#It's so funny but as a historian I will genuinely defend 'The Tudors' to the death even with all its problems
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rahabs · 10 months ago
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The Tudors ran so Wulf Hall could shuffle awkwardly around reiterating the same tired old Tudor stereotypes while claiming to be something new.
#It's so funny but as a historian I will genuinely defend 'The Tudors' to the death even with all its problems#Because it did was so few other Tudor shows/movies/media have ever done#And that is: it focused on things BEYOND just Henry and his wives.#Yes Henry was the focal point which makes SENSE but that's just it:#HENRY was the focal point. Most other Tudor media pieces have one of the wives (usually Catherine/Anne) as the focus and doesn't delve muc#Into the history or what was happening in England beyond the King's Great Matter.#The Tudors went ALL out. Yes they didn't get everything right but the fact that they tried and spotlighted so many other#Historical characters and events? The Pilgrimage of Grace? Actually LOOKING at the religious issues even if they weren't always accurate?#(Like with Aske for example. BUT AT LEAST THEY INCLUDED ROBERT ASKE like good lord it's like other Tudor media forgets everything else)#Focusing on Cromwell but also the Seymour brothers? The politics behind Henry? Even Brandon as annoying as his storylines could get.#Even smaller characters like Tallis and Gardiner and other Reformation and Counter-Reformation figures.#The fact that they featured the Reformation and Counter-Reformation AT ALL let alone tried to dive into the complexities of England's#religious crises. The burning of Anne Askew even? People having to navigate England's increasingly unstable religious situations?#The series hit its peak after the CoA/Anne stuff was over imho. Yes Cranmer and Norfolk annoyingly vanished despite being major figures in#the R/CR and they combined Mary and Margaret but god the Tudors did SO MUCH that NO OTHER PIECE OF TUDORS MEDIA has EVER DONE.#It looked BEYOND Henry BEYOND his wives and tried to paint a comprehensive pictur of a deeply troubling and divisive time in English histor#And it did so without demonising one side and it was just so good for so many reasons that I forgive its errors because damn did they TRY.#Tried in a way no one else ever has (no Wulf Hall did not I'm sorry)#(Wulf Hall was just the same old stereotypes rehashed and branded as something 'original' because it was from Cromwell's POV but again.#Same old stereotypes. Nothing actually original about anything else.)#The Tudors is so underrated for what it tried to do and what it achieved and I am reaching the tag limit but UGH god. Amazing.#Not even getting into how wonderful they were with Mary Tudor/Mary I herself and showing figures around her#Because that would be another tag essay considering the subject of my thesis.#Flawed but wonderful.#text#chey.txt
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