One year of a Ci-Devant

Today is the one year anniversary of my decision to start writing this blog and a huge thank you to Elena Maria Vidal, Louise Fennell, Sam Davison and Theodore Harvey, whose own online postings inspired me to start this one.

Since this blog began it has had 188,000 hits. Nearly half of those have come from the United States, with the United Kingdom in second place. In third place, the most regular visitors to this blog are Canadian, followed by readers from Germany, Australia, France, the Netherlands, Brazil, Spain and Italy. The blog's most popular articles, in descending order, have been an interview with the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, a brief link to an awful sequel to Titanic, an article I wrote on why people continue to be so fascinated with Anne Boleyn, a look at Marie-Antoinette's dress sense and a guide to Anne Boleyn in the movies.

It has been exactly a year since I posted the blog's first two historical articles - a look at the history of the Feast of the Annunciation and the first of anniversary posts, recording the death of Queen Elizabeth I, which occurred on this day in 1603. 

Appropriately, given that I wrote an article called "The Allure of Anne Boleyn" and even more appropriately given her ability to kick-start a discussion, the top five most remarked-upon articles on this blog have all been to do with Anne Boleyn. The single most commented article of all has been my analysis of the academic debate surrounding her childhood - The Age of Anne Boleyn. That's followed by The Allure of Anne Boleyn, my review of The Other Boleyn Girl and the culmination of my anniversary posts on Anne's downfall - May 19th, 1536: The Execution of Anne Boleyn. The general feedback to that series in May, chronicling Anne's last few days alive, from her final public appearance at Greenwich on May 1st until her death on May 19th was incredible, by the way, and to everyone who followed the series and got in touch to say how much they had enjoyed it, perhaps there were no comments more gratifying than those which said it had changed their opinion of Anne or that the daily posts had made you feel as you had forgotten hindsight. Thank you all. It was an exhausting series to undertake but one which I loved. Studying Anne's captivity in the depth required in order to write each post was a learning experience for me and some of my opinions on her final weeks changed as well.

To everyone who has read and everyone who has commented on Confessions of a Ci-Devant, again you have my deepest thanks.

Gareth