#tl; dr there's a lot of smugness evident in many books of this genre | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fideidefenswhore · 4 months

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the downfall and execution of a tudor queen (2023) / the boleyns: a scandalous family (2021) / the king's pearl: henry viii and his daughter mary (2017), melita thomas / anne boleyn (tv miniseries 2021) / the mirror and the light (2024) / elizabeth (1998)

#web weaving #sort of?#i never feel like my edits really fit #they're more like collages #anyway...me on my island with the one other tudor fan that liked AB 2021 lol #'our expectations were low but holy fuck' sounds like a lot of consternation about a pretty...solid script?#what i loved most about it was moments like the above #the ability to summarize really complex dynamics borne of circumstance #in such a way that you can believe in the world and it serves as its own 'previously on' that a miniseries inherently lacks #esp when it only covers five crucial months #tl; dr there's a lot of smugness evident in many books of this genre #when it comes to anne's attitude towards her stepdaughter #bcus she was quote proven wrong unquote; becaues mary got quote the last laugh unquote...#when really. as per the quotes i've been posting #it doesn't seem like mary's reconciliation with her father was the idyll many have made it #thus we have anne's letter #and offer. knowing that others are offering her better futures #but saying this is the best future you could have. limited time only.#and it seems the future proved her right; not wrong (at least the immediate future)#bcs while matters; had she accepted; might not've been substantially better than they were under the auspices of a 'more gentle' stepmother #it also doesn't really seem like they would have been substantially worse #anne was right that her enemy's supporters wanted her disgraced and/or dead. she was right in that they wanted elizabeth disgraced #and/or dead. she couldn't have predicted what happened to herself in the exact matter it did- mainly bcus it was unprecedented #but it seems she had a pretty clear view of what mary was doing: playing both sides. attempting to ingratiate herself to her father while #also conspiring against him. and she knew it would have been better to have her on side #(and in a more jaundiced view: have her where she could watch what she was doing; who she was seeing)#but perhaps underestimated how impossible it would be to get her there in the first place #('on side' ; that is. not at court. although probably not that either. with the conditions she demanded)#but her fears of mary were not paranoia. they seem to have been grounded in realism #and a clear view of the situation at home and abroad

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