The Tudors

In my time away from you all I've been watching the first two seasons of The Tudors from Showtime. Best Buy had them on sale for $15.00 a season. It was worth it to give the shows a try, at the normal thirty dollars a season there was no way I would have ever picked them up. I'm glad I did. At the time I started watching the first season I picked up a book that I've had sitting in my bookcase for years and never got around to reading. It was "The Six Wives of Henry VIII."

It was strange reading and watching the show at the same time. Somehow I kept my reading along what was going on in the show. I couldn't remember what happened to his first wife Katherine of Argon and I wasn't sure if I was going to read about it or see it on the show. I actually started to get ahead in the book and discovered her fate reading it and later watched it on the show.

Now you can complain that The Tudors is just historical soap opera, but life in Henry VIII's court was nothing sort of a grand soap opera at the time. Reading the book I was surprised by how historical accurate the show was. Some of the lines from the show are straight from history. It made the times when they deviated from the truth hit harder for me. The whole subplot of Henry marrying his sister to the King of Portugal was completely wrong. It was his younger sister and she married the King of France, but she does end up marrying Henry's friend after her husband dies and she returns to England.

It just made me wonder why when they did such a good job of sticking to the truth most of the time, that they had to change things in some occasions. I'm sure they thought they had to keep the number of characters down or whatever reason, but to me it was no excuse. Stick to what happened.

Still I have enjoyed the first two seasons and plan to eventually purchase the final two seasons. I finished the book and went right into reading the sequel by the author, "The Children of Henry VIII." A very fascinating time. The problem is that the second book ends with Elizabeth becoming Queen, so now I have to find a book about her.