Hey guys, this is Mel. If you're listening to this, you are about to hear a super special sneak peek of our latest bonus episode. But fair warning, this is just a sneak peek. Don't hurt us. It's totally optional to subscribe, but if you're interested, you can check out our Patreon by searching Significant Lovers Patreon Online. Hope you enjoy. Kate, who are we talking about today? Drum roll.
Well, last week I teased that I was talking about a couple that had a historical drama miniseries released about them this past year. And that TV show that I was talking about was called Mary and George, and that was released on the Skynet channel, which is like an English Channel, I'm pretty sure. And it was also on the Stars Channel. And that TV show is about George Villier and King James the first of England. Yeah, historic. Is gay romance yes.
So that is who we are talking about this week. Whoa. And I'm excited. Kate what 3 words? Would you use to describe this couple? The three words I would use to describe them are. I mean, this is technically 4 because I had to mutually beneficial interest, domestic. Oh, and dubious. Oh yeah, we got that -1 we always do that. Always got to have that one. I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued. Yeah, so like I said with the TV show, I really enjoyed that show. I highly recommend it if you
haven't seen it already. It's honestly quite historically accurate as people would say. There's some flaws with the show itself, nothing too major, but its commitment to depicting history has actually happened. Isn't one of its flaws. Like it said, it's quite accurate. So again, I very much recommend it. It stays very close to the truth and close to the history, and that's in part because it's based on a nonfiction book about the life of King James and George Villier.
The book is called The King's Assassin by Benjamin Woolley, and I've read that as research for this show. And I also read a couple other books. And kind of like with The King's Assassin, some of the titles are kind of spoiler alerty, so sorry in advance. So one of the books I read was The Murder of King James the First by Alistair Salony and Thomas Cogswell. Kings James and the Letters of Homoerotic Desire by David M Bergeron, The Catochring by Alan Stewart and the Wisest Fool.
The Lavish Life of James the 4th and 1st by Stephen Pepperon. Sorry if I pronounced your name wrong, Stephen. I'm sorry. Well, it is a spoiler, but now I'm extra intrigued. I'm on the edge of my seat. Yeah. So I read all of those books as high preparation for this episode, so I have a lot of information. But before I begin, I just want to say that there's no way I can fit all of this into this episode. So this isn't going to be a completely comprehensive history, but I will never fit in
everything. Yeah, that's important. I'll try and fit it in. So if you like to know more about any of the people or things or events that I talk about, definitely do your own research. I think it's very interesting. And again, highly recommend the TV show if you want to learn more as well. Cool. So yeah, we can get into it.
But before we get into our main cast of characters, which is King James and George, we kind of have to do some background context knowledge because there's a lot of politics and fighting and wars and stuff that you kind of need prior knowledge to know about before you kind of get to everything that goes on later. Because then you will be kind of lost with all. What? Century are we in here? We are in the 17th century for the majority of the story, but we'll start with the 16th
century, which is the 15th. Of 9th, This is the furthest back we've ever gone it. Is and I'm so excited. If you didn't know, I studied history in college and I love it. So this is really fun for me. She's the resident historian. So it's really hard to talk about James without first talking about his mother. Who do you guys know who that might be? Mary, Queen of. Scots.
Yes. OK, so his mom is Mary Stewart, or Mary Queen of Scots, which is what she's most normally known as. Mary was the only surviving child of the previous King of Scotland, James the 5th, and upon his death she was only six days old.
She became the new queen. But despite her title, Mary was raised primarily in France and eventually became the Queen at Consort of France when she married the King Francis the Second. The King of France, whoever Their marriage and his rule only lasts a year as he died in 1560 and after his death, Mary returned to Scotland and expected to be lovingly embraced by her cousin, the new Queen of England, Elizabeth the First. However, that did not happen.
Although Elizabeth was unmarried, childless, and Mary was technically the second in line for the throne, Elizabeth refused to name Mary as her heir. For some reason they just. Because she was Catholic. Right. Yeah. Mary. 'S Protestant, yeah. And Elizabeth was also jealous about how Mary was raised. She had like a better childhood and Elizabeth had a poor childhood, so there was some jealousy going on as well. And OK, their father was Henry the Eighth, right?
So, yeah, so Elizabeth's father was Henry the Eighth, and Mary's father was James the 5th. They're cousins. They're. So there's a relation there. Anyway, yeah, sorry. So Mary is very enraged that she was not named the Rifle Air because that's what she believed she was. So she decided to marry again and solidify a line of succession that would rival Elizabeth. So without Elizabeth's permission, Mary married her 19 year old first cousin. Take a drink, Henry Short, Lord Darnley.
And then shortly after they wed on June 19th, 1566, Mary gave birth to her son James. OK, so this. Is the main character James? So this is the universe that he was born into. So I won't go into much detail of what happened afterward, but a couple months after the birthday of James Laura Darnley, his father ran away back to his home after he committed murder in front of Mary while she was pregnant. Like like who did he kill? All right, I will have to stop the episode right there.
Thank you so much for listening to the teaser. If you want to hear the full episode and many other bonus episodes, you can find them on Patreon. You can search significant lovers on the website or download the Patreon app. It works a lot like regular podcast listening apps, and we have tons of other couples on Patreon to listen to. So thank you so much for listening and supporting the show, and we'll get back together next week.