Seat of a Bishop. And the book explains that the diocesan seat is at Kingsbridge, and that the Bishop is also Abbot of Kingsbridge (which is why he has such influence in picking a Prior, and hence Phillip’s and Waleran’s deal). It explains that in the old days most cathedrals were in out of the way places, but that by the time the novel took place, most of them had moved to bigger and more prominent settlements, but that just hadn’t happened in that diocese. In fact, in the book, one of the plots that William and the Bishop come up with is to try to move the diocesan seat to Stirling, which would doom the priory.
Hey this show is quite entertaining and fun watching some history mixed with story telling. Could someone please help me find out what the weeping stone is, and if there really is a mineral that with similar abilities to that of the Weeping Stone in Jack’s statue.
WEEPING STONE XD HELP MEH
This thread was close to the boneyard… glad I caught it before it went the way of, well, almost everybody in this great mini-series.
My girlfriend and I finished watching the entire series last night via Netflix. First off, producing a nine (originally eight) episode historical series for a major television network on a $40 million budget is no small feat, but the entire cast and crew managed to do very, very much with little. It’s been a wonderful and engaging series. There was a point that I had to cut myself off from watching another episode because it was 2:00am and I had to be up for work the next morning.
Anyway, now that it’s (sadly) finished, there were a couple of questions I couldn’t seem to figure out:
[ol]
[li]When King Stephen was captured and imprisoned by Empress Matilda’s army, Bishop Waleran switched sides, allied with the Empress, and spit in Stephen’s face. Why was no mention of that made ever again in the series? An episode or two later, Waleran was back to counseling Stephen as if nothing ever happened.[/li][li]Why didn’t ex-Prior Philip out Prior Remigius when Philip was demoted? He knew Remigius was a tool for Waleran and sought to see Kingsbridge fail. I believe Philip mentioned in the first episode that he knew about Remigius’ acts of sodomy.[/li][li]Henry, Matilda’s son and supposedly rightful heir to the throne, was killed fighting Stephen’s army. Does that suggest Stephen won the war? I don’t remember any mention being made as to the outcome of Stephen v. Matilda.[/li][li]Finally, was Martha’s story more detailed in the book? Here’s a girl that witnessed her mother die in childbirth, her father murdered, (both before she was even a teenager!) and her brother kill 79 people through incompetence then poison himself and die. She was pretty much an orphan with not even Ellen looking after her. Kind of pushed aside by the story of Jack and Aliena, Martha to me seems like the most tragic character.[/li][/ol]
Anyone?
I’ll need to re-watch it in order to take a stab at your questions. It has been awhile and the old memory is not what it used to be. I haven’t read the books either.
Same here. I watched the miniseries when it first aired eighteen months ago, and I liked it, but am now foggy on it. Note, though, that much of the stuff about Matilda, Henry and Stephen is historical (although I don’t know how much the author fictionalized).
I just started watching this last night, there was a random episode on. I’m hooked and am probably going to track it down on DVD. I loved how they showed the workings of the society, it isn’t all just kings, queens, and boobs.
Since the thread was revived, I’ll mention that a miniseries based on World Without End (the sequel to the novel Pillars of Earth) was recently made. It’s supposed to air on Channel 4 in the UK, ReelzChannel in the US and Showcase in Canada (this is all according to the Wikipedia page).