Mike Walker: The Stuarts
Listened to: The Stuarts, an audio series by Mike Walker, whose Caesar!, an audio series picking various Emperors (or their opponents ) from GJC till Romulus Augustulus as its subjects I had enjoyed a lot. I also was vastly entertained by The Stuarts, but good lord, was it ever partisan and royalist to the nth degree. (Which the Roman Emperors series was not.) The Stuarts featured in it are: Mary Queen of Scots, James VI and I., Charles I, Charles II, James II, William and Mary, Anne, Bonnie Prince Charlie, his daughter Charlotte as the titular "Last Stuart". The two Charles' get a two parter each, and of course there's huge overlap in the William & Mary and Anne episodes, as well as between the Charlie & Charlotte episodes, but they do shift the focus.
The Mary Queen of Scots opening episode is that rarity: a fictionalization of her life which does not invent a meeting with Elizabeth I. In fact, Elizabeth does not show up at all, though of course she's talked about. It starts with Mary's arrival in Scotland and ends when she leaves the country, then gets a "where are they now?" type of epilogue which, since the entire episode is told from the various povs of Mary's Scottish friends and opponents, works pretty well. (And at one point has hilarious fourth wall breaking, as when Bothwell snarks about John Knox that Knox the Überpious, so ready to rant about Mary's sex life, was at the same time after a sixteen years old, and Knox in his part of the epilogue says "she was seventeen, and I married her!" Compared with the recent movie, this episode sticks a bit more closely to the facts (no Mary riding into battle), though it can't resist the bit which the 1970s movie about Mary invented and which shows up in Mary fiction ever since, that Rizzio has an affair with Darnley which later gives Darnley additional reason to hate on Rizzio. As with the rest of the episodes, Walker ruthlessly cuts down the ensemble and tries to avoid confusion (so instead of four favored ladies in waiting all called Mary, Mary has one standing in for all four with a different nickname), though I regret one thing not being mentioned, which is Darnley's mother (and maternal ancestry). This is in fact pretty crucial as to why Mary married him in the first place. In the episode, Darnley's father the Earl of Lennox gets mentioned and shows up, but what really is important is that Darnley was the son of Margaret Douglas, who was the daughter of Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII. This made him cousin to both Mary and to Elizabeth and gave him a blood claim to the English succession, though not one as good Mary's own. Meaning: Mary, who was trying to strengthen her claim to Elizabeth's throne, didn't just marry him for his pretty face. Since that marriage was arguably the biggest mistake of her life, in retrospect, one would think such a circumstance would not go unmentioned, but no, it doesn't make the cut. (Which turned out to foreshadow a great deal of mothers, daughters and sisters not making the cut. Look, Wallace, I get that royal genealogy is a headache, but in that time and age, it often was really important regarding everyone's claims on the top job.
Anyway, the episode about Mary's son James is perhaps the most sympathetic take on James VI of Scotland and VI. of England I've come across, cutting between two timelines, James the boy and young man on the one hand, and old James looking back on the other. Boy James is a terrorized-by-brutal-teachers-and-guardians clever, lonely and fearful kid whose childhood fears are also later used as an explanation for the witch persecution and whose loneliness gets temporarily soothed when he meets his first love, Esmé Stuart. (Here the episode pointedly does not mention James was 13, which when I looked it up did make me raise an eyebrow because the age does give his teachers and advisors a non-homophobic reason to be against the Esmé affair.) But inevitably they are torn apart. In the old James timeline, his last lover, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham has just returned from the ill fated Spanish trip with James' son Charles, and old James is frustrated as he sees the young guys eager for war instead of having learned from him how important peace is for a kingdom. Not to mention that Buckingham has all but traded him in for Charles. Again, culling down the number of relations makes a difference in characterisation: When young Charles is eager to intervene in the continental wars (who happen to be the early stage of the Thirty Years War, and James is against it, the episode makes it easy to entirely sympathize with James because it has James refer to "your cousin" the Protestant King of Bohemia whom Charles wants to help and James does not, wisely wanting to keep out of the continental slaughtering. As a matter of fact, it's Charles' brother-in-law, husband to his sister Elizabeth, whom Charles wants to help here, and it's his daughter James not only refuses to help but refuses later, when she's a penniless exile, to allow returning to England. By removing any reference to Elizabeth, Walker ensures the sympathy for James and his decision making remains unmuddled.
Then we move on to Charles and the English Civil War, and here's where the seies being royalist really becomes glaring. The first of the two Charles I. episodes is told from the pov of Henrietta Maria, his Queen, and the second from Charles himself on the day of his death. Now, it's not that the two parter doesn't let Charles make mistakes, which are called out as mistakes, it does. But not the type of mistake the Parliamentarians would complain about. Instead, Charles isn't ruthless enough and too damn polite and nice. His great sin which haunts him in part II (and you do get the sense the narrative agrees with him there) is not having stood by his friend Stafford and having let himself be bullied by Parliament into signing his execution warrant, the big mistake not executing the ringleaders when he still could have. The Parliamentarians are a bunch of fanatics, way too paranoid about Catholics, and are shown uniformly so. Factions, what factions? Now, Walker makes a moving story out of this, don't get me wrong. The first episode is a good take on the arranged marriage trope, as Henrietta Maria first is a lonely stranger at the English Court since Charles is still way too bff with Buckingham to let her get emotionally close, and only when Buckingham dies does she get to know Charles as a person and understand how having been the unfavorite son of his father, the sickly child expected to die, has formed him. And the second part is basically told backwards, from the royal execution to the moment Charles signs Stafford's death warrant despite having promised Stafford not to at the end of the previous episode, and while hardly high literature Walker does a good job of telling a story in this tricky format. Also, the two parter has one of history's most entertaining ambigigous shady ladies in a supporting role, to wit, Lucy Hay, Lady Carlisle, who is introduced as Buckingham's misstress and spy in new Queen Henrietta Maria's entourage, who switches sides and becomes Henrietta Maria's friend because she can see in the long term Buckingham is doomed (and is going to drop her anyway, whereas Henrietta Maria will not), and who then in part II also can see where the wind is blowing and switches sides to the Parliamentarians while becoming Pym's mistress. Lucy was one of the inspirations for Milady (de Winter) in The Three Musketeers, and she's a very colorful part in these two episodes.
The Charles II. two parter gives us young Charles, penniless exile on the continent (with flashbacks to child!Charles getting a good hard look at reality during the Stafford trial when he was sent by his father to plead for Stafford's life with Parliament) , culminating in his restoration, while part II provides us with middle aged Charles scheming and maneouvring against Parliament to esnure brotherJames' succression. After three tragic Stuarts - James VI and I is a successful King but he's also tragic because lonely - , you can telll Walker has fun with Charles the survivor and quipster, though again the rl ensemble is ruthlessly cut down. Only two of Charles' mistresses make the cut, Louise and Barbara, and of the siblings only James. No sister Minette means Louise gets her lj job of being the sole intermediary between Charles and Louis XIV for the secret treaty, while no other sisters will have consequences for the Wililam and Mary characterisation. But the most royalist element of this second two parter isn't so much parliament being drawn (again) as a bunch of irrational anti Catholic fanatics, but brother James being fussy, pedantic and too honest for his own good about his Catholicism, but otherwise well meaning with no actual negative qualities, while Charles' oldest illegtimate son Monmouth is an ungrateful complainer whose sole lines seem to consist of "I'm a Protestant and I should be King!" Basically, this is the gospel according to James, and it gets laid on even more thickly in the next part, where we hear from James, from the pov of the Churchills, no less, Jack (future Duke of Marlborough) and Sarah (future Rachel Weisz in "The Favourite") , who get entertainingly characterized as a cynical courtier power couple that James maybe an annoying fusspot but never had a mean bone in his body and basically was too naive and good natured for the job. Which, what? I mean, even if you assume that every negative word about James as King was written by the victor (i.e. William of Orange) in justification of his takeover, there's still plenty of material from his Duke of York years. The entire saga of how James' first marriage came to be, for starters. (It's still exile time when James promises Anne Hyde, daughter of brother Charles' chancellor-in-exile, he'll marry her. They have sex. She gets pregnant. They get married. By then, however, the Restoration is on the horizon, James is a royal Duke with money again instead of an exile with a title, and NOW he changes his wife, declares the marriage wasn't a marriage, and gets his male friends to claim they had sex with (by now highly pregnant) Anne so she's a whore and the kid can't be his. At which point brother Charles intervenes and lays down the law: the marriage stands, Anne is his sister-in-law. And that's the guy whom Mike Wallace has the most cynical narrators of the episode dclare "has no mean bone in his body"!
James being too nice a guy (just like Dad) for the job who only wanted to give everyone freedom of conscience, otoh, means you have to explain why both his daughters turn against him in this and the subsequent episodes. Especially since hes also written as an excellent father. (RL Events like his complaining about Mary and Willliam hanging out with exiled Monmouth, or him telling Mary her husband is cheating on her in order to estrange them? Do not happen.) This is barely justified by historical necessity, family ambition and outside influences. (I.e. William wants to be King, and the Churchills are influencing Anne.) Otoh, William is a nicely enigmatic and ambigous character (and another good take on the "arranged marriage turns real" trope). Here, the narrator is Willilam's bff and possible lover, Bentinck. (As opposed to the James I./his boyfriends affairs, which are presented as love affairs, here the narrative presents the William/Bentick relationship as a platonic friendship, with with with emotional romantic overtones. William is another lonely royal boy temporarily saved form loneliness by finding a true friend, but he's far more prickly and defensive than James I. was, and way more ruthless later on in terms of realpolitik. Otoh, he's probably the most competent ruler in this series, and despite being enigmatic does become sincerely attached to both Bentinck and Mary. Alas, Walker has removed any references to his mother having been a Stuart (the older sister of Charles and James), so his version of William can claim the throne only via his marriage to Mary, not also because he is, in fact, part of the succession as well. And we get such lines like teenage Mary complaining of having to marry a guy she's never heard of. (Teenage Mary did weep at the prospect of having to marry abroad, but she definitely had heard of her first cousin William before.) Mary starts out as a naive girl but becomes a power realist and does find happiness in her marriage. Meanwhile, Anne starts out even more naive but also solidly underestimated and eventually learns that a ruler can't afford ambitious friends. She doesn't get rid of Sarah because of Abigail Masham (who does not show up in the Anne episode), she gets rid of Sarah because Sarah overreaches herself, and so does Marlborough.
Anne is the last crowned Stuart, but there are still two more Stuarts to go. Because now the Stuarts are in exile and not in power anymore, Walker can milk the underdog romance for what it's worth, but he also provides a clear tragedy trajectory for Charles Edward Stuart, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie - he has just charisma, belief and energy and courage enough to get the most successful Jacobite uprising going and going pretty far, but he's absolutely incapable of dealing with defeat, and from the moment he flees after the battle of Culloden, he's headed for self destruction, drinking more and more, with what started out as a romance turning abusive until . BPC himself isn't the narrator, his episode is told from the pov of his more realistic younger brother Henry and of his mistress Clementina (the mother of Charlotte later). By the time the episode ends, Charlie is an alcoholic wreck and Clementina has run away with their daughter to save her life. The last episode, about Charlotte, in a way is a counter part and wrap up with the Mary Queen of Scots episode that opens it, again a story of a woman told from various friends and foes. Mary started at the top; Charlotte starts at the bottom, being no one's heir at first, her mother had to declare her illegitimate and put it in writing she wasn't married to Charlie in order to get help from her not-quite-in-laws. Through sheer dogged determination, charm and energy, Charlotte first secures an existence for herself by becoming rich Cardinal Rohan's mistress and then eventually wears her father, the alcoholic wreck in Rome, down into receiving her. Once there, she takes over his household (by then, he's been married and left by his late life wife) and brings some semblance of order and, surprisingly for both, affection back into his life, and he actually fades out on a good note, having made Charlotte his official heir, thus giving her finally the recognition she wanted all her life. But alas, she herself has only two more years to live. Charlotte is perhaps the most interesting of the female Stuarts as written in this series, with a core of impossible dreaming hidden in the veneer of a cynical adventuress, and she has a neat verbal sparring relationship going with Uncle Henry (neither trusts the other an inch but both uneasily recognize they have quite a lot in common), and so this listener found it most unfair that real life cut her down just when she had made it to the (exile) top. Then again, between the French Revolution and Napoleon, whoever claimed to the the Stuart pretender was to become pointless anyway in a radically changed world.
In conclusion: like I said, every entertaining, but in its unabashed royal partisanship something to behold, thus awakening the urge to call for the English Republic again.
The Mary Queen of Scots opening episode is that rarity: a fictionalization of her life which does not invent a meeting with Elizabeth I. In fact, Elizabeth does not show up at all, though of course she's talked about. It starts with Mary's arrival in Scotland and ends when she leaves the country, then gets a "where are they now?" type of epilogue which, since the entire episode is told from the various povs of Mary's Scottish friends and opponents, works pretty well. (And at one point has hilarious fourth wall breaking, as when Bothwell snarks about John Knox that Knox the Überpious, so ready to rant about Mary's sex life, was at the same time after a sixteen years old, and Knox in his part of the epilogue says "she was seventeen, and I married her!" Compared with the recent movie, this episode sticks a bit more closely to the facts (no Mary riding into battle), though it can't resist the bit which the 1970s movie about Mary invented and which shows up in Mary fiction ever since, that Rizzio has an affair with Darnley which later gives Darnley additional reason to hate on Rizzio. As with the rest of the episodes, Walker ruthlessly cuts down the ensemble and tries to avoid confusion (so instead of four favored ladies in waiting all called Mary, Mary has one standing in for all four with a different nickname), though I regret one thing not being mentioned, which is Darnley's mother (and maternal ancestry). This is in fact pretty crucial as to why Mary married him in the first place. In the episode, Darnley's father the Earl of Lennox gets mentioned and shows up, but what really is important is that Darnley was the son of Margaret Douglas, who was the daughter of Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII. This made him cousin to both Mary and to Elizabeth and gave him a blood claim to the English succession, though not one as good Mary's own. Meaning: Mary, who was trying to strengthen her claim to Elizabeth's throne, didn't just marry him for his pretty face. Since that marriage was arguably the biggest mistake of her life, in retrospect, one would think such a circumstance would not go unmentioned, but no, it doesn't make the cut. (Which turned out to foreshadow a great deal of mothers, daughters and sisters not making the cut. Look, Wallace, I get that royal genealogy is a headache, but in that time and age, it often was really important regarding everyone's claims on the top job.
Anyway, the episode about Mary's son James is perhaps the most sympathetic take on James VI of Scotland and VI. of England I've come across, cutting between two timelines, James the boy and young man on the one hand, and old James looking back on the other. Boy James is a terrorized-by-brutal-teachers-and-guardians clever, lonely and fearful kid whose childhood fears are also later used as an explanation for the witch persecution and whose loneliness gets temporarily soothed when he meets his first love, Esmé Stuart. (Here the episode pointedly does not mention James was 13, which when I looked it up did make me raise an eyebrow because the age does give his teachers and advisors a non-homophobic reason to be against the Esmé affair.) But inevitably they are torn apart. In the old James timeline, his last lover, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham has just returned from the ill fated Spanish trip with James' son Charles, and old James is frustrated as he sees the young guys eager for war instead of having learned from him how important peace is for a kingdom. Not to mention that Buckingham has all but traded him in for Charles. Again, culling down the number of relations makes a difference in characterisation: When young Charles is eager to intervene in the continental wars (who happen to be the early stage of the Thirty Years War, and James is against it, the episode makes it easy to entirely sympathize with James because it has James refer to "your cousin" the Protestant King of Bohemia whom Charles wants to help and James does not, wisely wanting to keep out of the continental slaughtering. As a matter of fact, it's Charles' brother-in-law, husband to his sister Elizabeth, whom Charles wants to help here, and it's his daughter James not only refuses to help but refuses later, when she's a penniless exile, to allow returning to England. By removing any reference to Elizabeth, Walker ensures the sympathy for James and his decision making remains unmuddled.
Then we move on to Charles and the English Civil War, and here's where the seies being royalist really becomes glaring. The first of the two Charles I. episodes is told from the pov of Henrietta Maria, his Queen, and the second from Charles himself on the day of his death. Now, it's not that the two parter doesn't let Charles make mistakes, which are called out as mistakes, it does. But not the type of mistake the Parliamentarians would complain about. Instead, Charles isn't ruthless enough and too damn polite and nice. His great sin which haunts him in part II (and you do get the sense the narrative agrees with him there) is not having stood by his friend Stafford and having let himself be bullied by Parliament into signing his execution warrant, the big mistake not executing the ringleaders when he still could have. The Parliamentarians are a bunch of fanatics, way too paranoid about Catholics, and are shown uniformly so. Factions, what factions? Now, Walker makes a moving story out of this, don't get me wrong. The first episode is a good take on the arranged marriage trope, as Henrietta Maria first is a lonely stranger at the English Court since Charles is still way too bff with Buckingham to let her get emotionally close, and only when Buckingham dies does she get to know Charles as a person and understand how having been the unfavorite son of his father, the sickly child expected to die, has formed him. And the second part is basically told backwards, from the royal execution to the moment Charles signs Stafford's death warrant despite having promised Stafford not to at the end of the previous episode, and while hardly high literature Walker does a good job of telling a story in this tricky format. Also, the two parter has one of history's most entertaining ambigigous shady ladies in a supporting role, to wit, Lucy Hay, Lady Carlisle, who is introduced as Buckingham's misstress and spy in new Queen Henrietta Maria's entourage, who switches sides and becomes Henrietta Maria's friend because she can see in the long term Buckingham is doomed (and is going to drop her anyway, whereas Henrietta Maria will not), and who then in part II also can see where the wind is blowing and switches sides to the Parliamentarians while becoming Pym's mistress. Lucy was one of the inspirations for Milady (de Winter) in The Three Musketeers, and she's a very colorful part in these two episodes.
The Charles II. two parter gives us young Charles, penniless exile on the continent (with flashbacks to child!Charles getting a good hard look at reality during the Stafford trial when he was sent by his father to plead for Stafford's life with Parliament) , culminating in his restoration, while part II provides us with middle aged Charles scheming and maneouvring against Parliament to esnure brotherJames' succression. After three tragic Stuarts - James VI and I is a successful King but he's also tragic because lonely - , you can telll Walker has fun with Charles the survivor and quipster, though again the rl ensemble is ruthlessly cut down. Only two of Charles' mistresses make the cut, Louise and Barbara, and of the siblings only James. No sister Minette means Louise gets her lj job of being the sole intermediary between Charles and Louis XIV for the secret treaty, while no other sisters will have consequences for the Wililam and Mary characterisation. But the most royalist element of this second two parter isn't so much parliament being drawn (again) as a bunch of irrational anti Catholic fanatics, but brother James being fussy, pedantic and too honest for his own good about his Catholicism, but otherwise well meaning with no actual negative qualities, while Charles' oldest illegtimate son Monmouth is an ungrateful complainer whose sole lines seem to consist of "I'm a Protestant and I should be King!" Basically, this is the gospel according to James, and it gets laid on even more thickly in the next part, where we hear from James, from the pov of the Churchills, no less, Jack (future Duke of Marlborough) and Sarah (future Rachel Weisz in "The Favourite") , who get entertainingly characterized as a cynical courtier power couple that James maybe an annoying fusspot but never had a mean bone in his body and basically was too naive and good natured for the job. Which, what? I mean, even if you assume that every negative word about James as King was written by the victor (i.e. William of Orange) in justification of his takeover, there's still plenty of material from his Duke of York years. The entire saga of how James' first marriage came to be, for starters. (It's still exile time when James promises Anne Hyde, daughter of brother Charles' chancellor-in-exile, he'll marry her. They have sex. She gets pregnant. They get married. By then, however, the Restoration is on the horizon, James is a royal Duke with money again instead of an exile with a title, and NOW he changes his wife, declares the marriage wasn't a marriage, and gets his male friends to claim they had sex with (by now highly pregnant) Anne so she's a whore and the kid can't be his. At which point brother Charles intervenes and lays down the law: the marriage stands, Anne is his sister-in-law. And that's the guy whom Mike Wallace has the most cynical narrators of the episode dclare "has no mean bone in his body"!
James being too nice a guy (just like Dad) for the job who only wanted to give everyone freedom of conscience, otoh, means you have to explain why both his daughters turn against him in this and the subsequent episodes. Especially since hes also written as an excellent father. (RL Events like his complaining about Mary and Willliam hanging out with exiled Monmouth, or him telling Mary her husband is cheating on her in order to estrange them? Do not happen.) This is barely justified by historical necessity, family ambition and outside influences. (I.e. William wants to be King, and the Churchills are influencing Anne.) Otoh, William is a nicely enigmatic and ambigous character (and another good take on the "arranged marriage turns real" trope). Here, the narrator is Willilam's bff and possible lover, Bentinck. (As opposed to the James I./his boyfriends affairs, which are presented as love affairs, here the narrative presents the William/Bentick relationship as a platonic friendship, with with with emotional romantic overtones. William is another lonely royal boy temporarily saved form loneliness by finding a true friend, but he's far more prickly and defensive than James I. was, and way more ruthless later on in terms of realpolitik. Otoh, he's probably the most competent ruler in this series, and despite being enigmatic does become sincerely attached to both Bentinck and Mary. Alas, Walker has removed any references to his mother having been a Stuart (the older sister of Charles and James), so his version of William can claim the throne only via his marriage to Mary, not also because he is, in fact, part of the succession as well. And we get such lines like teenage Mary complaining of having to marry a guy she's never heard of. (Teenage Mary did weep at the prospect of having to marry abroad, but she definitely had heard of her first cousin William before.) Mary starts out as a naive girl but becomes a power realist and does find happiness in her marriage. Meanwhile, Anne starts out even more naive but also solidly underestimated and eventually learns that a ruler can't afford ambitious friends. She doesn't get rid of Sarah because of Abigail Masham (who does not show up in the Anne episode), she gets rid of Sarah because Sarah overreaches herself, and so does Marlborough.
Anne is the last crowned Stuart, but there are still two more Stuarts to go. Because now the Stuarts are in exile and not in power anymore, Walker can milk the underdog romance for what it's worth, but he also provides a clear tragedy trajectory for Charles Edward Stuart, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie - he has just charisma, belief and energy and courage enough to get the most successful Jacobite uprising going and going pretty far, but he's absolutely incapable of dealing with defeat, and from the moment he flees after the battle of Culloden, he's headed for self destruction, drinking more and more, with what started out as a romance turning abusive until . BPC himself isn't the narrator, his episode is told from the pov of his more realistic younger brother Henry and of his mistress Clementina (the mother of Charlotte later). By the time the episode ends, Charlie is an alcoholic wreck and Clementina has run away with their daughter to save her life. The last episode, about Charlotte, in a way is a counter part and wrap up with the Mary Queen of Scots episode that opens it, again a story of a woman told from various friends and foes. Mary started at the top; Charlotte starts at the bottom, being no one's heir at first, her mother had to declare her illegitimate and put it in writing she wasn't married to Charlie in order to get help from her not-quite-in-laws. Through sheer dogged determination, charm and energy, Charlotte first secures an existence for herself by becoming rich Cardinal Rohan's mistress and then eventually wears her father, the alcoholic wreck in Rome, down into receiving her. Once there, she takes over his household (by then, he's been married and left by his late life wife) and brings some semblance of order and, surprisingly for both, affection back into his life, and he actually fades out on a good note, having made Charlotte his official heir, thus giving her finally the recognition she wanted all her life. But alas, she herself has only two more years to live. Charlotte is perhaps the most interesting of the female Stuarts as written in this series, with a core of impossible dreaming hidden in the veneer of a cynical adventuress, and she has a neat verbal sparring relationship going with Uncle Henry (neither trusts the other an inch but both uneasily recognize they have quite a lot in common), and so this listener found it most unfair that real life cut her down just when she had made it to the (exile) top. Then again, between the French Revolution and Napoleon, whoever claimed to the the Stuart pretender was to become pointless anyway in a radically changed world.
In conclusion: like I said, every entertaining, but in its unabashed royal partisanship something to behold, thus awakening the urge to call for the English Republic again.