In the annals of British royal history, there are names we hear often. Richard III, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Victoria, and Elizabeth II, among others, have all been subject to countless pieces examining their enduring cultural impact and what they might suggest about the United Kingdom’s present and future role on the world stage.
One monarch has been underrepresented in the royal art canon, even though his life was comprised of the kind of dramatic intrigue that artists salivate over. The monarch in question is King James VI and I. James, the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, had an extraordinary impact on British history. His accession to the English throne marked the unification of England and Scotland under one crown. James’s sponsorship of the English translation of the Bible, known as the “King James Version,” is one of the most widely printed books in history. James also sponsored Britain’s colonization of the Americas, with Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent settlement, bearing his name. His legacy was immediately complicated by his son, Charles I, whose quarrels with Parliament over the divine right of kings led to his execution and the brief abolition of the monarchy.
So, what has kept King James in the footnotes of art depicting a world he directly shaped?
For Tony Curran, who plays King James in the STARZ limited series Mary & George alongside Julianne Moore and Nicholas Galitzine, multiple factors are at play.
“One, he was a Scotsman coming onto a British throne,” Curran explained in an interview with Geek Vibes Nation. “Two, he wasn’t a warmongering King; he didn’t want to go to war. He called himself ‘Rex Pacificus’. Third, he was queer. The hypocrisy of sweeping someone aside because of their sexual orientation, their culture, and their political approach to war, they’re all elements.”
Mary & George addresses all of Curran’s points but digs especially deep into James’s sexual identity. Specifically, it studies how George Villiers (Galitzine) and his mother, Mary (Moore), use it to improve their political and economic position. The guiding belief was that James’s voracious interest in partying, sex, and men made him easy to control and influence. Whoever laid in James’s bed at night essentially sat on his throne during the day. For Mary, the opportunity is simply too good to pass up. She fashions George into the perfect paramour to catch James’s eye, pushing him into the king’s raucous court. George succeeds, and he and James embark on a volatile relationship that enriches the mother-son duo and ultimately reshapes the rule of Britain.
One of Mary and George’s prevailing questions is whether King James’s courtiers were right: did sex make the monarch vulnerable? Taking it a step further, was this ostensibly powerful man genuinely unaware of how his loyal subjects perceived him, or did the vainglory of the Crown and his desires prevent him from seeing the blatant machinations happening against him?
In truth, James was keenly aware of his tenuous position on the throne and amongst the court, leaving him a uniquely fragile monarch. Referencing Benjamin Woolley, whose nonfiction book, The King’s Assassin, inspired Mary & George, Curran explained, “King James was nourished in fear. He was constantly looking over his shoulder.” James’s fear came from a childhood shaped by familial conspiracies and deaths: his mother’s beheading by her cousin Elizabeth I, his father’s murder, and his imprisonment as a teenager. Mary’s absence from James’s life, a “nourishing maternal figure,” as Curran describes her, and the self-serving interests of the regents ruling Scotland in James’s name made it difficult for him to trust. His ascension to the British throne in 1603 only exacerbated his fears of betrayal. Within the first year of rule, James thwarted two plots to remove him: the Bye and Main Plots.
James’s vulnerability and anxiety left him an easy mark for the Villiers. As James, Curran vacillates between bemused weariness and passionate loyalty as George worms his way into the King’s favor. Volatile as James could be, Curran conveys profound, affecting tenderness throughout the series, borne from the monarch’s yearning for trust and the sobering reality that he may never acquire it. Two moments in particular stand out. In the third episode, James apologizes profusely to George for doubting and shunning him at Robert Carr’s behest, publicly embracing him, and granting him land and titles. Having secured his place by James’s side in the fifth episode, he bolsters it by counseling and comforting the king on the floor over the fate of Sir Walter Reigh, who violated James’s peace treaty with Spain. While not one of Mary & George’s vaunted love scenes, it is extraordinarily intimate and one of the series’s best scenes.
“There’s a wisdom and a sort of childish naivety to James,” Curran said. “He’s always asking who can be trusted and who can he trust. I think he had to trust some people to get through his reign as monarch. But he was always wary in many ways.” The clash of wisdom and naivety, coupled with his yearning for genuine intimacy, leaves him susceptible to George’s eventual and inevitable betrayal. Referring to the fourth episode, where James tells George the story of his first great love, Curran explained, “It was a huge moment of vulnerability, sharing a moment as deep and profound as that. And then George goes to Parliament and says the only way forward is to go to war with Spain. He does what James abhors and begs him not to do. In many ways, that’s the ultimate betrayal.”
“It’s one of the most challenging roles I’ve had to play,” Curran said of King James. “It was also the role of a lifetime. There were so many facets to him: his joie de vivre, his sensuality, his lust for life, and his tragic nature.” James’s life was rowdy, and Curran enjoyed bringing it to life. He was, however, always conscious of what was beneath the parties, orgies, and James’s insatiable and gregarious nature. “Deep down, there was a lot of pain and trauma….I tried to incorporate those feelings into how I portrayed him.”
For Curran, it all comes back to what he saw in the relatively few depictions of James VI and I in the public canon. “When we would look at paintings of King James, I would always look in his eyes,” Curran shared. “He seemed very melancholic, sad, and vulnerable. He looked tragic.”
Mary & George is currently airing on Starz.
A late-stage millennial lover of most things related to pop culture. Becomes irrationally irritated by Oscar predictions that don’t come true.
