Historical Inaccuracies
I've just finished watching the first season of Showtime's series, The Tudors which is basically porn with historical inaccuracies mixed in. Now I like historical fiction, and I'm willing to accept a certain amount of creative license, but I hate it when things are randomly changed seemingly without reason. The Tudors has a lot of these. One of the best examples is the character of Thomas Tallis, who had NOTHING to do with any of the people at court other than writing music for them. He's a completely random character! Plus they couldn't even get his wife's name right. They almost did but then decided to kill her (despite the fact that she outlived him) and have him marry her sister. What? Why?!
To drive home the point one can see above in the official logo that they can't even count to six and I have a bad feeling that it's my favorite wife (Anne of Cleves) who's going to get shafted.
Though it's terribly difficult identifying any of them by their boobs.
2 comments:
Yeah, admittedly, it's not the show to go to if you want flat-out history. I mean, they changed Henry's sister Mary's name to Margaret because they thought it would be confusing to have two Mary Tudors. (But apparently Anne Boleyn's sister Mary was able to keep her name because she shows up for two episodes and disappears.)
I don't think those women are meant to be his wives, though. I think it's just meant to signify that Henry VIII is a lusty young fellow. Or something like that. Anne of Cleves doesn't appear until the third series, which hasn't finished airing here yet, so I can't speak to that.
Are you a friend of mine or just someone who found my blog? Either way, thanks for your comments.
And Henry did have a sister named Margaret, but the Margaret in the Tudors more closely follows the life of his sister Mary.
I figured they may have made Tallis marry Jane instead of Joan because Woolsley's lover was also named Joan. But she's barely in the story, so that hardly seems to justify that random plot device.
And now that I think of it, I suppose those women behind him could just represent the wives in the show so far and since season three has Jane Seymore, Anne of Cleves, and Katherine Howard, it makes sense to put only five women behind him. The show hasn't had Katherine Parr yet.
But I think another large inaccuracy is the fact that Henry is still attractive looking by the time he gets to Katherine Howard (I saw this in the previews). In reality, by then he was old, fat, impotent, and had a festering wound on his leg that wouldn't heal.
But I don't suppose that would sell as well.
Anyway, I don't think it's all bad or I wouldn't have watched the entire first season. I quite enjoyed the complexity of Cardinal Woolsley and Thomas More's characters. I think they sell themselves short when they go for the cheap sex appeal aspect.
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