custody of Prince Henry and his treatment of her friend Beatrix Ruthven. Anne appears to have loved James at first, but the couple gradually drifted and eventually lived apart, though mutual respect and a degree of affection survived.

In England, Anne shifted her energies from factional politics to patronage of the arts and constructed her own magnificent court, hosting one of the richest cultural salons in Europe. After 1612, she suffered sustained bouts of ill health and gradually withdrew from the centre of court life. Though she was reported to have been a Protestant at the time of her death, evidence suggests that she may have converted to Catholicism at some point in her life.

Historians have traditionally dismissed Anne as a lightweight queen, frivolous and self-indulgent. However, recent reappraisals acknowledge Anne's assertive independence and, in particular, her dynamic significance as a patron of the arts during the Jacobean age.

## References

1. ↑ Williams, 1, 201; Willson, 403.
2. ↑ Stewart, 182, 300–301.
3. ↑ Barroll, 15, 35, 109; "Although Anna had considerable personal freedom and her own court, she does not appear to have intervened so visibly against her husband in factional politics as she did in Scotland, and her support was not often sought. Where the Queen's court came into its own was as an artistic salon." Stewart, 183.
4. ↑ The Archbishop of Canterbury reported that she had died rejecting Catholic notions. "But, then," cautions historian John Leeds Barroll, "we are all familiar with the modern 'press release'. In Anna's day, too, there was much to be said for promulgating an official version of England's queen dying 'respectably'." Barroll, 172; A letter from Anne to Scipione Borghese of 31 July 1601 is "open in its embrace of Catholicism", according to McManus, 93.
5. ↑ Agnes Strickland (1848), 276 Retrieved 10 May 2007; Willson, 95; "Her traditionally flaccid court image..." Barroll, 27; Croft, 55; "Anne had proved to be both dull and indolent, though showing a certain tolerant amiability so long as her whims were satisfied. She was interested in little that was more serious than matters of dress." Akrigg, 21.
6. ↑ "She quickly moved vigorously into court politics, an aspect of her new life not foregrounded by her few biographers... she soon became a political presence at the Scottish court." Barroll, 17; "Though she has been accorded insufficient attention by historians, James' Queen, Anne of Denmark, was politically astute and active." Sharpe, 244; "This new king's influence on the high culture of the Stuart period, although considerable in certain discrete areas, has been misunderstood in terms of innovations at the court itself... during the first decade of his reign, these innovations were fundamentally shaped by James' much neglected queen consort, Anna of Denmark." Barroll, 1–2.