Mission Impossible? Ambassador Karl Harst, Anne of Cleves, and their struggles to secure the strategic alliance between Cleves and England

Much has been written about the marriage between Anne of Cleves and Henry VIII, but scholars mostly had to rely on the sources that came from an English perspective and narrative. To enable a more balanced view on the encounter between England and Cleves and on the marriage, source material needs to be included that was created from the perspective of the side of Cleves. As only parts of the dispatches of Karl Harst, ambassador of Cleves to England 1540-1542, have been published before and furthermore between 110 to 150 years ago, this thesis aims to fill a gap. It provides transcripts of Harst's letters written in 1540 during the brief period of marriage between Anne of Cleves and Henry VIII and of diplomatic alliance between Cleves and England, as well as fresh perspectives and new insights into a topic that supposedly was exhaustingly covered.