Gary has been feeling a little bit better – enough that he can stay awake for four or five hours a day, so we are back to binge-watching television in the evenings.
I came upstairs from painting last weekend and I noticed he was still watching what he’d had on when I started painting two hours before.
“You have to watch this,” he said, breathlessly, “It’s really good. It’s all about Mary, Queen of Scots.”
“Mary, Queen of Scots!” I said in the obligatory Monty Python voice.
“You would love it. It’s a historical drama.”
So I asked about the only bit of MQofS trivia I know. “Does Elizabeth’s I’s rival in love end up at the bottom of the steps with her neck broken? I remember that was so suspicious she couldn’t end up with the man she supposedly loved.”
“Yes!”
“Did they mention the rival had advanced breast cancer and that’s probably what really did her in?”
“No, you are wrong. I mean, she did have cancer but then she threw herself down the steps and framed her husband. Mary wouldn’t do that.”
Based on the cancer-nod to historical accuracy, I decided to give it a chance. It was like history slanted toward teenagers. Or tweens. Tweens who would own a grimoire, like my husband, and believe in seers and prophecies.
It was called Reign, and as the IMDB review states in the first sentence, “This is a show for girls.”
Days later, after it was all over, we went to Wikipedia to sort out what was true and what was not, and he was bereft to hear some of his favorite characters were not historically accurate. (“No! Not Leith! He wasn’t real? Are you sure?”)
Then he was bereft and wrote some poems in his grimoire.