Have you
seen the movie Elizabeth: The Golden Age? In this movie you can see a clear
hero-villain fight based on historic events that actually are pretty inaccurate,
you can check a lot of facts in this page http://www.elizabethfiles.com/ and compare it to the movie. BUT that’s
not my point though, let’s think that the movie magically is fixed and filmed
again with the historic events more “accurate” according to English history. Even there the story was narrated by the
winners.
The stereotyped
character that represented Philip II (king of Spain) in the movie is actually a
pretty accepted point of view in the Anglo world, and sometimes even worst representing
him as fanatic, despotic, criminal, imperialist and genocidal.
So here
comes a question I had:
How the story would be
if Spain had won the War?
Logically the story would be radically different, but I can only look the real history, I will show you leaders of the nations involved in the war in the "winner perspective" to prove a point:
Elizabeth won, and his image is like this (according to England):
Elizabeth the
Queen of England, was also called the “Virgin Queen” because of her pure image,
and the fact she never married. She was Protestant and fought against the
Catholic Church who was pressing to kill her and gain control again on England.
She was
known for being a wise and strong woman who was “married” to England. She
sacrificed his personal life for England.
In her
reign we have one of the most important literature images, William Shakespeare,
being the maximum exponent in poetry of this country.
If Philip II had won, I think all the world would know him like this (Spanish vision):
Philip II,
the king of Spain was also called Philip the Prudent because of his “prudent”
actions that he took when he started reigning Spain, which was in a very hard
situation. In his years as a king Spain was finally unified, and he separated
the nobility from the state decisions.
He was
known as a cold person, but it was an image he wanted to make public, this made
him not having much friends actually. He sacrificed his social life and his happiness
for his empire.
In his period
of reign we have a big advance in literature with Lope de Vega one of the
biggest figures in theatre, even nowadays. We have more figures including Miguel
de Cervantes who doesn’t actually need presentation, his name immediately
remind us Don Quixote.
My conclusion is that everyone
can be a hero when you are writing the History!
