The unbelievable story of a noblewoman and her son’s plot to seduce a king is unravelled in Sky’s brand new drama series Mary & George.
Academy Award winner Julianne Moore plays Mary Villiers, while Red, White & Royal Blue breakout Nicholas Galitzine plays her son, George, whose good looks were put to cunning use in a bid for money and power.
Remarkably, this story is inspired by true events, with The Fatal Affair of George Villiers and James I by author and broadcaster Benjamin Woolley providing the basis for this seven-part miniseries.
For a full account, you can purchase the book on Amazon or from a local bookseller of your choosing. For a short overview of some of the biggest questions the series raises, read on.
Mary & George true story: Shocking history explained
Was King James VI and I really gay?
The sexuality of King James VI and I has been the subject of debate for a long time.
During his life, jokes and rumours about his homosexuality were common, due largely to how he surrounded himself with handsome, young men, whom he quite openly kissed, wrote about lovingly and shared a bed with.
An opposing view, that these so-called ‘favourites’ were just good friends and that ‘masculinity’ was expressed differently in those days, has become less prominent in recent years.
Some historians, such as Michael B Young, suggest that it was partly fuelled by society’s negative attitude towards same-sex relationships in the 20th century, with these biases no longer clouding the evidence to the same extent.
Publicly, King James condemned what was then known as ‘sodomy’ (ie the act of anal sex), which was used by some historians to counter claims of his own homosexuality.
However, Young noted that King James’s excessive alcohol consumption and swearing exposed him as a hypocrite, while there’s also a chance that he felt the rules of the time simply didn’t apply to him. The phrase ‘do as I say, not as I do’ comes to mind.
Therefore, modern historians tend to believe that King James VI and I was either bisexual or homosexual, with his fathering of eight children with Queen Anne of Denmark and likely sexual relationships with his male “favourites” suggesting the former.
Who was Mary Villiers?
Mary Villiers came from the noble Beaumont family, but her standing in the upper classes of early modern Britain was far from assured – which is why she went to great lengths to shore it up.
After her first husband, Sir George Villiers, died in 1606, she found herself on the brink of financial ruin, hatching a plan to work her way back into a world of opulent wealth.
That relied heavily on her second son, also named George, who she sent to the English Court, having likely heard of the king’s widely rumoured interest in handsome, young men.
Sure enough, he went on to become one of the king’s “favourites”, which lifted the Villiers out of their economic peril and gave them considerable influence over the running of the country.
What was King James and George Villiers’ relationship like?
In just over a decade, George Villiers climbed the ranks of the royal court to become King James’s closest advisor.
He used his influence to benefit himself and his family, with this corruption narrowly avoiding formal punishment but making him an unpopular figure among the court – but importantly, not with the king himself.
On the contrary, King James proclaimed to love Villiers, the duke of Buckingham, “more than anyone else”. However, in a bid to quash rumours of homosexuality, he instead compared their relationship to that of Jesus Christ and his disciple, John.
King James told his Privy Council in 1617: “I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had John, and I have George.”
