Off with Her Head!
I have this thing with Queens in European history who got their heads chopped off. There is something fascinating to me about it. I don't know what it is, but it is so horrifying and grotesque that I've always found myself absolutely mesmerized by the whole idea.
Marie Antoinette, Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots...all lost their royal heads to the sheer delight of angry mobs. Lots of people were beheaded back in medieval times, but it's crazy to me that they would do it to a Queen.
I've recently become obsessed with the Tudors...and just to make this clear, I'm talking about the actual history of the Tudors (King Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn, etc. NOT the Showtime series, "The Tudors.").
Now THAT was a disfuncational royal family.
To think of all that resulted from the horny King Henry VIII, a ruler who took to chopping off the heads of his wives who didn't either die after childbirth or become exiled so that he could screw his newest mistress...a man who broke an entire country free from the Catholic Church so that he could wed a new piece of ass (Anne Boleyn, the original Monica Lewinski of sorts).
All for the sake of ensuring that a penis would continue to rule the land. And what's funny is that when it was all said and done, his daughter Elizabeth, whom was the product of his decision to split from the church and marry his mistress, wound up becoming one of the greatest rulers the country would ever have.
All of that drama and beheading and religious turmoil...6 wives (two beheaded, one exiled, one dead from childbirth, one annulled, and the last one whom I will just assume was simply one lucky bitch), a country in ruins and the only male heir dead...all of that fuss and a woman was still destined to rule England.
PHENOMENAL irony. Bravo.
That's some pretty heavy shit. Henry VIII! What a pig! But oh what a fascinating pig he was.
Since I am voluntarily ignorant when it comes to most things religious, I had no idea that England broke from the Catholic Church so that King Henry VIII could divorce his first wife and marry his whore.
Can you imagine having that kind of power? The man named himself the head of his own Church, unscathed by having the Catholic Church on his bad side. That's craziness. The Catholic Church is one big scary intimidating entity.
Even Chuck Norris sleeps with a night light on out of fear of the Catholic Church hiding under his bed.
~shudder~
Henry VIII's influence marches on to this day, having followed English settlers overseas to America. It makes sense. From what I've witnessed here in the US of A, many Protestants continue to find no problem in divorcing their spouses to be with their whores. It's very educational to finally understand where the root of that American classic came from.
Ol' Henry was the original religious rule-bending hypocrite. The OG Bible Abuser.
Who needs reality television when there are real-life stories like THAT to read about?
I find myself hungry for more information on the whole mad Tudor dynasty.
About a year or so ago, a sudden interest in European royalty also happened to me with Austrian born, one-time French Queen Marie Antoinette, after I saw Sofia Coppola's film "Marie Antoinette" with Kirsten Dunst.
I remember being a kid and watching the cartoon "Beetlejuice," which was a spin-off from the movie. In an episode, one of the dead characters was Marie Antoinette. She walked around carrying her head tucked under her arm. The head talked and had a French accent and everything.
I thought that to be mind boggling and morbidly amusing and it has always stuck with me, so years later, when Coppola put out her film, I was intrigued.
Initially I was annoyed with ending of the film, "Marie Antoinette." The movie ended with Antoinette looking back wistfully at Versailles, while being hauled away to be imprisoned...then...NOTHING.
("Whaaa? Wait- that's IT? I sat through this whole fucking movie and I don't even get to see her get her head cut off? What a gip!")
After watching it again, reading up on the history, and better understanding the artistic direction Coppola was coming from in making the movie, the lack of blood and gore started to make sense and became a just choice, but still. It would have given me some sort of closure.
I was pleased to see that "The Other Boleyn Girl" made up for what "Marie Antoinette" lacked in that department- where Queen Anne Boleyn and her brother George lost their heads in gruesome public executions.
In "The Other Boleyn Girl" axes fell, heads rolled, and I got that odd feeling of repulsion/satisfaction that must have come with someone getting their head cut off back in the day. It's disgusting I know, but I am one of those people who are inherently interested in the dark and disturbing.
Mildly disturbing at least~ not disturbing just for the sake of shock value.
The stories that back those medieval executions are what make them so interesting. It's not just for the sake of seeing someone get their head cut off.
You go through the entire journey of a story- especially in visual media- and there is all this building up and climaxing...especially when you know the fate of the doomed.
I mean, mobs of people would gather and cheer with their children in tow when someone was sent to the block. They would rejoice and scream and hoot and hollar while a person was executed. Like jackals.
That's just pure insanity.
I personally would never want to actually see someone get their head cut off in real-life (GOD no), but when it comes to historical execution, one has to wonder just what was so sick about human nature back then to make some sort of celebrated social event out of it.
Beheading was the real deal. To leave it out of a movie just depletes a big chunk of what was interesting about the entire story in the first place. Had Marie Antoinette and Anne Boleyn had NOT been beheaded, would modern day film makers be making movies about them?
Sometimes the way someone leaves this world, or the fact that they left the world earlier than they should have at all, is mostly of what makes them so interesting.
