(no subject)

[endlessrarities]

It's been a strange weekend.  The telly has been pretty rubbish, so my viewing has run as follows:-

Friday evening: Simon's Schama's History of Britain - Nations.  Or, how Edward I thoroughly trashed the Welsh, nearly wound up trashing the Scots, and how the poor old Irish got trashed by EVERYONE, even the Scots who were ostensibly dispatched to help them.

Hmmm.  That's not a good start.  Particularly when you pay a visit the following day to an abbey which still bears the scars of Edward I's predations etched deep within its fabric.  For Paisley was one of the many religious houses that Longshanks laid waste on his forays north in search of Imperial glory.  

This thoughtful trip to Paisley Abbey was followed up by a fascinating programme on the History Channel called Inside the Body of Henry VIII.  This used historical accounts and artefactual evidence (in particular, Henry's suits of armour) to examine Henry's health issues.  The researchers concluded that he was virtually crippled by his jousting accident (the wounds on his legs were left as running sores and you could evidently smell him coming three rooms away...), and that in later life he suffered from Type II diabetes.  And they suggested that his despotism could be linked with an injury to his frontal lobes, again sustained in his jousting accident.  J wound up feeling sorry for him.  I can't say I felt the same way. 

This was then followed another episode of Simon Schama's History of Britain: King Death, which dealt with the Black Death and the Peasant's Revolt, and ended with the murder of Richard II in Pontefract Castle.

Cue The Tudors.  Which by some strange twist of Fate, just so happened to open in Pontefract Castle, with references to the murdered Richard II.  And, after enduring another episode where I felt a) chronologically dislocated, and b) extremely dissatisfied by the writers' treatment of the Scots situation, I finally stirred myself to check my literary sources. 

I wish I hadn't,  Because I'm bloomin' angry, because the Scots really are getting a bad press in The Tudors.  Last night, Henry VIII lost his rag because the Scots had rampaged south of the border, practising their slash and burn tactics.  I lost my rag, too, because this just never happened.  After Flodden (when, to be fair, the audacious James IV had indeed been guilty of annoying the English, but perhaps that's because he wanted Berwick back, which the English had nicked 50 years before...) the Earl of Surrey had left the Scots in a situation which was the late medieval equivalent of being nuked back to the Stone Age. 

Anyway, I feel it's my solemn duty to set the record straight, because let's face it, nobody else will.  Here's the official view, taken from a fun populist textbook (written from the English perspective), which is edited by a respectable bunch of scholars from Cambridge, Saint Andrews, etc, (The Chronicles of the Tudor Kings, ed. Loades, D):-

     'Employing a combination of threatening embassies and raids across the border, he [Henry VIII] did his best to browbeat the Scottish King into entering an alliance that would have turned Scotland almost into a vassal kingdom.

     When these measures failed, he embarked on a full-scale war and in November 1542, at Solway Moss, inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Scots.  James V died three weeks later, supposedly of a broken heart, leaving his throne to Mary, his six-year old daughter.'

Why couldn't they stick to the historical script?  Would it have been that hard??  I suspect it may be something today with the writers' determination to make Henry VIII remain a sympathetic, hard-done-by character.  They also want to give Henry a chance to ride to war as a glorious, heroic leader.  Which is again really rather silly, because by then he was a shuffling, obese, cantankerous tyrant.

And what really makes me exasperated is the fact that in every other aspect of the tale, they seem to have got everything spot-on, with regards to the mayhem in Henry's domestic life, at least.  Gawd, I'd love to set the record straight by writing a novel from the Scots perspective, but hey ho, by the time I get around to doing that one, I'll be in my nineties, at the rate thing's are going.

But...  As a drama, it still beats everything else on telly at the moment.  If it hadn't been for the Scots issue, I'd even forgive the slightly-less-than slimline Henry and the Scots Suffolk...  And even though The Tudors left the realms of historical drama and turned into historical soap opera almost from the outset, I can't help hoping that when Henry croaks, they do another series about Edward and Mary...

And, in case you're wondering...  No.  I'm not a Nationalist.  And I still find it incredible to think that one of the Stirling Heads has been interpreted by modern scholars as Henry VIII, because if I was James V, the last thing I'd want in my presence chamber was the image of my nemesis emblazoned on my ceiling...

Ha!  For someone who was secretly rooting for Wales in the rugger last night, I'm doing a remarkably good job of sounding like a peeved Scot....