REIGN PAIN

Tags

costumes, France, French court, intrigue, Mary Queen of Scots, Protestant, Reign, religious unrest, TV series, Valois

While moseying along the racks at the library, I spied a TV series in the DVD section, one I’d never heard about. History freak that I am, it got snatched before anyone else noticed it sitting there, two seasons worth of what looked like Elizabethan period work. I should have paid more attention to the front cover.

Yeah, yeah, I’m an annoying stickler for historical fact, but this thing caused major jaw-dropping due to the history of Mary Queen of Scots getting twisted into something unrecognizable, a sort of hysterical history. Had the characters been taken over by pod people? Had the writers lost all sense of integrity? About half way through the first season it became clear: Reign, for all the bucks they’ve dumped into a very attractive production, has a target audience of teens, quite simply, a soap opera for the teenage masses.

Costumes for the men are a mish-mash covering a three hundred year span. Let’s face it, teens today would not like to see their heroes in tights, heels and bulbous shorts. And the girls, oye, the female costumes look like prom night on meth. For today’s proms, they’re perfect, but the time period is 1558 with ten layers of clothes and twenty pounds of beads and lace.

Mary Queen of Scots had her ups and downs in history but the real action didn’t start for her until she returned to Scotland after the death of King Francis II, who was probably a foot shorter, sickly and had a speech impediment. He kicked it a year and a half after they married, he fifteen and Mary seventeen at the time. And it was never established if their marriage had been consummated. It was said they liked each other well enough, according to Dad, King Henry II, who had ulterior motives, doncha know. And talk about strangling the facts, pious Francis murdered his father on the jousting field? It boggles the mind that puny Francis donned armor and lanced his father to death. Shame, shame, oh ye purveyors of nonsensical history.

On the positive side, I liked the performances. It takes talent and discipline to walk the fine edge of teen angst and soap opera scenery-chewing. Veteran, Megan Follows, is always a pleasure to watch. She infuses Queen Catherine with a vague, sly humor and this tempers the evil of the woman’s scary-cunning political maneuvers.

Now if the creators of this project wanted to make a twisted tale out of the Valois court, they should’ve written about Francis’s youngest brother, who later became king, the charming—and I must say decidedly prickish—Alexandre Edouard, Henri III. Now we’re talking the dark side of the force. This guy had no problem murdering family members, one of which was the Duke de Guise, Mary’s uncle. Henri Three also massacred Protestants after instigating political unrest, fled Paris like a coward and then later plotted to wage war on the city. Oh but the list goes on and on. One bit of accuracy in Reign is that it shows the real power broker, Mom, Queen Catherine de Medici. She ran the show behind the curtains and continued to do so during the tenures of all of her sons.

So why am I whining and ranting? There’s nothing wrong with fiddling with historical fact when it’s being made obvious that is the case. Heath Ledger in A Knight’s Tale was acceptable because the entire movie was tongue-in-cheek. It didn’t make itself out to be anything but a fun story set in the medieval time period, but Reign has warped the entire time period. My hope is that students will become interested enough to look up the truth, especially since our schools aren’t teaching it longer.

And so ends my rant. In a nutshell, if you don’t care about history and just want to see youngsters in costume playing at court intrigues, you’ll like this production. For a more precise rendition of the period, watch Helen Mirren in Elizabeth I.

As Monty Python was wont to say, and now for something completely different. Critique partner and writing buddy, Judith Post, writing as Judi Lynn, has a cover release for her upcoming digital work from Kensington, Cooking Up Trouble, scheduled to come out next year. Take a look-see:

http://www.pumpupyourbook.com/2015/11/27/pump-up-your-book-presents-cooking-up-trouble-cover-reveal/

M.L Rigdon (aka Julia Donner)

Follow on Twitter @RigdonML

Website http://www.MLRigdon.com

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Julia-Donner

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Something Completely Different

Tags

Bastille, Crete, ergot, France, history mystery, Maori, plague, Richelieu, St. Vitas, WWII

 

After so many downer-type posts, it’s about time for something not so heavy. There are a lot of so-called historical facts on the web. Some are of the LOL variety, but I was unable to verify most of them. It boiled down to a few to follow in chronological order.

First up, the mystery of the “Dancing Plague” of 1518. A woman in Strasburg, France started it by dancing nonstop on a public street. People joined her gyrations with no let-up for as many as six days, staying in motion, which is supposedly inhuman and impossible, until they dropped. When the illness waned—the inflicted expired of exhaustion and/or heart attacks and strokes—four hundred men and women had died. Seven other cases were recorded during the medieval age in the same region. This incident is well documented and a book was written about it, in which the conclusion of the mystery was mass psychosis brought on by starvation and disease. Maybe. But how can starved, diseased people dance for days nonstop when that kind of exertion is beyond marathoners? Another suggestion said it came from ergot fungus ingestion, which can infest grains, but that’s poisonous. The only medical conclusion I could think of was that it was an early version or variation of St. Vitas Dance, or syndenham chorea, but that usually occurs in female adults, the rheumatic fever version mostly shows up in kids. Who the heck knows what caused it? Maybe they were naughty and St. Vitas rained down on them his dancing curse. Case unsolved. It happens. One medical source suggested a contageous “outbreak of psychogenic illness.” That could happen. Look at our Congress.

There’s also the famed story of storming the Bastille, in which all of seven, yes, seven prisoners were freed. Let’s be real. The Bastille’s ugly reputation came from the ever-popular Richelieu, thug-slash-minister to Loius XIII. The building was actually an armory, hence let’s storm it to get the munitions inside, not the prisoners, but the later scenario makes for a juicier story. Richelieu liked to throw his political and religious enemies in the clink. Aristocratic families with misbehaving sons dumped them in a cell there to cool their high-kicking, red heels. The thing that impressed me most about the Bastille was seeing its key. The memory of it is clear and perfect, in a box on the wall of George Washington’s house on Mt. Vernon.

The last factoid I didn’t fully confirm, because I want it to be true, but did verify that certain parts are documented. On the isle of Crete during WWII, Germans tried to scare off allied forces by shouting out in English that they were going to attack with bayonets and stab the enemy to death. The threat was met with wild and eager cheers from the allied soldiers. Their joy so terrorized the Germans that they retreated. What the Germans didn’t know was they had threatened the famed Maori warriors with their most ardent wish—a glorious victory in hand-to-hand battle. New Zealand’s battalions became known as Knife Men, had petitioned to go to war, and ran around Crete making use of their bayonets. And got lots of medals. A caveat: my family on my mother’s side is all Germanic immigrants, proud and rock-hard stubborn. It’s ingrained. If only the Germans hadn’t been so cocky. Oh the irony.

Next up: Haven’t Decided Yet