I didn’t see a thread on this, so excuse me if I’m duplicating anything.
I must say, the opening scene was extremely uncomfortable to watch. I’ve heard royalty had servants to wipe their bums for them, but did Henry really have a manservant standing (actually kneeling) there with a towel while he took care of his pent-up sexual frustration? :eek:
My son was complaining that Cardinal Wolsey’s final words (about serving God and the King) were actually said on his way to the execution, not as he was being arrested, and that Wolsey suffered a stroke instead of committing suicide. I think TPTB knew that, therefore the scene where the King says that no one must know how Wolsey died were a wink and a nod to historians.
Anne is a true bitch. If you’re going to give it up, give it up. Don’t bring the guy to the verge and push him off…that’s just vicious and cruel.
I believe the consensus here is that this is not a very historically accurate show, and that Rhys-Meyers is miscast. That may be, but it sure is a pretty show to watch.
I saw it. I didn’t like this show at first, but it grew on me. I’m glad there’ll be another season. I’ll miss Wolsey, though. Sam Neill is a great actor.
I watched it, I just wasn’t impressed enough with it to comment. I liked Sam Neill’s moment and JRM’s butt shot but honestly I can’t tell most of the characters apart even after watching the whole season and it seems like half of them are named “Thomas.” The only saving grace of this show is Maria Doyle Kennedy. I will likely watch next season for as long as she’s on it but then unless something radically sparks my interest I’m gone.
He was fat by the time he finally married Anne, though.
He’s going to be so bitchy as the Pope. I can’t wait to see someone just cockblock the bratty Henry. Even though this is a stupid show, I do love the drama.
As for Anne being a bitch, well, she’s looking out for #1. She was in a very precarious position and had invested years and years in this whole misadventure. She didn’t want to blow it by becoming pregnant with an illegitimate child, considering how Bessie Blount was cast aside once her son was born. No, she was not a nice girl, but then, Henry was a complete bastard, so they were well-matched in that respect.
We’ve been watching the entire season, and really enjoying it. Yes, it’s not historically accurate and Henry should be a ginger , but the performances of Maria Doyle Kennedy and (I think) Natalie Dormer, Sam Neil and even JRM are really very good. This is my favorite period in history, so I’m a bit inclined to like it :).
I think it shapes up really well for next season, we all know historically that alot of “drama” will be occurring and I think they’d have to be idiots not to at least make it entertaining. Even though she’s a hard bitch, you have to be a little bit sympathetic to Anne’s situation- she can’t back out of where she is and if she doesn’t fight tooth and nail to keep her position, her entire family will be nothing to the King and they will all blame her. Conversely, the Queen also is in a position where she has little choice but to fight- but at least she has been offered a way to withdraw with at least some of her dignity intact. I admire her convictions though, and not sure what I would be doing in her shoes.
I’m sympathetic to Anne Boleyn, except for the way she treated Catherine and Mary, and she regretted that before her death.
I’ve always been guiltily annoyed with Catherine of Aragon. She was undeniably right in that she was the legitimate queen of England and Henry’s wife. But I can’t help thinking how much better everyone’s life might have turned out (hers, Mary’s, Anne’s and even Henry’s) if she had given in to Henry’s early demands and allowed the marriage to be dissolved.
This is one of my time-travel fantasies - to go back and tell Catherine what was going to happen if she fought the divorce, to see if it would make any difference in how she reacted. Or better yet, simply to save Henry and Catherine’s baby boy.
(I have all the episodes of The Tudors queued up on the DVR, but I haven’t watched them all yet. I’m one of those who was irritated in the beginning by the casting of JRM. Not because he’s hot - I have no objections to portraying Henry as still attractive in this time period - but because he is so different from the large, boisterous, red-headed Henry. Also I can’t get JRM’s character from Gormenghast out of my mind.)
I watched all season and I found that Rhys-Meyers did the opposite of growing on me. I didn’t mind that he was hot (as Henry was considered to be extremely handsome in his youth), or that he was too young – the compression of events was kind of warranted in this case, I think. But he’s just too small. Henry, even in his very fit youth, was a big guy. He should have been the biggest guy in every scene. And his smallness just made him seem more and more un-Henry to me. The cat they have playing Brandon would have been a better choice for Henry, in my opinion, if they felt they had to play him young. If they had wanted to go age-appropriate (which really would have been my preference), the guy who played Buckingham in the first couple of episodes would have made an excellent King Hal.
Most of the other changes also irritated me – because I just couldn’t see the sense in them. In most instances, the changes they made didn’t improve in any way on the real story. Wolsey’s end was a case in point – in what way was having him commit suicide in prison better than having him die, sick and in disgrace, while he waited to be arrested for treason? His famous line about wishing he had served God with as much diligence as he had the king would have had a lot more punch as a deathbed line than it did shouted out as he was arrested.
The clothes also bothered me increasingly – especially the women’s headgear. Everyone looked beautiful, but only very. very rarely did you see a woman in the right type of headgear. Katherine (once) and some of her maids were wearing what looked like a french hood – appropriate for the time, but since Anne is known to have favored the french hood I very much doubt Katherine ever wore one. She should have been wearing a gabled hood and I never saw one once in the entire series.
And the masturbation thing at the beginning wigged us all out (I watched it with my husband and my parents). Gross! We’re calling the unlucky servant the Groom of the Hankie.
You know what I did like, though? The bloke whom More burned at the stake (forgot his name) didn’t use the King James version of the 23rd Psalm. Reasonable enough, given that King James had not yet been born at the time of these events, but a very nice touch, especially given the looseness with which most history was treated in this series.
My son asked me what the servant was going to do with the—er—contents of the Hankie. I said fertilize the roses or mix it in the oatmeal, I had no clue.
