Weston, but sexually attracted to his sister Anne and willing to commit incest with her. American academic Retha Warnicke postulated George Boleyn and his associates might have been homosexual, but no contemporary evidence supports the theory. However, George Cavendish in "Metrical Visions" wrote that he was a notorious seducer of women. Also, no contemporary records mention Anne Boleyn giving birth to a deformed foetus, which Gregory depicts and the characters interpret as possible evidence of incest. Paternity of Mary Boleyn's children. It has long been rumoured that Henry VIII fathered one or both of Mary Boleyn's children, originating from a report made in 1531 by an anti-Boleyn prior and Catherine of Aragon adherent, who had never seen the boy. There is some debate, with Sally Varloe, G. W. Bernard (author of The King's Reformation), and Joanna Denny (author of Anne Boleyn: a new life of England's tragic Queen and Katherine Howard: a Tudor conspiracy) arguing that he may have been Henry Tudor's son. Some writers, such as Alison Weir, consider it unlikely that Henry Carey (Mary's son) was fathered by the King. Role of Thomas and Elizabeth Boleyn. The Other Boleyn Girl depicts Mary's parents as devoid of affection for their daughters, and eager to use both as sexual pawns for political gain. Sources such as Anne Boleyn by Marie-Louise Bruce (1972) suggest that Mary's parents did not encourage her sexual escapades and were horrified when she was sent home from France in disgrace. Anne Boleyn's wardship of Henry Carey. Anne Boleyn took on Mary's son as her ward after his father's death during an outbreak of sweating sickness and supplied him with an education at a respectable Cistercian monastery. This was a common practice in the Tudor nobility and one very similar to the situation faced by dozens of young aristocratic children, including Anne and Mary's cousin, Katherine Howard, who was raised by her grandmother when her father was penniless. Anne's actions are usually seen as kind by contemporaries and historians, but the novel presents it differently: Anne "steals" Mary's son the year after Henry VIII has made it clear that he intends to marry her, to make herself more politically attractive to the king. It is shown both as a cruel act and as an adoption in the modern sense, in which the child's caretakers are considered his legal and social parents. Anne secured Mary a highly respectable