Royal wedding day not so auspicious

King Henry VIII had his wife, Anne Boleyn beheaded May 19, 1536

The British calendar is splattered with bloody anniversaries commemorating hundreds of years of violent battles and murdered monarchs. So finding an untainted date for the wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle was fraught with historical land mines.

May 26? On that day in 946, King Edmund (The Magnificent) I was murdered at a party in Pucklechurch.

June 8? On that day in 1042, King Harthacnut dropped dead at a wedding banquet. Officially, he drank too much and had a stroke. But poisoning conspiracy theories abound.

June 14? That was the day in 1645 that at least 1,000 royalists were slaughtered at the Battle of Naseby.

How about July 1? In 1916, it marked the beginning of the Battle of Somme, one of the bloodiest battles in all of recorded military history.

And this Saturday? Come on, royals. You didn’t see this one coming?

May 19, the day fashionable and outspoken American actress Markle will marry redheaded Harry, is the same date that redheaded King Henry VIII had his wife, the fashionable and outspoken Anne Boleyn, executed.

Oh, and Harry’s real name is Henry.

In a royal court sodden with etiquette that dictates everything from the way a cup is held to the way legs are crossed, how did anyone rubber-stamp a wedding date on such a horrific anniversary?

Royal historian and Anne Boleyn biographer Claire Ridgway said “it would be tricky to find a date in English history that is not linked to something awful.”

(We didn’t even touch on the other queen beheadings in our previous list.)

“I don’t think the link to Anne Boleyn came into the equation when picking the date, it would have just been based on what worked out best with the busy lives of the royal family,” Ridgway demurred.

Sure, that’s possible. Other historians believe the family did look at the date and all its connections between past and present, but decided to keep calm and carry on.

“I think the royal family would almost certainly have considered the fact that the date is the anniversary of Anne Boleyn’s execution,” said Elizabeth Norton, a British historian who specializes in English queens and the Tudor period.

But she believes that any bad juju has long since vanished with the passage of time. The British remember Anne Boleyn — the subject of countless books and movies — but not May 19th. It’s not marked on any calendars, the way Guy Fawkes Night is.

It’s not a May 8 — V-E Day, when World War II ended in Europe, which is still celebrated and remembered as a date, Norton said. Or like Sept. 11 in the United States.

“Anne Boleyn’s execution is obviously not an event that is still commemorated, but it is remembered to some extent. Anne’s story is very well known,” Norton said. “I expect that the royal family reasoned that it was long enough ago and not widely enough known to be a problem.”

Even so, she said, “it is hardly an auspicious date for a commoner to be marrying into the royal family and, as the 500th anniversary of Anne’s death approaches in 2036 there will be considerably more publicity about the coincidence of the date.”

“Hopefully, Meghan will have considerably more luck than her predecessor as royal bride,” she said.

Henry VIII was already married when the ravishing Anne Boleyn caught his eye.