Lady Elizabeth Quotes in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)

Lady Elizabeth: Now go to France. The queen of France is sophisticated. Be useful to her, amuse her. She'll admire your spirit. Learn from her. Observe the ladies of the court. See how they achieve what they want from their men, not by stamping their little feet but by allowing the men to believe that they, indeed, are in charge. That is the art of being a woman.

Lady Elizabeth: When was it that people stopped thinking of ambition as a sin and started thinking of it as a virtue?

Lady Elizabeth: My children, my children...

[Turns around and slaps her husband, then walks towards her brother without any sign of hysteria]

Lady Elizabeth: Look what you've done.

Lady Elizabeth: [after the King marches in, angry] Your Grace.

King Henry VIII: Your daughter, where is she?

Lady Elizabeth: [Quietly to her servants] Leave us.

King Henry VIII: Where is she?

Lady Elizabeth: Which one?

[Stares coldly as she walks forward]

Lady Elizabeth: Your Grace, which one?

Lady Elizabeth: Treason? What is treason? Anything the king or his lawyers decide it to be, on a whim.

The Duke of Norfolk: Damn you! Not a single detail was left to chance! And now the moment of our greatest glory...!

Anne Boleyn: Glory? What glory? A mistress gave a man a bastard, no more.

The Duke of Norfolk: A male bastard, a son!

Anne Boleyn: The queen may yet give birth to a son.

The Duke of Norfolk: The queen no longer bleeds!

Anne Boleyn: Can you be sure?

The Duke of Norfolk: One of her physicians, and the moment this family provides him with a son he turned his back to it on your account! You better have a plan, girl! And that plan better work!

Anne Boleyn: Or what, uncle?

Lady Elizabeth: Enough, both of you! And what about Mary, hum? And her child? Or have you forgotten about them already?

Anne Boleyn: Mary and her bastard child will go back to the country. It is the king's wish... and mine.

Lady Elizabeth: Very well, and you can be the one to tell her. I think you've earned that privilege.

Mary Boleyn: Mother, please! Speak to father... Do something... I don't want to go!

Lady Elizabeth: This is not a request. We have been summoned.

[gets up and leaves the room]

Mary Boleyn: [to Anne] Please don't be angry with me... You think I desired to go for this purpose?

Anne Boleyn: All I know is that a man who didn't know who you were was with you in that room for a half-hour and came out besotted!

[starts to leave]

Anne Boleyn: Don't know what you said or did!

Mary Boleyn: Nothing sister! Except sing your praises and talk about my husband.

Anne Boleyn: Really? Well, you must show me how you did that sometime!

[leaves the room]

Lady Elizabeth: [preparing for the King's arrival] It costs a fortune to get this house ready for a royal visit!

Sir Thomas Boleyn: [first lines - strolling through the woods with his wife while the children playfully race through the sunlit fields] I received a request for marriage today for Anne from the Carey family. William, their eldest son.

Lady Elizabeth: Oh, that's wonderful.

Sir Thomas Boleyn: I turned it down. Offered them Mary instead. Everyone improves the standing of their family with their daughters. I think Anne can do better than a merchant's son.

Lady Elizabeth: [exasperated exhalation] And Mary can't? I think you underestimate her.

Sir Thomas Boleyn: Oh no, that's not true. I think she's the kinder of the two, quite possibly the fairer. To get ahead in this world, you need more than fair looks and a kind heart.

Young Anne: [after overtaking Mary] I beat you, I beat you!

Young Mary: Hey!

[all three children then fall down in a heap laughing]

Sir Thomas Boleyn: Well done, Anne. Well done, children.

Sir Thomas Boleyn: Easy for you to say! You've had position and wealth all your life!

Lady Elizabeth: Until I married you, Thomas, and I was happy to give it all for love.

Sir Thomas Boleyn: Would a smile be too much to ask?

Lady Elizabeth: What's there to smile about? I'm a mother of a child ordered to marry a girl he hates, another banished aboard in disgrace, and a third whoring in public with an adulteer. You say you are concerned for her happiness, will Mary be happy when he leaves her? Because you know that will happen in the end.

Sir Thomas Boleyn: Only God knows how anything will end.

Lady Elizabeth: God? He turned his back on all this a long time ago.

Sir Thomas Boleyn: And these rooms, our new position? Does none of my work please you?

Lady Elizabeth: These gifts, this favour will go as swiftly as it came. These rooms belonged to the Duke of Buckingham, the king's closest friend. His head now rots on a spike.