Sinful Sunday: Savoring the Tragic Queer Villains of "Mary & George"
The Starz period drama dishes out delicious and salacious queerness in its story of two ruthless queer social climbers in 17th century England even as disaster looms on the horizon.
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Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.
Warning: Full spoilers for Mary & George follow.
Well, I’ve finally done it, fam. I’ve finished Mary & George, the new sexy and sultry and very, very gay period drama from Starz. Based on the nonfiction book by Benjamin Woolley, its seven episodes chronicle the meteoric rise of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (Nicholas Galitzine), who is aided, abetted, and manipulated by his mother, Mary (Julianne Moore). Together they set out to conquer the court of King James (Tony Curran), who is well-known for his penchant for sleeping with any handsome lad that crosses his path.
I’ve been looking forward to this show for a long time, both because I love period dramas and because I’ve long been fascinated by both the reign of James I and his very conspicuous love affair with Villiers (count me among those who is convinced their bond was quite sexual, regardless of what other, more uptight historians might think). I remember first learning about their dalliance in Philippa Gregory’s book Earthly Joys and, given the fact that both Galitzine and Moore have queer credentials in spades, I knew that they were going to knock it out of the park, and so it proves to be. They are the perfect pair to portray a pair of scheming, manipulative, and ultimately quite tragic social climbers, and they make for a perfect subject for a Sinful Sunday.
There’s a certain cruel beauty to Nicholas Galitzine that I think lends itself perfectly to the character of George Villiers. It’s there in the poutiness of his cherubic lips and in the dark glint that you sometimes see in his eyes. While at first it seems as if George really is a hopeless romantic–the type of sad young man who will try to hang himself because his mother has forbidden his romance with a maid–his first tastes of true power at King James’ court proves that there was always a part of him that yearned for control over others. Trained by both his mother and the dissolute members of the French court, George learns very quickly that his beautiful face and sinuous body make for useful bargaining chips, both with James and with pretty much anyone else that he wants to manipulate. Arguably the most notable moment of the blending together of sex and cruelty comes when George finally gives in to Somerset’s efforts at seduction, only for him to reveal that he only gave in so that the other man would have something to think about when he hangs for his crimes.in Mary & George proposes that queer sexuality is as dangerous as it is enticing.
For her part, Julianne Moore’s Mary Villiers is as ruthless and cutting as her son, if not more so. She really is one of those people who yearns for power for its own sake rather than for any grander or higher purpose, and there’s something queerly and bitingly refreshing about her willingness to admit as much. This isn’t to say that she doesn’t love George, because it’s clear that she does, or at least as much as a mother like her could be capable of loving a son like him. The one bit of tenderness she does have is directed toward Niamh Algar’s Irish prostitute Sandie, who acts as both her lover and her conscience. When the latter is killed–the result of a plot between the dissolute and cynical Francis Bacon and an embittered George–it isn’t long before she turns her ire on the former, engineering his downfall. With Mary, desire, whether queer, straight, or otherwise, is always and forever entangled with power and danger.
Speaking of Francis Bacon, though he’s only a supporting character he makes for quite the antagonist for both Mary and George, though it has to be said that he is a sometime-ally for the latter. Like almost every other man at James’s court, no stranger to the love of nubile male flesh, and Mark O’Halloran’s’s performance puts its toe right on the line of being campy, and I am here for it, and clearly savors the opportunity to play such an oily and nefariously queer character.
And then there’s poor James. As I wrote a little while ago, I was very afraid that the first Stuart king was going to be made into nothing more than a caricature, but having finished the series I can now say that this is not the case. To be sure, there is something a little ridiculous about James, and he is prone to moments of madness and delusion, and it is definitely true that he latches on to any young man that crosses his path. Beneath all the hedonism, however, there beats the heart of a man at the top yearning for someone to love him for who he is rather than what he can provide. James’ tragedy is that his position precludes such a fate. On the surface he seems to have done everything a king should–married another royal (the equally tragic Queen Anne), produced children (including the weak-willed and petulant Charles), and kept England out of war with Spain–but it’s all ephemeral. Even his love for George–and perhaps George’s for him–comes crashing down into ruin, fire, and death.
There’s a bleak tragedy at the heart of Mary & George that is haunting yet utterly compelling. Whether or not George actually loved James is certainly open to debate, but it’s clear that, when it comes down to choosing his beloved’s life or his own continuing rise to power, he chooses the former, with tremendous cost. He’s remarkably cold-blooded when it comes to smothering James when faced with the merest threat that his beloved’s affection and favor might have passed from him for good, and it’s a scene eerily reminiscent of the moment in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator when Commodus murders his father Marcus Aurelius with a pillow. George has finally come into his own, and he will do anything to keep his position, even if it means sacrificing his love on the altar of ambition.
Yet in this case history has its own tragic end in store for this most hubristic of queer villains. As the final episode speeds to its conclusion, George continues his upward social and political trajectory under Charles’ reign, until it all goes awry when he is stabbed by a disaffected soldier. A seducer to the end, he is ultimately cut down by a man who saw many of his friends perish because of the Duke’s vainglorious ambitions and military ineptitude. By this point George is so drunk on his power and so self-assured in his position–and so heedless of the lives of the men he commands–that it never even occurs to him until it’s too late that the man might be after more than just his cock. It’s a startlingly fitting end for George for, as Mary herself remarks, “how else would this end?”
If I have one complaint about the series as a whole, it’s that it’s just too short. Seven episodes is not nearly enough time to spend with these characters and to chart their sudden rise to power and their equally catastrophic fall, and the ending in particular feels abrupt. Those of us who are more than a little familiar with the Villiers and their career at the Stuart court know from the beginning where this was all going to end, but for those who don’t know the history it can be a bit jarring to see our main hero cut down in the prime of his life by a soldier that neither he nor we can remember out of retaliation for a battle that took place off-screen. While I don’t think that it would have been necessary to show the battle in all of its splendor–this is Starz and not HBO, after all–I do think it would have landed with more effectiveness had we spent a few more episodes chronicling George’s ever-more-irresponsible meddling in international affairs under Charles I’s reign.
That quibble aside, however, I must confess myself utterly entranced by Mary & George. It presents us the Stuart court in all its beauty and hedonism and cruelty, with the title characters at its center until the very end. Seeing George’s body sprawled out in a spreading pool of blood is the final example of queer male beauty made abject, all of his exquisite allure rendered into inert flesh. There’s something even more fitting about the very final frames, in which we see Mary, sitting at the head of the table, surrounded by her family and seemingly secure in her power, yet clearly haunted by all she has given up and Yet for all that she seems to be financially secure at last, it’s just as clear that none of them will ever occupy the same place in her affections as George, the only one of her children who seemed to really understand her and to be worthy of her love.
Mary & George elevates queer tragedy to the level of period drama art. Even though we know what lies in store for them, we can’t help but hope that it might be otherwise, this time it might be different. Julianne Moore and Nicholas Galitzine have given us two fantastic queer villains and, though they go down in defeat, their stars shall shine forever bright.