King & Conqueror
14 September 2025 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI have been watching the BBC's new drama about King Harold and William of Normandy, which to be honest is making me more and more inclined to go and read Georgette Heyer's "The Conqueror" instead (almost certainly, given Heyer's fanatical research ethic, more historically accurate, and easier to empathize with the characters as well).
Whoever did the adaptation on this one obviously had the brief to emphasise as many significant roles for women as possible, but at least it is done plausibly, with women depicted as canny diplomatic advisers or powers behind the throne, rather than being weapons-wielding warriors. King Edward's mother, Emma of Normandy --I'm *assuming* that connection between the realms is historically accurate, because I've never heard of her-- is basically the villain for the first half of the run, until Edward finally snaps and batters her to death with the crown of England (yes, it's that sort of show). Hard to imagine Edward the Confessor murdering anyone, but the scene makes it seem plausible in context.
Gore is definitely a defining factor, and I get the impression a lot of effort has been put into the fight choreography. The sets and buildings -- maybe not so much. I don't know if the entire thing was filmed on a single set and a couple of locations, but it manages to give that impression; all the towns/cities are indistinguishable collections of huts and maybe a stone tower or two, and have to be carefully labelled on screen, the coastlines of Dover, Normandy and Norway all look the same (you literally cannot tell the difference between leaving one side of the Channel and arriving on the other side without the helpful captions, and I'm assuming all those scenes were shot on the same beach), and the general colour palette is muddy grey and brown.
Harold feels like an oddly passive character, who only acts when circumstances push him into it (apart from having his older brother assassinated just in case, which as a result feels oddly out of character -- otherwise the show comes across as somehow trying to whitewash him, although I'm not quite sure against accusations of what!) Sadly we don't get the apocryphal scene where Earl Godwin stands up at a banquet, disclaims responsibility for a murder, and calls upon God to strike him dead if he is lying, only to immediately choke to death on a piece of bread; here he dies peacefully in his own bed of a longterm illness :-p And in the latest episode we had a character mysteriously expire seconds after giving birth despite vigorously screaming and pushing a few moments before; it's as if the writers heard that "many women died in childbirth" but were not quite sure *how*! (Exhaustion and/or blood poisoning mostly, I think; at any rate they generally lingered on for some time if they did succeed in delivering the child.) With hindsight I would guess that the cause of death in the onscreen case was probably supposed to be some kind of massive post-partum haemorrhage, but they shy away from showing this (as opposed to the frequent shots of people having their throats cut in close combat)...
The show also suffers from the now-ubiquitous 'colour-blind casting', featuring a noble black family in Anglo-Saxon England at whome nobody blinks an eye, plus Harold's black friend. (Not a good choice for undercover work one would have thought, as he stands out a mile.) At least the black Earl has a black daughter, unlike the truly confusing situation in the Hilary Mantel adaptation where the fair-haired Seymour family apparently have one black sister, whom I'm afraid I didn't even realise was supposed to be related.
My favourite character is currently the elegant and slippery Count Baldwin of Flanders, William's completely untrustworthy father-in-law (who actually does fit my memories of Heyer, so is probably drawn from historical record!)
Not a great show, but not sufficiently actively annoying to cause me to stop following it...
Whoever did the adaptation on this one obviously had the brief to emphasise as many significant roles for women as possible, but at least it is done plausibly, with women depicted as canny diplomatic advisers or powers behind the throne, rather than being weapons-wielding warriors. King Edward's mother, Emma of Normandy --I'm *assuming* that connection between the realms is historically accurate, because I've never heard of her-- is basically the villain for the first half of the run, until Edward finally snaps and batters her to death with the crown of England (yes, it's that sort of show). Hard to imagine Edward the Confessor murdering anyone, but the scene makes it seem plausible in context.
Gore is definitely a defining factor, and I get the impression a lot of effort has been put into the fight choreography. The sets and buildings -- maybe not so much. I don't know if the entire thing was filmed on a single set and a couple of locations, but it manages to give that impression; all the towns/cities are indistinguishable collections of huts and maybe a stone tower or two, and have to be carefully labelled on screen, the coastlines of Dover, Normandy and Norway all look the same (you literally cannot tell the difference between leaving one side of the Channel and arriving on the other side without the helpful captions, and I'm assuming all those scenes were shot on the same beach), and the general colour palette is muddy grey and brown.
Harold feels like an oddly passive character, who only acts when circumstances push him into it (apart from having his older brother assassinated just in case, which as a result feels oddly out of character -- otherwise the show comes across as somehow trying to whitewash him, although I'm not quite sure against accusations of what!) Sadly we don't get the apocryphal scene where Earl Godwin stands up at a banquet, disclaims responsibility for a murder, and calls upon God to strike him dead if he is lying, only to immediately choke to death on a piece of bread; here he dies peacefully in his own bed of a longterm illness :-p And in the latest episode we had a character mysteriously expire seconds after giving birth despite vigorously screaming and pushing a few moments before; it's as if the writers heard that "many women died in childbirth" but were not quite sure *how*! (Exhaustion and/or blood poisoning mostly, I think; at any rate they generally lingered on for some time if they did succeed in delivering the child.) With hindsight I would guess that the cause of death in the onscreen case was probably supposed to be some kind of massive post-partum haemorrhage, but they shy away from showing this (as opposed to the frequent shots of people having their throats cut in close combat)...
The show also suffers from the now-ubiquitous 'colour-blind casting', featuring a noble black family in Anglo-Saxon England at whome nobody blinks an eye, plus Harold's black friend. (Not a good choice for undercover work one would have thought, as he stands out a mile.) At least the black Earl has a black daughter, unlike the truly confusing situation in the Hilary Mantel adaptation where the fair-haired Seymour family apparently have one black sister, whom I'm afraid I didn't even realise was supposed to be related.
My favourite character is currently the elegant and slippery Count Baldwin of Flanders, William's completely untrustworthy father-in-law (who actually does fit my memories of Heyer, so is probably drawn from historical record!)
Not a great show, but not sufficiently actively annoying to cause me to stop following it...