Hmm.  Ok, I wasn't too fond of TOBG in book form, but the film masacred not only history, but the book too.  I did enjot TBI, but doubt I'll enjoy the film if it's made by the same people.  The script for TOBG was rubbish, and it was miscast (Eric Bana as Henry?  Why?).  I hope it doesn't happen.

Hmmm it would be quite an entertaining film if the script and cast were right…but then again; we'd have to put up with Phillipa Gregory on the red carpet telling everyone how 'historically accurate' the film and book were

Genetically speaking it is possible for parents of non-red hair to have a red haired child. I am living proof of that. Red hair is a recessive gene to all other hair colours. So within the film world of TOBG and The Tudors, Anne and Henry could have had non-red hair and still had the flaming red haired child of Elizabeth, as all is required is for Henry and Anne to be heterozygous in their hair colour.

If we take the simple approach to hair colour and pretend that only 1 gene is involved (in fact there a multiple genes hence the variety of hair colours). If Brown hair is dominant to red hair. Henry and Anne could be either Homozygous Brown (BB) or Heterozygous Brown (Bb). Red hair in this example will be (bb). If either Henry or Anne were Homozygous Brown it would be impossible for Elizabeth to be red hair as the only genotype Elizaneth could be would be (BB) or (Bb). The (B) will mask the (b) allele producing brown hair. However, if BOTH are Heterozygous, they both are able to contribute a (b) allele, which would produce a red haired child. This allowing two brown haired people to have a red haired child.

So scientifically speaking the movie is accurate, the historical accurancy is another matter.

Elizabeth got her red hair from both her parents. Even though Anne had brown hair, she was still required to have the allele for red hair to guarantee Elizabeth got red hair. I understand historically it is better for Henry to have red hair, especially since most people associated him with red hair, but I was just responding to your statement that it looks silly that two brown haired people produced a red hair child.

These days red hair is apparently a fading hair colour genetic wise- but back during The Tudor times, there were many people with red hair so the recessive red allele would have been more common in non-red hair heterozygous people. Which meant that if a red haired person procreated with a non-red head there was a greater chance of red hair occuring on the child – as was the case with all of Henry's children. And even Queen Jane.

So genetically speaking it is not such a huge WTF that Eric Bana and Natalie Portman produced a red haired child.

I too have issues with the way Henry is protrayed in media, cause I hate how The Tudors has Henry all handsome and fit with his last 3 wives, making at least 2 of them look like strange idiots for 'rejecting' the handsome prince. When in fact, if they showed himn as the fat ugly man he became you could imagine why they didn't fall all over him with love.

I'm up for any of these sort of films as I take them for what they are just entertaining films and I don't dwell on all the inaccuracies purely because my view is at least someone is keeping history alive, most films aren't anything like the real events. This sort of history is always long forgotten by the average person these days so at least any film is good in my opinion.

THanks Bella…another lost drink..