Reign: Attack of the 16th Century Millennials

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16th century Europe, 16th century France, Adelaide Kane, Bad Clothing, Catherine de Medici, Kings and Queens, Mary Queen of Scots, Mary Stuart, Reign, The CW

So I was on Netflix the other night and it suggested that I watch Reign, the CW show about Mary Queen of Scots. And I thought, “Ok. Let’s give it a try. How bad can it be?” The answer is, it can be pretty darn bad.

The Historical Queen Mary of Scotland

Marie Stuart (which is the French spelling of her name) was born in December of 1542, the only surviving child of King James V of Scotland and his French wife Mary of Guise. The Scots and the French had for centuries maintained a traditional political alliance based on mutual hostility to England. Starting in the 14^th century, it had been very convenient for France to be allied with Scotland, because whenever the English invaded France during the Hundred Years’ War, the French could count on the Scots invading England. For that reason, the two countries maintained what the Scots termed ‘the Auld Alliance’.

Marie’s father died of a fever less than a week after Marie was born, and as his only legitimate child, she then became queen. Henry VIII of England, seeing an opportunity to break the Auld Alliance, proposed that Marie wed his son Edward when she turned six. The Scottish regent initially accepted the offer, but by July of 1543, the deal had broken down and the Scots renewed the Auld Alliance. In response, Henry’s forces invaded Scotland, hoping to seize the young queen. This invasion, which was nicknamed the ‘Rough Wooing’, failed, but made clear to the Scots that it was quite risky for them to keep Mary where the English might grab her.

Eventually, after moving Marie further northward for several years, in 1548, the Scots accepted a French proposal, quite literally. King Henry II suggested that Marie should wed his three year old son, Francis. As a result, Marie was sent to live at the French royal court; it was typical of such arranged royal marriages that the young bride would be raised along her future husband, and the French royal court would be a much safer place for her. She was accompanied by her two illegitimate half-brothers and four Scottish ladies-in-waiting, the ‘Four Marys’ (since all four of them were named Mary).

Marie and Francis as king and queen

In April of 1558, when she was 16, Marie signed a treaty making the French king her heir if she died without heirs. Less than a month later, she married Francis. In November of 1558, when Mary I of England died and was succeeded by Elizabeth I, Marie became the heir to the English throne, since she and Elizabeth were cousins. In July of 1559, when Henry II died, Francis became King Francis II and Marie became his queen. Unfortunately for her, however, Francis died less than 18 months later from some sort of ailment centered on his ear. His 10 year old brother became King Charles IX, and Henry II’s widow, Catherine de Medici, became regent. Catherine disliked Marie and since there was nothing to keep her in France and she had a kingdom in Scotland, she soon returned back to Scotland.

Marie’s Scottish subjects greeted her with some suspicion. She had been raised in France and spoke French as her main language, speaking English only with a heavy French accent. She also chose to spell her first and last name in the French fashion (which is why I’ve chosen to use that spelling here, as well as to keep her separate from the various other Marys of the period). More seriously, having been raised in Catholic France, Marie was a devout Catholic, whereas Scotland was by 1560 torn between Catholics and Protestants. Her reign in Scotland proved to be extremely turbulent. But I’m going to break off her story here and turn instead to Reign.

 

The adult Marie. Note her red hair

Are You Mary Queen of Scots?

Reign opens in 1557, with Mary Stuart (Adelaide Kane) 15 years old and living at a French convent. She and the young nuns play soccer until it’s time to have lunch outdoors. One of the nuns begins bleeding out of her mouth and ears and drops dead in her porridge; it’s revealed that she was Mary’s food taster, and so clearly there is a plot afoot to poison Mary. The Mother Superior decides that it’s time to send Mary back to the French royal court because the convent is unsafe.

Adelaide Kane as Mary. Note the distinct lack of red hair.

None of that actually happened. Mary was raised at the French court. However, the idea that a young Catholic noblewoman could have been raised in a convent is entirely reasonable, and the opening gives the series a chance to show her return to court as a way to introduce the cast and the setting to the audience, so I suppose we can forgive this particular historical liberty.

However, once Mary leaves the convent, the show also substantially leaves the realm of history and quickly finds itself in the realm not of France but of the contemporary teen romance. The pilot offers Mary three potential boyfriends, Prince Francis (Toby Regbo); Sebastian, Francis’ illegitimate half-brother (Torrance Coombs), and Colin (Ashley Charles), a Scottish boy she evidently knew from back home who has come to France to serve her because he’s obviously into her even though he’s technically the boyfriend of one of her ladies in waiting. Suffice to say, of the three, only Francis actually existed.

Mary also learns that the Franco-Scottish alliance is not a guaranteed thing, for reasons that aren’t actually explained (at least not in the episodes I managed to get through). The political arrangements in the series are very simple. The English are bad, and because they’re bad, they want to assassinate Mary. They’re Protestant, whatever that means, while the French and apparently the Scots are Catholic, which means they occasionally carry a rosary. The Auld Alliance, France’s powerful position in 16^th century Europe, and the historic reasons that the French want Mary aren’t relevant, because what matters is that the uncertainty about the alliance means that Mary and Francis can be on-again, off-again as the network’s need to generate suspense requires. And when they’re off again, Mary can be interested in Sebastian, who even gets a cute nickname, Bash, or courted by whatever nobleman happens to be visiting the French court in that particular episode.

Oh, and Francis’ mother, Catherine (Megan Follows) hates Mary, which is accurate, but the series has Nostradamus predict that Mary will be the death of Francis, so Catherine naturally wants to stop the marriage. In the pilot, Catherine either bribes or pressures Colin into attempting to drug Mary so he can rape her and thus render her not a virgin and therefore not a fit wife for the king. Unfortunately it all goes wrong because a mysterious girl who hides somewhere in the palace and wears a bag over her head warns Mary not to drink the wine and so she avoids being raped. Colin gets arrested and has his head chopped off, only it turns out that the executioners accidentally executed the wrong guy and Bag Girl helps Colin escape, which causes Catherine no end of worry.

As the series goes on, it occasionally brushes up against actual events. Mary’s status as a potential heir to the English throne is introduced, although she refuses to claim the throne because that would be political, I guess. At the end of the season, King Henry dies as a result of a jousting injury, which happened (but not while jousting his own son) and Francis becomes king.

But the series wouldn’t be complete without Mary’s cadre of high school frenemies ladies in waiting, who are all lovely young Scottish women without the faintest trace of Scottishness among them (but in all fairness, both the Scots and the French are played as Americans, so at least the series is consistent). Their names are Amy, Greer, Kenna, and Lola, which the scriptwriters presumably got out of a recent high school year book. At least Greer gets a Scottish loconym, ‘of Kinross’.

Mary and her besties. Note the distinct lack of sleeves or anything else to suggest the 16th century

In other words, the series is interested in historical accuracy about as much as 300 2: Rise of an Empire is. The faintest outline of the historical Mary Stuart can be seen through the rather tawdry clothing they’ve put on her.

Speaking of clothing…

Look at All the Prom Dresses!

The costuming in this series is ghastly, about as historically accurate as the typical high school play. The young women in the series all generally wear 21^st century fashions (except for Bag Girl, unless there’s a hot new trend in burlap that I’m not aware of). While many of the dresses are moderately full-length, that’s about as close as they get to period clothing. They are variously off-the-shoulder, sleeveless, low-cut, short skirted, gauzy, glittery, lacey, feathery, and so on. More or less, the young women at the French court dress like they’re going to a 21^st century prom. And they wear high heels. Catherine de Medici gets a more mature, reserved, and slightly more accurate take on those fashions, as befits a queen of France. (Tyranny of Style offer a short, but intelligent discussion of the show’s fashions.)

How are these not prom dresses?

The men spend most of their time running around in fitted leather or velvet pants with dark-colored, often unlaced doublets, with the occasional slashed-and-puffed sleeve here and there. In the first regular episode, Simon, the evil English ambassador, wears an 18^th century frock coat because apparently after this he’s going to the Caribbean to hunt Johnny Depp and the rest of the crew of the Black Pearl. The men generally artfully muss their hair, except for King Henry, who has opted for the shaved-head and beard scruff that was so popular a few days ago.

The French court is based in what appears to be an early 20^th century estate somewhere, with lots of furniture and drapery and rugs and nothing that looks particularly 16^th century.

Except that chair. That chair wandered in from some other, more historically-minded show.

In the pilot, the court gathers to marry off some unnamed somebody-or-others, which gives the cast a chance to do some dancing. The adults briefly do a little vaguely medievalish-looking dancing, and then Mary and the girls decide to take over and run into the center of the room and start twirling around to symbolize that they’re free spirits. Apparently the rest of the women of the court are also free spirits in waiting, because they run onto the floor, the band obligingly breaks into some vaguely Celtic folk-rock and everyone joins hands and does a circle dance. In 16^th century Europe, the technical term for this is a branle, and for about two seconds the show accidentally gets something almost historically accurate. But then confetti begins raining down on the dancers and they’re saved from having to pretend to be 16^th century.

The Real Problem with Reign

The real problem with the series is the characters are consistently written as 21^st century millennials, rather than as anyone who might have lived in the 16^th century. They spend lots of time emoting and very little time acting like actual nobles who’ve been taught their whole lives that their marriages are a matter of politics and not personal desire. Despite the plot detail that turns on Mary’s virginity, the rest of Mary’s cohort seem eager to lose theirs, with one of the girls doing the nasty with King Henry in the main stairwell and another slutting it up with Francis. At one point Colin sneaks into Mary’s bathroom, where she’s bathing (in a beautiful 19th century claw-foot tub), and no one seems particularly perturbed that he was able to get in there.

The show does at least have the good sense to recognize that 16^th century princes were expected to have have sexual conquests before and during marriage, but in Francis’ case, he’s treated as a jerk for doing it. So rather than trying to understand the 16^th century, the show simply embraces the sexual ethos of contemporary upper-class New Yorkers.

Francis, in between bouts of being interested in Mary, moans that “Every man, even a king, should have some kind of skill…One that I didn’t inherit.” So he’s decided to take up sword-smithing, in the palace attic. That sound you’re hearing is my forehead hitting the table.

Perhaps the most telling moment in the series comes immediately after that, when Francis comments that his parents are so afraid of anything happening to him that they’re afraid to let him live, unlike his bastard half-brother Sebastian. The line is clearly intended as a critique of modern helicopter parents. In contrast, Mary is a free spirit because she knows how to milk a goat and likes the feeling of mud between her toes.

Rather than seriously exploring how 16^th century teen royals might actually have felt about their lives, the series is content to project modern teen sentiments back on the 16^th century as a way to encourage viewer identification with the main characters. Our heroine is plucky, free-spirited, unpretentious, determined to stand up for herself despite having not real support, and wants to experience real love, just like the intended audience. The good characters aren’t interested in social class, while Catherine is clearly bad because she cares about things like that.

Now, I suppose you might be thinking, “Well, duh! It’s not like the CW is seriously going to attempt an accurate period drama.” Ok. Fair point. But here’s the thing about being a historian watching these sorts of things: I can’t help but think about how much better the series could have been if they had made more of an effort to be accurate. The 16^th century is one of the most fascinating periods in all of history. The political and religious conflicts and the intellectual currents of the period produced an enormously complex set of events that dramatically changed Western culture. And there’s no reason a good scriptwriter couldn’t use that setting to tell stories that modern teens would find compelling while still being a little more true to the period than this series is. The problem isn’t that Reign is targeting a millennial audience; the problem is the Reign is lazily written. It has no ambitions beyond being a 16^th century Gossip Girl, and modern audiences tend to accept it because they’ve been trained to accept bland mediocrity as the best they can get.

Remember, Shakespeare’s plays were 16^th century popular entertainment, not the high-brow fare we think of them as today. Titus Andronicus is a trashy revenge drama that would be right at home on the CW. Sure, it’s unfair to compare modern network tv to Shakespeare, but when you think of the comparison, it’s clear that Reign isn’t even trying to be good. It’s just trying to be watched. The first clue is casting a brunette in the role of a woman who was famous for her red hair.

Oh, and Another Thing

There are pagans living in the woods right outside the royal palace, practicing human sacrifice, because why not?

Want to Know More?

There are a lot of not very good biographies of Mary Stuart. John Guy’s biography on Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuartis probably definitive for scholarly works. But if you’re not up for 600+ pages, try Rosalind K. Marshall’s much shorter Mary Queen of Scots: Truth or Lies(Kindle edition), which focuses on answering the key questions about this famous but somewhat misunderstood woman.

I don’t know of any books on Francis II; his short reign hasn’t attracted a lot of English-language scholarship, so far as I know. But you could read Catherine de’Medici  by R.J. Knecht. Her time in power in France began before Francis was king and continued long after he had died.

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Elizabeth: The Golden Age: There’s Something about Mary (Stuart, That Is)

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16th Century England, 16th century Europe, Babington Plot, Cate Blanchett, Eddie Redmayne, Elizabeth I, Elizabeth: the Golden Age, Geoffrey Rush, Kings and Queens, Mary Queen of Scots, Mary Stuart, Samantha Morton, Shekhar Kapur, Tudor England

In 2007, Shekhar Kapur returned to the life of Queen Elizabeth I, making Elizabeth: the Golden Age as a sequel Elizabeth (1998, dir. Shekhar Kapur). The film brought back Cate Blanchett in the title role and Geoffrey Rush as her loyal spymaster Francis Walsingham, and added Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh. Despite the fact that the two films were shot in a very similar style, had the same director, and had Michael Hirst, the screenwriter from the first film assisting with the script, EtGA did much more poorly at the box office, not even breaking into the top 100 films of the year, whereas Elizabeth was 65 the year it was released, and its lifetime gross has been less than half the first film’s. It also received much less love from the critics. In an overall sense, it’s actually better history, because it hews a little more closely to the facts than Elizabeth did, although that’s not really saying that much.

The Babington Plot

Like Elizabeth, EtGA intertwines the story of Elizabeth I’s love life (or lack thereof) with a story about a Catholic plot to depose her and Walsingham’s efforts to protect her. In fact, it actually recycles part of the first film’s plot. Elizabeth features a plot against the queen that is a composite of the actual Ridolfi and Babington Plots, with the Jesuit John Ballard featuring as the assassin. EtGA shows us the Babington Plot somewhat more accurately, but since John Ballard was already killed in the first film, they decided to rename the Jesuit orchestrater of the plot Robert Reston.

The historical Babington Plot involved a Catholic effort to assassinate Elizabeth and replace her on the throne with her Catholic cousin Mary I of Scotland, who had been captured and held in genteel confinement in England for 19 years. Walsingham understood that Mary was the focus of numerous plots, since as Elizabeth’s closest living relative she was naturally a factor in Catholic plots to remove Elizabeth. Her letters show that Mary was extremely well-informed about multiple conspiracies, but Elizabeth was deeply reluctant to take action against Mary. Since Mary was a crowned queen in her own right, executing her would provide precedent for executing Elizabeth, and it would undermine the mystique that Elizabeth felt was essential to her rule. Walsingham tried without success to get his queen to take decisive action about her cousin.

So when Walsingham captured an English Catholic named Gilbert Gifford who was conspiring to assassinate Elizabeth, he saw an opportunity to eliminate Mary. Gifford agreed to act as a double agent. He met with Mary and arranged to have letters smuggled to her in beer barrels.

As the plot developed, it came to focus around a wealthy Catholic named Anthony Babington, who was in what he thought was secret coded communication with Mary via those beer barrels, never realizing that Gifford and another member of the plot were letting Walsingham decode and read the letters. The Jesuit priest John Ballard was working to gain Spanish agreement to launch an invasion on England in Mary’s name, while Babington was being maneuvered to win Mary’s assent to a scheme in which Babington was to assassinate Elizabeth, Mary would be rescued from confinement, and then placed on the throne. Mary eventually sent Babington a letter laying out what she saw as necessary for any plot to rescue her from captivity. This letter on its own was probably enough to implicate Mary in the whole plot, but one of the spies copied it and added a postscript in which Mary appeared to agree to the effort to kill Elizabeth. That was enough to let Walsingham arrest Ballard and Babington, who were subsequently executed.

Mary Queen of Scots

The Execution of Mary

Mary was put on trial in 1586, based on a Bond of Association passed by the Privy Council in 1584. This bond, which Mary among many others signed, allowed for the execution of anyone in the line of succession (read: Mary) who was aware of any plot to kill the queen, even if they were not actively involved in the plotting. Parliament followed this up with an Act of Association that provided for the execution of anyone who stood to benefit from a plot against the queen. So despite Mary’s insistence that she was not subject to English law, and despite the fact (or rather because of the fact) that she was allowed neither legal counsel nor defense witnesses nor access to the evidence against her, Mary was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death.

Elizabeth hesitated to sign the death warrant. She understood that executing Mary would certainly outrage France and Spain, and would remove one of the few active deterrents to a Catholic invasion. She also recognized that it would be very hard for her to control the perceptions and meaning of the execution. Nevertheless, driven by pressure from both Walsingham and the general English population, she eventually gave in and reluctantly signed the warrant. (Walsingham reported eased her discomfort by including the warrant in a stack of other documents that needed her signature.) Then Walsingham conveniently ‘fell ill’, leaving it up to a deputy to dispatch the warrant to Mary’s jailer. Elizabeth was furious at the poor deputy for having sent the warrant without her permission; like Walsingham’s illness, this too was probably a fiction, to provide her with some degree of deniability.

Mary’s last letter shows her being at peace with her impending death, and understanding herself as a Catholic martyr. The execution itself, in February of 1587, was less clean than was desired. The executioner failed to deliver a clean blow and had to take a second stroke. Her pet dog ran up to the body and got itself covered in her blood. When her head was held up, her wig either slipped off or was pulled off (accounts differ), revealing that she had gone grey (Mary, like Elizabeth, was well-known for her red hair). In later Catholic propaganda these details were elaborated to make the execution seem even more horrific than it was; it was claimed that the executioner took three strokes to kill her, so that her death was more like the torture of an early Christian martyr. The dog supposedly howled loudly and ran about the room getting blood everywhere. When the executioner picked up the head, he supposedly grabbed the wig by mistake, so that the head fell out and rolled across the floor. Elizabeth’s concerns were proven correct; she could not control the propaganda generated by the execution, and it triggered the Spanish Armada the next year.

The Death of Mary Queen of Scots

The Plot and Execution in Elizabeth: the Golden Age

EtGA follows the basic facts of the Babington plot, but it does make a few key changes. As noted, Ballard was renamed so as not to conflict with the first movie. The film lays out the messages being smuggled to Mary in beer barrels and Walsingham’s monitoring of the plot, although how he discovers the plot is wrong. In the film, he simply arrests some Catholics who give him the lead he needs; also his (I think fictitious) brother William is a Catholic entangled in the plot.

In reality, the plot never got anywhere near coming to fruition, but in the film, Babington (Eddie Redmayne) bursts into Elizabeth’s chapel and draws a pistol. He hesitates to shoot her but eventually pulls the trigger. It’s unclear at first but eventually it emerges that he was given a pistol that was loaded with powder but no bullet.

Redmayne as Babington, pointing his pistol at Elizabeth

The assassination attempt gives Walsingham enough leverage to persuade Elizabeth to try and execute Mary (Samantha Morton, in a very small but moving performance). Elizabeth is shown waffling before the trial, and has to be persuaded by Walsingham that she has a duty to protect her people by execution Mary. Elizabeth eventually agrees and Mary is put on trial and executed. The emphasis is mostly on the execution, which is shown without anyone of the unpleasantness. The sequence is quite sympathetic to Mary, who appears serene as she goes to her death, whereas Elizabeth is shown to be deeply agitated.

Morton as Mary; note that red is the liturgical color of martyrs.

Perhaps the biggest change that the film makes, however, comes immediately after the execution. Philip II of Spain declares war on England, and Walsingham suddenly realizes that Philip was behind the whole plot in the first place., because the Spanish king has been reading Mary’s correspondence. Babington’s gun was unloaded so that Elizabeth would survive, execute Mary and give Philip the justification to invade. Walsingham begs the queen’s forgiveness for misunderstanding the whole situation, and Elizabeth admits that she has erred in executing Mary.

Upon examination, this plot doesn’t work. If Elizabeth had been assassinated, Mary would have automatically become queen, and there would have been no need for a Spanish invasion. Executing Mary was the last thing Philip wanted to happen, because it meant that there was no Catholic heir to the throne (the new heir, Mary’s son James, having been raised as a Protestant), which would make controlling England after the conquest a bigger problem, since there is no Catholic heir to put on the throne as a Spanish puppet (although as the widower of Elizabeth’s older sister Mary I, Philip had his own very weak claim). Had Philip simply been waiting for an excuse, Mary’s imprisonment would probably have been enough on its own. In actuality, the execution of Mary forced Philip to take action when he was probably reluctant to do so.

Furthermore, Babington never actually attempted to shoot Elizabeth, and it’s not clear how Philip would have been able to read Mary’s correspondence, since it was passing through Walsingham’s hands.

So the film essentially inverts the relationship between the execution of Mary Stuart and the Spanish invasion. The actual invasion was a reaction to Mary’s execution, whereas in the film, the execution is part of the scheme to set up the invasion. What the film gets right is the broad sequence of events, showing how the Babington Plot led to Mary’s death, which in turn led to the Armada War. With the exception of the detail about the pistol being unloaded as part of a deeper plot, the film’s changes to history are mostly in the way of simplifying the complex details of the plot and making the narrative  clear to the audience. In that sense, I think this part of the film works better as history than Elizabeth does. But as we shall see next time, there are other problems with EtGA.

Want to Know More?

Elizabeth: The Golden Ageis available on Amazon.

Like biographies about Elizabeth I, there are a lot of not very good biographies of Mary Stuart. John Guy’s biography on Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuartis probably definitive for scholarly works. But if you’re not up for 600+ pages, try Rosalind K. Marshall’s much shorter Mary Queen of Scots: Truth or Lies(Kindle edition), which focuses on answering the key questions about this famous but somewhat misunderstood woman. The Trial of Mary Queen of Scots: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford Series in History & Culture)is a short classroom textbook that addresses her trial and execution and offers the primary sources for those events.