Becoming Elizabeth: Why women holding power and surviving politics in England fascinates viewers consistently ?

British royalty has little significant connection with India or Asia in the day present day. Their queens, before Queen Victoria, had no historical part in these parts of the world. Yet stories of British royalty fascinate audiences worldwide, be it their real life events- like the death of Queen Elizabeth Second or the controversial exit of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry from Royal duties. More than court intrigues, political games and England’s fierce anti-Catholicism, queens that have ruled over this island nation have inspired tons of films, series and TV shows. The female monarch who battled convention, political intrigue in house and from foreign shores; and gender bias, to rule over a powerful nation in medieval times has made for true value entertainment. In fact, the mainstay of The Crown is also the queen Elizabeth the second, her life and times. Films about queens of England proliferate. Currently, the critically acclaimed drama Becoming Elizabeth (Lionsgate Play) has grown with audiences. It shows the early years of Elizabeth the First, the last Tudor monarch to rule over England when governments were in tatters across Europe. With a large creative team under showrunner Anya Reiss, this series begins when King Henry the Eighth is dead. He has five children- Mary, a Catholic daughter; Edward, the boy king and heir apparent; and Elizabeth, 15, the bastard of Anne Boleyn, the queen that he got executed. This series is bold and delightfully surprising in its interpretation of court intrigue. Every lead character is marked by uncertainty. Their choices have little clarity or free speak. They answer questions with counter questions, never making it clear what their intention is. The most appealing part of this series is its irreverence. It treats the question of succession to the English throne like any other regular family’s dilemma. Elizabeth is a strong willed teenager but wily in those decisions that matter, and that could mean life or death for her. It is also a powerful commentary on the limited choices that a woman has in her life’s most important steps. She must act according to a pre-defined moral code, follow tenets of a new form of Christianity, hide her true feelings for siblings and her lover. She must count on subterfuge and defiance to stay protected. It also shows the reckless, sly and smooth Thomas Seymour, rumoured to be Queen Elizabeth’s first lover, as a different kind of nobleman. He encourages every woman with a royal connection to be independent and free spirited, without worrying about consequences. Becoming Elizabeth could well be a contemporary interpretation of this complex succession to the English throne. The life and achievements of Queen Elizabeth has been fertile ground for filmmaking. Amongst many such stories, Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth The Golden Age (2007) won a couple of Academy awards and multiple nominations for various film awards. The film is not historically accurate nor is it considered inclusive in adapting political intrigues and court dramas of her steady, powerful reign. But a brilliant Cate Blanchett as the queen and a story about conflicts of a female queen, who had to build a personality cult of the virgin queen as a rallying factor for people, won acceptance. Her reign laid the foundation for Great Britain- a unified nation and forged a powerful national identity. The reign of Elizabeth laid foundations for the British to seek global supremacy, thereby spawning colonial conquests in centuries that followed. She was the last Tudor monarch, but also the most impactful one. While queen Elizabeth ruled effectively and had a moderate approach to religious violence across England, she had a lifelong internal battle against her cousin, Mary Stuart. This is the crux of the film Mary Queen of Scots (2018), which narrates this great battle of the sisters from the point of view of the Scottish queen. Mary has been judged as a victim by history. But the film by Josie Rourke drew a mixed response with sizeable criticism over the film’s historical inaccuracies. Mary Queen of Scots had grown up in the French court, and had never met Queen Elizabeth, only communicating with her through letters. She set foot in Scotland with intent to fight the English queen, fanning an age old cultural divide that still exists between these cultures. But this tension between women from the same family, the parallel queens, has driven both literary and televised fiction consistently. In fact, the troubled Stuart Queen, Anne, who ruled for just five years and had very poor health, also made for the much applauded Oscar winning film The Favourite. Anne’s story is one of suffering and unwillingness to be a monarch. Her tragic life was structured around class divide, the sheer value of being a queen’s ‘favourite’ in court even as peasants suffered and wars raged, made for an original black comedy about the ways of British royalty. Even as stories of queens beating gender bias and political intrigue entertain, the lives of the Boleyn sisters have inspired filmmakers too. The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) by Justin Chadwick is an underrated, well written drama about the extreme choices of Anne and Mary Boleyn. Anne Boleyn was executed by King Henry the Eighth of charges of adultery, after having given birth to Elizabeth. Both sisters plot and plan every means possible to ensnare the king, then Anne gives in to temptation and the pull of power. She was executed for a charge that commonly played out in the British court, without anyone making it public. This film looks at the unfairness that is embedded in the destiny of a woman in royal households, and the outcomes of ambition for women in the medieval world. It draws parallels to the judgment that society heaps on some women selectively even today. Fascination of the Royals of Britain has driven huge viewership consistently for The Crown, the Netflix series. It sets quite a few benchmarks in budgets, acting, production and storytelling. At its heart is a woman forced to become a country’s symbol of pride and honour for decades. When it comes to women holding the reigns of power, there is scope to tell multiple stories from various points of view. And with irreverence marking the recent approaches to stories about British queens and princesses, the role of gender has found a fresher, revised and more relevant voice. Archita Kashyap is an experienced journalist and writer on film, music, and pop culture. She has handled entertainment content for broadcast news and digital platforms over 15 years.  Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.