10 TV Shows That So Badly Wanted To Be Game Of Thrones
6. The White Queen
George R.R. Martin has made no secret of how heavily his story of the power struggles of House Stark and House Lannister draws on the real historical rivalry of the Houses of York and Lancaster during the Wars of the Roses in the English Middle Ages.
It makes sense, then, that TV executives looking for a Stark-Lannister rivalry of their own would go right back to the source. Well, in this case not so much the historical source as a series of fictionalised novels about the era from The Other Boleyn Girl novelist Philippa Gregory.
The White Queen provided the requisite mix of political intrigue, character deaths and steamy sex (the latter increased from its original airing on the BBC with additional sex and nudity for its US network Starz) to appeal to the Thrones audience.
There was a small barrier to magical fantasy content in The White Queen being set in the actual past. But this was easily overcome by turning the accusations of witchcraft that were really made against the eponymous queen, Elizabeth Woodville, into her being an actual magic practitioner in the show.
The White Queen did OK, but fell awkwardly into a position of not being accurate enough for history nerds nor imaginative enough for Game Of Thrones fans.
The BBC did not choose to continue the story after a standalone miniseries in 2013, but Starz did pick it up for sequels The White Princess (in which the role of Elizabeth was taken on by Thrones' Lady Crane, Essie Davis) and The Spanish Princess (built around Charlotte Hope - Myranda in Game Of Thrones - as Catherine of Aragon).