History Series / Britannia

The series has been renewed for a second and third season.

* TargetedHumanSacrifice: The Druids' gods are very picky about who they want sacrificed to them, just ask [[spoiler:King Pellenor]].

* GreaterScopeVillain: Emperor [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudius Claudius]] is the one who commanded the invasion if Britannia and the Outcast in particular believes that even if they repel the invaders, he would have to go to Rome and kill the emperor himself in order to really keep them from coming back. Interestingly, the real-life Claudius died in unclear circumstances in 54 AD, and Roman historians reported several, contradictory rumours that he was assassinated.

* ButtMonkey: Phelan. His wife Amena (who he really doesn't like) is very publicly sleeping with another man (who is also her husband, on the orders of the Druids), and very publicly tells everyone how much more of a man Lindon is. Then [[spoiler:his father dies, and despite being the official heir, he is passed over in favour of his sister. And then he is persuaded to run away with an enemy princess who believes herself to be the incarnation of a goddess, only to be told by Veran that she is mistaken and he has thrown away everything which he once had for nothing. Oh, and he spends most of his time on the run suffering from diarrhea.]]

Set in 43 AD, it follows the Roman army led by Aulus Plautius (Morrissey) as they launch an invasion of the island of Britannia, a mysterious land led by warrior women and powerful Druids who claim to channel the powerful forces of the underworld.

It was announced in March 2018 that the series had been renewed for a second season.

!!This series features examples of:

* EvilVsEvil: The Romans are a brutal invasion force that kills or enslaves everyone in their paths, while the Britons are ruled by bloodthirsty kings in constant war with each other and follow the dictates of the Druids, who forbid anyone from being literate under penalty of death and practice HumanSacrifice.

* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: Veran is said to be the second man ever created, being at least 10,000 years old, and he personally claims to have met Julius Caesar 98 years previously. Given how much magic is present, either or both of these claims may be true. In season 2 one of the druids explains that THIS Veran was born not so long ago and gods chose him to be one. There were hundreds of Verans all of whom seem to have one common memory and personality since the born of the first one ten thousand years before the action of series

* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: Veran is said to be the second man ever created, being at least 10,000 years old, and he personally claims to have met Julius Caesar 98 years previously. Given how much magic is present, either or both of these claims may be true.

-->'''Aulus:''' NOBODY. PISSES. [[PunctuatedForEmphasis in MY bath]].

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: So much that it needs [[ArtisticLicenseHistory/{{Britannia}} its own article.]]

''Britannia'' (2018-) is a is a British historical period drama the first co-production between Creator/{{Sky}} and [[Creator/AmazonStudios Amazon Prime Video]], and stars Creator/KellyReilly, Creator/IanMcDiarmid, Creator/DavidMorrissey, Zoë Wanamaker, Liana Cornell and Stanley Weber.

* AerithAndBob: ''None'' of the Britons have period-appropriate names, while most of the Romans do.

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Besides the obvious fact that the Druids didn’t have any real magic, there are some places were the series takes liberties with the historical facts:
** Plautius reminds Lucius of an incident in which they were both involved while serving in Egypt, and mentions Cairo. While the area was already home to various cities and settlements, Cairo wouldn’d get that name until the 10th century AD.
** The "arrangement" between Lindon and Amena is said to be the druids' idea in order to strengthen the bonds between the Cantii and the "Bretons" in Gaul. There are 2 problems with this: at that point in time the peninsula of Armorica had been part of the Roman province of Gallia Lugdunensis for decades, and it wouldn't be called Brittany for another four centuries, when Britons from the island of Great Britain began to emigrate there.
** Antonius claims that the god of the Numidians is Bomazi. In fact Bomazi is the ancestor-god in the mythology of the Kuba Kingdom in Central Africa.
** Plautius claims to not even know the names of the local tribes in the area where he landed. In reality, the pretext for the invasion was to re-instate Verica, an exiled king of the Atrebates tribe, so he would have been well aware of the political situation on the island.
** The Romans are seen drinking wine out of modern glass goblets, instead of ones made out in the style of the period.
** Basically every costume in the series is comically wrong. Eagle-eyed viewers may notice that some of the officers' helmets have been purchased from cheap £1 party stores.
** Characters played by black actors are identified as "Numidian", an olive-skinned Berber people from North Africa. It is possible that the screenwriters might have confused the Numidians with the Nubians, who did have dark skin, but the first legions in proximity to Nubia wouldn't be raised until the reign of Diocletian, 250 years after the series takes place.
** The Romans have Czech Hedgehog style tank traps surrounding their camp, 1895 years before they were invented.
** The Celts use runes. Nevermind that the runes were a ''Germanic'' writing system and did not arrive to Britannia until the Anglo-Saxon migrations: 400 years after the events of the show. If the runes were around in 43 AD (the earliest known inscriptions are from the 2nd century), they would have been limited to the area around Denmark or to Germanic mercenaries.
** Pre-Roman Britannia being a WorldOfActionGirls is a modern and greatly exaggerated view of what we know for sure about it and the roles women occupied on it. While it is true that many Celtic women trained for war and stepped into the battlefield with a frequency unheard of in most other cultures of its age, this was actually heavily dependant on the tribe in question, and in any case not as common and regularized as the series shows.

* AntiMagic: May be the case with [[spoiler:Cait. She easily walks past the Outcast's barrier, swallow a stone filled with dark magic with no ill effects, and when she and Pwykka meet he can't even touch her.]]

* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: Veran is said to be the second man ever created, being at least 10,000 years-old, and he personally claims to have met Julius Caesar 98 years previously. Given how much magic is present, either or both of these claims may be true.

''Britannia'' (2018-) is a is a British historical period drama the first co-production between Creator/{{Sky}} and [[Creator/AmazonStudios Amazon Prime Video]], and stars Creator/KellyReilly, Creator/DavidMorrissey, Zoë Wanamaker, Liana Cornell and Stanley Weber.

''Britannia'' (2017-) is a is a British historical period drama the first co-production between Creator/{{Sky}} and [[Creator/AmazonStudios Amazon Prime Video]], and stars Creator/KellyReilly, Creator/DavidMorrissey, Zoë Wanamaker, Liana Cornell and Stanley Weber.

''Britannia'' is a is a British historical period drama the first co-production between Creator/{{Sky}} and [[Creator/AmazonStudios Amazon Prime Video]], and stars Creator/KellyReilly, Creator/DavidMorrissey, Zoë Wanamaker, Liana Cornell and Stanley Weber.

* TheUnfavorite: Cait. Her father spends far too much time telling her how her sister was the special one, and makes it pretty clear that he'd rather Cait had died instead.
* WeAREStrugglingTogether: The Romans' invasion if the island is helped by the fact that the different tribes of Britons are more worried about fighting each other than they are about dealing with the Romans. Lampshaded by Plaitius himself:
-->'''Plaitius:''' Nine decades ago, when Caesar landed, the Celts were waiting on the beach in their thousands. Yesterday, not a single Celt was there to greet us. We march 50,000 men clear across Gaul, spend six weeks at the coast, quelling mutiny after mutiny, and still no word gets through. Tell you anything?

* WorldOfActionGirls: Britannia from the Roman perspective, as they run into warrior women whenever they go.

* NastyParty: An arranged marriage between King Pellenor's nephew and Queen Antedia's niece [[spoiler:turns out to be an ambush by Antedia in order to try an kill Pellenor. The groom gets his throat cut, but the bride is taken prisoner by the Cantii.]]

* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: Veran is said to be the second man ever created, and claims to have met Julius Caesar 98 years previously. Given how much magic is present, either or both of these claims may be true.

* KneelBeforeZod: Queen Antedia tries to get Plautius to seal their alliance by kissing her feet. He persuades her to accept a compromise of him kissing her hand. Then she demands that his second in command, Lucius, kiss her feet. Plautius is okay with that.
* LadyMacbeth: Amena may be the most ambitious character in the show and she does nothing but plot and intrigue to manipulate her husband to get it.
* LittleMissSnarker: Once she gets over the initial shock of her village being destroyed Cait proves to have quite a cutting tongue.

* HistoricalInJoke: One of the officers in Plautius' legion is named Vespasian, like [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespasian the future Roman emperor]] who indeed commanded one of the legions in the historical Plautious' invasion force. That this officer is not meant to be the famous Vespasian can be deduced from his much lower rank [[spoiler:and the fact that his head gets pincushioned by 4 Cantii arrows in the second episode.]]