I started watching Tudors last year but got busy and fell away from it. I picked it up again this summer and I’ve been slowly making my way through it. I find the thee’s and thou’s, macro power politics, and ardent religious fervor of the day energizing for some reason. I’ve had some down time this weekend and I binge watched all of season 3 Saturday. I’m well into season 4 and I heard a word today that I’d never heard before…
The word was fecundity and it means “the quality….especially in female animals, of producing young in great numbers.” I love period pieces and period series, even more so when they are well done, and Tudors is a rich and dramatic account of the evil reign King Henry the VIII. The dialogue is rich and the costumes are authentic. The power of politics and the whims of the king and royalty are intense and at times odious. One of the things that I always preferred about the King James Version of the Bible was the rich and palpable tone in the words, language, and as a result, the speech of the day. Forgive me, the Communication major in me is coming out!
Sometimes I just nerd out when it comes to words and language. It’s not often I hear a word that I’ve never heard before and it makes me log on to dictionary.com to get a dose of Scrabblism. See that? I just made that up. It’s strange to see, even in this period piece, how singularly purposed the women are. They were just baby breeding factories. It’s easy to see where the entrenched, archaic discriminations against women came from. Thank goodness women in many parts of the world can strive for more than fecundity in their lives and careers. So say we all. 