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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   13356 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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I was just rewatching (and complaining) about Wolf Hall Season 2 because of its addition of black guards and a black sister for Jane Seymour. It led me into a search for Tudor fiction where I learned the deep hatred of Philippa Gregory by Tudor history fans (apparently the Woodvilles really were witches, go figure).

But it was also pointed out that that's a feature not a bug. We know the story of the Prince in the Tower. It's just depressingly mundane, which is why we want it to be anything else besides the obvious. We know how it ended for Anne Boleyn. If Gregory wants to tell a story where these women gained agency by being witches or femme fatales is it the worst thing in the world?

Thirdly, and most importantly, historical fiction doesn't have to be written this way. If you want to change the outcome of a historical event because it makes your story better, you can write in a heavily inspired parallel universe like Guy Gavriel Kay, who has El Cid go down fitting Muhammad ibn Ammar in the Lions of Al-Rassan and Belisaurius becoming Emperor after Justinian in The Lord of Emperor's. You can also can be entirely truthful: Javier Moro's El imperio eres tú has biographical levels of accuracy on the life of Pedro I of Brazil, but reads like a novel. You can even make up your own characters, like Bernard Cornwell does in his Saxon Tales series and use the historical setting as a backdrop of what would otherwise be a fantasy novel.

Ah, but what if I, median viewer, don't want the real story (nor do I want to be told a story in a different timeline). "Richard did it" is boring and is the first thing anyone thinks of. I want something new and interesting that could be what happened!

If you're into straight history it can hardly be more accessible (especially European history obviously). Sometimes we don't want history though, it's often disappointing. We want a story about it.

It's hard to know how much to blame writers when they expect that you can just find the real story on your own time. In practice, yes, fiction often informs our views but at what point are the public to blame for that? Hillary Mantel is clearly reacting to a certain view of Cromwell and More. But she's clear that she's writing historical fiction.

That's kind of where I'm at with it. It's hard to come up with a line on historical realism because we will not reward writers for being historically accurate. The public may even laugh and dismiss you for violating their assumptions about what the world was like in the past.

But I draw the line at black Tudors. The difference there being that it's a clear top down imposition from the BBC not done to serve some story-telling purpose.

a black sister for Jane Seymour

Wait, what? The famously fair-skinned Jane Seymour? As described by the Imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys:

She is sister of one Edward Semel, of middle stature and no great beauty, so fair that one would call her rather pale than otherwise.

And here was me thinking the black Anne Boleyn was going too far! Unless we're going to blame one or other of her parents for not keeping it in the marriage bed, how on earth does that work?

EDIT: Though, looking it up, that actress is playing Jane's sister-in-law rather than sister. Whew! The good repute of the Seymour parents is saved!

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