How accurate is the movie "Mary Queen of Scot

[Silja]

I didn't say she was "repulsive", I said "unsympathetic. I think you are confusing my post with someone else's.

It seems so, yes. Never mind  

[helenazar]

What is interesting about Mary is that she never put Elizabeth to death, even though she had several chances and Elizabeth was not involved in the death plots.

They actually tried to implicate Elizabeth in plots during Mary's reign, Mary really did want her out of the way, but they could never prove anything against Elizabeth and couldn't just kill her without any proof of this because the people were very fond of her. There was one time when they came for her in the Tower with a warrant to take to her to her death (she knew), but she found a glitch with the signature and refused to go until Mary herself signed the warrant, which she ended up not doing. Also Philip, Mary husband, had persuaded Mary to go easy on her sister, he thought that she should just be married off to one of his own "cronies" and  thus neutralized. When he saw that Mary was not going to live too much longer, Philip even had plans of marrying Elizabeth and rule England through her, as he tried to do through Mary. But of course Elizabeth was not about to marry him...

[TampaBay]

They actually tried to implicate Elizabeth in plots during Mary's reign, Mary really did want her out of the way, but they could never prove anything against Elizabeth and couldn't just kill her without any proof of this because the people were very fond of her. There was one time when they came for her in the Tower with a warrant to take to her to her death (she knew), but she found a glitch with the signature and refused to go until Mary herself signed the warrant, which she ended up not doing. Also Philip, Mary husband, had persuaded Mary to go easy on her sister, he thought that she should just be married off to one of his own "cronies" and  thus neutralized. When he saw that Mary was not going to live too much longer, Philip even had plans of marrying Elizabeth and rule England through her, as he tried to do through Mary. But of course Elizabeth was not about to marry him...

Or anyone else!

TampaBay

[umigon]

Well, the idea of marrying Philip was not a stupid one. Of course Elizabeth would have never went through a Catholic conversion but Philip's lack of OFFICIAL control of England's affairs had been proved during his marriage to Mary, in which he signed a contract not to interfere in politics, although he did it.


At first Philip didn't have wanted to marry Mary and asked her father to marry the Queen himself, but Charles refused. It was then when Philip developped an ambition towards the English Crown.


Elizabeth, years later, would be near to marrying another Royal, Prince Hercule François de Valois, Duke of Alençon and brother of King Henry III of France. He was 22 years younger than she was and the marriage didn't take place in the end.

[bluetoria]

Do you not think that Elizabeth was 'always close to marrying someone' as long as it suited English diplomatic interests? She kept her 'suitors' hanging around at court for as long aswas necessary to cement treaties etc. but I doubt she had any real intention of marrying any of them....

[elena_maria_vidal]

Yes, there were many issues, but an obvious one that comes to my mind was the way they portrayed the relationship between Elizabeth and Leicester - as being hot and heavy and definitely sexual. For one thing, we don't know if the relationship ever became sexual in a literal sense, I tend to think that it didn't, although they were probably in love with each other. A very important aspect about Elizabeth's personality was that she felt that marriage (or sexual consummation for that matter) would take away her superior position (psychologically speaking) and put it in the hands of the man. So she would allow things to go just so far, lots of flirtation, lots of implication, but no farther (remember her mother, Anne Boleyn? She was very skilled at this exact thing, so why not her daughter too!).

Of course we don't know for sure what happened between Robert Dudley and Elizabeth, but to me it seems that they never consumated their relationship because Elizabeth would not allow it. She always seemed terrified of the whole thing, not the physical aspect per say, but because of the psychological ones. This is also why she refused to marry, although she toyed with the idea a little. As far as Dudley (Leicester), Elizabeth always used to say that he and she were never completely alone, always one of her women was present. Whether this is true or not, we don't know. But to assume that this relationship was sexual would be denying some very important aspects of E's personality and psyche. Historians disagree among themselves about this, but I think most lean towards the idea that this relationship never became sexual in a literal sense. Hence, the film should have been more vague about this part, at the very least, instead they just went full force in their blatant potrayal of it as if they were 100% sure about that, that this was a fact instead of a theory (I suspect in order to appeal to a wider audience). That really bothered me because it felt almost like exploitation  of history.  I think that "Elizabeth R" did a MUCH better job with this, and everything else for that matter.

In general, I found this movie kind of confusing. Even though I knew the story well, I found myself more than once thinking, who is this person supposed to be? Or I often wasn't sure what was supposed to be going on. I think in the case of this film, having a lot of knowledge about the subject went against you, since they really changed the story a lot!

I completely agree with you, Helen and you put into words exactly what I thought about the Cate Blanchett "Elizabeth."

[elena_maria_vidal]

I enjoyed the Vanessa Redgrave "Mary, Queen of Scots" very much up until she gets involved with Bothwell. The movie went downhill after that for me. But then I read later that she never really loved Bothwell the way it was potrayed in the movie. Vanessa made a good Mary, however.  And Timothy Dalton made a great Darnley.