The Devil's Crown

I've said it before and I'll say it again: 1978 was a good year for BBC television. Here is another series from then, which I've known about for a while now, but have only recently been able to see thanks to it being posted in the Yousual place - sadly a poor quality copy with sound that frequently drops or goes out of sync with the picture, the wrong aspect ratio, and with the titles and end credits in French. Despite this, it was a gripping series where I watched through all 13 episodes in quick succession. Hopefully it will get a proper DVD release one day, if not from the BBC itself then maybe from Good Old Network?

The Devil's Crown is a historical drama set over a period of time where characters, even main characters, come and go, grow old and die (or get murdered) as time passes. It is very much in the same mould as Fall of Eagles or I Claudius, both from earlier in the '70s, and would appear to be an attempt to get more lightning out of the same bottle.

This time the setting is England and France in the High Middle Ages, more specifically the years 1150 to 1216, and the drama centres on the lives of the Plantagenet kings of England, Henry ii (Brian "Great Commanders" Cox), his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine (Jane Lapotaire) and their sons Richard i (Michael "not Jayston" Byrne) and John (John Duttine). They are locked in constant struggle against the French kings, first Louis vii (Charles "Pendleton" Kay) and then his son Philip ii (Christopher "Sharaz Jek" Gable), who are the principal antagonists of the series.

The supporting cast is packed full of familiar British character actors such as Patrick Troughton, Christopher Benjamin, and Ian "Josiah Smith" Hogg as knights, and Jack Shepherd, Clifford "Rorvik" Rose and Anthony "heh heh heh" Ainley as senior churchmannys. These latter are significant because of the omnipresence of Christianity in the period, and the king's relationship with the church and the Pope (or his representatives) almost always being crucial in determining the course of events.

The main characters frequently talk to God in the form of soliloquies, letting us know their innermost thoughts, especially Richard who continually wrestles with his conscience - not over wars and killing (which he has no problems with at all, and neither really does the church) but over his homosexuality, which the church tells him is sinful and his family blames for his lack of an heir. This allows for a nuanced and even somewhat progressive portrayal of homosexuality, surprisingly so for a TV series made in 1978.

As with I Claudius before it, this series combines historical accuracy in the events depicted with the most sensational interpretation of the main characters involved. First there is Henry ii, who is portrayed as a manny of extreme passion and anger - easily the most famous thing about him is his outburst when in a rage that led to the murder of Thomas Becket (as seen in the third episode). Then there is Richard i, who is unabashedly and very gay, despite this being a disputed trait of the historical Richard. Finally there is king John, who is cowardly, treacherous, hypocritical and useless, and like every portrayal of him in a Robin Hood story turned up to 11.

With regards to these characterisations, the series appears to me to have been heavily influenced by The Lion in Winter (the 1968 film of which is a favourite of Gamma Longcat), the plot of which directly overlaps with one episode. Then, when only John is left, the final episodes cover a lot of the same ground as Shakespeare's The Life and Death of King John. And when king Richard is on crusade I could easily imagine Sir Ian of Jaffa appearing in the background of events that feature in Doctor Who's The Crusades, lol.

Another way in which the series resembles I Claudius is that it is almost entirely studio bound, with a stylised, theatrical way of representing events beyond the series budget such as battles or the grandeur of Rome or Jerusalem. At times this series steps even further away from realism than I Claudius (which leant heavily on old Claudius acting as narrator when it needed to convey things it couldn't show), and I was reminded of the device used by Terry Jones's 1995 documentary series Crusades of depicting the historical characters as though they were in tapestries or mosaics.

The other thing I was frequently reminded of when watching was the computer game Crusader Kings 2. If you were to make a TV series out of the game then it would end up almost exactly like The Devil's Crown - everything is here except for the most meme-tier levels of incest or horse popes: the problems of gavelkind succession, the need for kings to have heirs and to make marriage alliances, the crusades themselves of course, the aforementioned homosexuality, and a moderate amount of incest.

You could even go so far as to map Character Focuses onto most of the main characters: lustful Henry's is Seduction while pious Louis's is Theology. Richard the crusader specialises in War. Both Philip and John took Intrigue, although even with the +3 bonus John was still shit at it.