For that matter, Henry is likely to wait at least a time before marrying Anne (grieving protocols and all that), and I can actually see a scenario where his appetite for Anne diminishes once she's no longer "forbidden fruit".
by the time of a 1528 death for Katherine, Henry's gone too far for Anne to even consider walking away without a loss of face. Only way he marries a foreign second wife is if Anne also dies. Not to mention that the foreign candidates are not exactly thick on the ground: France's best candidate (Marguerite d'Angoulême) is too old; Karl V's sisters are taken orhave no interest in remarriage, as are Joao III's. The most prestigious (depends who you ask) royal match he might make is Hedwig of Poland. After that, everyone's daughters/nieces are too young.
Even the second-stringers (Lorraine, Cleves, Saxony) are too young. So Anne likely becomes Henry's second wife.
her first child could still be a daughter
of course
there's no guarantee her subsequent pregnancies would be more successful than they were OTL
of course
or that she'd be under significantly less stress than OTL (since whatever the religious context, she's not royally born herself and so is completely at her husband's mercy
while I've no doubt she'd be under stress, it'd likely be the perception of her. She'd be the "evil queen", "evil stepmother", the other woman that Henry VIII married. As to her being at Henry's mercy...not necessarily. In fact, far
less at his mercy than OTL.
It's an interesting conundrum, but essentially, having torn down the church/law in order to marry her, Anne was very much at Henry's mercy OTL. He'd essentially, to quote one biographer, "inverted justice" to get his own way. And since he'd done it once, why not again. Every one of her judges had reasons to find her guilty (if only for the reason that they knew if they didn't, Henry would come after them next). As much as I dislike St. Thomas More, he had a valid point when he pointed out that making the king the head of the church was a slippery slope. Because it essentially made Henry's power (both over church and state) absolute. That meant there was no recourse for Anne.
It sounds ironic in the extreme, but Anne's chief line of defense would be that she isn't French or Habsburg-adjacent. France would back her because a) until 1537 they have no alternate candidate for Henry and b) it means that Henry
can't marry a Habsburg/proxy. The Habsburgs would support her because a) she might be pro-French* but she's not French, b) her influence can be bought (unlike a French princess). The pope would support her (theoretically) because she's Henry's wife in the eyes of God
and the Church**. Sure, none of them might particularly
like Anne, but Henry has more to lose (in his PR abroad) if he drags her through a sham trial. Louis XII's annulment procedings (because that is what Henry will have to go through here), Enrique IV of Spain's, Lucrezia Borgia's from her Sforza husband...were all deeply humiliating on the public stage and all three men's public image took a knock as a result. Someone with Henry's ego will not wish to be remembered as "Henry the Impotent".
My opinion is that, around the second or third pregnancy failure (either a miscarriage or another daughter), her Uncle Norfolk pulls her aside and suggests
she offer Henry an annulment. The argument Norfolk uses to persuade her "look at what he did to Katherine". Contrasted to OTL, where Anne essentially got a bighead (seeing everything Henry
had done for her), she might be a little less high-handed here.
*how pro-French Anne would be TTL is open to debate. OTL it was...awkward. She championed the French because the Habsburgs supported Katherine. With no Katherine in the picture, her Francophilia might be tempered somewhat.
**the ambiguity- that half of Europe didn't accept her as Henry's lawful wife- was what allowed Henry to flex OTL. Knowing that nobody was coming to save her. Here, regardless of whether they like Anne or not, neither the Protestants nor the Catholics can deny that she
is Henry's
true and lawful wife. Henry behaves as he did OTL towards her (and many going "gee, isn't that how he treated Katherine too?") and he's got a PR nightmare on his hands. OTL, most of them were just "meh" because they could just say that they didn't regard the marriage as legitimate. Here, it's a bit harder to look away.
