Knowing more or less

 Sometimes knowing more must be considered worse.

I was thinking that as I watched the White Queen. The first time I watched it, I was just swept away by the romance and drama. I say swept away but I mean mildly engaged. No more than that. I rarely get swept away by anything. I suppose that's what's wrong with me if you could put it in a nutshell. That and the truth that when I *am* swept away, I'm *really* unmoored, really swept, all at sea.

So I'm rewatching the White Queen and I hadn't remembered that there are very few battle scenes. Which makes sense. It's not really about the Wars of the Roses as such. But it features Barnet. And the failure of historicism really bites. OMG. There's no readeption. Warwick lands in England, not Edward. Edward is not reclaiming his throne; Margaret of Anjou is trying to take it. 

And the battle! Ugh. At Barnet, Warwick bombarded what he thought were Edward's positions all night. The two armies were in open fields but it was foggy, so he didn't realise Edward had snuck up a lot closer to him. So he overshot Edward, who did not fire back. At dawn, Edward surprise attacked. Warwick's men held and one wing of Edward's army was crushed and forced from the battlefield but when the troops who had crushed them came back, there was a confusion over banners, cries of treachery and Warwick's army broke.

In the film, there is no artillery. No archers either. And Edward's army, all in one group, not formed into battles, is all dismounted, with nary a horse in sight. They creep through a foggy forest, clearly in daylight, and then sprint into Warwick's army. They then do that single combat thing that films love but has no connection to reality, with the show's protagonists slaughtering dozens of men because they are obviously better warriors than the common soldiery. Edward wins easily; there's no hint of treachery, no confusion, no luck, and the fog has pretty much vanished the moment the two armies meet.

Strangely, by Tewkesbury, one side or other has acquired artillery, because we hear it. We don't see the battle, which is probably a blessing.

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None of that matters, of course. I don't think it hurts anything to miss the readeption and the history is not very sound in the show anyway. It's not a good enough show to care. It's kind of a pity because the interplay of relationships and people would have made a good series. But probably not one that casual viewers could fall in love with.

When you know, you get fixated on the errors, especially when they are battles that run amiss. And you want the people to be real, and the setting -- generally okay in the White Queen -- to be accurate. You want the characters to be more like how they were: Margaret Beaufort smaller and younger -- if her kid is ten, she is in her early 20s, Margaret of Anjou prettier, the Neville girls much haughtier, Richard Duke of Gloucester much younger (he's clearly in his 20s at Tewkesbury but he should be in his late teens), Edward fatter and taller (he should tower over most other people).

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Life is like that. When you know more, you want things to be different. You want people to be what you imagine them to be. It's kind of the reverse of the show: in historical fiction, you want people to be who they were; in life, you want people not to be who they are but to be what you pictured.

Well, you have to swallow it, either way. You have to pass over the fiction. I start the new year single, with a new job, and problems that I can take as challenges or trials. So that's not so bad. Perhaps I can write my own version of history, change the truth into something kinder. I have only me to rely on, only me to write that story, only me. So.

posted by Dr Zen @ 10:21 pm 0 comments