Dive into the drama, controversy, and historical twists of Firebrand, the much-anticipated film starring Jude Law as Henry VIII and Alicia Vikander as Catherine Parr.
Based on Elizabeth Fremantle’s The Queen’s Gambit, this gripping retelling reimagines Catherine Parr’s life in bold and unexpected ways. But how much of it is rooted in truth?
Join me as I separate fact from fiction, break down the storyline, and explore the film’s departures from history—and from Fremantle’s novel.
Transcript:
Hello, and welcome! Today, I’m diving into Firebrand, the much-requested movie starring Jude Law and Alicia Vikander as Henry VIII and Catherine Parr. This film, based on Elizabeth Fremantle’s 2023 novel The Queen’s Gambit, explores Catherine Parr’s life through a fictionalised lens. Many of you have asked just how accurate this movie is to history—and to Fremantle’s book—so I’ve watched it, taken notes, and I’m ready to break it all down for you. Warning: spoilers ahead! If you haven’t seen the movie yet, it’s available on Amazon Prime in many countries. Watch it first, then come back to hear my thoughts.
Ok, so, the movie opens with the words “History tells us a few things, largely about men and war. For the rest of humanity, we must draw our own – often wild – conclusions.”
And, yep, they’ve gone with wild.
But they say that from the outset and it is a fictional movie based on a work of fiction, just inspired by history and historical personalities, so they have free rein, don’t they. Nowhere are they claiming it to be accurate to history. So, I for one, didn’t get my knickers twisted, or my knickers in a bunch, or whatever you say in your country for becoming unduly agitated or angry. I actually really enjoyed the film, although my daughter Verity says that’s because it had Jude Law in it and I might actually be biased. OK, I’ve always liked Jude Law, blame that Christmas movie “The Holiday”. Oooh, it’s nearly Christmas, I can watch it!
I didn’t love it, it’s not something I’d be recommending to friends and family as a must-see, but it was good.
It covers a very short period in Catherine Parr’s life, from summer 1544, when she’s acting as regent for her husband, King Henry VIII, while he’s campaigning in France, to his death in January 1547. While the cat’s away, the mouse definitely plays, and Catherine pretends she’s visiting a shrine to pray with her ladies, while actually she’s meeting her friend, reformer, preacher and Protestant martyr Anne Askew. Anne is busy preaching her evangelical views, is criticising the king and is actually calling for a revolution, something which panics Catherine’s ladies, who warn the queen that this is treason. Catherine tells her friend that she believes that the king has changed and that he listens to her, and that she has been chosen by God to change the king’s mind. This isn’t her only meeting with Anne. Catherine visits her again and warns Anne that she’s going to be burnt. She also gives her a necklace, an item that is obviously one of the queen’s jewels, official crown jewels. She’s supporting Anne financially, a very dangerous thing to do.
Anne gets arrested and although we don’t see what happens to her, Catherine is told by fellow reformer Edward Seymour that Anne was arrested, tortured and burnt at the stake. He warns Catherine to be careful. Catherine is obviously shocked and griefstricken, her friend of many years has died a martyr, on the orders of Catherine’s husband, AND she was tortured, something that was illegal for a gentlewoman.
So, let’s look at that storyline first, before moving on. Is it true?
Well, there’s no evidence that Catherine knew Anne during her first marriage, as is said in the film. Although, as historian Linda Porter notes, Anne’s father was a prominent member of the Lincolnshire community and Catherine would have lived with her husband, Edward Burgh, in Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, Anne would only have been 8 at their marriage and 11/12 when Catherine was widowed. There is not one jot of evidence that they were long-term friends. Anne did have court connections – one of her brothers served the king as cupbearer, her late half-brother had been a gentleman of the privy chamber and her brother-in-law was a lawyer in Catherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk’s household, but there are no clear links between her and the queen, apart from their shared faith and apart from the fact that Anne recorded that as she was racked they asked her if she knew the Duchess of Suffolk, the Countess of Sussex, the Countess of Hertford, Lady Denny and Lady Fitzwilliam, women close to the queen.
And there’s no evidence that Catherine gave Anne a necklace or that she funded her in any way.
This necklace becomes very important in Firebrand. Bishop Stephen Gardiner, a conservative Catholic, is determined to stop Catherine in her tracks. He seems to quite like her, but hates her religious views and the idea that if the king dies, she’ll become regent for Edward and will support further reform. He has the courtesy to warn Catherine first, telling her to be careful of her closeness to the Seymours and other religious radicals, but Catherine doesn’t heed his advice and he ends their conversation saying “it would have been better if you’d confessed. God will send the proof.” He can’t do anything at first because Catherine is pregnant, but after she’s suffered a miscarriage, the bishop goes to the disillusioned and angry king, a king who is jealous of his wife’s relationship with Thomas Seymour, and tells him that his enemies wouldn’t react well to him setting aside a queen he’d simply grown tired of, but it would be different if it was due to a charge of heresy. The king agrees to an investigation, for he knows that someone with money and influence was funding Anne Askew.
Gardiner threatens Catherine’s ladies, who then set about destroying the queen’s heretical books, and then he questions Edward Seymour and tells him that the king can send him away from court and make sure that he has nothing to do with his nephew, Prince Edward. Edward Seymour goes to his brother, Thomas, who is in love with Catherine and who had managed to get her necklace back to try and save her. Edward tells Thomas that the Crown want evidence of his relationship with the queen, and that he’ll be pardoned if he can provide something like love letters, but there aren’t any. Thomas explains that Catherine has kept him at arm’s length. All Thomas can provide is the necklace, and he does. It is the proof the Crown needs. Catherine and her ladies are imprisoned. It even looks like Catherine is going to be executed. She is led out to a stake with a hooded executioner, but then taken to the king. He is in a bad way and has said that he will only talk to her. He’s missed her and wants to know if she loves him, She replies carefully, “I love my king”, and he gets angry: “That’s not what I asked.” Catherine then murders him. She’s realised that it’s him or her. And that’s the end of King Henry VIII.
Phew! Quite a few spoilers there! But did any of that happen? Well, according to John Foxe, and he did have his sources at court, the Catholic conservatives at court led by Bishop Stephen Gardiner did try to bring down the queen for heresy, BUT she was never arrested or imprisoned. The king did indeed sign her arrest warrant, but it was found and shown to Catherine and then she was advised by the king’s physician, who was sent to her by the king, who was worried about her state of hysteria, that she should see the king immediately and submit to him, which she did. All was well. She was saved. She didn’t spend even a night in a cell.
And there’s no evidence that she was ever pregnant, and as for killing the king, she wasn’t even at court at the time of the king’s death, she’d been sent away in the king’s dying days.
What about Catherine’s relationship with the king? In Firebrand, the king goes from doting on her one minute to being incredibly violent with her, trying to rape her at one point and causing her to miscarry. Well, that’s fictional. We have no idea how the king treated Catherine behind closed doors. If he did, indeed, test her and manipulate her in 1546, leading her to believe that she could be arrested and executed, causing her to submit completely to him, then he was a monster, but there’s no evidence that he even raised a hand to her.
Some other points…
In Firebrand, the king announces that Catherine will be regent for his son if he dies during Edward’s minority. In reality, the king did not do that. Yes, Catherine was made regent in 1544 when Henry was in France, and it is likely that in the will made before his departure in 1544, he’d named her as regent during his son’s minority, but there were no announcements and in December 1546, he updated his will. Catherine was not to be regent, although she probably expected to be and was surely disappointed.
Oh, and there’s no evidence that Catherine was ever pregnant by the king in real life.
The movie ends with the king’s murder and then Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, narrating, telling us of how it was in no-one’s interests to question what happened to the king and that Catherine went on to publish a daring book and that “there’s more than one way to scorch the earth. She forged something in her flames, and made way for the tender shoots of hope to burst forth.” Then we’re told that Elizabeth later became queen and reigned for 45 years and that “neither men nor war defined her reign”.
Hmmm… poignant, but I’m not sure that Catherine scorched the earth. I have to agree with a review of the movie by Deborah Ross in Spectator, who says, “there is no way you could look at this Catherine and think: ‘Firebrand.’ She remains mostly passive throughout. When confronted about her friendship with Anne she immediately dissembles.” Anne Askew could be called a firebrand, she preached and preached knowing she could be burnt, she was martyr material. She was willing to die for her faith, for doing God’s work, Catherine wasn’t. I’m sure Catherine did influence the young Elizabeth – she did supervise her education, she did encourage the girl, she was a role model for her with her publishing etc. but I’m not sure that Elizabeth’s successful reign or her decisions regarding men or war were down to her stepmother. The Catherine of the movie just wasn’t that dynamic a character. She’s a victim, a victim of a cruel and brutal man, a victim of ambitious and zealous men, and as Ross writes, “she never has any real agency until the final scene”. Yes, very true.
Yet the very novel that the movie is based on has a very different Catherine, and, in fact, a very different storyline.
My daughter gets annoyed with me when I complain about adaptations of novels not being true to the book. She did a big project at uni during her Literature Masters about this very topic and explained to me that there are many theories about adaptations “but many agree that the traditional concept of being “faithful” to the book is irrelevant and that a film adaptation of a novel should be seen as a form of translation or as “rewriting” the story for a different medium.” Verity explained to me that ““Film Adaptation as Translation” by Cattrysse says that you have to leave behind the traditional idea of faithfulness to the “original” piece, because a screen adaptation can never be faithful. They are two different languages and are made in different moment by different people, etc. The director chooses how to “translate” it depending on things like the chosen genre, what the director/screenwriter wants etc.” Verity told me that Spanish director José Antonio Perez Bowie, for example, talks about how a film was a “rewrite”. The book is one thing and the adaptation another, and that it’s affected by society, the ideology, the aesthetic of the time, the budget, the director’s subjectivity and lots of other factors. Ok, ok, I can understand that, but I was still disappointed by how far removed it was from the book.
Elizabeth Fremantle’s novel is called “The Queen’s Gambit”. In the book, the king, who is already attracted to Catherine, falls for her even more over a game of chess when she opens with the queen’s gambit, a chess move, and wins. People usually let the king win and the king likes the fact that she doesn’t humour him. So that’s the title explained. Obviously the film-makers went with a different title due to the Netflix hit series The Queen’s Gambit.
The novel covers a lot more of Catherine’s life story. It starts in 1543, when she’s nursing her dying second husband, John Neville, Baron Latimer, and goes all the way to Catherine’s death in 1548, and slightly beyond. We get a much better idea of who Catherine is, and she’s certainly more of a firebrand, she is a woman of courage and conviction. The Catherine of the novel allowed herself to be raped when she, her stepdaughter Meg and a maid were held hostage during the Pilgrimage of Grace Rebellion, Catherine sacrificed herself to try and save Meg and their young maid, Dot, and even suffering a stillbirth. She helps her husband to kill himself when he’s dying a painful death, even though she fears it’s a mortal sin. She just seems so much stronger in the novel, a woman you could admire, even if she isn’t martyr material.
In the novel, Catherine doesn’t know Anne Askew, she just knows of her and funds her work anonymously. Fremantle writes that Anne “is everything a woman shouldn’t be, and Katherine so admires her for it.” They do meet in the novel, though, when Catherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, organises a visit to Catherine with Anne disguised as an astrologer.
Fremantle includes the plot against Catherine by Gardiner and Wriothesley, with royal physician and Catherine’s good friend Dr Huicke finding the arrest warrant in a corridor and taking it to Catherine, but it is the king who visits Catherine, rather than the other way round, and he makes her pleasure him, to completely submit to him. He then tests her in front of Gardiner by asking her her thoughts on justification by faith. Catherine says, “I will refer my judgement to Your Majesty’s wisdom”. She’s learnt her lesson.
Then she realises that her life is in danger a second time in the king’s dying days, she decides to kill the king before he can kill her, asking Dr Huicke, to add foxglove, henbane and hemlock to the poultice used to treat the king’s leg, to poison him slowly. However, Huicke realises the king is dying anyway and Catherine also changes her mind. The king dies a natural death.
And that’s not the end of the story, we also have Catherine going on to marry Thomas Seymour, coping with his betrayal with Elizabeth, and then dying after giving birth in 1548.
The novel is also told from different perspectives, Catherine’s and also her maid Dot, it isn’t just Catherine’s story, there are storylines involving her stepdaughter Meg, Dot, and also Dr Huicke.
Catherine also doesn’t get pregnant by the king in the novel and is never imprisoned.
I think the main differences between the novel and the movie are the timeline and the fact that the novel is much closer to history. Fremantle explains that she has “endeavoured, where possible, to remain faithful to the known facts, events and people of the period” and that only the most minor characters have been invented. I think that’s fair. The same cannot be said of the movie. It is not faithful to the known facts or the novel it’s based on, it is its own entity and as fiction it can do what it wants. I have to say that I enjoyed it as a movie. I thought the acting was excellent, particularly Jude Law, and they did Henry VIII’s leg wound very realistically – yuck! And the costumes and jewellery were exquisite, it was like Catherine and Elizabeth had walked out of portraits – incredible attention to detail – and the sets evoked the Tudor period. Just don’t watch it with someone who’ll get annoyed with you saying “well that didn’t happen” all the time!
As for the book, I’d highly recommend it. When I reviewed it in 2023, I called it “a riveting read” and I stand by that.
Oh, one thing I haven’t really talked about is Henry VIII’s health, his leg. Both the movie and book have Henry VIII suffering terribly with his leg, and this is true to history. His physicians did keep the ulcer open, and there was panic in 1541, when he was married to Catherine Howard, when the ulcer closed up and Henry nearly died. Jude Law has talked about how he doused himself with a special perfume made from blood, fecal matter and sweat to make things more realistic causing those around him to gag, which I’m sure the king’s courtiers did! It’s enough to make you feel sorry for Henry VIII, isn’t it?
In the end, Firebrand is a bold, fictional reimagining of Catherine Parr’s story. While it may not align with historical evidence—or even the novel it’s based on—it offers a dramatic, if sometimes far-fetched, portrayal of life at Henry VIII’s court. Catherine Parr’s courage and convictions shine in the original novel, but the film paints her as more of a passive victim until its climactic ending.
While Firebrand is entertaining and poignant in parts, it’s important to remember that it is, at its core, a piece of fiction inspired by history—not a retelling of actual events. Whether or not it lives up to the title “Firebrand” is up for debate, but it’s sure to spark conversation. What did you think of the movie? Let me know in the comments below!
Also, I’m sure you can think of further inaccuracies, so please do share as a comment, and feel free to ask questions too.