Author: alicehoffmans

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Parallels/similarities between Henry VIII and Elizabeth I abound, tbh? Not sure why people are not fond of that, I think they’re very interesting and every time I find one I find another. I think there’s this urgency to put her on a pedestal, and conversely to with Henry…do whatever the opposite of ‘put on a pedestal’ is (lol!!) that makes people balk at doing so.

One of the most amusing ones to me (and God, I’m gonna get booed so hard for this but idc fkjsdkfjdslk) is that Elizabeth’s most passionate romantic relationship was with someone that was a masculine version of her mother in a lot of ways (namely, a Mr. Dudley) and that Henry’s most passionate romantic relationship was with someone that was a feminine version of his father in a lot of ways  …

And also that they were both similarly unrealistic about these relationships in ways…I mean Elizabeth was more realistic and pragmatic about hers I think, she never married him even when she technically could have (after his wife’s death, after he was cleared of suspicion…legally/officially, anyway). But she DID order her council to name him protector of the kingdom when she had smallpox and she thought she would die and that’s like?? Wild, tbh….like did she think anyone would actually…?

Also Henry named Anne absolute regent and governess of their children in the event of his death in 1534. Like…know ya love her, boo, but did you think that’d like?? Work?? She wasn’t exactly universally popular; I could see her possibly being regent if Henry died after she had a son but otherwise I don’t think she’d have near enough support to sustain that position (He maybe did this in the hope that she would; I think he might have during her pregnancy that year but?? Still.)            

The GoT writers are terrible and fundamentally don’t get that the point of fantasy is to ‘see the colours again’ (quote from the author of ASOIAF, the series upon which GoT is based), they’re wanky hacks who’re obsessed with making their show as GrimDark as possible, even though Westeros fashion of the books is this amazing technicolour parade of late medieval opulence. Also Michele Clapton seems to work in a boring mud palate no matter the styles, if S1 of The Crown is any indication

theviscountconsett:

alicehoffmans:

Lmaooooo I actually like the costuming of The Crown? Esp. Margaret’s. Idk it kind of makes sense to me that the color palette is duller generally, they’re all living in this gilded world but have to face all this pressure to project a certain image, maintain the status quo, all very strait-laced but repressed and not really allowed to express emotion in any genuine way in the public arena?

Even the colouring on that show seems a bit ~grey~ to me at times (especially the episode with the Great Fog or w/e but also in general); but I always figured that was intentional. Gloomy London with its grey skies and rain and all that; but also just the…vibes/aesthetic of the show. Subdued, things cracking but never doing so on the surface etc. etc.

But yeah I hate the vast majority of the GoT costuming, tb(honest).  And GoT; because of the GrimDark thing and the We Are So Edgy/With Freedom Comes (Gratuitous, almost always Female) Nudity thing and honestly I find the plot…….boring. Like I’m not invested in any of these people, I don’t think most of the actors are that great either so I’ve never really gotten invested in a character.

I do want to clarify, I fucking adore the costumes on The Crown, it’s just the only other major show Michele Clapton’s done and both of them have the same kind of palate, which tbh, you’re right, works SOOOOOOOOOO much better against the gilded sets and gloriously gratuitous cinematography. I kinda prefer the designer in S2, who introduced pops of colour to the still muted palate which are really consistent with the real Queen’s rainbow wardrobe, but only mildly.

Yeah, like that show peaked in S2, anyone who thinks otherwise is somewhat deluded, and I actually love most of the actors but, again, they’ve had increasingly terrible scripts for like 5 seasons, like I’m sure most of them are as desperate for it to be over as any of us.

Like, I do feel sorry for Michele, cos she had to come up with a whole (GrimDark) aesthetic for a fantasy universe, and her main clothes horse in S1 was the heavily pregnant Lena Heady, but still, the utter lack of glamour, of opulence, of monarchical DRAMA resultant is so disappointing.

Tbh it’s kind of indicative of that show that some of the best costumes are the ones I hate the most, Natalie Dormer’s backless push-up bra* dresses. Like, there are layers, many many layers, all the layers and more that should be and aren’t on Natalie, about them that annoy me, but Jesus at least they try to be pretty. They still fail, because they so clearly exist to be sexy and make no sense (like, what the fuck even is the climate in that city, that everyone else is walking around in AUTUMN in long sleeves and high collars and then she’s just there tits out for the sake of tits out), but at least they’re not brown, give me the Reign costumes any day, even the brown dresses on Reign stood out. Maybe they were terrible dresses, but they were fun to look at. And the jewellery, a lot of it was dumb (and obvs fake) but it went big or it went home and they at least looked like some kind of royalty.

*for anyone trying to work out why Natalie Dormer’s boobs are so perky in those dresses it’s because they have, to quote the lady herself ‘a medieval suspension bridge’ in them, her boobs do not actually do that, nobody’s boobs do that, also useful info if you’re cosplaying Margaery Tyrell, build a push-up bra into your dress, your tits will look great!

Omg, this is too funny… agreed that s2 of the Crown had better costuming. 

Honestly Nat’s are among the few costumes I like from that show. Like, they’re so obviously designed to be aesthetically sexy, like you said, but at least the color and (sometimes, lol) material is good, at least we get pretty hanging sleeves and long, flowy skirts. Even during that weird Cult Church plot or w/e when she has to dress in high-collared stuff, they still picked flattering colors for her at least. 

Dying over the ‘medeival suspension bridge’ thing…honestly I wonder if they did a push-up or what with some of her gowns on Tudors because like…

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Hm, I’ve talked about it before but I’ll expand in that I think… both H7 and H8 were more similar than they were different (or, at least more similar than many are willing to admit– most historians try to dissociate them from each other). Even in decision-making, and I think they both kind of fuqued up re: setting precedents that were like…not great tbh. Even though I understand the political motivations behind them, there were also aspects of them that were kind of like…politically dumb. 

And we see this really early in their respective reigns (we see this in like…the ‘first day’ of H7′s and within the first year/s of H8′s).

So, H7′s first boo-boo I will tackle, and that is in the treatment of the corpse of Richard III.

Like…I get it. It’s not morally upstanding for sure, I’ll shade over it forever, but I do get like…the motivation. To treat the body honorably could potentially be dangerous because it implies that his death was regicide. And for his foundations, he can’t say R3 was ever king; rather an usurper. 

At the same time I think it made him look…kind of petty, tbh. And even if we have to go with Richard the Evil Usurper angle (which, you need to, to have ground to stand on as the one that overthrew him etc. etc.) so he was never king etc. he was still, at the very least, a duke? A member of the nobility? Brother of the last ‘rightful king’ (and he had to be, for his respective children to be relegitimized and the marriage alliance to EoY to work out)? 

Granted, shady and illegal things happend in the WoTR to members of the nobility, executions without trial re: Edward IV’s father (whose head was put on a spike) and of course Owen Tudor’s. But this wasn’t that…Richard was slain in battle. He was greatly loved in York. To treat his corpse with disrespect didn’t, in general, set a great precedent for English noblemen that had died in battle. It just added insult to injury, it made him look gloaty. 

And H8′s was the executions of Empson and Dudley. I get the motivation behind these too; I’ve talked about them in detail both here and here, so I won’t repeat myself. 

It wasn’t totally without precedent, I think many kings of the same era would have done the same. But at the same time this did set a problematic precedent  that we see later on– that if there is enough popular discontent for a king’s advisor… it has the power to eventually influence, perhaps even guarantee, their death. I’m sure this remained in the memories of the commons…particularly because the revolts in the North that happened later in Henry VIII’s reign did not call for his deposition– but rather, the head of Cromwell. They seemed to believe that this was a reasonable and achievable goal, and to me it’s little wonder that they did.