A rush for royalty

It's the spring of 1521. The roll of muffled drums fills the air, but "I could see nothing but the lacing on the bodice of the lady standing in front of me, blocking my view of the scaffold. I had been at this court for more than a year and attended hundreds of festivities but never before one like this. . . . "

So begins an account of the beheading of the Duke of Buckinghamshire, and so begins Philippa Gregory's "The Other Boleyn Girl," a book that has seduced a million readers and launched a profitable empire in Tudor-mania (other installations of her oeuvre include the inner lives of Katherine of Aragon, Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard, as well as Elizabeth I).

The title refers to Mary Boleyn -- Queen Anne Boleyn's sister (historians quibble whether she was older or younger) who also happened to have bedded Henry VIII and bore him two illegitimate children. In Gregory's researched novel, Mary Boleyn is the sympathetic narrator who recounts the romance and political intrigue of the Tudor court, from her own position as a family pawn to her sister's tortured relationship with the dashing king who's slowly turning power-mad.

This is the stuff of great chick lit. Over the decades, savvy single women have trod through the pages of Judith Krantz and Erica Jong, Sophie Kinsella, Candace Bushnell and, of course, Helen Fielding, who birthed the '90s "it girl" of the genre, Bridget Jones. The millennium is bringing a boomlet in historical bodice-rippers -- these figures were not just princesses of the Upper East Side, but real royalty, who often paid for their ambition with their lives, or at least, their loins.

It's easy to see why an actress would want to dive right in. On Friday comes the big-screen version of "The Other Boleyn Girl," featuring Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn, Natalie Portman as the tragic, scheming Anne and Eric Bana as a dashing Henry VIII (before the gout and addled ambition soured him). In the next year, moviegoers will also get to see Emily Blunt as a young Queen Victoria, Keira Knightley as Georgiana, the 18th century Duchess of Devonshire, and Johansson, again, this time as Mary Queen of Scots. That's on top of "The Tudors" miniseries on Showtime and Helen Mirren and Cate Blanchett in cinematic renditions of the Virgin Queen.

Yet for pure drama factor, it's hard to beat a king who chased his inamorata for seven long years, chucked not only his wife but his religion for her and then chopped off her head when she failed to produce a male heir. There's a reason why there have been at least 15 film and TV takeouts on Henry VIII and aspects of his reign.