Hey guys, this is Mel. If you're listening to this, you
are about to hear a super special sneak peek of our latest
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sneak peek. Don't hurt us.
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Hope you enjoy. Kate, who are we talking about
today? Drum roll.
Well, last week I teased that I was talking about a couple that
had a historical drama miniseries released about them
this past year. And that TV show that I was
talking about was called Mary and George, and that was
released on the Skynet channel, which is like an English
Channel, I'm pretty sure. And it was also on the Stars
Channel. And that TV show is about George
Villier and King James the first of England.
Yeah, historic. Is gay romance yes.
So that is who we are talking about this week.
Whoa. And I'm excited.
Kate what 3 words? Would you use to describe this
couple? The three words I would use to
describe them are. I mean, this is technically 4
because I had to mutually beneficial interest, domestic.
Oh, and dubious. Oh yeah, we got that -1 we
always do that. Always got to have that one.
I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued.
Yeah, so like I said with the TV show, I really enjoyed that
show. I highly recommend it if you
haven't seen it already. It's honestly quite historically
accurate as people would say. There's some flaws with the show
itself, nothing too major, but its commitment to depicting
history has actually happened. Isn't one of its flaws.
Like it said, it's quite accurate.
So again, I very much recommend it.
It stays very close to the truth and close to the history, and
that's in part because it's based on a nonfiction book about
the life of King James and George Villier.
The book is called The King's Assassin by Benjamin Woolley,
and I've read that as research for this show.
And I also read a couple other books.
And kind of like with The King's Assassin, some of the titles are
kind of spoiler alerty, so sorry in advance.
So one of the books I read was The Murder of King James the
First by Alistair Salony and Thomas Cogswell.
Kings James and the Letters of Homoerotic Desire by David M
Bergeron, The Catochring by Alan Stewart and the Wisest Fool.
The Lavish Life of James the 4th and 1st by Stephen Pepperon.
Sorry if I pronounced your name wrong, Stephen.
I'm sorry. Well, it is a spoiler, but now
I'm extra intrigued. I'm on the edge of my seat.
Yeah. So I read all of those books as
high preparation for this episode, so I have a lot of
information. But before I begin, I just want
to say that there's no way I can fit all of this into this
episode. So this isn't going to be a
completely comprehensive history, but I will never fit in
everything. Yeah, that's important.
I'll try and fit it in. So if you like to know more
about any of the people or things or events that I talk
about, definitely do your own research.
I think it's very interesting. And again, highly recommend the
TV show if you want to learn more as well.
Cool. So yeah, we can get into it.
But before we get into our main cast of characters, which is
King James and George, we kind of have to do some background
context knowledge because there's a lot of politics and
fighting and wars and stuff that you kind of need prior knowledge
to know about before you kind of get to everything that goes on
later. Because then you will be kind of
lost with all. What?
Century are we in here? We are in the 17th century for
the majority of the story, but we'll start with the 16th
century, which is the 15th. Of 9th, This is the furthest
back we've ever gone it. Is and I'm so excited.
If you didn't know, I studied history in college and I love
it. So this is really fun for me.
She's the resident historian. So it's really hard to talk
about James without first talking about his mother.
Who do you guys know who that might be?
Mary, Queen of. Scots.
Yes. OK, so his mom is Mary Stewart,
or Mary Queen of Scots, which is what she's most normally known
as. Mary was the only surviving
child of the previous King of Scotland, James the 5th, and
upon his death she was only six days old.
She became the new queen. But despite her title, Mary was
raised primarily in France and eventually became the Queen at
Consort of France when she married the King Francis the
Second. The King of France, whoever
Their marriage and his rule only lasts a year as he died in 1560
and after his death, Mary returned to Scotland and
expected to be lovingly embraced by her cousin, the new Queen of
England, Elizabeth the First. However, that did not happen.
Although Elizabeth was unmarried, childless, and Mary
was technically the second in line for the throne, Elizabeth
refused to name Mary as her heir.
For some reason they just. Because she was Catholic.
Right. Yeah.
Mary. 'S Protestant, yeah.
And Elizabeth was also jealous about how Mary was raised.
She had like a better childhood and Elizabeth had a poor
childhood, so there was some jealousy going on as well.
And OK, their father was Henry the Eighth, right?
So, yeah, so Elizabeth's father was Henry the Eighth, and Mary's
father was James the 5th. They're cousins.
They're. So there's a relation there.
Anyway, yeah, sorry. So Mary is very enraged that she
was not named the Rifle Air because that's what she believed
she was. So she decided to marry again
and solidify a line of succession that would rival
Elizabeth. So without Elizabeth's
permission, Mary married her 19 year old first cousin.
Take a drink, Henry Short, Lord Darnley.
And then shortly after they wed on June 19th, 1566, Mary gave
birth to her son James. OK, so this.
Is the main character James? So this is the universe that he
was born into. So I won't go into much detail
of what happened afterward, but a couple months after the
birthday of James Laura Darnley, his father ran away back to his
home after he committed murder in front of Mary while she was
pregnant. Like like who did he kill?
All right, I will have to stop the episode right there.
Thank you so much for listening to the teaser.
If you want to hear the full episode and many other bonus
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