Incoherent Thoughts on the TV series 'The Tudors'

So, I discovered, many years after everyone else, that sparkly Showtime epic of The Tudors, American money and Irish filmed, and a stellar cast list (2007-2010).  I suddenly fell, and I’m not back yet.  Here are my rambly and incoherent thoughts on the series, and its relation to the actual historical events as I remember being taught them in school, and as I read about them now, in many many properly researched checkably footnoted academic history books!!

By the way, unless you have an interest and some vague knowledge about Tudor History, or have seen the series or David Starkey’s recent documentary on the same, or somesuch – you will probably find this post completely boring and incomprehensible!  Also, I kept having thoughts within thoughts, so I freely admit my usage of brackets has been totally overdone.  Sorry.  Be warned!

MAJOR SPOILERS!

The Tudors, Season 1
(As often is the case with first series’ of things: a work of total perfection. Henry’s lusty king with his whispered moments of back stabbing malevolence and instability; Sam Neill forever changing my opinion of Wolsey and causing me to sink into the history books, probably never to be seen again as I try and make sense of it all; Anne Boleyn being such a cats paw, yet trying to be her own woman at the same time.  All those seething courtiers determined to rise at the expense of others.  The incredible colours and velvetness of everything.  Such a joy to watch the clothes and jewels and countryside.  Immensely well done, and utterly addicting.  I will forever be terrified of that disease known as The Sweating Sickness!  Wolsey’s death scene and its music and editing have gone into my Top 5 TV/Movie Death Scenes Ever, there’s a blog I will do one day!  Of course, his death wasn’t anything like that.  A moment of vast poetic license – but it made a very good point.)

The Tudors, Season 2
(Showing no sign of recovering from what is suddenly my latest obsession.  This series was all about the downfall of Anne Boleyn.  Watching her sink into unstable paranoia, running about threatening people as if she still had power after she had spent soooooo lonnnnnnnnnnnnng consolidating her position was painful and gruelling.  But of course, I couldn’t stop.  Watching Thomas Cromwell betray her [as he betrayed Wolsey last series] stirred my interest in him too.  Amazing how clear headed he was about his goal of the Reformation. What would he not have sacrificed to it, to keep it on track?  More books for me to pore over, there.  You can see Thomas More’s fall coming too.  

The last shots of Anne, thinking about her childhood were very clever.  She is a difficult character to sympathise with in that she caught the king the way of women in those days, the expected way – with sex and seduction and wiles.  This automatically makes me, a modern, pissed off with her.  While I recognise at the same time, that in those days, women were universally regarded as sinful and tempting [that was established Catholic doctrine of the time – the religion of the land, before the Refomation, and almost after it, with all the vacillations and backing and forthing…it took hundreds of years to settle, really]…and that that was all she had to draw attention to herself.  The fact that she was manipulated constantly, by her father [what a piece of shit he was - this is confirmed from my historical factual reading!], her brother, Cromwell and anyone else who thought they could get something from her while she tried to preserve her sense of self and do some Reforming on the quiet… [and she was more moderate and probably more perceptive about how to do that than Cromwell…would we have had the Pilgrimage of Grace if he had followed Anne Boleyn’s advice?  Maybe not!!!] She’s a toughy – she’s complex and there’s not enough documentary sources out there about her that aren’t biased.  Even her own letters she knew were likely to be opened, so who knows how honest she was within them?  So.  A fascinating woman, who fell in the end.  And so many fell with her.  Poor old Mark Smeaton, in particular. 

To return, therefore, that shot of her thinking about her childhood, where she played hide and seek with her brother and father [‘he’ll get you, Anne!’ – and so he bloody does, doesn’t he?] – that was very clever.  She was a simple child once, caught up in the loving arms of her father, whom she trusts.  Who she could not have forseen or ever imagined, why would she, that he would betray her too, to save his own miserable life…And then she watches the birds break away overhead, before the Frenchman calls ‘get my sword, boy’, the perfect angle of her neck is made, and there she goes.  Into history…That isn’t going to make it to my Top 5 death scenes, but it was very thought-provoking nonetheless.  Its interesting just how much fact they are managing to squash into a show that is also playing very fast and loose with people and facts in other ways.)

The Tudors, Season 3
(Do you know, there’s almost too much death now?!!  Fisher – chop chop!  More – chop chop!!  [Good riddance, you canting hypocritical fanatic; can you tell I didn’t like him – that’s more from my proper history reading than the sympathetic portrayal he was mostly given here; he’s another waaaaaaaaay complex one; but I’m not liking him at all, the more I read.]  Brandon, played by the incredibly pretty Henry Cavill gets serious and never gets over it here: the Pilgrimage of Grace has made him miserable, all those hangings and slayings and putting down of the people of the North at Henry’s wish has made him old, and he stays old [the hot poker up the arse scene brought tears to my eyes – of course that was Jane Seymour’s brother, here, not Brandon, but goodness – it does remind you how inventive and disgustingly cruel they could be at this time]. 

Cromwell here is shown as being completely taken by surprise at the Pilgrimage, an interesting idea.  Being so convinced that what he is doing is a good idea he thinks everyone else will too – despite the need for earlier boilings etc for heresy…The finale to this season is watching him fall.  Slowly but surely.  He spent all of Season 2 successfully consolidating his position and being very good at his administration. 

He was blamed for the Pilgrimage of Grace; and then, after Jane Seymour died after childbirth, blamed for the Anne of Cleves marriage debacle.  It was a stunningly good move on his part, the presentation of Anne of Cleves – to protect his agenda of Reformation…shame Henry didn’t like her.  Also a shame Cromwell’s closest working companions betrayed him.  I started to get quite an immense sympathy for him, I felt like I was understanding him better and better.  Why, I ask myself, was I not thinking of him as a fanatic, like More?  He was, in many ways, similar there.  Yet, so far, and in my reading – I’m liking him better.  Is this because I was brought up Protestant and have a liking for us all being our own priests?  So I have sympathy for his ideals?  Even though I have trickled into my own personal paganism and am surrounded by as much accoutrements and accessories to my ‘religion’ as any Catholic might have, and indeed, almost converted to Catholicism as a child and have always had sympathy for it?!!  I think my own hodgepodge religious history may have something to do with liking him, so far [my opinion may change, depending on further investigation].  I’m all for personally reading whatever holy book there is and not being told it by someone else.  Personal revelation has always been me.  Hmmmm.  I do think its right that a country shouldn’t be controlled or influenced by an unelected person far away, claiming to speak for a nebulous god (i.e. the Pope).  So it’s right our State be separated from the Catholics. (Even if, at that time, it was all for personal caprice that Henry went along with it...for a shag, really.  Laughable.  And for personal power, not having anyone set above him before God.)

I had a very odd scary thought while watching this series: you know that saying that 2 wrongs don’t make a right?  All that blood and torment and sacrifice of the Refomation – and all for, quite often, personal gain, not even the ‘right’ reasons…and yet, hundreds of years later, here we are, a nominally Protestant country.  And I think that’s right, as I just said.  It’s good we aren’t a Catholic country.  So…in the end, were the means justified?  Isn’t that a thought…I’m still mulling it and have no conclusions as yet.  I’ve never before hit a situation where that adage was possibly proved wrong.  Worrying[1]. 

Anyway.  Cromwell’s death.  That business with the axeman…what a horrible unnecessary, again, awful thing to do to him.  They didn’t need to do that.  He was already defeated, they already had him.  That was just spite and it was ugly…then again, all the Catholics who conspired against him, were no doubt scared for themselves and thinking what happened to the Northerners on the Pilgrimage of Grace – fear makes terrible violence possible.  We humans…<shakes head>)

The Tudors, Season 4
(Hmmm.  This was the season where you see the culmination of all that moodiness and changeability of Henry go quite ballistic.  Catherine Parr barely keeps her head.  Of course, we know CatherineHoward fails.  I will definitely have to do some solid reading on her.  What in heaven’s name was she thinking???? What was Culpepper thinking???  [They cleverly managed to make me hate him in one tiny scene – after that, I was gunning for him everytime his pretty face appeared on screen; I have no idea if that episode was true and hope it wasn’t…I will investigate!]  What I mean is – Henry has already been shown to be changeable and oh my god, stubborn as feck; and he is quite capable of killing anyone who gets in his way or pisses him off sufficiently [or even insufficiently – with the burning of Lutherans one day and then Catholics the next – he was getting very confused about his own Refomation in the absence of Cromwell…].  Did they not realise they were playing with absolute fire??  And Lady Rochford.  There’s practically no documentary evidence to back up her portrayal here – but this is forgiven, as they make sense of her behaviour in absence of virtually any existing documentary evidence AT ALL about her.  She’s one of the great mysteries of that whole period.  Why in hell did she help them – she was old enough to know better.  Watching Henry age and become, surely, mentally ill, is the thing to decipher in this series.  As well as the now forgotten taking of Boulogne, where they Great Escaped under and into the besieged city to take it.  It was one of those attempts at glory that fail as they had to give it back shortly after as part of a different treaty; that’s the way politics went then. 

This series was also one of watching characters die off.  Brandon dies still miserable (after they played very loose with his private life indeed – it wasn’t anything much like they showed it, but very good TV nonetheless).  Eustace Chapuys goes – what a well played character.  And Mary seems to begin her trip to fanatical doolally land in his absence; but who can blame her what with the unstable childhood and bonkers father – and mother to some extent – that she has, the issues it must have made in her head??  Again, it makes it understandable.  Elizabeth remains a strange performance.  Cool, very cucumbery. 

They start skimming things at the end – they completely miss out how Henry possibly had Catherine Parr’s replacement all lined up [Catherine Willoughby – it will be a relief at some point in the future to not read about people called Thomas and Katherine and Anne constantly!], so she really was lucky to escape with her life.  They skim how the politics went even more insanely cutthroat right near the end – though of course they touch on it with Surrey trying to kidnap the young Prince [very interesting thuggy choice to play him too – he was another one I was gunning for to go], and the interplay with Bishop Gardiner [oh why did he keep his head – this series was also the one where *I* started wanting to kill people] and Jane Seymour’s brother, that cold fish again.  They cleverly glossed Bishop Gardiner’s sudden drop from power, that no doubt saved many lives.  It was interesting and very cleverly done, the way the series makers and writer, constantly engaged my sympathy AS A MODERN – I got cross with the lack of women’s rights, I got cross with the domination of religion in life, I got cross with the power concentrated in so few hands i.e. the lack of democracy – and then echoed it all back to me making me think how little things have changed in some ways and how much in others.  A very quiet little ordinary message, really!  As they had Brandon say: 'Worship the God of all, drink the wine, and let the world be the world.'

The thing that really made me think was those issues about the Refomation, and about the ‘low born men’ Henry was wont to surround himself with, that pissed off the nobles.  The low born weren’t THAT low born by the way – they weren’t simply ‘commons’ – they were what we would nowadays call the upper middle class, those with new money and considerable advantage.  It would be like saying Kate Middleton was ‘one of us’, a proper commoner.  Someone whose parents can afford to buy you a flat in Chelsea [the second most expensive place to live in the whole of the UK, after Mayfair] after you finish university and get you a management job in Jigsaw…is NOT a commoner.  You’re a reacher, an aspirant – and you are nine tenths of the way there already.  Marrying into ‘old blood’ just cements you.  So this ‘low born men’ idea…just to put it in modern perspective for you.  Of course, it was dead shocking at the time, all these Esquires getting promoted to Dukes etc – Brandon being one. 

But the Reformation thing was what stays with me.  All these hundreds of years later, you realise that this is truly a case of the history being written by the victors.  I have grown up, and remember being taught in school about the inherent rightness and logical progression of the Reformation and its ideas…I never questioned it as I found the subject dry as breadcrumbs the way it was taught.  [The whole Tudor period never did much for me before this series got me interested.  I blame the teachers!]

This series got me to really live in the period in terms of understanding how terrifying and scary and high handed it must have been for the regular people, the ‘commons’ to have the religion they had lived with for years – hundreds of years! – stripped away from them so quickly, roughly and dogmatically.  Sure, there were the many questioners of old relics purporting to be saints bones and obviously not; many dens of iniquity in the houses of monks and nuns; also many cases of bribery and pocket lining; questionings as to why people couldn’t read the gospels for themselves if they wanted to…this was all part of the Humanist scholarship sweeping the Renaissance period and trickling about and slowly downward…

But the way Cromwell set about it, after the persuasive mocking plays, the violence with which he dissolved the monasteries  - the good and bad ones alike – that was his error where the people were concerned, that and taking away their days off, the Holy Days: and the one Anne Boleyn strongly warned him against, among other points…This was all so shocking for the people at the time.  I am not surprised that eventually there was the Pilgrimage of Grace, though it was bloody brave and trusting of the Northern people to think they would live after a rebellion like that.  Saying you are incredibly loyal to your prince and then rebelling to make him see he was wrong about something to do with God when he takes his own authority as God-given…you’re on a bit of a slippery slope there logic wise, and won’t end up anywhere but drowning in very cold water.

Anyway, it really made me see what a terrible schism and upheaval the whole thing was.  How incredibly bloodless and dead wet fish was my teaching of it in school!  I had not really understood or felt it before.  It is far more interesting and complexly layered for me now.  I will read more.

Lastly, on the subject of Wolsey. 

Another bloody thing they didn’t teach me in school, and that I am irritated though happier to only discover now…In school he was portrayed [as he was in ‘A Man For AllSeasons’ and ‘Anne of A Thousand Days’ for a large part – so my school history books took their line from film history rather than documents, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm] as a fat, greedy, power hungry, manipulative priest, a Pope Puppet Poppet, as Stanley described him the other day.  This is, by the way, what we in England do largely STILL expect our politicians to be like, bar the Pope influence.  These sort of people just DO end up lining their pockets at our expense in politics. 

But there was no mention of what a good statesman he was.  Also – I realise that I partly swallowed that previous view whole because I have always thought those dedicating themselves to religion as priests, nuns, Cardinals – whatever, Should Do Better.  Live Better.  Be Better.  And I judged him more harshly because he seemed so ‘worldly’.  [Heaven knows where I get that idealistic nonsense from, as its patently not true in real life a lot of the time…Also, its hypocritical of me, as dedicating your life to whatever religion does not necessarily preclude joyousness in things worldly.  However, it did at this time, for Catholic monks and nuns, so…] 

If I am ever in doubt of Wolsey again, I remind myself to re-read pp.6-9 of Jasper Ridley’s The Statesman and the Fanatic: Thomas Wolsey and Thomas More (London: 1982, Constable), where he describes the difference between proper religious people, referred at the time as the monks and nuns to whom ‘matters religious’ were concerned, and the ‘secular clergy’ – people like Wolsey, who were the natural politicians of the time – not expected to be better than they were.  But maybe I shall attempt a summary of the history books I am reading about Wolsey that are quite the eye openers in terms of culture at the time, in another post one day…?  I shall save him from his verdict in common culture and redeem him via academic knowledge!  Or did Sam Neill do that already, simply by portraying him so well?!)

Anyhow, that's that for now. Confusing it was, eh?  Maybe I should have spent several more days making it make more sense?  But I lack the time...

Some more Dr Who books coming next...

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[1] Obviously, if I were a Catholic I’d say of course it was wrong.  But I’m not.  Neither am I, anymore, a Protestant.  I hope no one Catholic reading this gets offended.  As usual I am simply thinking aloud – and I speak only for myself, NEVER for anyone else.  And as I say, I’m undecided.  I’ll probably remain so – the stakes are too high, and it’s so long ago; its hard enough to know where you stand amidst all the spin of events today – let alone events from so far back with insufficient documentary evidence for us to know everything that happened.  Also – say we did know everything?  I don’t think 2 of us together would probably agree on a judgement of this period, these events.  They are too big, too violent.  All we can hope for is that We Humans learn to be Less Violent in time. (Does that sound like I don't always condemn violence?  State violence at that?  It does, doesn't it?  More for me to think on.  I find I often contradict my own inclinations when I have thought about them at length.  I suspect I'll be thinking about all of this for a very long time.  The issues are still pertinent now...)