A rush for royalty

It’s the spring of 1521. The roll of muffled drums fills the air, but “I could see nothing but the lacing on the bodice of the lady standing in front of me, blocking my view of the scaffold. I had been at this court for more than a year and attended hundreds of festivities but never before one like this. . . . “

So begins an account of the beheading of the Duke of Buckinghamshire, and so begins Philippa Gregory’s “The Other Boleyn Girl,” a book that has seduced a million readers and launched a profitable empire in Tudor-mania (other installations of her oeuvre include the inner lives of Katherine of Aragon, Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard, as well as Elizabeth I).

The title refers to Mary Boleyn -- Queen Anne Boleyn’s sister (historians quibble whether she was older or younger) who also happened to have bedded Henry VIII and bore him two illegitimate children. In Gregory’s researched novel, Mary Boleyn is the sympathetic narrator who recounts the romance and political intrigue of the Tudor court, from her own position as a family pawn to her sister’s tortured relationship with the dashing king who’s slowly turning power-mad.

This is the stuff of great chick lit. Over the decades, savvy single women have trod through the pages of Judith Krantz and Erica Jong, Sophie Kinsella, Candace Bushnell and, of course, Helen Fielding, who birthed the ‘90s “it girl” of the genre, Bridget Jones. The millennium is bringing a boomlet in historical bodice-rippers -- these figures were not just princesses of the Upper East Side, but real royalty, who often paid for their ambition with their lives, or at least, their loins.

It’s easy to see why an actress would want to dive right in. On Friday comes the big-screen version of “The Other Boleyn Girl,” featuring Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn, Natalie Portman as the tragic, scheming Anne and Eric Bana as a dashing Henry VIII (before the gout and addled ambition soured him). In the next year, moviegoers will also get to see Emily Blunt as a young Queen Victoria, Keira Knightley as Georgiana, the 18th century Duchess of Devonshire, and Johansson, again, this time as Mary Queen of Scots. That’s on top of “The Tudors” miniseries on Showtime and Helen Mirren and Cate Blanchett in cinematic renditions of the Virgin Queen.

Yet for pure drama factor, it’s hard to beat a king who chased his inamorata for seven long years, chucked not only his wife but his religion for her and then chopped off her head when she failed to produce a male heir. There’s a reason why there have been at least 15 film and TV takeouts on Henry VIII and aspects of his reign.

The book “sells in Korea, Brazil. It sells in Russia. It’s clearly selling beyond Anglo-Saxon borders,” says the 54-year-old British author Gregory, on the phone from Dallas, where she’s touring in advance of the movie. “It’s the story of people who are generally very disadvantaged. It’s a dramatization and exaggeration of the difficulty in a woman’s life. The women who Henry married are marrying a man who is both a man and incredibly powerful, and he is also slowly turning into a tyrant.”

“Each generation enjoys the relevance and enjoys the opportunity to retell the story,” says Bana. “They’re probably fascinated by how little things have changed, in terms of people at the center of power who don’t have in place a system of checks and balances that [tells them] when enough is enough. [They] can get out of control. We see that every day in society. Henry VIII is probably the most extreme example of that.”

This said, this Henry VIII isn’t, as director Justin Chadwick says, “a caricature with the chicken drumsticky thing with Henry that we know from history books.” This is young, sexy Henry who can make girls swoon with his own unbridled brio, rather than just his position.

Yet one of the conundrums of history is how Anne Boleyn kept Henry’s interest for seven long years without sleeping with him. “In the early days of the relationship, they had this incredible bond together,” says Chadwick, best known for his miniseries “Bleak House,” which aired on PBS. “She challenged him intellectually, culturally, politically. That’s absolutely what kept Henry obsessed with this woman.”

Bana admits he had a tough time relating to how the monarch refrained from carnal relations with his beloved for so long. Yet Bana used his imagination. “I always saw him as a 12-year-old when it came to the passions of love that he had for some of these women. I tried to use that a lot in terms of justifying his behavior. If you look at him as a crazy 12-year-old with a sensational crush, it becomes easier to swallow.”

Despite the book having been published in 2001, this is actually the second screen version of Gregory’s tale, the first a bare-bones BBC production where the filmmakers used a hand-held camera to give the story a contemporary feel and the actors improvised. “It was so low-budget, if you look carefully you’ll see there is one dress which everybody [in the cast] wears at different times,” says Gregory with a laugh.

The new version was written by Oscar winner Peter Morgan, who penned not only “The Queen” but also a 2003 TV version of “Henry VIII” with Ray Winstone as the monarch and Helen Bonham Carter as the ill-fated Anne Boleyn. Morgan streamlined Gregory’s book and made Anne Boleyn less of a harridan. Although the sisters are still rivals, sibling love is stronger than the fury that might occur when your sister steals your boyfriend. Religious debates and realpolitik are just footnotes in the story, though the feminist interpretation of events is given voice by the Boleyns’ weary mother, played by Kristin Scott Thomas.

Gregory, who was consulted regularly by Morgan and Chadwick, sounds pleased by the film; she did enjoy the royal premiere, which was attended by Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla. (According to Chadwick, Camilla and many of her ladies-in-waiting were already fans of the book.) Still, Gregory has a few quibbles. One is the fact that the real Henry VIII was famously a redhead. But not in the movie version of “The Other Boleyn Girl.” “I told them he’s got to have red hair,” Gregory says. The filmmakers told her, “We’re not putting red hair on Eric Bana.” The other is a terrible violation that Henry VIII does to Anne Boleyn, which will not be revealed here. Suffice it to say, it’s not in the book or, says Gregory, history. She explains that Anne Boleyn “was very dominant” in their relationship. “Until their marriage, it’s the woman who runs their relationship.”

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rachel.abramowitz @latimes.com