Really happy to see the 1972 version come in at #2. That's a favorite of mine. Also, I had no idea that Anne of the Thousand Days and Mary of Scotland were written by the same person as The Bad Seed! Fascinating.
I can see your confidence really coming through now in your videos now. You seem more settled, your analysis and investigation has always been great, and your personality is coming through. Great work ❤
My favourite Mary is in a sketch comedy show called Psychobitches where famous women from history go to a psychologist. Michelle Gomez plays Mary to off-the-rails perfection. I agree with everything you said about the Ronan&Robbie movie!
The serpent queen really spun me for a loop when Mary was first introduced, I kept pretending it was just another Mary that they're showing so I wouldn't claw my eyes out! 😭 Lovely video with excellent commentary ❤
personally my fav is still camille rutherford because i love how human she is in it (she infuriates you with her decisions but we also see how conflicted she is and tbh i think that reflects the historical mary more because oh boy did she make some bad decisions...) and the creeping horror of the film. also re the execution scene i think the goal is sort of to drive home the fatalism of the film. we know mary will be executed by elizabeth, and with the puppet shows and mary's hallucinations of rizzio, its as if the world of the film is warning mary. i think the cut to her execution scene is meant to represent darnley's death being a turning point that mary's actions have made her execution inevitable. perhaps since much of the film is mary's reflection, it means thats the point that mary herself believes her death to have been sealed. particularly since her faith is interwoven into the film as source of comfort and conflict. also tbh i just think french marys are the best marys because it immediately allows a modern audience to pick up on her outsider position in scotland AND gives history fans a little something extra knowing that not only was mary raised in france but also french as the (literal) lingua franca
I’m excited to see if Reign will top the list. Even if it’s not the most accurate, and the show does go full CW at times, we get a fully fleshed and emotionally diverse version of Mary. Side note: what’s your opinion on the “Did Mary have Darnley killed” mystery?
@@AliceOfSherwood I've always wondered why the murderers--whoever they may have been--chose such a conspicuous method of murder. As a reader of murder mysteries, I would think a killer and conspirator, especially of such a high-profile target, should want to conceal the fact that it WAS murder. Darnley was already ill, so all it would have taken was drugging or bribing the guards so they could sneak in and smother Darnley, or poison him...and oh, alas, His Majesty took a turn for the worse, may God rest his soul! And no one would have been the wiser--and even those who may have suspected something was fishy would have had no proof. Instead, what do they do? Blow up the damn HOUSE and alert half the countryside that something was going on!
I first learned of Mary Stuart's tale as a child watching Katherine Hepburn's Mary on a local tv channel that showed classic movies on Saturday afternoons. Her portrayal has always been the standard I have measured all "Marys" against. I am glad to see it in the top spot. Excellent list & wonderful commentary on each. You have also given me some options I have not seen yet - I am particularly interested to see the Swiss production (even more so when I saw Tony Curran was in the cast). Side Note: To the person who said they dressed as Zombie Anne Boleyn for Halloween - was it with or without her head?
"I thought she attended Beauxbatons" - love it! Did you know theres a portrait of Anne Boleyn in the grand staircase? I only just noticed that last weekend.
Very enjoyable, thank you. It's a shame there aren't more versions of 'Mutiny on the Bounty' as it's a cracking good historical story with loads of interesting characters and events. There's Laughton/Gable, Howard/Brando and Hopkins/Gibson. Errol Flynn played Fletcher Christian (what a fab name that is) in a very early B/W filme and David Essex played him in a musical, and I think that's your lot, otherwise it's something you could have a lot of fun with. I was obsessed with it about 25 years ago, researched a lot and wanted to write about it but didn't in the end as there was as far as I know no new information.
Recently found your channel and just wanted to say how much I enjoy these videos! There’s something so satisfying and thought provoking comparing the different interpretations and portrayals of all these historical figures, so thank you for taking the time and putting in the hard work of filming and editing to make these! :)
Thanks again for another interesting review and rankings of one of the most tragic and vastly interpreted though plays and films historical legend that still intrigues many to this day. I always liked Vanessa Redgrave and her portrayal of Mary's romantic vulnerability that Elizabeth uses to her own advantage to get her to marry a less threatening consort and prevent a Catholic invasion that would dethrone her. It's always the politics and religious power struggles that put even cousins from the same family against each other. I agree Glenda Jackson put a quite a stamp on the Queen Elizabeth persona and I'm so glad you ranked this version near the top.
Yay a new vlog‼ Ps: I'm still mad at John Knox! Again I know he's not completely to blame in this story. Still that does not make me dislike him any less!
Looking forward to season 2 of The Serprent Queen where the catholic fanatic Mary is gone and the tolerant Catherine is in charge but somehow there is still a whole ass religious civil war going in France
I was rather hoping you'd touch, however briefly, on the 1957 Disney short The Truth About Mother Goose. It purports to show the "real" historical inspiration behind the nursery rhymes we know and love (which isn't strictly true--most of these so-called origins for nursery rhymes have turned out to be false--but it's entertaining anyway). According to this short, "Mary Mary Quite Contrary" was inspired by Mary Queen of Scots. The segment does trade in a lot of fallacies--claiming that Mary actually came to live in Elizabeth's court!--and it recycles some animation. The shot of Mary coming down a flight of stairs is cribbed off Cinderella (as, apparently, is Mary's blue dress) and her flirtations with the male courtiers is recycled from Katrina Van Tassel in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
[Nitpick] Patrick McGoohan actually played the Earl of Moray, Mary's brother. Bothwell was played by Nigel Davenport, whom I knew most from his brief appearance as Ebenezer Scrooge's father Silas (a character who doesn't appear in the novel) in the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol. (He's also Jack Davenport's dad.)
Omg I absolutely loved the Mary/Gunplot series! Blasphemy lol. I thought the script/acting was really well done, and the black humor of Cecil grooming James into statecraft, to continuously “widen the plot!” was fantastic.
Ronan and Robbie are both so talented and charismatic, and honestly, I really think that physically they are both a great fit to the characters they play (Ronan especially, while Robbie with the prosthetic nose looks very convincing as the older Elizabeth). This should have been a movie where all you need to do is to let them both shine by giving their characters as much depth and complexity as possible. What a shame their talents were so under-utilised in this mediocre production.
at 59:41 - the male actor in the footage you use isn't Patrick McGoohan, he's the one accompanying Mary while she's heckled by John Knox in the first clip you show of this film.
I have a super precious, ridiculous, terror of a cat named Mary Queen of Scots, and my position is unequivocally biased. SHE is the best Mary Queen of Scots, hands down.
I liked the Mary in the serpent queen because you don’t usually see Mary before those later years. One thing I wonder about the portrayal is that Mary is very dogmatic against the Protestants and it reminds me very much of her cousin Mary I. Was she really as dogmatic about her faith as her English cousin?
And I really liked sairose Ronan’s performance as Mary Queen of Scot’s; I feel all the faults of that movie had nothing to do with the actors performances but rather the director’s and writers agenda , & willful ignorance of the truth in history
Hello Alice my name is Isaiah and I have something important to say to you. I have come to offer you something special and if you choose to accept it I guarantee will be the best thing to ever happen to you. I have come to offer you the love of God. God is wise,creative and is a good listener incase you want someone to talk to you. An like any father he wants to help you and keep you safe especially from the devil. But I can not force you to believe the choice is ultimately yours have a happy holidays Shalom Shalom.
"...maybe Tom Hooper should stay away from musicals." Didn't you like the film version of Les Mis? IMO, it did have its flaws, mainly the cuts to the score and the over-reliance on closeups, but overall I found more to like about it than to dislike...especially its clarification of the historical context and the extra details from The Brick that it got in there.
God the Mary Queen of scots film is the worst film thing I every watched. As a person who always found Queen of scots very interesting they got a lot wrong
Don’t assume Americans don’t know the Gun Powder Plot. Also if you’re going to talk down to Americans get your facts right. New York City was the capital when Washington was president
I've been waiting for this!!
Really happy to see the 1972 version come in at #2. That's a favorite of mine.
Also, I had no idea that Anne of the Thousand Days and Mary of Scotland were written by the same person as The Bad Seed! Fascinating.
Honestly, your explanation of the Gunpowder Power plot is spot on!
I can see your confidence really coming through now in your videos now. You seem more settled, your analysis and investigation has always been great, and your personality is coming through.
Great work ❤
Great ranking, Vanessa Redgrave is my favourite so I'm happy to see her rank high up.
And In the Top 3, no less.
My favourite Mary is in a sketch comedy show called Psychobitches where famous women from history go to a psychologist. Michelle Gomez plays Mary to off-the-rails perfection.
I agree with everything you said about the Ronan&Robbie movie!
The serpent queen really spun me for a loop when Mary was first introduced, I kept pretending it was just another Mary that they're showing so I wouldn't claw my eyes out! 😭 Lovely video with excellent commentary ❤
personally my fav is still camille rutherford because i love how human she is in it (she infuriates you with her decisions but we also see how conflicted she is and tbh i think that reflects the historical mary more because oh boy did she make some bad decisions...) and the creeping horror of the film. also re the execution scene i think the goal is sort of to drive home the fatalism of the film. we know mary will be executed by elizabeth, and with the puppet shows and mary's hallucinations of rizzio, its as if the world of the film is warning mary. i think the cut to her execution scene is meant to represent darnley's death being a turning point that mary's actions have made her execution inevitable. perhaps since much of the film is mary's reflection, it means thats the point that mary herself believes her death to have been sealed. particularly since her faith is interwoven into the film as source of comfort and conflict.
also tbh i just think french marys are the best marys because it immediately allows a modern audience to pick up on her outsider position in scotland AND gives history fans a little something extra knowing that not only was mary raised in france but also french as the (literal) lingua franca
I’m excited to see if Reign will top the list. Even if it’s not the most accurate, and the show does go full CW at times, we get a fully fleshed and emotionally diverse version of Mary.
Side note: what’s your opinion on the “Did Mary have Darnley killed” mystery?
The Darnley mystery will be in the final video.
@@AliceOfSherwood I've always wondered why the murderers--whoever they may have been--chose such a conspicuous method of murder. As a reader of murder mysteries, I would think a killer and conspirator, especially of such a high-profile target, should want to conceal the fact that it WAS murder. Darnley was already ill, so all it would have taken was drugging or bribing the guards so they could sneak in and smother Darnley, or poison him...and oh, alas, His Majesty took a turn for the worse, may God rest his soul! And no one would have been the wiser--and even those who may have suspected something was fishy would have had no proof. Instead, what do they do? Blow up the damn HOUSE and alert half the countryside that something was going on!
@@jenniferschillig3768 well... sometimes people are idiots! ;-) Or maybe it was supposed to be some sort of a message?
I’m a History Buffs fan so I really appreciated him being referenced here
I first learned of Mary Stuart's tale as a child watching Katherine Hepburn's Mary on a local tv channel that showed classic movies on Saturday afternoons. Her portrayal has always been the standard I have measured all "Marys" against. I am glad to see it in the top spot. Excellent list & wonderful commentary on each. You have also given me some options I have not seen yet - I am particularly interested to see the Swiss production (even more so when I saw Tony Curran was in the cast).
Side Note: To the person who said they dressed as Zombie Anne Boleyn for Halloween - was it with or without her head?
With. I painted a bloody line around my neck
@@AliceOfSherwood I would love to see some pictures if you have any maybe when you do your Anne Boleyn redo?!
Star Wars references are priceless. You gotta wonder if that franchise has any Tudor era references to speak of
"I thought she attended Beauxbatons" - love it! Did you know theres a portrait of Anne Boleyn in the grand staircase? I only just noticed that last weekend.
Yeah, which makes no sense either because she would have attended Beauxbatons as well.
Also, Jane Seymour - Slytherin
Catharine Parr - Ravenclaw
@@AliceOfSherwoodKatherine Howard- Hufflepuff.
Bless you for this exhaustive list! I love the inclusion of the operas.
Good video. I ❤ British humor. I am delighted you inter-mingled it in.
As a long-time Minnesota Opera patron, I was stupidly excited about a tiny reference to it here.
Im rewatching that head fall off her wig for the week. It was perfect!
Very enjoyable, thank you. It's a shame there aren't more versions of 'Mutiny on the Bounty' as it's a cracking good historical story with loads of interesting characters and events. There's Laughton/Gable, Howard/Brando and Hopkins/Gibson. Errol Flynn played Fletcher Christian (what a fab name that is) in a very early B/W filme and David Essex played him in a musical, and I think that's your lot, otherwise it's something you could have a lot of fun with. I was obsessed with it about 25 years ago, researched a lot and wanted to write about it but didn't in the end as there was as far as I know no new information.
Oh hell yes! I just got off work and im excited for this ranking 😊❤❤❤
Hi I'm seeing this from France . Thank you for all your' work
It's always a good day when Alice uploads!❤
Recently found your channel and just wanted to say how much I enjoy these videos! There’s something so satisfying and thought provoking comparing the different interpretations and portrayals of all these historical figures, so thank you for taking the time and putting in the hard work of filming and editing to make these! :)
Thanks again for another interesting review and rankings of one of the most tragic and vastly interpreted though plays and films historical legend that still intrigues many to this day. I always liked Vanessa Redgrave and her portrayal of Mary's romantic vulnerability that Elizabeth uses to her own advantage to get her to marry a less threatening consort and prevent a Catholic invasion that would dethrone her. It's always the politics and religious power struggles that put even cousins from the same family against each other. I agree Glenda Jackson put a quite a stamp on the Queen Elizabeth persona and I'm so glad you ranked this version near the top.
Yay a new vlog‼
Ps: I'm still mad at John Knox! Again I know he's not completely to blame in this story. Still that does not make me dislike him any less!
Adelaide Kane helped introduce my LOVE of Mary Queen of Scots. I feel like she will be my top Mary. My lucky/favorite number is four, need I say more.
Looking forward to season 2 of The Serprent Queen where the catholic fanatic Mary is gone and the tolerant Catherine is in charge but somehow there is still a whole ass religious civil war going in France
Oh my gosh #6. I remember watching it years ago but could never figure out which version as the name of film is similar to most others.
I was rather hoping you'd touch, however briefly, on the 1957 Disney short The Truth About Mother Goose. It purports to show the "real" historical inspiration behind the nursery rhymes we know and love (which isn't strictly true--most of these so-called origins for nursery rhymes have turned out to be false--but it's entertaining anyway). According to this short, "Mary Mary Quite Contrary" was inspired by Mary Queen of Scots. The segment does trade in a lot of fallacies--claiming that Mary actually came to live in Elizabeth's court!--and it recycles some animation. The shot of Mary coming down a flight of stairs is cribbed off Cinderella (as, apparently, is Mary's blue dress) and her flirtations with the male courtiers is recycled from Katrina Van Tassel in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
[Nitpick] Patrick McGoohan actually played the Earl of Moray, Mary's brother. Bothwell was played by Nigel Davenport, whom I knew most from his brief appearance as Ebenezer Scrooge's father Silas (a character who doesn't appear in the novel) in the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol. (He's also Jack Davenport's dad.)
Ooh this was a great video! Definitely subscribing. I just got “into” Mary Queen of Scots so this really helped me get my fix.
it was a joy to watch it :) and I actually liked it to be this long, it was like watching full movie :)
Omg I absolutely loved the Mary/Gunplot series! Blasphemy lol.
I thought the script/acting was really well done, and the black humor of Cecil grooming James into statecraft, to continuously “widen the plot!” was fantastic.
I liked the bbc miniseries gunpowder treason and plot when I saw it as a child; but the r@pe scene by Darnley scarred me for years
Ronan and Robbie are both so talented and charismatic, and honestly, I really think that physically they are both a great fit to the characters they play (Ronan especially, while Robbie with the prosthetic nose looks very convincing as the older Elizabeth). This should have been a movie where all you need to do is to let them both shine by giving their characters as much depth and complexity as possible. What a shame their talents were so under-utilised in this mediocre production.
I have to rewatch the Vanessa Redgrave version. It has been such a very long time since seeing it. And yes, yikes, The Gunpowder Plot is cringeworthy.
at 59:41 - the male actor in the footage you use isn't Patrick McGoohan, he's the one accompanying Mary while she's heckled by John Knox in the first clip you show of this film.
The serpent queen is certainly interesting but i was immediately triggered by the portrayel of Mary.
Thank you for the inclusion of the operas!
Nt the game of thrones reference for the reign Queen Mary 😅😅😅
Mary and Elizabeth never met in real life so when I see movies or series where they meet, I stop watching.
I have a super precious, ridiculous, terror of a cat named Mary Queen of Scots, and my position is unequivocally biased. SHE is the best Mary Queen of Scots, hands down.
14:44 😂😂😂 As an American I lol’d
I liked the Mary in the serpent queen because you don’t usually see Mary before those later years. One thing I wonder about the portrayal is that Mary is very dogmatic against the Protestants and it reminds me very much of her cousin Mary I. Was she really as dogmatic about her faith as her English cousin?
Not really. She openly stated that she would allow Protestants the Freedom of their conscience (though this would later backfire on her).
And I really liked sairose Ronan’s performance as Mary Queen of Scot’s; I feel all the faults of that movie had nothing to do with the actors performances but rather the director’s and writers agenda , & willful ignorance of the truth in history
Hello Alice my name is Isaiah and I have something important to say to you. I have come to offer you something special and if you choose to accept it I guarantee will be the best thing to ever happen to you. I have come to offer you the love of God. God is wise,creative and is a good listener incase you want someone to talk to you. An like any father he wants to help you and keep you safe especially from the devil. But I can not force you to believe the choice is ultimately yours have a happy holidays Shalom Shalom.
"...maybe Tom Hooper should stay away from musicals." Didn't you like the film version of Les Mis? IMO, it did have its flaws, mainly the cuts to the score and the over-reliance on closeups, but overall I found more to like about it than to dislike...especially its clarification of the historical context and the extra details from The Brick that it got in there.
God the Mary Queen of scots film is the worst film thing I every watched. As a person who always found Queen of scots very interesting they got a lot wrong
Don’t assume Americans don’t know the Gun Powder Plot. Also if you’re going to talk down to Americans get your facts right. New York City was the capital when Washington was president
This is the one I’ve been waiting for! 🫨