[ SECRET POST #3212 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3212 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 027 secrets from Secret Submission Post #459.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[philstar22]

I don't think Gregory is a good story teller at all. She picks a favorite character and then demonizes everyone around her to make her look better and doesn't write faults into her characters. Those are not, to me, signs of a good writer. I really, really hated The Other Boleyn girl (which, admittedly is part because I like Anne a lot and while she wasn't perfect Gregory makes her out to be practically evil).

[sarillia]

That's interesting to me because one of the things I felt most strongly about when I read The Other Boleyn Girl was sympathy for Anne when she was driving herself to exhaustion playing her part.

[philstar22]

Maybe? Honestly, she just upped the scheming to the point that Anne came across as awful and unlikeable to me. Yes, some of it was true, but not anywhere near to that extent (and given the lack of power for women at the time, a woman who uses what she has to get ahead and would rather be a wife than a mistress is hardly a horrible human being), and Mary wasn't anywhere near the saint Gregory painted her to be.

[sarillia]

Oh I know it's got barely any connection to historical fact. I was talking about them as characters. I just have a soft spot for characters like this book's version of Anne so I still felt sympathetic toward her.

[philstar22]

That makes sense. I'm really interested in the historical character, so I couldn't quite manage to separate them in my mind.

[sarillia]

That's fair.

Personally I love seeing all the different ways historical people are interpreted in different stories even if I know that some of them are much closer to what the evidence we have says than others.

[(Anonymous)]

The Other Boleyn Girl is not one of her better books, I agree, and Gregory based her portrayal off the most ludicrous, bullshit biographies of Anne I've ever read. But some of her more recent work has been interesting. I don't necessarily agree with her portrayal of historical figures, but she has a way of making them very real (and very flawed) human beings. It's actually very impressive when you see how she's created a character who thinks they're doing the right thing and who tries to make the right choices... but they're not. You can understand why they did what they did, but if you know your history, you'll also know that they're screwing up big time. That's tough to pull off as a writer.

[philstar22]

Oh, that actually sounds good. The Other Boleyn Girl turned me off her writing so much I haven't actually read her other stuff. Which ones are the best?