I have just recently gotten up-to-speed on the second season of The Tudors, having watched the finale yesterday. While I have enjoyed the whole series tremendously, it does engender a great many questions.
To my mind this is part of the genius of the show; for even when it takes enormous liberties with history, it is still makes for a compelling story. Much like Frank Miller’s 300, both of them sharing a common conception of historical drama as “one fifth history, and four-fifths something that looks cool”.
Little by little over the course of a season, you will get suckered into researching the actual history behind the flashy events on screen. And thus I was very glad to discover commenters at TudorHistory.org’s Q&A blog have posited several potential answers to the question of why Mary I didn’t crop her younger half-sister at the neck.
TANGENTIALLY RELATED: James Frain’s portrayal of Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, is all the go. A strikingly complex and humane portrait of a man that is usually portrayed as a one-dimensional evil henchman. It will be a shame to see this Cromwell ascend the scaffold.
EVEN MORE TANGENTIAL: Natalie Dormer interviewed in the Daily Mail, with a plethora of fetching pictures.
Image: Sarah Bolger as Lady Mary Tudor.
Chris is most often found flying a desk, but he delights in studying the Golden Age of Aviation (1919-1939). He admires all the pioneering men and women who navigated the skies with nothing more sophisticated than a map, compass and sextant—and the conviction that there was no place they could not reach.
You forgot one-fifth that has no clothes on.
Hah! I think that can be filed under the “four-fifths something that looks cool” part. As long as we’re not seeing an awful lot of the nekkid sovereign.