Tag: answered

thoughts on period dramas :’)

I actually can’t usually get through them?? Which is weird because I like history so much but like…I’m very picky. I feel like I’ve tried more than I’ve been able to watch. 

One of the worst in the last five years was def TWP; I still can’t really believe I watched that…at least I made some good & funny edits off it tho… I watched the teaser for T(S)(P) and my overriding feeling from it was ‘meh’ so idt I’m going to bother. I do want to make funny posts off the screencaps, tho. 

I couldn’t get through Borgias or Versailles. 

The only ones where I’ve watched every ep are, in no particular order: Tudors, The White Queen, Reign, The Virgin Queen, Anne with an E, Harlots, that…Charles II one with Sewell (idr the name), The Crown, Borgia, Wolf Hall and Victoria. 

Among dramas about English royalty, I still think Tudors reigns supreme– it is just so watchable. I don’t think it’s too soon for another long-term Tudor drama, but I do think they need to start from a different point, and preferably it would be directed and written by women (at least primarily) for the next time. I think a lot (although, not all) of its flaws had to do with how the women were portrayed on the show.

Thanks! x. 

Do we know anything about anne of cleves and h8’s relationship? Like during their marriage was it friendly & diplomatic in general or cold & distant?? I haven’t seen much on it so I always wondered

I’ve read they were friends afterwards in a lot of articles, just not the sources the author was using to make that claim. 

She doesn’t strike me as a foolish woman, so I think Henry must have at least been friendly with her for AOC to believe he would ask her to remarry him after Howard’s arrest. 

In December 1541, Chapuys wrote:

…since she [AOC] was known to have gone away [from London] in the family way from the King, and had actually been confined this last summer, the rumour of which confinement, real or supposed, has widely circulated among the people.

Of course, in Tudors this meant that Henry and AOC slept together while he was married to Katherine Howard, because, well– in Tudors, Henry sleeps with pretty much everyone, and is never faithful to any of his wives (save Anne B. during the betrothal years, and K.Parr).

Obviously this rumor of pregnancy was not true; I leave the reader free to make up their own judgement about why Chapuys would repeat the rumor in a dispatch. He tended to have a motivation behind what he chose to disclose; but I don’t think he very often repeated rumors unless he thought there was at least a grain of truth to them. 

Tl; dr, while the old adage ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire’ might not quite hold water here, perhaps ‘where there’s smoke, there’s a spark’ might be more fitting. My best guess it that they were quite friendly, even maybe borderline flirtatious, in a public setting, and that observers shared this with others. After which, by the end of the telephone game, turned into AOC’s scandalous~ pregnancy.

What made you be interested in the Tudor dynasty?

Hmm, not really any one thing in particular. It wasn’t always my main interest, but one of many when I was a kid (I was kind of…a weird kid, lol). I was also really into Arthuriana, which makes sense I guess because there are elements of that in the Tudor era as well (Camelot, and then its sort of darker side).

There’s something about the Tudors, it is hard to quantify…they just strike me as so very human. Mythic and yet not remote, as so many royal families are/were; somehow dually mythic and accessible. 

Starkey put the fascination best, imo:

Why don’t [Henry VIII’s predecessors] impress themselves on our minds in the same way…the reason that the Tudors fit themselves– that is, go into our minds in an almost subliminal way– is that they are the first dynasty that we can imagine…that we know as people. If you don’t know what people looked like, or what they were thought to look like, what they were presented as looking like, you cannot know them. And of course, this has become more and more powerful as we’ve shifted, essentially, from the rather verbal age of the 19th century, into the visual age of the late 20th century and early 21st century. 

If I remember correctly, the trajectory for me went something like:

Red Rose of the House of Tudor from the school library —>  the adaptation of that book into DVD or VHS from public library —> AOTD play from public library —> AOTD film from public library –> Doomed Queen Anne from public library…

Afterwards it gets murky, there wasn’t as much YA about the Tudor era then as there is today. But I know when I was a preteen, then in early teens, it was Gregory novels and then Tudors when its first season was released. 

All of that sort of cumulatively piqued my interest, I read what articles I could get hold of online. I didn’t really start to get into it academically until I rewatched Tudors like…. six years ago or so? I started reading up on the inaccuracies vs. the accurate re-enactments of the show online (by then there was much more content available re: that), and the more I learned the more I wanted to learn. 

Worst movies you’ve ever seen?

Hm…I actually don’t like most movies, honestly? So it’s hard to say. 

That probably sounds weird, but just like…if it doesn’t grab my interest right away I literally just stop watching. And people are like ‘give it a chance!’ but when I know I know, y’know? Like every time I’ve given it a chance because someone else told me to I’m proven right and I stay bored. 

The best movies imo would be easier to answer, lol…

American Beauty was way overrated imo (the best actor in it was probably Annette Bening, by far), very gratuitous and I think it’s weird that they a) hired a minor for a role that had a nude scene and b) that her parents signed the waiver for that. So I definitely have mixed feelings about the critical acclaim that one got, I watched it a few years before all the stuff about Kevin Sp*cey came out because it was so critically acclaimed and I didn’t really know the movie premise, and I wouldn’t watch it again. Also in retrospect, it was pretty obvious that one was both written and directed by men, looking back. 

I think the HP movies are pretty overrated…the first four were pretty good, but the fifth was really bad imo, I literally didn’t watch any of them after that one and I don’t regret it. 

🍒

compliment: too many to list! you are highly creative, imaginative, intelligent, and oh-so-fun to co-create with. i love writing and brainstorming with you!! and wfth is an epic, i’m so amazed and in awe that you created smth so majestic and yet realistic out of thin air and inspirations ❤

criticism: you have the audacity, to be busy and have a life, and thus no longer have the time to message me or look at the things i’ve tagged you in 👀 🔍….dpsdfkdjsbs ❤ ❤ ❤