Abstract
Radio-Televisión Española’s 2012–2014 series Isabel presents an important new adaptation of the so-called Catholic queen in that the program successfully depicts Isabel I of Castile as a ruler in her own right whose influence was decisive in the formation of Spain. The program provides an important corrective to many of the one-dimensional portraits of the queen in the historical record in that this Isabel is an independent monarch rather than merely her husband’s pious helper. Nevertheless, the series profoundly re-orients the religious characterization of the queen by diminishing her commitment to the aspects of her reign that remain distasteful to modern audiences, thus revealing postmodern audiences’ continued aversion to associations of Christianity with the exclusionary practices of the past.
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Beck, E.S. (2018). Religious Medievalisms in RTVE’s Isabel. In: North, J., Alvestad, K., Woodacre, E. (eds) Premodern Rulers and Postmodern Viewers . Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68771-1_8
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