The White Queen

It’s a great tale and beautifully told with beautiful actors.

Absurd but engrossing War of the Roses-era drama. [9 Aug 2013, p.73]

The Starz 10-hour miniseries is a beautiful, fun period piece populated by amazing talent.

It may not have the production values of those shows [The Tudors or The Borgias], but it does have an Irons, who, along with the rest of the cast, makes The White Queen an entertaining romp through a complicated and fascinating period of English history.

The White Queen is gauzier than “The Tudors,” and it contains more overacting; but it scratches the same itch.

Though the series drags whenever it becomes bogged down in political aspects of the fight, it’s inherently entertaining to see such back-stabbing, and possibly literal stabbing, between supposed loved ones.

Adapted from three overlapping page-turners by the prolific Philippa Gregory, this enjoyably propulsive high melodrama replays the classic Wars of the Roses family feud (York vs. Lancaster) from the perspective of the women who are both pawns and players in a violent, turbulent game of claiming and keeping the English throne.

Addressing these complexities [the women hav[ing] to be more creative in their scheming], however, and incorporating the other tentacles of Gregory’s history eventually begin to dilute the story’s central thrust (and there’s a lot of thrusting) toward the end of the eight episodes previewed out of the 10-part run.

Each of them [actresses Rebecca Ferguson, Faye Marsay and Amanda Hale] stabs backs and pops bodice buttons with the necessary élan while keeping a straight face at The White Queen’s putative moral, which is that arranged marriages are corrupt and evil, while those born of attempted rape, self-mutilation and suicide are sacred and empowering.

This may be a case where a little more violence would help make the stakes seem more real. The main issues for these royals and would-be royals are when to bow and to whom.

Its success is due largely to the costumes, set dressing, and comeliness of the two leads, a smoldering Max Irons (son of Jeremy) and radiant Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson.... The problem with The White Queen is its pace, slowed by ponderous exposition and arcane bloodline conspiracies.

There are many powerful scenes in The White Queen, moments that illustrate time and again how a woman's body was both her greatest tool and her inevitable prison; a man could control his fate by mind or sword, a woman can do it only by proxy. Unfortunately, they are surrounded by the misty, swampy lands of generic medievalness.