Possible that I’m just being finicky, but this was another part of Worsley’s Six Wives documentary that I found was a little…off, I guess?
I wouldn’t go as far to label it as ‘inaccurate’ (I don’t really have the authority to do so), but I would label it as potentially miseading.
“Has to tread carefully around her father”? Sure, could absolutely see that considering the circumstances and the year portrayed (1536).
“Princess Mary”? No, not legally– not anymore. The newly titled “Lady Mary” in England, even if Chapuys still referred to her in his dispatches as ‘princess’.
“Who she barely knows”? No, not really… I could believe “who she feels she barely knows”. That would be very believable, considering all Henry had done; all that had happened in the past three years, and that he had neither visited her or spoken with her in those three years (at most he had acknowledged her with a bow as she stood outside the balcony at Hatfield) – Mary may well have felt she ‘hardly knew’ him at this point.
But the wording seems to suggest that Henry no longer spoke with her or visited her at the exact same time the wheels of the Great Matter started turning (when Mary herself was 10/11)…and this is not the case. Mary had known, and often been in the presence of her father, for most of her life.
Upon reflection, I know there’s always going to be at least a bit of a narrative/ storytelling in documentaries…for entertainment’s sake, but I do wish that accuracy wasn’t sacrificed so much for it? Esp. since it is, actually, a documentary.
Like if you’re watching this as a beginner to Tudor history, you’d finish it thinking that COA was the first monarch to demand the title of “Your Majesty” in Europe, too– this was definitely not the case.
@semper-exdem #like i think it was in the jones/lipscombe documentary that they had a servant or something call Elizabeth ‘Your Majesty’ in like 1547????#like im sorry I wasn’t aware Elizabeth was queen when she was 14?????
GOD yeah things like that are a bit…much. That series wasn’t terribly accurate, unfortunately.
It always tends to be overstatements/embellishments to add dramatic flair, too…in Lovers Who Changed History Lipscomb said no king and queen had ever gotten an annulment for their marriage before Henry VIII asked for one which like…I guess Eleanor of Aquitaine is a figment of my imagination, then?
Site Title 