#i didn't care for the characterization of norris either

[fideidefenswhore]

wolf hall (book and/or miniseries)

the characterization of francis weston...i actually feel like his characterization would've fit henry percy better (described as "light and hasty"-- that diverts to another thing i'd change, it was disappointing that mantel got so much of him correct, like his debts, and yet left no room to mention percy was often the source of some of the more vicious rumors about anne...instead it's always someone close to her, her family, like anne shelton and jane boleyn, that have such low opinions of her); i won't quibble with him being spirited and perhaps even shallow and extravagantly spendthrift (he was extremely privileged and only 25 when he died, after all); but having him be just so unequivocally nasty as to call cromwell's literal deceased daughters (to his and his son's face...?) ugly as sin just seemed way too easy a justification. she'd already written him into the wolsey farce to explain why cromwell picked from the cast to condemn those men in 1536, that just felt like laying it on too thick.

the device of cromwell promising parents on the edge of death to look out for their children to explain his actions ran thin by the time it was used for mary in tmatl (at that time, the second time it was used, already for wyatt). mantel should have chosen one or the other. even more realistically, i think cromwell's protection of wyatt should have been explained in the same way his protection of the future exeter players was used: he wanted him in his debt, he wanted to call on favors in the future.

the portrayal and arc of mary boleyn...as another reviewer put it:

"In Wolf Hall as in The Other Boleyn Girl Mary is the only uncalculating Boleyn, the only artless person at the Tudor court. [...] Although Mantel’s prose has been justly praised, this indignant speech could have been lifted right out of The Other Boleyn Girl or any other Tudor bodice-ripper that would not have made the Booker Prize shortlist. It’s as if, when we get to the Boleyn women [...] we’re always on the same terrain. [...] The best historical fiction, embellishes, invents, and excludes so that we see the past, and our relation to it, in a new way. Mantel’s novel may change how we look at Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell. But her depiction of Mary Boleyn is the same old story."

there were a lot of things in the book that didn't really translate into the adaptation of the tv series, that were either abridged or altered or completely absent. i would've liked to see the scene from bring up the bodies after catherine of aragon's death, where anne discusses her stepdaughter, or the one earlier, where she says she understands catherine, because she would fight for everything she has for her daughter, as well. neither of those were in the tv series. in my estimation, cromwell is more blorbofied in the tv series than the books...it's not given enough space, but there are lines that attest to his ruthlessness, the executions of the 'right' men in ireland, for example, that i don't recall being given any space at all in the tv series. we get a sense of his personal life more than his political life, almost, in the tv series.