The BEST episodes directed by Lucy Swingler
#1 - Isabella and Margaret
She-Wolves: England's Early Queens - Season 1 - Episode 2
In 1308 a 12-year-old girl, Isabella of France, became queen of England when she married the English king. A century later another young French girl, Margaret of Anjou, followed in her footsteps. Both these women were thrust into a violent and dysfunctional England and both felt driven to take control of the kingdom themselves. Isabella would be accused of murder and Margaret of destructive ambition - it was Margaret who Shakespeare named the She Wolf. But as historian Helen Castor reveals, their self-assertion that would have seemed natural in a man was deemed unnatural, even monstrous in a woman.
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#2 - Jane, Mary and Elizabeth
She-Wolves: England's Early Queens - Season 1 - Episode 3
Helen Castor looks at what happened when England was faced not just with inadequate kings, but no kings at all. In 1553, for the first time in English history all the contenders for the crown were female. In the lives of these three Tudor queens - Jane, Mary and Elizabeth - she explores how each woman struggled in turn with wearing a crown that was made for a male head. Elizabeth I seemed to show that not only could a woman rule, but could do so gloriously. But at what cost?
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#3 - Death of a Dynasty
Monarchy - Season 1 - Episode 6
In this final episode, Dr. Starkey takes up the story of Shakespeare's kings: Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI. It starts with the usurpation and murder of Richard II and ends in a bloody civil war in which the English royal house tears itself apart. The last medieval kings see the institution of the monarchy reach a crisis point in which its future seems far from certain.
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#4 - A United Kingdom
Monarchy - Season 1 - Episode 5
In this episode Dr. Starkey explores a century which saw three Edwards reign: father, son and grandson. Edward I took the image and might of the English monarchy to new heights. He was the new Caesar; a man who would unite England, Wales and Scotland into one kingdom. All his achievements almost came to nothing during his son's disastrous reign which ended in abdication and murder. It would take the third Edward to rebuild the prestige of the English monarch. With his victory against the French at Crecy, Edward III made England great again, but also plunged her into a war with France, which would last one hundred years.
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#5 - Matilda and Eleanor
She-Wolves: England's Early Queens - Season 1 - Episode 1
800 years ago, Matilda came within a hair's breadth of being the first woman to be crowned queen of England in her own right. Castor explores how Matilda reached this point and why her bid for the throne ultimately failed. Her daughter-in-law Eleanor of Aquitaine was an equally formidable woman. Despite being remembered as the queen of courtly love, in reality during her long life she divorced one king and married another, only to lead a rebellion against him. She only finally achieved the power she craved in her seventies.
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