Katherine Carey’s story begins with a silence—one the Tudor court never dared to break, but everyone seemed to understand. She was born in 1524, at the very moment her mother, Mary Boleyn, was King Henry VIII’s mistress. The timing alone raised whispers. Mary’s husband had been gone for months, long enough that the question of paternity hovered over the pregnancy like fog clinging to a battlefield. Henry, who was rarely subtle in his personal affairs, quietly paid Mary’s expenses while she carried the child. No public acknowledgments, no grand gestures—just the kind of hidden support he reserved for children he would never name but could never fully abandon. And when…