Edward in Popular Culture
Edward II of England has been portrayed in popular culture a number of times. The most famous fictional account of Edward II's reign is Christopher Marlowe's play Edward II (c. 1592). It depicts Edward's reign as a single narrative, and does not include Bannockburn.
In 1991 English filmmaker Derek Jarman adapted the Christopher Marlowe play into a film featuring Tilda Swinton, Steven Waddington, Andrew Tiernan, Nigel Terry, and Annie Lennox. The film specifically portrays a homosexual relationship between Edward II and Piers Gaveston.
French novelist Maurice Druon's saga The Accursed Kings depicts Edward II and the Despensers' fall in its fifth novel, La Louve de France (The She-Wolfe of France). In this novel (whose title refers to Queen Isabelle's historic nickname) it is assumed as historic the homosexuality of the king (and his special relationship with Hugh Despenser) and his secret murdering in prison by red-iron impalement.
Edward II was portrayed as an effeminate homosexual in Braveheart.
Edward II's death and sexuality are mentioned a number of times in Michael Crichton's novel Timeline.
Edward II's supposed escape from prison and obscure life in exile conforms the main secret plot of Ken Follett's novel World Without End, and the subsequent TV miniseries of the same name.
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Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is of the essence of imaginative culture that it transcends the limits both of the naturally possible and of the morally acceptable.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)