MovieChat Forums > World Without End (2012) Discussion > Ignorance of the linguistic reality

Ignorance of the linguistic reality

posted 11 years ago by shazzboy
11 replies | jump to latest

I know the writer/s are trying to make Queen Isabella seem like a really foreign and therefore alien character by upping her Frenchness, but it doesn't make cultural sense for this era as the entire monarchy and most of the nobility were Norman French speakers. Many of the royals could speak no English at all.

So by having Edward III seem very English in comparison to his mother is culturally silly as the entire Plantagenet dynasty were proud native French speakers who had disdain for the English peasantry. English did not become the royal language until a decree by Henry V in 1410.

[–] Reephaman 11 years ago

Too right. Don't get me started on the historical inaccuracy of this series. I got so frustrated by the laughable errors in it that I just gave up and had to leave my knowledge of medieval England to one side so that I could watch it as a costume romp.

Some obvious errors that were immediately noticeable:

opening scenes: soldiers firing crossbows from horseback. Physically impossible to reload and fire a crossbow from a moving horse. It was like medieval England meets the wild west.

The houses: it was like a Disneyfied version of medieval England. Too neat and tidy, too many rooms, too much furniture, too well-built.

When Langley was calligraphing in the scriptorium: look closely and he's copying or writing the first lines of Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. It's supposed to be 1330, when Chaucer was 10 years old and The Canterbury Tales is at least 50 years from being written, and about 100 years before it was in any kind of circulation.

I'll finish there, because the list is endless and I have a life to get back to.

[–] fmbowey 11 years ago

Just like the first series the producers have completely ignored Scottish history. Pillars was set in the reign of David I [Maud's uncle who gave Stephen a lot of trouble in the north]; and Robert the Bruce [who also gave Edward a lot of trouble in the north.] Edward actually attack Scotland [1333] before France [1338.]

My church historian sister almost had a fit at the sight of monks and nuns in the Scriptorium at the same time!

[–] Reephaman 11 years ago

The producers have completely ignored all history, not just Scottish. At risk of offending the sensibilities of many on this board, I blame the culture of bastardised history that was all started with Gibson's Braveheart. So many people thought that that was real that an alternative history of the whole history of England's relationship with Scotland has now sprung up. According to Braveheart, of course, it's possible to believe that Edward III is the product of an affair between Isabella and William Wallace.

[–] ronfirv 11 years ago

I am an expatriate Scot and was less than pleased with the historical inaccuracies here. (Not all that impressed with Braveheart either).
Norman French was widely spoken at the Scottish Court of the period and unlike England, the Norman Barons were invited into Scotland by the king.
Ho hum, guess we call it artistic licence.

[–] hrhppg 11 years ago

Or we could call it using a language the target audience speaks and could understand without reading subtitles for 6 hours. Also you do know the source novel is fiction and not a historical work ?

[–] ronfirv 11 years ago

Of course the novel was complete fiction!

However, there are authors aplenty out there, also writing historical works and there is much, much more accuracy in them than in Follett's attempts.
Cornwell, Manfredi,to name but two.

[–] zingbot1000 11 years ago

This. People nitpicking over things like which language is spoken by the royal family are missing the point that this is a television program and the majority of the audience (English speaking) would not be keen on half of the show being French audio with English subtitles. Come on, people.

Besides, it's a fiction, based on a book of fiction; it doesn't pretend to be historical fact.

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[–] thegreatgazoo-1 10 years ago

All the inaccuracy drove me crazy too.

I mean, c'mon, everyone knows the Mk4 jet backpack has a primary nozzle discharge with two thrusters and these clowns insist on THREE thrusters.

If ya can't do it right, don't do it at all.

[–] LordManhammer 8 years ago

The OP was talking about accents, not asking for the whole show to be in French. Doesn't it terrify you, Zingbot, how many people think they're really learning history from television? The answer certainly isn't to kill any entertainment value by turning movies into historical documentaries, but that doesn't mean we can't acknowledge the problem.

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[–] Hecate-3 8 years ago

Ironically, Braveheart helped me learn more about the history of the period, because it made it easier for me to remember the historical figures, and because I can remember that "Such-and-such is one of the things that's different from the way it happened in the movie." I also thought it was excellent as a work of fiction.

My biggest beef with Braveheart was not that it took liberties with what actually happened, but that it made such a point of presenting itself as the truth in the opening voiceover. That was unconscionable, especially in view of how the film depicted Scotland's national hero Robert the Bruce.

The problem with World Without End is that instead of writers taking liberties with history for the sake of artistic license, one gets the sense that the writers just didn't know any better and didn't have historians review the script for accuracy.

But wasn't Edward III the first English monarch to promote speaking English in his court? It seems as though I read that somewhere, but I might have misremembered.

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[–] Jes' Sayin' (5947) 7 years ago

Actually Edward I was the first of the kings to really embrace English so it's not wrong that by the time of Edward III there would be something of a divide vis-a-vis language. Read more about it in A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain by Marc Morris.