Yknow, a lot of things are a matter of perspective

If you told napoleon when he was 20, “oh, btw, your son is going to be an Austrian Duke and you are going to have a nice private island to do whatever you want with” he would’ve been like, “whoa! My family will rise so high?”

It’s only when he’s in his 40s and megalomaniacal that’s he’s like “I’d literally rather both me and my son dead”

Robespierre in this documentary looked so good, but the quality of it on youtube was so shitty. These gifs are like two pixels on the screen 😭

The Muse Erato, François Boucher and his studio, 18th century

Oil on canvas 36 ¾ x 51 ⅞ in. (93.4 x 131.7 cm)

Self-Portrait by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun 1781.

the weirdest thing about philippa gregory’s plantagenet/tudor books is that every single book will have the protagonist say “never before has there been such tyranny in england” and it’s like bitch didn’t you read the last book? it is now the 1570s and gregory says that england has been having nonstop tyranny since 1428 keep up 

To be fair, “the old days were better, this generation has it the worst” is a universal human feeling and as old as the hills

True, but in the context of PGregs’ books, it’s not so much “the old days” that were supposedly better; it’s specifically the Yorkist days that are said to be better, with the Tudor era being portrayed as inherently awful simply because the Tudors ruled it.

(That’s not even touching on the casual xenophobia, classism and sexism underpinning her portrayal of the early Tudors and Lancastrians).

True, she does seem to forget that the Yorkists had a lot of in-fighting and bumped off Henry VI, but on the other hand the characters saying the Yorkist days were better are themselves Yorkists (Elizabeth of York, Margaret Pole, Elizabeth Woodville), like it makes sense that Elizabeth of York would idolise her dad’s reign and conveniently forget what happened with Uncle George. 

Sorry for the late reply. 

I just want to say that this is why first person is such a problem in historical fiction, since the reader can only view history through the eyes of one character at a time. Still, there are still ways to show different perspectives within a first person narrative like introducing characters with different opinions, or having the protagonist witness events that force them to rethink their worldview (aka. character development - a hostile acquaintance to PGregs). However, that’s not the case in PGregs’ books.

I can only really speak for The Shite White Princess as that’s the only PGregs book I’ve had the misfortune to read in full, but there, “Princess Lizzie” is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the author’s own prejudices against 500 year old dead people (namely Henry VII and Margaret Beaufort). “Lizzie’s” character never outgrows her childish worship of her father and “lover” Uncle Dick because at no point does her worldview change. Neither is she set up to be an unreliable narrator because every plot point and every other character exist solely to affirm her worldview. What’s worse is that “Lizzie” and PGregs’ other mouthpieces are guilty of stunning hypocrisy, which is never questioned within the narrative - not even by the antagonists. Just off the top of my head: “Lizzie” expresses constant horror at all of her husband’s actions, yet constantly praises her father and uncle for having done the same; Elizabeth Woodville criticises Henry for being the product of his grandparents’ secret marriage, despite Elizabeth herself being both party to and the product of a secret marriage; Margaret Beaufort’s implied incestuous feelings for her son (ewwwww) are rightly portrayed as gross, but “Lizzie’s” full-blown sexual affair with her UNCLE is portrayed as true love. Does anyone in the story remind them of these inconvenient truths? Nope. In fact, we’re just supposed to agree with the characters, no questions asked.

So yeah, I really can’t defend PGregs’ writing at all. It’s a hot mess and yet we keep getting crappy adaptation after crappy adaptation of her work.

Sorry for the delay!

Don’t get me wrong, The White Princess is not the hill I want to die on lmao I gave it a 4/10, but I think when it comes to criticising PG it’s important to be specific.

Elizabeth does change over the course of the White Princess: her love for Arthur means she can’t continue to wholeheartedly side with her mother and she does go from loathing Henry Tudor to loving him around the mid-1490s, which astounds and delights Henry who says he apparently always wanted her to love him this way (granted, this makes no sense when you remember the rape earlier in the book, but then Elizabeth Woodville also falls in love with a guy who attempts rape. It’s at least a consistent blind spot in the books, with the exception of Edmund Tudor who is unambiguously evil). When Henry VII starts getting flirty with Catherine Gordon, Elizabeth is forced to empathise with Anne Neville because she’s now in the same position of having to watch her husband dance with another woman while she can only smile, and she realises how difficult it must have been for Anne to be gracious about the whole thing while dying. 

It’s two negatives making a positive, and that wouldn’t be necessary if the writing lacked the original negative. 

I think partly the problem is if you’re queen of England there’s not a lot of people who can correct you, and the antagonists aren’t necessarily interested in justifying themselves to someone they look down on. 

Certainly in the Kingmaker’s Daughter, the view is very different from Anne’s eyes, and PG talked in the afterword about interesting it was to look at Elizabeth Woodville from the other side. Elizabeth Woodville seems legitimately shady from her point of view, and Richard III admits to Anne that his actions with his niece are about humiliating Henry Tudor and he dgaf about the damage to her reputation. Anne herself is horrified at the incest, but too broken from her bereavements to try and protect Elizabeth of York from being essentially groomed. Granted, you could have told this story with switching POVs ASOIAF-style, but the books are already long and you’d get to page 1000 before someone’s story arc finished. 

The White Princess is still annoyingly anti-Tudor and Elizabeth of York is sometimes too mopey and powerless, which makes the book a slog. The whining is why I gave up on reading The King’s Curse about thirty pages in. I did not want another 400something pages of whinging. 

Sorry “implied incestuous feelings for her son” by Margaret Beaufort? I’m SURE you’re right but like, could you elaborate?

This is four years late to the party, but yeah, I can elaborate.

I can’t remember all the details, and I gave up on reading The White Princess at the Birth of Prince Arthur, but a few moments from the book caught my attention.

In the book, Henry mentions to Elizabeth that his mother never retires to bed without seeing him. She likes to bless his forehead with the mark of the cross and kiss him goodnight. Henry quietly explains that there were so many nights that she never got to see him or know if he was safe.

It strikes Elizabeth as odd because she can’t see the “hard-hearted woman” who “convinced her son to 🍇 her” waiting up to kiss her son goodnight.

Later on, on Elizabeth and Henry’s wedding night, Margaret lingers as everyone is leaving the bedchamber, clearly unwilling to leave. Elizabeth remembers what Henry had earlier mentioned and gently grabs hold of his shoulder, deliberately letting Margaret see her fingering the fine linen cloth that Margaret herself embroidered. Elizabeth then shifts closer to Henry, moving as though she’s about to rest her head on his shoulder.

Henry is completely oblivious, misunderstanding the reason why Margaret is lingering, believing it to be nothing more than the pride of seeing her son married.

Still, Elizabeth knows that seeing her beside Henry must be eating Margaret up inside.

As far as I know, those are the only references, and it is clearly one-sided, but it is disturbing that Philippa wrote Margaret and Henry’s relationship this way.

Vanessa Redgrave as Anne Boleyn in A Man For All Seasons (1966)

Vanessa Redgrave as Mary, Queen of Scots in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)

Vanessa Redgrave as Elizabeth I in Anonymous (2011)

Honestly, like, the girlbossification of historical women has been around since before "girlboss" was even a thing and it is damaging and bad and awful but I think what's just as bad as these reactions to it:

Marlon Brando as Napoleon and Merle Oberon as Josephine in Desiree

I’m doing fine my dear maman. Send me a pocket handkerchief.

I embrace you my dear maman. I’m doing pretty well.

Good evening dear maman. A tear falls from my eyes. It is for you. I’m going to fall asleep in the tranquility of innocence.

Three notes written by Lucile Desmoulins to her mother between her arrest on April 4 1794 and execution nine days later. The last one is generally seen as a final farewell, penned down right after the death sentence had been pronounced on April 13.

sans culotte in the 1790s:

(from lucy wooding’s lrb review of hunting the falcon)

Henri de la Rochejaquelein by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin

German caricature of Josephine as a “nocturnal apparition” waking up Napoleon from his sleep

Nächtliche Geister-Erscheinung, anonymous, early 19th century

My take on what happened to the Princes in the Tower? They were the only true Christians and therefore were the only people taken in the Biblical Rapture.