I’d like to say that when I’m not working hard on my school readings and assignments, I do really productive things like bake gourmet desserts or teach myself another language or go to the gym. In reality, I often find myself sitting on the couch watching tv shows and eating popcorn and thinking about how I should be doing the aforementioned productive things. If a tv show is really good, then it draws me into the story and away from reality enough that I don’t care about what I maybe should be doing.
A lot of tv shows are set in the past and claim to represent things that happened in the past, therefore making them a form of “popular history.” For many people, watching the occasional historically-based tv show is the only way they engage with history. This is a great way for the public to get interested in past events. Unfortunately, the reality is that most historical tv shows are dependent upon funds from large tv networks that really just care about their bottom line, with historical accuracy much lower on the priority list. This means that in order for historically-based tv shows to stay on the air (or to produce another season that gets released online all in one shot, as is increasingly the case today), they need to get good ratings and reviews. In order to get these ratings and reviews, tv shows need to be entertaining and exciting and thought-provoking. While I believe that history in general is all of these things, the history that is agreed upon by historians as our most accurate understanding of the past is often not well-depicted on tv.
An example that comes to mind is Reign, a CW-produced show that started in 2013 and is now filming its fourth season. It follows a young Mary, Queen of Scots as she navigates the French royal court of the 1550s, where her fiancé, Francis, is next in line for the French throne.
Mary, Queen of Scots really did live in France for a time, and she did marry Francis of France at sixteen and rule with him for a year before he died (spoiler alert) of an ear infection. This is the historical fact that the series is based on, but its treatment of the events and people surrounding this fact is colourful, to say the least. For example, the main plot of the first season involves a love triangle between Mary, her betrothed, and his illegitimate brother, Sebastian (“Bash”). Except Sebastian exists nowhere in the historical record. He was completely made up by the show’s writers. Mary does end up marrying Francis in the show, so at least that’s historically “accurate.”
The shows producers are aware of the criticism they face from the historical community, but they don’t seem to care. Executive Producer Laurie McCarthy has stated, “in each episode we’ll educate people on what element of history helps our story.” But at the end of the day, “It’s a television show. We took some liberties. My job is to tell stories persuasively.”
The real Queen Mary
One of the most common complaints about the show is its costumes, which tend to look more like modern-day prom dresses than renaissance-era court gowns. Mary’s ladies in waiting play prominent roles in the early episodes of the show, as they seek their own love interests in the French court, all while fabulously dressed. This serves to make the show seem even more like a teen drama that just happens to be set in a castle than the historical drama it claims to be. To be fair, the entire show is not all about Mary’s various love interests. Her mother-in-law, Queen Catherine de Medici of France (who actually existed!), is one of the most interesting characters on the show, as she plots to get rid of Mary. Protestant-Catholic relations are also a major theme in later seasons, and a young Queen Elizabeth appears in the third season, along with other real historical figures like Diane de Poitiers, Robert Dudley, and Nostradamus – though whether or not their true stories crossed paths the way they did in the show is highly unlikely.
I’ll be honest, the show is pretty addicting the watch, historically accurate or not. Yes, it’s ridiculous, but as far as guilty-pleasure tv goes, it could be worse. And even though it’s lacking in the historical accuracy department, Reign’s audience, consisting largely of teenage girls, has been introduced to a real historical figure, one that isn’t quite as well known as her contemporary queens like Elizabeth and (the other) Mary. Hopefully people who watch the show understand that Renaissance France was not actually like Reign, and will seek out the true histories of the characters in the show, which are interesting in their own right – I know I did.
I’ve just begun watching Netflix’s The Crown, which is about the reign of a different queen, and which seems to be striving for much greater historical accuracy. Stay tuned for updates.
* PSA: Reign is not on Canadian Netflix.
HISTORICOOL 