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Apr. 1st, 2008 11:19 pmSo I finally finished that bloody Boleyn novel. It was okayish. Mary Boleyn was a blank, idiotic character who was painted as some bumbling clown tripping her way from one bed to the next. Henry was a tyrannical oaf, which at least amused me. The characterisation of Anne and George Boleyn was much better and I ached for them whenever I was dragged off to Another Summer with the Children at Hever or Mary's Amazing Adventures Learning How to Make Butter. Then the conclusion just came rushing up, with no satisfying end at all - dropping the book from amusing bodice-ripper to *eh*
But what really got my goat was reading up on the main characters afterwards and finding out that several annoying liberties had been taken with the story. This is what I get for willfully refusing to learn about British royalty. Anne wasn't the completely cold bitch who cut her sister off, but the only Boleyn family member who helped her out financially. And ___ never adopted Elizabeth! AND WHUT all the timeline was screwed up. It's just fiction, I hear you cry! Except if you were writing some fannish work and got the canon timeline all screwed up, you'd be trolled into next week. I wish I could troll Phillipa Gregory.
Ah, 'tis no matter, strumpets! I ache for IRL reads, now. I would really like to read a sympathetic biography of Anne Boleyn; she seems so fascinating. I note that Antonia Fraser has one out about Big Fat Henry's six wives, so I'm going to buy that. She did an absolutely brilliant job with Marie-Antoinette's biography and was the only writer I had read who didn't paint her as an evil Teutonic hobag. She also has a book out called Warrior Queens I might buy, which talks of such famous queens as Jinga of Angola.
Me neither.
I would love to read something about other pwning queens and warriors, like Catherine the Great or Gorgo, interesting enough to be mentioned by Herodotus more than once. Except that neither she nor Leonidas will EVAR BE THE SAME AGAIN after the lulzfest that was 300.
But what really got my goat was reading up on the main characters afterwards and finding out that several annoying liberties had been taken with the story. This is what I get for willfully refusing to learn about British royalty. Anne wasn't the completely cold bitch who cut her sister off, but the only Boleyn family member who helped her out financially. And ___ never adopted Elizabeth! AND WHUT all the timeline was screwed up. It's just fiction, I hear you cry! Except if you were writing some fannish work and got the canon timeline all screwed up, you'd be trolled into next week. I wish I could troll Phillipa Gregory.
Ah, 'tis no matter, strumpets! I ache for IRL reads, now. I would really like to read a sympathetic biography of Anne Boleyn; she seems so fascinating. I note that Antonia Fraser has one out about Big Fat Henry's six wives, so I'm going to buy that. She did an absolutely brilliant job with Marie-Antoinette's biography and was the only writer I had read who didn't paint her as an evil Teutonic hobag. She also has a book out called Warrior Queens I might buy, which talks of such famous queens as Jinga of Angola.
Me neither.
I would love to read something about other pwning queens and warriors, like Catherine the Great or Gorgo, interesting enough to be mentioned by Herodotus more than once. Except that neither she nor Leonidas will EVAR BE THE SAME AGAIN after the lulzfest that was 300.
