#because other scenes from TLE from mary's pov are basically identical in this iteration

[fideidefenswhore]

I'm not getting what weir's trying to say with this novel. did i hear right that in her anne book, she went over her death in prolonged agony for kicks and had her literally burning in hell? so it feels like she had an idea what to do with the six wives (clearly), but this mary novel is a fill in the blanks kind of story looking for someone to write about. like pgregs and margaret pole. and the plot doesn't even make sense to me. so she gives mary a troop of weird crushes that go nowhere for padding, and then she's happy with philip and misses him even when he can't give her basic enjoyment. what's she getting out of it?

p.s. if we're going with crushes for mary i don't know why no one makes a thing with philip of bavaria like the tudors did. at least that almost happened.

the implication is there, because while coa and jane receive 'the light' and angels beckoning them, anne's ending is 'merciful darkness descended'. i won't go into detail about the 'prolonged' portion, but she has defended the choice based on... what one could generously call 'research'.

the connection of their faith, and she's attracted to him, i think the suggestion is that she was so innocent and sheltered her entire life that she's not really even aware that there's a pleasure to marriage she's not receiving. which, like, she is a virgin (upon marriage), but you'd think she'd be aware of the prevailing medical opinion of the time, which was that women couldn't conceive without pleasure... tbf, none of the women in her series seem aware of this, which can either be attributed to weir's prudisheness/animosity towards (certain) women.

there is an interesting part, when it comes to philip's excommunication:

"In her anguish, she realized that she would have to choose between the obedience she owed her husband and that which she must render to Christ's vicar on earth [...] 'We will declare war!' [...] At last, they were as one."

whereas, the anguish of choosing between her father's authority and the pope's lasted... well, arguably her whole life, but she acknowledged the church of england's authority by 1536, so... several years? versus thirty seconds? it's interesting, i think the implication here (had weir had the skill to do more with it, that is); is mary's belief in the sacrament of marriage > that authority (it could've led to a greater moment of understanding her mother's obedience to her father insofar as refusing to do anything against his will beyond sustaining the use of her title, which is a source of frustration for her earlier on in the novel), and an allusion to how being anti, or pro, papal could be a matter of political timing > principle. it could even raise the question of how mary might've reacted had the earlier pope during the great matter declared against her legitimacy. would she acknowledge it? because an often unacknowledged aspect of mary's life is that she defied the pope herself during her own reign; her opinions and principles and beliefs on this matter were probably less straightforward than is usually assumed.