A few weeks ago we rented “The Other Boleyn Girl.” Well I should clarify and say *I* rented “The Other Boleyn Girl.” Tom said he wasn’t into historical romances. How the main chick getting her head chopped off by order of her husband is considered a romance, only a man could understand. And frankly such a man scares me…but I married him, so I digress. 
So he was doing his computer-y thing and I was watching my movie. It was fantastic and I’m definitely reading the book. This gave a completely new angle to the Henry VIII saga. Mary Boleyn (Anne’s sister) has always had such a small footnoted place in history. She was a lover of Henry VIII, believed to have had up to two of his children, and was sister of Anne Boleyn. And that’s all history tells us? Are they freaking kidding?
There are stories there. And though “The Other Boleyn Girl” is historical fiction, I would not be at all surprised if it’s closer to the actual facts than most “based on a true story” movies we see now. There is a difference in “the exact facts” and “the true story.”
At the end of the day no one really cares the exact words that were exchanged. (Unless we’re in a court of law where such measures of precision are vital.) What we care about is the essence, the basic truth. So this was what confused me about “The Other Boleyn Girl” being considered historical fiction. I kept waiting for the “fiction” part, because as far as I’m concerned the story was true in every way that matters to people.
Sometimes I wonder if we get so caught up in a “just the facts, Ma’am” mentality that we can’t remember why we wanted the facts in the first place. Especially since sometimes “just the facts” obscures the truth, as it seems to have done for centuries in the case of Mary Boleyn and her sister.
July 5, 2008 at 1:52 pm
That’s what irritates me to no end. There are scant few facts: just interpretations, suppositions, educated guesses, etc. But people sit on those interpretations as if they’re facts.
They’re not. No one really knows what goes on behind closed doors. And you can interpret history based on the conventions of the time, etc., but the fact remains that people don’t always behave rationally, that the truth is often stranger than fiction.
One interpretation is as close to good as another. We’re never really going to KNOW for sure the details. All we know is she lived, she was Queen, she was beheaded. We don’t know which sister was the elder. We don’t know if Mary’s kids are Henry’s or not. We can’t ever know. We can make educated interpretations, but a probability is not The Way It Was.
Not that I have strong feelings on the subject.
July 5, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I think we just live in an age where people think they don’t have the truth unless they have a transcript of the exact facts, and I don’t think that’s true. Whether “The Other Boleyn Girl” is how it happened or not, it’s a true story. If not of these particular people, of these particular people if things happened a slightly different way, or other people in other times and nature.
If a writer captures what’s true about being human, the rest is just backdrop. IMO.
July 5, 2008 at 2:13 pm
*other times and places (I should reread before I post. geesh)
July 6, 2008 at 11:03 pm
LOL. I just rented this movie.
It is the “fact” behind the history that attracts me to historical romance/fiction. Which is why I grow irritated with wallpaper historicals. Real life is so much more interesting that the alternate universe so many authors have substituted for the scandalous, passionate, dreary and sober world of history. It’s also a cop-out for people to focus narrowly on hygiene, snobbery, etc as “historical accuracy”. I strive to make my characters human, but also express their particular setting and the very things that would shape them.
July 7, 2008 at 12:07 am
Hey Evangeline, good points! I think if someone is going to write historical fiction they have to be willing to go deeper than just surface realism.
I hated history until one professor I had in college. He would teach the “real stories” and not gloss over it like it had to be done in high school when everyone was underage.