Anna Throndsen (also referred to as Anna Trond or Anna Trondsen) was the daughter of Christopher Throndsen and his wife Karine. They had eight children and so Anna was able to get away with doing pretty much as she wanted, including helping her father with his business affairs, which is possibly how she came to meet the Earl of Bothwell. Seven of the Throndsen children were daughters, with the consequent problems of making good marriages for them all. Two of her sisters had married Scotsmen, and so a marriage to a Scottish Lord was an attractive prospect to Anna and to her parents. What the Throndsens perhaps didn’t realise was that Bothwell was by now impoverished by his war efforts, having to sell lands to prevent bankruptcy.
Anna was dark and perhaps quite Latin looking. She also came with an attractive dowry of forty thousand silver dollars. Whilst still embroiled in negotiations with Frederick, Bothwell promised to marry Anna. When he was freed from these by the death of the Queen Regent, he was still trapped by his new obligations.
Deciding that out of sight would hopefully become out of mind for Anna, Bothwell announced his plans to leave Denmark to pay his respects to his new Queen at Fontainebleau. Unfortunately, by this time Anna had given him not only her body, but also her heart. She set her mind on going with him, and her family made no objection. Bothwell had no choice but to let her tag along.
Their journey must have been traumatic, as at one point Throckmorton wrote to Cecil to say that Bothwell was dead, but further details are unobtainable. By 12 September he had reached Flanders, and instructed Anna to stay there. This wasn’t the desertion which it has been painted in the past - even when Anna sued him, she never accused him of this. He was guilty of using her money to finance himself and his entourage, but the separation was a temporary one. Bothwell needed money and aimed to plead his case in the French court, since it was in support of his Queen that he had lost his fortune. Arriving with a poorly educated foreign mistress in tow would do nothing for his chances.
By the standards of the French court, Anna was ill-educated, and would have been a liability. Contrary to the picture often painted of a boorish man, Bothwell was well-educated. As well as his supposed studies in magic, he had an interest in military history and theory, reading these in French translations from Latin. He could speak and write French fluently - his writing was far more elegant than many of his Scottish contemporaries.
Gore-Brown writes that Bothwell left whilst ‘behind him a lachrymose Anna fluttered a damp handkerchief.’ Gore-Brown is most entertaining on this episode, he seems to have had as gossipy an interest in this whole affair as I have. It was probably during this separation that Anna wrote some of what were to become known as the casket letters, supposedly written by Mary Stuart. Of the Eighth letter Gore-Brown writes ‘its affectations almost provide Bothwell with an excuse for neglecting its authoress.’
"Sir,
I leave you to judge if weariness produced by your absence and by your forgetfulness, or fear of danger which every one predicts to your beloved person can console me, in view of the unhappiness my cruel lot and continued misery threatens, following the misadventures and fears, both recent and further past, of which you are aware.
But for all that, I do not complain of your scant remembrance and scant care, still less of your broken promise and cold letters, since I have made myself so much yours, that your will is agreeable to me.
My thoughts so willingly submit to yours that I want to suppose your actions proceed from none of the above-mentioned causes, but from just and reasonable grounds which to meet my own desires. By that I mean the arrangement which you have promised to make definitely for the security and honourable treatment of the sole support of my life. I have no other reason to wish to stay alive and, but for it, want only speedy death.
To prove how humbly I submit to your commands, I send you by the hand of Paris [Bothwell’s page], as a token of my homage the ornament of my head [presumably a lock of hair], which directs the other members, signifying that if you are invested with the spoil of the chief member, the rest of the body is your subject, with the heart’s consent.
In place of the heart which is already yours, I send you a sepulchre of hard stone, coloured black, sown with tears and bones. I compare it with my heart which is likewise fashioned into a secure tomb or repository for your commands, and especially for your name and memory, which are therein contained, as the hair in the ring. [She sent him a mourning ring of black onyx or enamel containing a lock of hair in a setting of bones and tears.]
Never shall your memory issue, until Death gives you my bones for a trophy, just as the ring is covered with them - a sign that you have made a complete conquest of me and my heart, to the point of leaving you my bones in memory of your victory and my happy, willing loss wherein I was better employed than I deserved.
The enamel round the ring is black to symbolise the resolution of her who sends it. The tears are innumerable, like my fears to displease you and my tears for your absence and for regret that I cannot be yours in outward appearance as I am unfeignedly in heart and soul. I should have good right to that, were my merits greater than the most perfect woman in history, which is what I want to be.
Receive then this ring, O my only possession, in as good a part as my joyful acceptance of your wedding [ring]. It shall never leave my bosom until our bodies are publicly joined and is a token of all I hope for and desire of happiness in this world.’
Anna signs herself off as his ‘humble, obedient, loyal wife and only love.’ To be fair to Anna, it is highly likely that she was pregnant by this time - there is no record of this, but it is known that Bothwell had an illegitimate son called William, whom his mother looked after, suggesting that the child’s mother had some standing in the eyes of his family. The likeliest mother would be Anna Throndsen. However, as Gore-Brown comments, ‘A little sympathy may be kept for the seducer whom she must have bored profoundly.’