In addition to curiosity, eating the melons of the royal family, there is also a pleasure of voyeurism.
Based on this, it is not difficult to understand the popularity of the British drama "Mary and George", this peachy scandal of the royal family hundreds of years ago surfaced, making the audience feel a big drama intertwined with love and ambition.
A power-obsessed father sends his beautiful daughter to the deep palace as his political capital – this is a common plot paradigm in Chinese harem dramas.
But we don't see much of the sex transition - the mother who chases fame and fortune sends her beautiful son to the king's couch, and after the son gains power, the whole family also follows the chicken dog to heaven, which is the plot synopsis of the British drama "Mary and George".
01
This scheming mother is named Mary (Julianne Moore), and the story begins when her squire husband has just died, and her three sons and a daughter are all waiting to be fed. She thought that her husband's assets were barely enough for them to survive, but she found that he had already transferred his money to her brother before his death.
Mary must find another rich partner for herself to marry, and cross the class again like a first marriage. Before, she was just a maid from humble background, and the only thing she could rely on was her beauty and brain.
After the death of her first husband, she quickly locked in the second one, and with a little charm she took down the wealthy old knight and successfully brought her children to the fringes of high society.
Among the four children, Mary is most optimistic about the delicate and weak George (played by Nicholas Galicina), she firmly believes that his appearance can change the fate of the whole family, so she resolutely cut off his love affair with the little maid in the family, and spent a huge amount of money to send him to France for training, and trained him to learn fencing, equestrian and other noble hobbies and bed tricks.
While George was training, Mary was given the opportunity to receive the king by chance. Through observation and bribery, she discovers a new world - the king actually likes men, and Somerset, the popular man next to him, is also in power. The ambitious Mary decided to send George to the King's Pillow to compete for favor.
The future plot is very familiar to the audience. Almost every means of competing for favor in "Mary and George" can be found in the harem drama "The Legend of Zhen Huan": George won the king's favor for the first time, relying on an ingenious dance, which is close to Zhen Huan's stunning dance; Somerset is like a willful and arrogant concubine Hua by virtue of the king's love; George pretends to be a masked musician at the banquet after losing power, which is exactly the same as An Lingrong's way of regaining favor......
I believe that when you see this, you can't help but sigh "The world is really a huge "The Legend of Zhen Huan"".
George gained power in the palace, Mary swaggered outside the palace, and she had several other children marry the nobles to strengthen the family's power. In her early years, she advised her son, "If I were a man and I had your looks, I would rule this damn world." After careful planning, she finally achieved her wish, and while sitting on wealth and power, she also secretly manipulated George to control the political situation.
"Mary and George" is a rich and colorful show of Mary and George's family history, even after the death of the old king, they became the new king's dependents. But in the last episode, after George was assassinated by ordinary soldiers, he was caught off guard and ended unexpectedly, just like a beautifully crocheted sweater that looks like it is about to be finished, but the needle suddenly breaks.
However, the crochet man was still there, and when Mary heard the news of her son's death, she looked down at the huge family that had branched out, revealing a complicated expression that was difficult to fathom.
02
The story of "Mary and George" is strange and catchy, but it is adapted from a true story in British history.
As depicted in the play, Mary Villiers, the prototype of her mother, achieved food and clothing for the first half of her life through two marriages, and when she reached middle age, the days of realizing her beauty came to an end, and she set her sights on the next generation.
The son's prototype, George Villiers, first entered the palace as a cupbearer, serving King James I to drink, and was soon made a personal attendant who could take care of the king's food and clothing.
After that, he went from horse master, baron, viscount, earl, to the Duke of Buckingham, and it only took him eight years to rise to prominence. The Duke of Buckingham was also borrowed by the writer Alexandre Dumas for the novel The Three Musketeers.
As the only duke in the dynasty who was not a member of the royal family, George was criticized. At this time, his long-sleeved and dancing mother, Mary, settled in the royal palace and became a close "friend" of the king, even influencing the treatment of him in the later stages of his life.
Mary worked hard for the family, first arranging a marriage to the aristocratic woman Francis for her eldest son, John, who was suspected of being mentally retarded. Francis was a victim of marriage from beginning to end. After marriage, she cheated and gave birth to her lover's son.
Unable to bear the fact that her unrelated grandson would become the heir to wealth, Mary began to push George's marriage to Catherine, England's richest woman, in a seemingly "perfect" marriage in which everyone got what they wanted.
The sexuality of King James I is not a fiction of the series, but has been stamped by historians.
He had eight children with Princess Anne of Denmark, including the heir Charlie, and the series also pays a lot of attention to the little prince. At the same time, he has three important male favorites: his first love Esmay Stewart (he was 37 years old at the time), his first love when he met when he was 13 years old, his lover Somerset, who was once in power in the palace, and his lover George, who accompanied him until his death.
In the play, the king does not forget to travel long distances to retrieve Esme's embalming heart when he is dying, which is quite bizarre, but it is real. The king considered his exotic lover to be "upright and gentle" and worthy of his lifelong memory.
When talking about George, the king also used sweet words, saying that he "loved the Duke of Buckingham more than anyone else", and even made a shocking declaration of love, "Christ has John, and I have George." ”
Unfortunately, George's love was not as pure as the king thought, and he was deeply bound to Prince Charles in the later years of the king's reign and monopolized power. George remained active after Charlie's accession to the throne, and the two men were violently attacked by parliament when dealing with the French and Spanish issues.
George died in an assassination campaign orchestrated by fanatics, and his mother, Mary, was not defeated by the cruel facts, but rather showed rather indifference, and she lived four years longer than George. The words "the most powerful" and "pure blood" on her tombstone almost make people forget the starting point of her maid.
03
If you look back at history, you will find that "Mary and George" is 80% a reproduction of historical facts.
But is it a good historical drama? The answer is no.
We can classify it as a bubble historical drama, based on historical facts, but full of colorful bubbles that put entertainment first.
As can be seen from the title, Mary is the core character of the play, which is the solo show of actress Julianne Moore, and she also perfectly interprets Mary's intelligence, tactfulness and ruthlessness with her superb acting skills.
She keeps saying that she loves George the most, but in fact she loves no one but herself. Her husband or her children are her tools. Love more if you have use value, and love less if you don't.
"Mary and George" echoes the trend of the big heroine, focusing on the former, causing George to be constantly weakened in the play and reduced to a beautiful but stupid mom boy. But George in real history is by no means a fool who sells meat, especially in the later period of power, he was almost separated from his mother, and he was not a man who was willing to be a puppet at all.
But the series does not intend to explore the symbiotic relationship and power struggle between mother and son, the complex emotions of James I and other heavy elements, but lightens them and settles on the staggering strange relationship. You can simply understand it as a perverted wolf mother, an online chicken baby.
George's actor Nicholas Galicina was also very interesting, and he was previously better known for his role as the British prince in "Star-Spangled Red and Royal Blue". Playing a gay man again is a reinforcing reuse of the classic character by the crew of "Mary and George", and makes full use of his vase attributes, making him show his robust flesh to the camera many times. This also proves that the crew's portrayal of George is not distracted.
"Mary and George" didn't need too many nude scenes, but it arranged many George's bed scenes. In the era of eyeball economy, these easy-to-spread bridges can grab the audience's attention for the first time, but if you dig deeper, you will find that they are just to take off and expose for the sake of exposure.
Even Mary was arranged to have an affair with the fireworks woman, and the two women also contributed large-scale bed scenes. Whether it is the portrayal of Mary's character or the respect for real history, this setting is unnecessary, just to increase the selling point of the series.
"Mary and George" is a hilarious drama that stops there.
It is good-looking and indiscreet, which is in line with the psychology of chasing dramas in this era, but it cannot be among the halls of classic historical dramas.
Amy
Editor-in-charge: Chen Lingling