Corsets vs Facts: Historical Truth and Dramatic Excess in Mary & George

In Mary & George, the Tudor court becomes a battlefield where affection is currency and intimacy is wielded as a weapon. The series peels back the velvet drapes of royal life to expose a world of calculated betrayals, shaped by loyalty that bends easily beneath ambition. At its heart lies a mother and son whose fates are entwined with power, manipulation and the dangerous theatre of royal favour. Based on Benjamin Woolley’s 2017 non-fiction book The King’s Assassin, the 2024 television series explores the fraught and intimate relationship between King James VI (Tony Curran) and George Villers, 1^st Duke of Buckingham (Nicholas Galitzine), while foregrounding the manipulative influence of George’s mother, Mary Villiers (Julianne Moore), as the architect behind their union.

Set in 17th-century England, the Jacobean era comes alive in the series as the court was a space defined by proximity to royal favour, power most tangible through intimacy with the monarch. Courtiers competed relentlessly for access to King James, whose well-known preference for handsome young men shaped both the politics and the culture of the palace. The rivalry between George Villiers and the Earl of Somerset (Laurie Davidson) operates as one of the clearest expressions of Jacobean court politics within Mary & George. Somerset, as the king’s established favourite, embodies entrenched power: he is confident in his position and accustomed to shaping policy through personal access to James.

Yet George’s arrival threatens this stability through youth, beauty and emotional appeal. Each seeks to present himself as indispensable to the king, while simultaneously discrediting the other through rumours and strategic humiliation. Through this dynamic, this series accurately underscores the brutal economy of court life, where affection is unstable, and intimacy becomes the most dangerous currency of all.

The series also excels in capturing the social climate of the Jacobean court

One of the series’ most provocative choices is its treatment of the relationship between George and James VI. The creator of the show, D.C. Moore, places this romance front and centre, presenting a vision that reframes royal desire as something inherently political. However, this adaptation has been argued to present an overly romanticised version of events, as the fervent and turbulent passion that James VI had towards George in the television series was, in reality, obscured by euphemism and discretion.  But their bond is reimagined with a striking overtness that succeeds in portraying the spectacle of dependency and imbalance and how lust becomes inseparable from power. James VI was known for his affinity for handsome young men, and the favour that he bestowed upon his favourites often translated directly into political authority.

Although Mary & George takes creative liberties in its explicit retelling of George and James’s relationship for dramatic effect, it remains faithful to the political logic of the Jacobean court. By foregrounding desire rather than disguising it, the series exposes the underlying mechanism of power: that advancement depended less on merit than on proximity to the monarch’s body and emotions. The series also excels in capturing the social climate of the Jacobean court, where public virtue masked private corruption and where reputation was a form of armour. Through its rich costuming and shadowed interiors, the show visualises a society obsessed with appearances while rotting beneath them.

Despite this, the series places great attention on the orchestrator of the internal volatility that soon erupts within the court: Mary Villiers, George’s mother. She is depicted as acutely—almost cynically—aware of her social position as a woman, and of how precarious that position becomes following her husband’s death. Stripped of status and security, Mary is shown to understand that her survival depends upon proximity to power, and that power is something she can no longer access directly. Instead, she lives vicariously through her second son, George, treating him as both instrument and investment in her campaign for restoration.

Mary & George transforms Mary Villiers into a symbol of how women at court navigated power indirectly

Rather than portraying Mary as a simple schemer, the series frames her ambition as a response to structural exclusion. Her manipulation of court politics is born from necessity as much as desire: she reads people as carefully as she reads opportunities, exploiting fear and longing. George becomes her conduit into the masculine spaces of influence from which she is barred, and her maternal affection is inseparable from political strategy. The show presents her as ruthless, but also deeply conscious of the limited tools available to her. In doing so, Mary & George transforms Mary Villiers into a symbol of how women at court navigated power indirectly, through sons, marriages and reputation, revealing that the most dangerous player in Jacobean politics was not always the king’s favourite, but the one who placed him there.

While Mary & George indulges in sensationalism by making what history leaves ambiguous explicitly sexual, it proves far more faithful to the political realities of the Jacobean court. In prioritising emotional truth over documentary restraint, the series ultimately delivers a portrait that is politically authentic, even when it is historically provocative.