I just finished watching The White Queen

[potentiality_26]

I never liked it, I want to say that at the outset.  I mean, what's the point of making a historical series from the point of view of the women if you're only going to underscore how ultimately powerless they are?  Even the "magical" subplot was annoying because it was so obviously a ploy to make the series' passive heroine look slightly less passive, but that too ultimately failed.  If the closest she comes to taking charge of her life is basically wishing someone dead, that is not power.  The way this series was advertised, I honestly can't tell if the writers legitimately thought it was feminist and empowering, or if they were just lying, and I'm not sure which is worse.

So anyway, given that I never liked it, I probably have no right to be as annoyed as I am about how completely off the goddamn rails it went in the last episode.



What was that Richard/Elizabeth of York nonsense about?  It's not the technical incest that bothers me (the Heroes fandom pretty much killed my compunctions on that score a long time ago, and yeah, I prefer it with fictional characters, and yeah, it's better when it's subtext that leads to fanfiction rather than text, but I'm pretty sure nothing you do to Richard III's memory is even gonna register at this point, so go for it, I guess).  But seriously, for a series that went out of it's way to paint Richard as a nice, misunderstood/manipulated guy, it was a little random to suddenly assert that he had a thing with his niece, when it ultimately has no effect whatsoever on the actual storyline.  

Anyway, what really bothered me about it was how shoddily done it was.  They fell in love when, exactly?  The two times they looked at each other?  Really?  There's a bit where she defends him to her mother, saying what a good man he is and how wrong about him they were, and yeah, that's in keeping with what the show had been telling us throughout, but when did she have a chance to learn that?  Where did the whole thing come from?

More importantly, why?

Momma Elizabeth cursed whoever had the princes in the tower killed, and it's suggested that that was Margaret Beauford, and her other daughter brings up that if that's the case Elizabeth of York and Henry (VII) will never have sons.  It was a nice zinger to have at the end- suggesting that all her magic only served to ruin her daughter's life- but of course they did have sons.  So, I want to think that the point of this plotline was to suggest that Elizabeth and Henry VII's son would actually have been Richard's as a result of pre-Bosworth Field shenanigans, but history doesn't bear that out, and anyway they had multiple sons.  So it served the narrative not at all.


See, all of this happened a long time ago.  We know who married who, who had which kid, who died in what battlefield and who didn't, but we don't know the meaning behind a lot of it.  What I like about historical fiction (when I like it) is when the writers take what we do know and make an interesting backstory, weaving the facts together to create a reading I haven't thought of before.  This was a poor one, and it handwaved plenty of what we do know to serve itself, which to my mind defeats the purpose.

At the end of the day, I'm sticking to Shakespeare, guys.  They're equally fictional, but Shakespeare was just better at it.
 

Comments

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

Och. Never heard of this, but now I've heard enough to know to avoid it, lol!!

[potentiality-26.livejournal.com]

:) To be fair, the fact that I didn't like it doesn't mean it was trash or anything, it's just... sometimes you watch something and you think that the writers just didn't have anything interesting to add to what's already out there, so why did they bother?