Best

One of the best pieces of historical fiction I can recommend is the Anne of Cleves teleplay within The Six Wives of Henry VIII. I think of it often when I am considering the nature of historical fiction, and tonight, having a conversation with my mom in which we were talking about going to see The King's Speech tomorrow, I was thinking of it once again.

It seems that the period of production for the new flick has brought to light a treasure trove of primary sources for the specifics of this story (always something to get me lusting: for Clovis I, in English, primaries were thin on the ground indeed!). There are some improvisations in the production, interestingly enough, centering most on the specifics of therapy King George received.

For me, these improvisations are invariably fascinating. I find as much fascination in the *fiction* of historical fiction as in its history; how it is deployed, when and where in a story, the thought processes in what is used and how. Stage Beauty (a great movie) uses fiction to wonderful effect, in entirely inventing a performance vocabulary of nuanced, wonderful artifice, comprising the grueling training of a boy learning to become an actor of women's roles - and it's actually quite the beautiful series of gestures and symbols translated to a physical language.

I find things like that (and, as a Star Trek fan, I appreciate them outside of histfic - see also: the fact that Klingon exists as a fully formed language, when it started life as a couple of harsh-sounding word-oids intended to do little more than provide verbal props for an alien race), and love DVD extras for providing nerdly little insights into how world-building is done. Because, in histfic as in sci-fi or fantasy, world-building is key.

Or, as in my case, world-rebuilding. Ahem.

Anne of Cleves offers something similar, and gripping in itself. History provides, in fact, more than minimal primary sources on Henry VII, yet Anna von Cleves is perhaps his least-known wife. Her brief tenure, and the difficult nature of understanding the true nature of her departure from Henry's court and the royal stage, often lead to her neglect. She's generally portrayed as either a silent pawn or a lucky girl, delivered from the clutches of a fat madman by political expediency.

Elvi Hale is allowed to perform a scenario completely speculative, perhaps extremely likely, and absolutely entertaining. Her play centers on a drawing-room comedy scene, an extended sequence of comings-and-goings from the rooms of a neglected and ignored queen, who is written and presented as wonderfully intelligent, remarkably urgent, and smoothly manipulative to boot. She's a delightful presence, and provides a winsome answer to the question of whether Henry's supposed dissatisfaction with her ugliness and decripitude (and even rumors of her possible unchastity; never quite likely) were to be taken seriously. She's mature, to be sure, but startlingly winning, and charmingly funny too. She provides, come to think of it, probably most of the laughs out of the entire BBC series. Huh - never thought about that. And I do have an affection for characters written to be allowed a sense of humor in otherwise difficult and dramatic circumstances. I leavened my own ax-wielding barbarian with a great deal of wit, myself.

So when I think of the idea of historical *fiction*, it has for a long time been this televised play I go to mentally, as a sort of touchstone or archetype. I approve it and aspire to it, and find it immensely enjoyable every single time.

Note to self - one indulgence to consider, when paid-off cars, taxes, possible-vacation-expenditures, and the outcomes of final payments from previous employers all shake out: a blu-ray player. Since that DVD player died (G-d rest you, the my-dad-memorial-DVD-player!), I'm losing my mind not being able to enjoy my DVD collection.