The queerness of King James I, of Bible fame

The King James Version of the Bible is the preferred version of many fundamentalist Christian churches — and the one being hawked by Donald Trump in a “God Bless the USA” edition, with the addition of the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Pledge of Allegiance. But what some promoters of the King James Version don’t realize or — at least ignore — is the queerness of the king who commissioned it.

James, known formally as King James I of England and King James VI of Scotland, would likely be understood as bisexual today; there weren’t such labels for sexuality in his era, the 16^th and 17^th centuries. He apparently had a passionate relationship with his wife and queen, Anne. “He was no heir and a spare man — he had multiple [pregnancies] with her — so they had a fairly active sex life,” Steven Veerapen, a biographer of the king, recently told Esther Addley in an article forThe Guardian.

But James also had many male lovers, chief among them George Villiers, earl and later duke of Buckingham, whose ascent to becoming James’s favorite is dramatized in the new miniseries Mary & George, which has been shown in the U.K. and comes to the U.S. Friday on Starz.

“Introduced to James I in August 1614, the charming, handsome Villiers soon replaced the Scottish favourite Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, in the king’s esteem,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica.“His relationship with James became sexual, and he retained the king’s passionate support to the end of the latter’s life.”

There was a time when historians were reluctant to admit that close same-sex relationships were likely to have been sexual, but that reluctance has abated, as evidenced by the Britannica passage. “There was, for a very long time, a hesitancy to really talk about it, it would just be said that he had these ‘favourites’ and that he was foolishly devoted to them — and we won’t go into what else might have happened,” Veerapen noted in The Guardian’s article.

But James’s letters portray physical relationships between him and various men, including Villiers, according to Veerapen, whose biography of James is titled The Wisest Fool. In one letter to Villiers, for instance, James refers to him as “my sweet child and wife.” Even though James publicly denounced the act of sodomy, “that doesn’t mean he wasn’t doing it himself … You’re the king. Why not? Do what you like,” Veerapen said.

James was born in 1566 in Edinburgh and was named king of Scotland when he was just 1 year old, after his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned, and his father, Lord Darnley, murdered. After he came of age, he pursued an alliance between Scotland and England, and he became king of England in 1603, upon the death of Queen Elizabeth I.

In 1604, a group of religious leaders in England came up with the idea of a new version of the Bible; their proposal said the English translations already in circulation “were corrupt and not answerable to the truth of the original.” James quickly became enthusiastic about the project and approved a list of scholars to do the revision. The King James Version of the Bible was published in 1611.

By the next century, it had become the most popular English-language Bible, and even nonbelievers praised its beautiful use of words. Some conservative Christians consider it divinely inspired and the only authoritative version, ignoring or denying its queer origins. However, there have been many versions since then — the Revised Standard Version, the American Standard Version, and more, some of them using modern language.

A translation produced by Catholics in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, the Douai-Reims Bible, “was the only authorized Bible in English for Roman Catholics until the 20th century,” Britannica notes. After all, England had broken with the Catholic Church by James’s time, and he and the nation were officially Protestant.

Trump’s promotion of an edition of the King James Version as part of “our religion” in the U.S. ignores the existence of so many versions of the Bible — which he’s probably not even aware of — and the existence of non-Christian religions. Oh well, no one ever thought he was a theological scholar.

But this Bible remains James I’s most enduring claim to fame, while the new miniseries will shed more light on his queer identity, “revealing him to be one of the most prominent figures in British LGBTQ+ history,” The Guardian’s Addley relates. Tony Curran portrays James in the series, with Nicholas Galitzine as George Villiers and Julianne Moore as George’s ambitious mother, Mary Villiers.

“It’s based on what is, in fact, somewhat settled history,” that James “preferred the company of men,” Richard Lawson reports in Vanity Fair. He adds, “It’s a lark to see familiar trappings so queered, especially when it is justified (at least somewhat) by historical record.”

Our sibling publication Out describes the series as "a deliciously sexy, horny, and messy (in a good way!) period piece." It "feels like the chaotic bisexual tale we’ve been impatiently waiting for," Out concludes.