and the raithlin island massacre

semper-exdem:

I have no idea whether this opinion is popular or unpopular at this point, but frankly I don’t think Elizabeth has been given the “perfect queen” treatment in media at all. Like at all. I haven’t seen one movie or show that doesn’t accentuate or focus on one of Elizabeth’s negative qualities (sometimes making one up entirely). Anonymous and Reignas (a Spanish show) make her out to be a sex crazed maniac, Reign makes her a paranoid bitch (with too many lovers to count), Doctor Who and Blackadder play up her temper, Horrible Histories makes her into a caricature (but they do that to pretty much anyone plus it’s for kids so I just shrug it off) and so on and so forth.

And even the ones who offer an overall positive portrayal of Elizabeth still highlight some flaws and show her as human rather than perfect. In the Cate Blanchette movies, Elizabeth is naive and flustered as a young queen, enamoured with a man who tries to bring her down (all innacurate but there you go), and in Golden Age, except for a few iconically strong moments the movie dedicated the majority of its time highlighting Elizabeth supposed vanity and obsession with growing older and her jealousy towards her courtiers and ladies. Helen Mirren’s Elizabeth also focuses on Elizabeth’s jealousy regarding Robert Dudley and her struggles with reconciling her Catholic subjects in the face of excommunication and Mary Stuart. It shows her making decisions that weren’t popular like cutting off the hand of the guy who wrote against her marrying Anjou. The Virgin Queen series has an Elizabeth who can’t seem to get control over her own emotions at all. All these shows and movies show an Elizabeth who, yes, eventually triumphs but they also show her as human, fallible and they certainly play up one or more negative aspects of her personality.

In fact, if there’s any historical figure that has been given the “perfect princess, perfect queen” treatment in recent media, it’s Mary, Queen of Scots. And far from being a compliment, this rose-tinted wash strips Mary of her complexity and her humanity. It pigeon-holes her into a Cinderella trope and ignores her ambition, it ignores her passion, it ignores her rash decisions, her capability of being spiteful just as much as she could be kind.

So protraying Mary as kind and benevolent and Elizabeth as evil and jealous is not a ‘fresh and new’ portrayal. It’s not “new evidence.” It’s an old, tired narrative that does a disservice to both of these fascinating queens.