Je suis Henry VIII, mais oui

[ceebeegee]

I just upgraded my cable package to get Showtime (quite a step for me--I never get the premium channels, that's what Netflix is for). Showtime is premiering a new series in April called The Tudors--it's about Henry VIII mainly. They're saturating the subways with print ads that make it look quite fun--they're trying to market it as a kind of historical soap. However the nitpicker in me is grumbling about the actor playing Henry--he is far too slight and dark-looking. Henry was quite tall and broad in his youth (though not fat--that happened later in his life) and very fair. Reddish-blonde hair and fair skin--Jonathan Rhys-Meyers doesn't look like him at all. He'd just better be good in the part.

One of the ads says something like "The King's best friend is having an affair with the King's sister." They're talking about Charles Brandon, a very close friend of Henry's (he was the son of William Brandon who carried the standard into Bosworth Field next to Henry VII and died in the battle (killed, I believe, by Richard III)--Charles was basically raised with the Royal Family). Henry VIII's younger sister, Princess Mary, had a crush on him that developed into a full-blown romance (kind of like Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend, now that I think of it, and when her marriage to Louis of France ended (he was much older) she and Charles married in secret and then begged Henry for forgiveness which he eventually gave. Mary and Charles were the grandparents of Lady Jane Grey, the original nine-day-wonder. Jane was eventually executed for the various rebellions on her behalf thanks to her dumbass father and one of my Tudor books ends her chapter with "sometime later the mangled corpse of Henry VIII's great-niece was unceremoniously thrust into St. Peter's ad Vincula, between two former queens. The debt incurred at Cluny Chapel 39 years before had been repaid at last." St. Peter's was where Catherine Howard and Anne Boleyn were buried, and Cluny Chapel was where Charles and Mary married in secret. I thought that was a rather poetic way of characterizing Jane's fate.

However, the site for the series has Princess Margaret--Henry's older sister--as a major character and doesn't list Mary at all. I hope they're not conflating the two Princesses!--Margaret was no Mary and certainly not the sexpot shown on the site. Margaret married James IV of Scotland at 13 and had kind of a rough time of it there--she sure wasn't vamping it up with Charles Brandon.

I'm such a nitpicker. But I'm sure I'll enjoy it anyway.

Comments

[king-duncan.livejournal.com]

I've liked Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in things before, though I don't know how he'll do as Henry. I must say he looks a tad more butch than usual for him; there were some titillating pics of him in the role floating around the 'net recently.

[melebeth]

A friend of a friend worked on the series and says "The history will piss you off, because it's ghastly, but the show is AWFULLY pretty"