#and motivations. and it seems like a lot of Tudor media doesn’t get it right with them

[ladysansa]

Wats wrong w previous Tudor media

a lot of them have a tendency to portray one or several of Henry’s wives or other women in the Tudor period in a…negative light, shall we say? for example, portraying Katherine of Aragon as a nagging old hag of a wife who should’ve just let Henry divorce her, Anne Boleyn as scheming to become Henry’s mistress and then his queen, Katheryn Howard as someone who was unfaithful to the king—despite the fact that she was a teenager who, even if she had been “unfaithful” to him was taken advantage of and groomed by the older men in her life. It just seems like they can never get the women right, whether it be Mary I, Elizabeth I, Lady Jane Grey, any of Henry’s wives, or many of the other women portrayed in Tudor media—and if they get one right then they sometimes just screw over one or all the others.

That’s not to say that I never enjoy these shows or movies, but everytime I see a new movie or tv series come out I always kinda side-eye it, because you never know what choices they’ll make regarding the characters. History often mistreats women even long after their deaths, so I’m always wary of pieces of Tudor media or literature—even biographies.

[the-busy-ghost]

TSP S02E08 - Peace (At Last)

It’s the last episode of this strange show and tbh it’s a bit sad, because you know, I think I had fun. You have to give the actors credit for genuinely creating some moving scenes, and I will miss some of the dresses the costume department served up. On the other hand, the show was bizarre and nonsensical but that in itself was genuinely entertaining, and also I think that this was a piece of media which really lent itself to being pulled apart- it can be quite educational to analyse some of the balls to the wall nonsense in period dramas, and sometimes they really can offer new lines of enquiry that people wouldn’t otherwise think about. But yeah. Cast and crew must have had a good time making it and in some areas, the acting shone through, where it was allowed to. If anything half the reason this show was disappointing is because it had every opportunity to be much better. 

That being said, onto my rant for the week. 

- We start off with some sadly wooden Shakespearean-play-being-performed-live-on-stage line delivery which wasn’t really suited to television or this show’s established aesthetic. There were quite a few other places in the script this episode where characters said things in a rather cringy way that would have been much better on stage, or not said at all. Maybe it’s the writers, who knows. Bit disappointing though.

- I have to ask, why is Margaret Pole just letting Mary stand outside the door in her nightgown listening to all this? That’s rather negligent guardianship? Terribly contrived, 0 marks.

- Katherine and Mary’s scene in the chapel was sort of nice, pity we didn’t see  more of this kind of moment.

- AND we are back in “Scotland” (haha, right), and apparently we are picking up exactly where we left off in the last episode, with Margaret returning loaded with some trinkets from the English treasury. Presents for everybody. 

- First thought why the hell is this castle ruined. Did nobody tell Frost and Graham that all those ruins in the pictures of Scotland weren’t originally like that? Also I have no idea where Margaret is meant to be here. At first I thought maybe they’ll show a Fake Tantallon but her following lines indicate that she’s managed to get to the west land somehow? Very confused. 

- Who the fuck are the ‘men of Arran and Hamilton’. That is not how ANY of this works. I think what the scriptwriters mean is that Margaret has gone to the Earl of Arran and his retainers? But that’s not in the least how they should be referred to, it’s a deeply misleading line and doesn’t really mean anything. Also confirms btw that James IV’s kids were absolutely just set-dressing, since they had an opportunity for Moray at least to show up in 1524, but it seems that they have no relevance to the plot whatsoever so I have no idea why they were onscreen so much.

- “With English gold”- WOW ok, Margaret you really need to explain how you got that because otherwise it just looks like you’re acting on behalf of Henry VIII. Also did nobody consult their ‘Collected Works of Robert Burns’ before writing that line. But ‘assured’ Scots are a complex concept that I definitely didn’t expect the writers of TSP to understand anyway (and really more a feature of Mary I’s minority not James V’s).

- Anyway sorry Frost & Graham if there was any reasonable explanation for the ruined castle, the barbaric Scots stereotype, and the ‘English gold’ in this scene, I’m afraid I found it difficult to hear over the sound of your raging political agenda

- Also they’ve gone with a rather confusing motivation shift for Margaret here. Certainly, in 1523-4, Margaret was trying to discreetly recover control over the Scottish government while at the same time keeping Albany on side, but she couldn’t just march in there with the Earl of Arran and his pals and take it back. Her letters from this period (to Englishmen though, so maybe suspect) indicate that she was hoping that, while Albany was out of the country, the Scottish political community would get fed up with him jetsetting off to France all the time, decide that he had forfeited his rights to the regency, and support her aim of having James V declared an adult monarch in his own right (the ‘taking furth’ of the king). 

But in the context of this tv show, where nobody has indicated that Albany’s support is wavering at all, and where they have declared for the last few episodes that Margaret’s big problem is Angus (who, btw, from 1521 until early 1524 seems to have been sitting in a prison in France thanks to Albany) and that Albany is her ally, it is a very confusing character shift. Unfortunately it shows more clearly than ever that they really did not have enough space in their allotted ‘ten minutes of Fake Scotland per episode’ to cover the complexities of Scottish politics and indeed the enigma that is Margaret Tudor.

- That being said *now* I understand why they keep referring to James as the ‘heir’ to Scotland instead of the king. They’ve mixed up the ‘taking furth’ of the king which was supposed to bring the regency to an end, with an actual coronation and declaration that he was king. Once again, these are not the same thing. James was crowned within a fortnight of Flodden on 21st September 1513, in the chapel of Stirling Castle, with the support of all the leaders of the political community who mattered. In November 1524, by contrast, he was theoretically declared an adult ruler, which meant that his regents could be dismissed (and it helped that Albany, who had not returned from France by the date he said he would, had technically forfeited his rights). And if James happened to take his mother Margaret Tudor as chief counsellor on his ‘secret council’ well that was just his royal prerogative, done with the support of the political community as recognised in parliament.

- But still, contemporary rumours about Albany’s shady intentions aside, *to the best of my knowledge* nobody openly/directly challenged James V’s right to the Crown either in 1513 or 1524. James was the king from 1513, and any ensuing squabbles centred more around who should have responsibility for his upbringing and safety, not his rights to the throne.

- See what I mean about a two minute, ridiculously inaccurate scene being educational though? I could discuss the implications this nonsense would have had for sixteenth century Scottish politics for DAYS and when I go back to check my references for this rant, I learn even more. So like well done to TSP in that regard I guess. Maybe all historical tv shows should be horrendously inaccurate, and then they should do a behind the scenes series alongside it where they get actual historians (not like me) to go nuts and rant about the real history.

- Huge LOL at Mary in the next scene saying that Henry VIII supports Margaret’s annulment from Angus by the way. Not like, historically, Angus has just escaped France and arrived in London or anything. I imagine their conversation would have gone something like this:

Henry: Ah Mary, good to see you. You will be happy to know that I have had a change of heart and I support our sister’s annulment from Anguish, so you can write to Meg and tell her not to worry about him.

Mary: Oh that’s good to hear, I was always rooting for her, I- what’s that behind your back. 

Henry: What? Nothing.

Mary: Looks like the earl of Angus.

Henry: What? Er no, it’s er it’s just my Fake Beard. Lots of people get them mixed up.

Mary: Riiight. And you haven’t got a Scottish earl behind your back?

Henry: Not at all! Why would I have our brother-in-law behind my back? I hate that guy. Isn’t he in France anyway? Now would you go and get Wolsey I need to speak to him about, er... my beard. Yes my beard. It’s definitely not about a letter to Lord Dacre or anything.

Mary: Ok, absolutely believable, I will see myself out.

- Ok I’m getting carried away and actually, this rant is getting very long again even thought we’re only a few scenes in, so maybe I will split it into two parts so as not to clog up people’s dashboards. BRB.