Tudors: Your Favourite and Why

[Seahorse Wrangler]

Please excuse me as I laugh and laugh and laugh...

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Katherine (Kat) Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII. Devoutly Catholic, the nineteen year old is the most learned women in England. Her knowledge of Greek and Latin and the moral precepts she has embraced from the Ancients(along with her great beauty) attract the attention of king when she is brought to her uncle, the duke of Norfolk, at a time of riot and unrest in her home county. Named for Katherine of Aragon, Henry's first queen, the fearless Katherine becomes lady-in-waiting to their daughter, Lady Mary.In that position she is thrown into close association with the king while simultaneously abetting Lady Mary's scheme to reinstate Catholicism in England.

It doesn't help that the cover photo attached is from the first season of The Crown.

[viii]

😂😂😂😂😂😂

For $2.50 I’m tempted to buy it. 

[anjulibai]

Why choose an historical figure to write fiction about and then make her completely different from everything known about her in the historical record? Especially tragic ones like Katherine Howard. Just make up a fictional character instead. 

[Seahorse Wrangler]

4 hours ago, anjulibai said:

Why choose an historical figure to write fiction about and then make her completely different from everything known about her in the historical record? Especially tragic ones like Katherine Howard. Just make up a fictional character instead. 

Phillipa Gregory and Alison Weir glare in disapproval. I used to love PG's recency novels but her War of the Roses/Tudor novels I find totally unreadable due to her desire to distort everything up to the max. Aw isn't as bad but her novel about Anna von Kleve having a secret affair for nearly 20 years and having more than one child out of wedlock....nope!

 

 

[anjulibai]

51 minutes ago, Seahorse Wrangler said:

Phillipa Gregory and Alison Weir glare in disapproval. I used to love PG's recency novels but her War of the Roses/Tudor novels I find totally unreadable due to her desire to distort everything up to the max. Aw isn't as bad but her novel about Anna von Kleve having a secret affair for nearly 20 years and having more than one child out of wedlock....nope!

 

It just seems incredibly disrespectful to the people they are writing about, especially when it's clear they suffered in life. I like historical fiction that builds upon what is known about the person in a realistic way. 

I mean, Katherine Howard is a great example. She was a orphaned, uneducated and neglected, and sexually abused by more than one man. She was an immature teenage girl, wholely unprepared for and naive about the role she was pushed into. She was beheaded when she was no more than 19, probably younger.

That is a sad life. In many ways, she's got a lot of similarities to many of the daughters she talk about on this form - daughter of a huge family with way too many children (her father was one of 21 children, she was one of 10), uneducated, taken advantage of and used, and blamed for her own sexual abuse. 

How dare anyone try to romanticize her life by forcing her to be some intellectual and virtuous ideal. She deserves better than becoming a Mary-Sue in a bad fan fic (and I like fan fic!). 

And do not get me started on the treatment of Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl. There's just so much wrong there. 

Sorry, for the rant!

[viii]

3 hours ago, Seahorse Wrangler said:

Phillipa Gregory and Alison Weir glare in disapproval. I used to love PG's recency novels but her War of the Roses/Tudor novels I find totally unreadable due to her desire to distort everything up to the max. Aw isn't as bad but her novel about Anna von Kleve having a secret affair for nearly 20 years and having more than one child out of wedlock....nope!

 

 

I like PG’s works because I know I’m reading them as fiction and they’re not usually accurate. 

AW was a HUGE disappointment though because she is a historian and has written excellent non-fiction tudor novels. I have struggled with all five of her Six Queens series that I’ve read but the Anne of Kleves novel was beyond infuriating. 

[Seahorse Wrangler]

AW for some reason decided to refer to Anna's younger sister as Emily rather than Amelia. I spent the whole book trying to work out why. In the persona  pages it's

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Amelia (nicknamed Emily)

I haven't found any sources referring to Amelia as that. I find it highly annoying for no good reason. There isn't several Amelias running around. A book doesn't have a character limit.

 

throws hands in the air

[Cat Damon]

I am not a historian (I do have a BA in History however) and I try to keep an open mind. I hope that someone sees an inaccurate movie or reads an inaccurate book and are compelled to do their own research. History can get a bad rap for being boring, but I just think people haven't found the interesting parts (for me, pretty much all of it lol), or had a very dry teacher in high school who taught in an old-fashioned way. I feel the same way about people who say they hate reading. I think they just haven't found the right book or genre- everyone has a reader inside of them. 

HOWEVER, I cannot stand Philippa Gregory. I've read a couple of her books and they just annoy me with how much she's clearly just making up. If someone wants to write history, just make it historical fiction and make up a person, don't use real people who already have bad reputations (ahem Anne Boleyn)! 

[tabitha2]

Most of Pre modern history in any period in any country would make The  Soprano family and Jack  Bauer and Dexter blanch and get queasy and It sure as hell does not need be dramatized or invented. In fact To portray it accurately would involve toning  down for modern audiences

King John Bedded his 12 year old bride. A Certain King Raped regularly raped young girls and A rebel and his small son were boiled alive to name a few. 

[anjulibai]

Yeah, history is dramatic enough, there's no need to change it. 

[Seahorse Wrangler]

Claire Ridgway, founder of the Anne Boleyn Files has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Lovely news to share - I'm a Fellow! - The Anne Boleyn Files

[Cat Damon]

So this is not really Tudors related, but I'm currently reading a book about John of Gaunt (who is an ancestor of the Tudors so I guess it's a little related?) and it is so fascinating! He married a few times, and his children from his third marriage were the Beauforts- Henry VIII's paternal grandmother was Margaret Beaufort. John was also the brother-in-law of Geoffrey Chaucer. For anyone wanting a new history read or looking for one to give as a gift, it's by Helen Carr and is called The Red Prince: The Life of John of Gaunt. I listen to the BBC History Extra podcast and she had a great episode talking about the book on there a little while back.

[viii]

16 hours ago, Seahorse Wrangler said:

Claire Ridgway, founder of the Anne Boleyn Files has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Lovely news to share - I'm a Fellow! - The Anne Boleyn Files

That's awesome. Claire produces amazing work. 

[Seahorse Wrangler]

4 hours ago, Cat Damon said:

So this is not really Tudors related, but I'm currently reading a book about John of Gaunt (who is an ancestor of the Tudors so I guess it's a little related?) and it is so fascinating! He married a few times, and his children from his third marriage were the Beauforts- Henry VIII's paternal grandmother was Margaret Beaufort. John was also the brother-in-law of Geoffrey Chaucer. For anyone wanting a new history read or looking for one to give as a gift, it's by Helen Carr and is called The Red Prince: The Life of John of Gaunt. I listen to the BBC History Extra podcast and she had a great episode talking about the book on there a little while back.

By his second marriage to Constance of Castile, he was the great great grandfather of Catherine of Aragon.

His Beaufort children were barred from inheriting the throne of England by right of blood so Henry Tudor claimed it by conquest. 

[Seahorse Wrangler]

Found another interesting youtuber, tasting history with Max Miller. This one is a May Day Tudor Salad. 

 

[WiseGirl]

Have you ever watched the Supersizers Go? Both funny and fascinating. Some of the foods...ick. Here is a link to the Elizabethan episode. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00c4y5m

[Seahorse Wrangler]

16 hours ago, WiseGirl said:

Have you ever watched the Supersizers Go? Both funny and fascinating. Some of the foods...ick. Here is a link to the Elizabethan episode. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00c4y5m

sadly not available for me.

[samurai_sarah]

It's available on Youtube:

 

[Seahorse Wrangler]

Found a new blog Frock Flicks, looks at costuming in movies but is heavily Tudor biased. 

[Loveday]

11 minutes ago, Seahorse Wrangler said:

Found a new blog Frock Flicks, looks at costuming in movies but is heavily Tudor biased. 

I've been following Frock Flicks for years. They. Are. Hilarious. And they know their costuming stuff, let me tell ya! 

[Seahorse Wrangler]

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall author, dies aged 70

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The Booker prize-winning author of the Wolf Hall trilogy, Dame Hilary Mantel, has died aged 70, her publisher HarperCollins has confirmed.

Mantel was regarded as one of the greatest English-language novelists of this century, winning the Booker Prize twice, for Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, which also won the 2012 Costa book of the year.

The conclusion to her groundbreaking Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, was published in 2020 to huge critical acclaim, became an instant Sunday Times bestseller and was longlisted for the Booker prize.

HarperCollins confirmed she had died on Thursday “suddenly yet peacefully”, surrounded by close family and friends.

When asked by the Financial Times earlier this month whether she believed in an afterlife, Mantel said she did, but that she could not imagine how it might work. “However, the universe is not limited by what I can imagine,” she said.

 

[viii]

That's pretty young to pass away. I always wanted to read her books but I just found Wolf Hall to be so dreadfully dry that I could never get into it. 

[Loveday]

54 minutes ago, viii said:

That's pretty young to pass away. I always wanted to read her books but I just found Wolf Hall to be so dreadfully dry that I could never get into it. 

I agree. I think her writing style just takes some serious getting used to; I read the first few chapters and then put it aside because it was just such slow going. And I'm one who usually loves huge, slow, meandering novels full of seemingly irrelevant details. My patience for such is getting less the older I get, though. LOL. But the miniseries was phenomenal. Mark Rylance was so brilliant. That alone makes me want to sit down and try the book again sometime. Maybe some cold, snowy winter afternoon when I have nothing else to do!

Rest in peace, Hilary. 

[hoipolloi]

I feel that we should note the passing of Hilary Mantel in this thread devoted to the Tudors.

Her trilogy on Cromwell, Henry VIII, and Tudor England is matchless. 

[Seahorse Wrangler]

The Making of Anne Boleyn with Professor Suzannah Lipscomb