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aelfgyvaa · 6 months ago

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re: your post about anne boleyn merch, would be interested to hear your thoughts on the musical "six"!!

I think we were always gonna end up here eventually. To briefly summarise? I have pretty much nothing but distaste for Six.

Before I get into it, let me just say - I don't care if you like Six. If it makes you happy, that's great, I respect that. I'm not trying to tell anyone that they can't or shouldn't enjoy it, just that my personal opinion of it is... negative, to say the least.

TW - In the discussion below, I do mention child loss and child sexual abuse

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The very first song in Six promises that the show is going to explore a different side of the infamous six wives of Henry VIII, rejecting the popular narrative ('Get ready for the truth that we'll be revealing'). However, it only seems to succeed in retreading the same ground we've been going over for literal centuries. I'm sure a casual viewer of Six could certainly learn something new about these women from the show - if, that is, they'd never really known about them in the first place.

To start, I'll go over some of the gripes I have with each individual representation of the wives.

Catherine of Aragon

First off - did no one pause to think that a jokey throwaway line like this in an upbeat pop track might have been distasteful when discussing a woman who lost five children?? No? Ok. Catherine had four miscarriages or stillbirths, and lost her son Henry when he was little more than a month old (and from what I've seen, none of this is mentioned at any point).

'Kiddy-less' is just obnoxious.

Anne Boleyn

In her character description at the beginning of the script, Anne is described as 'a bubbly, fun-loving gal who only wanted to snog a sexy guy'. At another point, she is referred to as 'The temptress'. Right. So we're just sticking to the exact same reductive portrayal of Anne that's been circulating forever? Cool, cool, very revisionist.

The only person who confessed to an affair with Anne Boleyn was Mark Smeaton, who did so under torture, and his story didn't even align with known facts at the time. Portraying Anne as a flirt is not 'revealing' the 'truth' - it's quite literally repeating the narrative that saw her executed.

The script and the song lyrics are littered with jokey references to 'losing your head' and I just??? Apparently, the beheading of a real person was the opportune moment to slide in a blowjob joke. Sorry, didn't realise that her execution was funny - my bad I guess.

Jane Seymour

Six seems to want to give us the impression that Henry VIII's affection for Jane Seymour, the only one of his wives to give birth to a surviving son, was reciprocated by her. Which is... certainly presumptive.

Of course, I can't definitely say anything about her personal feelings, but the fact that Henry married her eleven days after Anne's execution, and that she was reportedly sympathetic to Catherine of Aragon and Mary Tudor, paints an interesting picture of their relationship.

Other than that, there's not much to say about Jane - but that in itself isn't great. She comes off as flat, and little more than a doting housewife-esque stereotype. I understand that she was only queen for a year, but... go girl give us nothing?

Anne of Cleves

Once again... this is just so lazy. Considering one of the two writers/composers for Six studied revisionist history at Cambridge, the revisionist narrative we were promised at the beginning remains entirely absent.

The first time Henry VIII met Anne, he burst in unannounced, in disguise, and kissed her without consent. I don't know about anyone else - but if I had just arrived in a new country, was not fluent in the language, and had never seen the man I was to marry before - I'd be freaking the fuck out if that happened. Henry seems to be one of the first people to ever call Anne 'ugly', which only happened after this incident wherein she was clearly unimpressed by him. Very convenient.

Katherine Howard

Sigh...

Yeah, I hate this. I hate it so much.

Accounts are definitely murky, but I think it's safe to say that Katherine Howard had a childhood marred by sexual abuse. Whilst she was a ward of the Duchess of Norfolk, Katherine had a 'relationship' with her music teacher Henry Mannox. We don't know exactly how old Mannox was (Six puts him at 23, but yeah. We don't know), but given that their 'relationship' reportedly took place around 1536-ish, Katherine would've been about thirteen. There's an acknowledgement of this age gap in Six, but it's pretty gross how flippant it is.

Her alleged 'relationship' with the Duchess' secretary Francis Dereham is also referenced with similar thoughtlessness.

Given that Katherine was most likely still a teenager when she married Henry VIII - and when adultery accusations resulted in her execution - the pretty blatantly sexual tone with which she is presented is incredibly uncomfortable and, frankly, super inappropriate.

Katherine Parr

First off - fucking pardon? Speaks for itself, really.

The first half of Katherine's song focuses on her relationship with Thomas Seymour as opposed to Henry VIII. Which, y'know, it's nice to move away from Henry, although Thomas Seymour is very much not off the fucking hook (child groomer👍).

Katherine's song is definitely the least blatantly offensive and/or boringly repetitive of the bunch, and I do appreciate the references to her writing (although it is pretty much thrown in without any context). To be honest, she's pretty much got the only characterisation that I'm not actively opposed to.

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Six claims to be a feminist, revisionist retelling, and yet in its first scene immediately pits the six women against each other by deciding to compete for who is the 'best wife' by... comparing trauma? Even when Katherine Parr's character questions this, she's mocked by the other characters.

There's an acknowledgement towards the end of the play that comparing the women and defining them by their relationships with King Henry is reductive - but frankly, by this point in the play, the damage has already been done. No half-assed 'Hey maybe we shouldn't compare ourselves after all!' is going to erase literally everything else that happened in the show prior to this. I don't care that you've decided to pull a complete 180 right at the very end, you still populated the rest of the show with disrespectful jokes that made light of the traumatic experiences of VERY REAL PEOPLE.

Six fundamentally fails at its introductory promise of revealing any sort of 'as yet untold' history surrounding these women. Worse, it arguably dehumanises them, reducing them to a group of dancing, singing, jokey fictional characters who reflect on the misery of their real-life counterparts with a disconcerting sense of humour. Instead of fulfilling its feminist framing, it falls for the tired, repetitive method of thought that presents these women as two-dimensional placeholders.

I read Six's entire script for this post, and honestly, I hope I never have to look at it again.

#anti six the musical #six the musical #tudor history #henry viii #catherine of aragon #anne boleyn #jane seymour #katherine howard #katherine parr #history #helena has opinions #ask

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thecatsaesthetics · 3 years ago

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Anne Boleyn 2021 Review

Okay, so I want to start this off by saying I am a day late and a dollar short. I know that. Who wants my, over thousand-word, essay on this... but I've gonna give it to you. So please keep reading and leave me comments with your thoughts about this show.

So I will start this off with the positives:

I think Jodie Turner-Smith was excellently cast as Anne Boleyn. Jodie has a remarkable range as an actress. Especially since this version of Anne Boleyn, she is both victim and villain Jodie was able to pull it off flawlessly. She jumped from being a heartbroken wife to manipulating Henry VIII very well. Two scenes that really highlight this are:

The one after her miscarriage and Henry riding off; showed Anne’s desperation and sorrow very well. “Won’t you say goodbye to your wife?” was a heartbreaking line and I very nearly lost it when she collapsed.

The second was in the next episode where she manipulated herself back into his “good graces” by proposing Cromwell had been double-crossing him. This didn’t come across as villainous to me, it came across as a woman in a struggle for survival. Playing the game to keep her station after miscarriage.

I will say this about the show Jodie carried it on her back. She made Anne very sympathetic but highlight that she had this temper that harmed her. However, unlike Claire Foy’s Anne Boleyn I never felt this Anne was unlikable. She came across as someone struggling to survive. The scene with Mary after she learns of potentially Mary being reinstated in the line of succession also highlighted this. The whole "The King never likes to be without me for long" was a lie given he had left her but it was to puff up her station. Reminding Norfolk that she helped his daughter marry the King's son. Forcing Chapuys to kiss her hand. These weren't just power moves, they were survival moves.

This Anne was similar to Natalie Dormer’s Anne in season 2 of the Tudor and Geneviève Bujold in Anne of a Thousand Days. I enjoyed how Jodie both made the performance utterly her own but also obviously drew inspiration from the others.

Moving on,

Another positive was George and Anne’s relationship. I did like how touching their scenes were. The final meeting between George and Anne was heartbreaking.

The horse symbolism, while oddly ripped off from The Tudor’s swan symbolism what I liked. Also, the clock from King Francis implying the “Her time is up” I truly enjoyed. I am just a sucker for symbolism

The Norris Comment

I LOVED THIS. I loved how not only it was said, Anne being flirtatious and joking but the immediate drop. This was the moment Anne truly screwed up. I loved how Norris reacted and the reactions of everyone in the room. This comment is oddly overlooked by most productions of Anne Boleyn or Henry VIII. From what I have read it was an incredibly important comment that was made by Anne. This in combination with her final miscarriage left her in a dangerous position.

Now to a more mixed feeling:

Henry and Anne’s relationship:

On the one hand, I liked it, it showed they were still into each other a lot. This is unlike The Tudors where Henry VIII weirdly loses all sexual interest in Anne (but somehow still expects her to have a baby). Most productions show Anne and Henry’s marriage crumbling the second she has Elizabeth which just isn’t true. I also liked how the miscarriage alone didn’t cause Anne’s downfall, which is usually how it’s done.

That being said the physical violence… Henry VIII was a lot of things but he really wasn’t a physically violent guy himself. He’d execute you but he was a coward about it. I think the one notable time Henry got physically violent with a wife is when he ordered a sword after discovering Katherine Howard’s prior “relationships” and people thought he was angry enough to execute her himself. Even with Jane Seymour, he seems more degrading of her at times than physically violent. Emotional violence was more Henry’s style.

I do understand that they were trying to show the relationship as chaotic, volatile, and unhealthy. However, I just didn’t think it was necessary to add physical violence to do this.

Now with the petty:

The costumes… were so god damn ugly. Just as a side note before we pass from the positives to the true negatives. I just don’t understand what goes through the minds of costume designers. Jodie is a beautiful actress and they put her in the ugliest of clothing.

I mean I have seen worse costumes. They weren't as bad as The White Princess or Wolf Hall. But I would put them alongside The White Queen honestly.

I don't think costumes must be accurate, but I want them to be pretty at least. If you aren't going to make them accurate can we at least have something interesting to look at?

The Negatives:

Jane Boleyn: Ummm I don’t know what to say other than this is fucking dumb. I mean I guess we should be glad there was no physical violence between George and Jane this time around. Other than that I don’t get it. We literally are three mins into episode one and they have Anne call Jane a “spiteful little bitch” why? Because she’s upset her husband is cheating on her? Like Anne is upset her husband is cheating on her? Why wouldn’t Anne sympathize with Jane if that were the case? Even if they wanted to make Jane Boleyn evil they did a bad job. Am I not supposed to have sympathy with the wife getting cheated on?

Also, Dan Jones should have his degree ripped from him. Dan Jones is an actual historian who is an executive producer on this show and he allowed them to have Jane be brought as a witness to Anne’s trial.

On that note let’s move to the Jousting Head Injury thing. Again Dan Jones should have his degree ripped from him. This event did not happen, at least not like this. You can watch Claire Ridgeway’s video on this but the historical records do not support Henry VIII being unconscious at all after this fall. And it was funny they had Chapuys heavily involved in these scenes since he never even wrote about this event. You’d think if it was that important he would have.

That gross miscarriage scene… for all that is holy I do not understand why we are getting these intense miscarriage scenes. The camera was literally between Jodie’s legs at one point. It was so nasty. The sounds… I just can’t. I won’t go into it further but I’d rather have Natalie’s Dormer’s implied miscarriages with just some bleeding then this shit any day.

Now before I tactical the racism I want to say the final episode was probably the weakest one. Anne’s trial… I hated it. I hated Anne speech it was way too much Feminism™. I would have rather had her execution speech or her confession with Crammer. I do get why they only chose to have one of these in the episode, it would totally over crowd the episode. That being said… not only was the directing weird in this scene the speech they wrote just was subpar at best.

The Racism:

Okay, I am going to try my best to tactical the racism in the show. Now I am white and I don’t want to say I should be speaking over ANYONE. Plenty of black Tudor fans have written this better than me.

However, two plot points on this show really struck me as racist.

Jane Seymour: the odd predator behavior Anne has around Jane Seymour. It must be noted that the age gap looks apparent on the screen. Jane’s actress is 25 and Jodie is 34. Jane looked like an innocent schoolgirl and the aggressive scenes with Anne made these seem incredibly predatory. In ALL other productions, I’ve seen this is never how Anne and Jane come across.

The weird kiss between them was both racist and homophobic. I think they said it was about Anne wanting to see the “appeal”. Again it just made her look predator. The worst scene was when she was circling Jane as she spoke a hymn. Honestly, they made Jodie look like a fucking shark in that scene. It was so nasty.

The second and less talked about was Anne and Kingston. I don’t get why nobody is talking about that disturbing scene where Kingston physically pushes Anne onto the bed and holds her there. It was utterly disturbing, and quite frankly I am shocked anyone found that appropriate. You cannot separate Anne being portrayed by Jodie, a black woman, and having a white man grip her head down on a bed saying “She’s only a woman” as an insult. It was incredibly disturbing.

Also in general having Kingston treats Anne so awful… when all other productions of Anne Boleyn have Kingston treat her remarkably well. Racism is implied here. Why in every other production Anne's ladies are kind and gentle to her, and Kingston is moved by her, but when it's Jodie he's physically brutalizing her?

I think there were obviously other incidents, including all the shit with George and Jane but I don’t feel that equipped to handle them. I just wanted to bring these two to light.

Overall:

Jodie was amazing, carried the show on her back. That’s kind of it. It was very subpar. For a show that claims in the beginning inspired by “The Truth… and lies,” it seems more inspired by lies than by any sort of truth.

I mean did we need another Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn TV show. Probably not. Which makes me feel sad. Jodie was so good. She truly pulls off regal. I want to see her in more period dramas. But other than that… 5.5 stars maybe?

#anne boleyn 2021 #anne boleyn #henry viii #jane seymour #tudors #jane boleyn #george boleyn

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amltdaily · 4 years ago

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Season premeire details:

Season Premieres Thursday, Nov. 19, 2020 Friendship isn’t a big thing. It’s a million little things. Our gang ended last season with many challenges in front of them. In season three, we’ll see our group of friends once again lean on each other in ways that are both moving and aspirational—something we could all use right now. When we last saw Rome and Regina, they were about to adopt their son, only to have Eve, the birth mother they had come to know and love, change her mind. With that, Regina finally broke, leaving Rome at a loss as she heartbreakingly admitted: “You made me want this.” Rome and Regina must now face the challenge of moving forward—but how can they move forward from the loss of a child? Especially when that child is still alive, being loved by someone else. As for Delilah, while she has been having fun with Miles, she begins to question if “having fun” is enough. While Sophie embarks on a journey to pursue her music and Danny discovers his confidence at school, Delilah sees her older children growing into young adults, even after losing their dad. And when Delilah realizes that her time with her own father is limited, she makes a life-changing decision. When we left Gary, he had just made the difficult choice to pursue his new relationship with Darcy and leave his romance with Maggie in the past. As Gary begins to navigate dating Darcy, he encounters an unexpected challenge when he finds himself becoming an instant father figure to kids of his own. But the process of stepping into these fatherly shoes causes Gary to reflect on the way he himself was raised and make a life-altering decision. Meanwhile, on the heels of confessing her feelings for Gary, Maggie arrives in Oxford. But her conviction to find out who she is without cancer is renewed when her new roommate Jamie encourages her to create a podcast, chronicling her experiences at Oxford and finding her voice. Maggie’s British alter ego allows her to take chances and live outside her comfort zone—while she’s literally living outside her comfort zone. But when unforeseen circumstances throw a wrench into her plans, we see Maggie finally bloom into the person she’s always wanted to be. As for the Savilles, we left last season with a big cliff hanger. Is Eddie dead or alive? While the premiere will answer that question, what we’ll see this season is that Katherine and Theo will never be the same. They must tap into their strength and redefine their lives, leaning on each other like never before. Through their story, we will follow two mysteries: Who hit Eddie that night? And was this accident really an accident? And just when the friends seem to find their new normal, their lives are upended when, like ours, COVID-19 rocks their world. We’ll see the topics our show depicts—depression, breast cancer, chemical dependency, domestic violence, friendship, family and love—and how all of them are heightened by the challenges our world is facing right now. And we’ll rediscover what our gang has always known in their hearts: With the love and support of your friends, you can get through anything. “A Million Little Things” stars David Giuntoli as Eddie Saville, Romany Malco as Rome Howard, Allison Miller as Maggie Bloom, Christina Moses as Regina Howard, Grace Park as Katherine Saville, James Roday Rodrigues as Gary Mendez, Stephanie Szostak as Delilah Dixon, Floriana Lima as Darcy Cooper, Tristan Byon as Theo Saville, Lizzy Greene as Sophie Dixon and Chance Hurstfield as Danny Dixon. DJ Nash is the creator and executive producer; Aaron Kaplan, Dana Honor and David Marshall Grant are executive producers; Nina Lopez-Corrado, Terrence Coli and Geoffrey Nauffts serve as co-executive producers on the series, from ABC Signature/Kapital Entertainment. ABC Signature is a part of Disney Television Studios, alongside 20th Television and Touchstone Television.

#a million little things season 3 #a million little things

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the-quiet-winds · 5 years ago

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The Buffalo’s Inferno

[Everyone’s been waiting for this, right?

Mild angst. Some rude words. Discussions of death.] Katherine, for lack of better words, had not been having the greatest day ever.

She can’t really explain why, but she’d been in some weird sort of mood that made everything feel horrible no matter what it was. She had shooed Argyle out of her room when he had come creeping in for pets, she had nearly yelled at Anne for how long she took in the bathroom this morning, and actually had sternly asked Anna to turn her music down.

Finally, when the house seems stable enough and Katherine feels she might just be okay, she slips downstairs in search of a snack. Situating herself at the kitchen island with a bowl of fruit, she tries to calm her mind.

But, when you live in a house with five other women and a cat, calm and peace aren’t exactly easy to grasp. Granted, her guest isn’t the worst person it could be, but she really had been looking forward to some alone time.

“Hello, love,” Jane greets, sitting down next to Katherine and accidentally jostling her in the process.

“Hi,” Katherine mumbles, not looking up from her bowl.

Jane frowns at Katherine’s unresponsiveness. “What’s up, love?”

“Nothing.”

“Kat,” Jane says, but she uses that voice. The one that usually makes Katherine’s stomach feel like butter as she promises to fight away all the nightmares and keep Katherine safe and ensure that nothing will ever hurt her again.

Today, however, it just feels so patronizing and almost a sort of lie as she continues to say, “come on, sweetheart. What’s going on?”

“Nothing, I’m fine,” Katherine insists, hoping the slight bite in her voice would ward off Jane finally.

But her mum is too sweet and loving to leave her alone when something is so clearly bothering her. Jane’s hand sweeps softly through her hair, coming to rest on her shoulder.

“Come on, love,” Jane whispers. “Just talk to me.”

Katherine slams her hand on the table, rattling her bowl and startling Jane out of her skin.

“Why can’t you just be normal?”

“Kat, what-”

“Why can’t you just be normal?” Katherine nearly shrieks, hot tears streaming down her face. “Why do you insist on being so… motherly all the time?” She moves towards her room.

Jane follows. “Kat, you’re my daughter and-”

“I’m not your daughter!” Katherine explodes, jumping to her feet. Words are flying out of her mouth faster than she can truly contemplate. “You’re not my mum, that’s what you wanted,” she jams a finger into Jane’s chest with enough force to push her back, Jane’s eyes wide and almost scared. “I hate you!” Katherine all but screams, retreating up the stairs to her bedroom, holding the door, as she screams, “I wish you weren’t my mum!”

With the final declaration, she slams the door.

She buries her face in her pillow and pretends not to hear Jane’s soft pleading for her to open the door, which is quickly replaced by tearful apologies and promises to change.

Then, there’s nothing, and Katherine falls asleep crying into her pillow.

---

The first thing Katherine realizes when she wakes up that afternoon is the house is quiet. Silent, even. She checks her clock on the side table - there’s still an hour until they leave for the show, so why is everyone so quiet?

She drags herself off the bed and into the bathroom to scrub the tear stains off of her cheeks. As she pats off the water, Katherine can’t help but notice the different smell that lingers in the bathroom. Just a different kind of cleaning product or something, that’s all.

She brushes it off and heads downstairs.

Aragon and Parr are curled up together on the couch, talking in hushed voices. Anne and Anna are similarly discussing something at the kitchen island, taking tiny pretzels from a bowl and popping them into their mouths intermittently.

Katherine approaches them, somewhat hesitantly. “Where’s Jane?”

Anne raises an eyebrow. “Who knows?”

“She had to be upset earlier, why did you all let her leave?”

“Jane? Upset? What else is new?” Anna grumbles, stealing another pretzel.

“What are you talking about?” Katherine asks.

“Jane is always upset, Kitty,” Anne says. “If we never let her leave when she’s upset, she’d literally never be out of this house.”

“We should get going,” Cathy butts in.

Katherine checks the stove clock. “We still have another hour till call.”

“Did you seriously forget?” Aragon asks.

“Forget what?”

“What has gotten into you today, Kitty?” Anne asks. She sighs, then, “we have our meeting at the theater, like we do every first show of the week.”

“Oh, right,” Katherine says, knowing full well she has no idea what they’re talking about.

“Come on,” Aragon says. “Maybe Jane won’t be late to this one.”

“Or completely screw us all,” Parr snipes.

Katherine is sure she has absolutely no clue what is going on - did they really all think so little of Jane? Were they finally being honest?

She dwells over these thoughts the entire ride to the theater, but then she starts to question why. Jane had been too protective, too motherly toward her, even though, by some odd technicality, they were on some sort of sisterly status.

Every previous notion she had of Jane flees as soon as they reach the theater, where the woman is sitting on the stoop, smoking a cigarette.

“Glad you all decided to show up,” she drawls, dropping the butt to the ground and putting it out with her shoe. “Lets get this over with.”

“You shouldn’t do that before a show,” Aragon says, and Jane just rolls her eyes.

They all enter the theater, Jane not even waiting for the others, and Katherine can’t help but notice the ambiance feels different, less warm, even though everything seems identical.

Katherine follows the others as they sit down on the stage, and she can’t help but notice that Jane sits different. It’s a tiny thing to observe, really, but usually Jane sits with her back straight, legs crossed, like a ‘proper woman’, as she would tease. Today, however, she looks like she doesn’t care, sitting in the complete opposite way.

Katherine knows the way she’s sitting is a stupid detail, but the fact that Jane barely glances in her direction doesn’t go unnoticed either.

Throughout the whole meeting, Katherine is completely lost. She can’t figure out why she’s even there, since almost all of the stage manager’s questions are about Jane and her ‘behavior’ over the last week. Whether she had any altercations with the other queens (apparently Jane and Aragon had had a blowout over the car), whether she had used any substances (a moot question, considering she still smelled like the cigarette from outside the theater, and Anne manages the courage to point out her noticing of one or two empty bottles of gin in the garbage (this confession earns her a very dirty look)), and, oddly enough, whether she had come in contact with any sharp objects in the last week (other than the knife used to cut up some snacks, no).

Then the questioning moves to the other queens - how had their weeks been, and had they had any problems.

Katherine pretends everything is fine, when inside she is screaming. This all seems so wrong-

“Time to get suited up,” Anna jokes as they stand, heading towards the dressing rooms.

That’s when there’s more wrong, Katherine sees.

Jane’s area, normally full of fan art and pictures with the queens, is empty. There’s not a single item, save for the tiny makeup pallet and half-drunk coffee, that even shows anyone is there.

Katherine follows her into the dressing room, causing the woman to raise an accusatory eyebrow. “You following me, Howard?”

Howard. Not Katherine, not Kat, not ‘love’. Howard.

“No, just trying to-”

She cuts herself off at the sight of her spot in the dressing room (that’s her spot in the corner!) filled with someone else’s stuff.

“Wrong room, you dolt,” Jane hisses.

Anna squeezes past Katherine, stock-still in the doorway, and sits down in the spot that should be Katherine’s.

She feels her eyes bugging out of her head. Everything is so wrong and-

“God, maybe get some brain cells to go with your ass,” Jane drawls sarcastically before shutting the door in Katherine’s face.

As if in some sort of trance, triggered by all of the collective thoughts of every single thing that feels wrong with today.

She sits between Anne and Aragon in her ‘new’ dressing room and starts through her normal routine. At least that was still the same.

With three minutes to curtain, they all convene backstage. Katherine lets out a tiny sigh of relief as she notices all of her fellow queens look the same.

Or, they do, until Jane walks in.

Gone is her grey and white dress with low heeled boots, the one that Katherine thinks makes her look like an angel of some sort. Instead, she wears long black tights, classic rivets down the sides, with boots heeled higher than Cathy’s. The tights connect to a tank top also in black, wrapped up in a leather sort of biker jacket. Her hair doesn’t flow gracefully, instead piled up to give her some sort of false short cut, curled and sweeping over part of her face, the makeup around her eyes nearly making her look like a vampire.

She doesn’t look anything like Jane, and Katherine is terrified.

“Stop your gawking,” Jane whispers harshly.

Katherine looks anywhere else very quickly.

They’re ushered on stage as the band starts the intro, and Katherine tries to do everything she knows as they start the show.

“Divorced.”

“Beheaded.”

“Murdered.”

Katherine’s head almost explodes right there, and she nearly misses her cue to say her line.

Luckily, enough of the first song is the same that Katherine can fall into a rhythm, but when their individual introductions start, she can barely wait to see what Jane’s was.

“Jane Seymour, the only one he truly loved,” she sang, but sarcastically. As if she was bitter about it.

“Rude!”

“But did he really love me? I guess not. I’m not as nice as you thought. He took a knife to my gut just to have my son.”

Katherine fights with every bit of her resolve to keep her expression neutral as this revelation unraveled in her head.

Unfortunately, it quickly becomes too much, and she finds the room spinning and spinning before she drops to the floor in a dead faint.

---

“Katherine.”

“Katherine, wake up.”

Kat slowly blinks to consciousness, and she finds herself on an oddly comfortable couch.

Next to the couch sits Maria, a sheepish smile on her face as she watches the actress slowly comes to.

“Wha-”

“You fainted,” Maria says softly. “Do you remember that?”

It slowly starts to come back to Katherine - Jane’s attitude, Jane’s new costume, and, apparently, Jane’s new story.

“You fainted and they brought you back here, put on an alternate,” Maria continues. “I have the show off so they asked me to watch you.”

“What’s going on with Jane?” Katherine mumbles out as she sits up, rubbing her forehead.

“Jane? She seems about the same.”

As Katherine’s head begins to clear, the dull roar of the show through the monitor filters to her ears, just about at the end of Anne’s song.

She turns it up just slightly, hoping that she’d at least get Jane’s comforting vocals to soothe her worried mind.

Oh, how we hope to be let down.

“Weren’t you the one he ‘truly loved?’” Anne taunts.

“Well, that’s what I thought,” Jane says, and Katherine can almost hear the snarl in her words. “But here’s a story I’m sure you all should hear.”

“Oh, blah, blah,” Anne rebukes. “You got stabbed, well so did I.”

“And me!” Another voice puts in, and Katherine is sure that’s supposed to be her.

“I had been in labor for three days when Henry gave up on me,” Jane says, low and dangerous. “He decided the possibility of a son was more important than the woman he loved,” she spits the last word, “and took a knife to my stomach to get my son.”

Katherine audibly gasps, and Maria looks confused.

“You seem like you’ve never heard this,” Maria says. “It’s all she talks about. It’s why she’s always mad… why you all have those meetings?”

Katherine can only nod and wait for the familiar piano to start.

It doesn’t.

Instead, Maggie’s electric guitar roars, and whoever is covering for Maria starts plowing into the drums.

Basically, it’s the opposite of what Katherine was hoping to hear. Where there should be a soft, yet powerful ballad that Katherine likes to close her eyes and roll up in as if nothing else in the universe matters, especially when she’s held in Jane’s warm arms, listening to her mum’s heartbeat as the soft song lulls her to sleep.

But this, this is just wrong.

Instead of singing about loving Henry despite his flaws or how much she misses her son, Jane sings in a very clearly false excitement about what she refers to as, “their fling,” followed by the declaration of a pregnancy.

That’s when it gets worse.

Jane’s angry. More angry than Katherine thinks she’s ever heard her be. Her vocal range is pressing into the higher octaves as, like some kind of dark rock star, she belts in her upper range about being betrayed and given up on, and how she, “just wants to-”

She’s cut off by the other queens, all is quiet, then she starts singing again, the chorus once more, before the song ends.

Katherine sits up and grabs her phone off the table next to her, immediately typing, ‘Jane Seymour,’ into a search bar.

She clicks the first article that pops up and scrolls down to, ‘Issue and Death.’

The article seems mostly familiar to Katherine - Jane becomes pregnant in the winter, carrying well into the summer and going into labor in October.

But instead of two days and three nights of labor, a royal birth, eleven days of sickness, then death, it couldn’t have been more different.

According to this article, on the third night, Henry had become so paranoid over the physician’s reports of the possibility of the son being stillborn, he consented to the removal by cutting open Jane’s stomach.

In her last moments, after her son had been born, Henry never visited, the article read. Edward had been taken to the king and Jane died cursing his name with weakening breath as she bled out right then and there.

It sends a chill down Katherine’s spine, this report.

Then, another part of her whispers, she can relate.

Jane had been betrayed in the worst possible way by a man she thought loved her.

So had Katherine.

She’s so absorbed in her thoughts that she doesn’t even realize how much time has passed, and the show is ending. She knows she has to talk to Jane.

Katherine pokes her head in the hall just as the queens begin their walk down, but there’s a lack of energy that Katherine is so used to seeing. They all just seem tired. Drained.

“You alright, Katherine?” Cathy asks her gently.

“What was it tonight?” Jane butts in brusquely. “Another panic attack?”

“What? No-”

“I don’t know why they even let you perform,” Jane drawls lazily, leaning against the wall. “You can barely ever keep yourself together.”

“Mum-” Katherine winces as she realizes her mistake, but it’s too late.

“Are you crazy?! I’m not your bloody mum!” Jane laughs. Actually laughs, a biting, bitter sort of laugh. “As if I would ever want to be.”

Katherine needs to snap Jane out of whatever trance this is. She needs her mum, her real, amazing, lovely mum.

“You are,” she finally says, seeing Jane beginning to head down the hall. “You just don’t know it.”

“You must be more stupid than I thought,” Jane says sharply, “because I’m only a mother to my son, but I was robbed of that chance. But you,” she shoves Katherine back, “you got to know him more than I ever did. So don’t you come up to me with any of this, ‘you’re my mum,’ crap, because guess what, Howard,” Jane towers over her now, “no one loves you.”

With the final blow, Jane turns on her heel and storms down the hall.

Katherine’s knees give out beneath her and she crumbles to the floor.

“Mama, please.”

Jane does stop at that, turning around but not coming closer. “Grow up, Katherine Howard,” she says lowly. “It’s about time you stop asking like a damn child.” She disappears into the dressing room with the snap of a door.

Katherine begins to shake as she cries into the stiff carpet of the backstage floor. What had she done? She had been ungrateful, that’s what, and now she had lost her mum. Jane had just been trying to take care of her like always, with those soft words and the gentlest of hugs.

But Katherine had been unappreciative, acting like some stupid child instead of Jane’s devoted daughter.

She had been Katherine Howard, not Katherine Seymour, and now she is cursed to live in whatever Hell this is forever. The Hell where everyone is terrified of Jane, where the show is so different and so wrong, and, of course, where Katherine has no mum.

No one comes to help her. No one comes and lifts her into their arms and gives her something to cling to while she sobs.

She’s alone. Wholly and completely alone.

Her tears drip off of her face and into the carpet of the backstage hall as she mourns for everything she’s lost.

“Mama, I’m sorry,” she manages to whisper, even though Jane can’t hear her, and doesn’t care.

She stays there for longer than she thinks should be possible. At some point, Anna or Anne or Parr or Catherine or even Jane should have come out of their dressing rooms and found her pathetically laying on the floor.

But no one comes, and Katherine doesn’t care. She stays there on the floor, tears falling into the stiff and unforgiving carpet.

Jane’s words maliciously ring in her head as the world begins to disappear around her, until she can only make one more broken refrain of, “Mama, I’m sorry.”

---

When Katherine forces her eyes open and her nerves begin to fire again, she finds herself on her soft, albeit slightly crumpled, duvet.

How did she get home?

She lifts her head off the bed and turns to the window. Mid-afternoon sunlight streams through the pane, where surely it should be well and truly dark.

That’s when it all hits her at once - the bowl, crying herself into a nap, the dream-

Jane.

Oh God, Jane.

She honestly isn’t sure if she’s thinking about scary-murdered-Dream-Jane or her lovely mother, but regardless, she needs to make this right.

She races to Jane’s room, not even knocking before opening the door.

Jane is sitting on her bed, propped against the headboard, working on some embroidery. At the sound of the door opening, she looks up, and Katherine swallows the lump in her throat at the dried tears she sees on Jane’s cheeks.

“Kat, I-”

She doesn’t finish that sentence. In fact, she barely has time to put the embroidery safely on the bedside table before Katherine is in her arms, all but in her lap, whimpering out apologies between wheezing, broken sobs.

It takes several minutes for Katherine to calm down enough to take little breaths, which is when Jane finally asks, “what happened, love?”

Katherine frantically shakes her head, and Jane gently hushes her, running her fingers softly through her hair.

“Later,” Kat chokes out.

“Okay,” Jane whispers soothingly. “That’s okay.”

There is some more silence, then Jane kisses Kat’s forehead and smiles, pulling Kat back just enough to meet her eyes. “I love you, my little Seymour,” she promises.

Katherine’s eyes well with tears, and she buries her face back in Jane’s shoulder. But amongst the nearly incomprehensible whimpers, one phrase is strong and understandable.

“I love you too, Mama.”

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#six the musical #katherine howard #jane seymour #catherine parr #anne boleyn #anne of cleves #catherine of aragon #julie writes #the buffalo's inferno

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