I can’t really call this Everything Wrong With Reign Part VI, because for once, nothing included here is Reign‘s fault. They were cancelled before they got the chance to… present the story of Mary, Queen of Scots in their unique and sensational style. In the final episode of Reign, we see Mary desperately trying to… Read More Everything Reign Couldn’t Get Wrong: The Seasons That Never Were
We are kicking off our more in depth look at Everything wrong with Reign (S4) with a look at the portrayal of Elizabeth I. Having been introduced as the primary antagonist in Season 3, Rachel Skarsten reprises her role in Season as an Elizabeth desperate to keep her throne. Elizabeth’s plot lines focus on her romantic… Read More Everything Wrong With Reign S4: Elizabeth I
It took a minute, but I have finally finished Reign. Ostensibly showing the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, Reign was famous (or infamous) for its anachronisms and its sheer drama. It took historical fiction to new heights with increasingly ridiculous and outlandish storylines that had little to no bearing on reality. But boy, was it entertaining.… Read More Everything wrong with Reign (Season 4)
When studying the English court over any period of time, certain family names become familiar and are inevitably repeated. Prominent families rise and fall throughout the ages; the Percy Family from the North of England have been at court since that of William the Conqueror and have held the Earldom of Northumberland longer than any… Read More The Boleyn Blip: The Rise and Fall of a Family
Reign season three continues to give us a wildly entertaining and dramatic life of Mary, Queen of Scots. This time we have a new antagonist; Queen Elizabeth I of England. Historically, Elizabeth was Mary’s natural rival. They both had a claim to the English throne and being of opposing religions gave the people an obvious… Read More Everything Wrong with Reign (Season 3)
Season 4 of the notoriously innacurate but eminently watchable The Tudors ends with the breakdown of Henry VIII’s marriage to his German bride, Anne of Cleves. We see the marriage dissolve, it’s chief engineer Thomas Cromwell go to the block for his role in it, and Henry marry his fifth wife; Catherine Howard. But in… Read More Mary I and her First Philip
And lo, we come to the third and final sister in our exploration of the extremely unhappy marriages of the Grey ladies. Of the three Grey sisters, Lady Mary Grey was deemed the least likely to assume the role of Tudor heiress. Technically, it was hers to assume; like her sisters, she was the granddaughter… Read More The Unfortunate Marriages of the Ladies Grey Pt III: Mary
Many moons ago, in the long-distant days of 2004, historian John Guy published My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary, Queen of Scots. It was a comprehensive biography of Mary, Queen of Scots and for some of us [read: me] it would become required reading for the various school work on Mary, Queen… Read More Everything Wrong (and sometimes right) With Mary, Queen of Scots (2018)
Recently, I wrote about Lady Jane Grey and her extremely unhappy marriage to a man she despised. By contrast, her sister Katherine would have two marriages to men she loved deeply, and who loved her back, but by dint of her place in the succession, and Elizabeth I’s seeming determination to snuff out love among… Read More The Unfortunate Marriages of the Ladies Grey Part II: Katherine
Lady Jane Grey is most well known for her nine-day stint as queen – the shortest reign of any British monarch. It was so short, that there is some question over whether she is actually to be counted among rulers of England. Her execution shortly afterwards, when she was still only sixteen years old, means… Read More The Unfortunate Marriages of the Ladies Grey Part I: Jane
