“Thomas Cranmer, the Architect of the Church of England, [was] burnt at the stake under Mary. Of course I realize Henry couldn’t foresee that Mary would become Queen regnant, yet smart monarchs consider such possibilities.”
i’m not sure if this is worse than the take that all the burnings under mary i were actually henry’s fault (because she wouldn’t have ‘had to’ … ’had to’, yes….????– if he hadn’t ‘invited heresy in’, as if every single englishman was 1001% catholic until 1533 and then all those messy heretics came pouring in) or just an extension of it (i.e. henry could’ve prevented his execution if he’d just never annulled his marriage in the first place, so really he should’ve thought of that first).
cranmer in his prison cell: i’m so mad at henry for not asking mary to not execute me if she were ever queen before he died; this is all his fault…
Also ‘couldn’t have foreseen that’ like…I mean obviously he was able to foresee it a little, or he wouldn’t have included her in the succession in the first place??
another thingie about reign (although, no one asked, and i’m rewatching for some reason because i’ve like…run out of things to watch, i guess, and it’s been long enough that it feels fresh) that was so infuriating was like…it was actually close to being good, with the aesthetic?
by which i mean, it was all very close to flowing together and being believable… it was very close to, at the very least, not being jarring.
because i feel like with a historic drama, you have limited options when it comes to that. you can either do it 90-100% anachronistic (which reign did not do, aesthetically), in a tongue-in-cheek way (sort of like…galavant, i guess?); or for the most part faithful to the setting and events of the era, with a few anachronisms just sprinkled in there, sort of like with the tudors (which showed, for instance, a printing press as a ‘new invention’ for england in 1530) in regard to costumes (which were often elizabethan rather than henrician, and sometimes not even close to being faithful to a nearby century’s fashion) etc.
but reign did like, 70/30 or 80/20 for anachronism vs. historic realism and it’s frustrating because it was so close to being harmonious, and instead it ended up being discordant. it’s like listening to a piano piece and hearing the pianist hit the wrong notes, and seeing the right ones on the keyboard, close to their hands but unplayed.
harlots thoughts, disorganized and written while coffee is brewing, take one:
“oh, i have the wrong black!” – said with delight, and an air of ‘whoops!’ gotta love that georgian racial profiling.
i really hope fan commentary has not pulled an emily (who, like…was drunk, and did not know the whole situation) at this point and isn’t accusing harriet of ‘trying to sink her claws into will again’ or some such nonsense because like…yeah, looking at dead bodies. how romantic. how transparent of her.
please.
the insight into sukey’s backstory– and just more, her as a character in this episode– was interesting, and i hope we see more of her next season. there’s something very…spiky, about her, she almost reminds me of marie-louise in a way?
i really can’t see isabella coming back at this point. the way they tied up her arc had a lot of closure, and i really can’t see how she’d contribute to the plot from this point forward.
obviously, it is disappointing in a certain sense, because ultimately she chose her brother, and herself and her daughter, over the victims of the spartans (and their future victims)– i do realize there was that addendum that he not hurt charlotte which was touching but also….really?
if blayne’s going to hurt charlotte, he would probably hire someone to do it (rather than doing it himself) in a way it couldn’t be traced back to him (this, even before he signed it) so i’m thinking…how is that exactly going to hold up in a court of law if some ‘accident’ befalls her (i’m not saying it will but like logistically…i don’t think it’s as much of an assurance as is the property being signed over to isabella)
however, it makes the viewer question their own moral code and it makes them question what they would do in a similar situation if they were isabella, which i think is what you want from storytelling.
i would like to believe that i wouldn’t make the choice that isabella did, but i can understand why, after a lifetime of living with her abuser, after a lifetime of having absolutely no leverage…she would use leverage when she finally had it, immediately, to get away from him.
and i can’t honestly say with certainty that i wouldn’t make a similar one, in similar circumstances and i hate that but the narrative made me confront it so…there it is. it’s Good Writing.
i’ve really gone back and forth on charles quigley this season, and this episode is no exception (i think in a lot of ways, we actually saw more development in s1)
anne’s quote that charles “used to tup her” is…how many girls, exactly, before emily has he taken advantage of and had sex with at his mother’s house?
even beyond coercion, there’s obviously opportunity for manipulation– getting the girls better treatment from lydia, or shielding them from the worst of it, sneaking food to demand favors…
and okay, charles said he didn’t know lydia was adducting girls still because she told him she wasn’t but i kind of feel…like he did know?
and once he was finally confronted with that she absolutely still was, beyond the shadow of a doubt, he did act but also like…why weren’t the first times, why wasn’t the first treatments of emily, enough for him to make a stand?
i know he eventually moved out of quigley’s place and cut ties with her but he also ended up moving back, and reconciling with her to a certain extent after she LITERALLY tried to kill the girlfriend he claims to love so much so like??????
i know we don’t want to believe the worst of our parents but like…
and i’m sure to a certain extent lydia’s tried to hide some of the worst of it from him just like…over his life but also??
i doubt she managed to do that EVERY time.
I had more thoughts about Anne, and the way Lydia’s arc tied off this season (I kind of have issues with that, although I feel like in ways it was fitting) but maybe I’ll get to those later?
With Lydia’s, I will say that it does feel almost sort of mythical, Biblical maybe, the retribution within the narrative …her whole career, secrets have been her currency. And now she’s in a place, and marked by society in such a way, that all her currency is worthless.
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