'Reign', television show touted to be based on the life and times of Mary, Queen of Scots premiered Thursday night, October 17, 2013 to mixed reactions from audiences and critics.

While a section of audience is amused at 16th century royal crowd dressing in lacy bustier and dancing to new age music, others have criticized the show for tampering with the history and the genre of period drama as a whole.

Adelaide Kane of Teen Wolf fame plays Mary, the Scottish queen who arrived at the court of King Henry II in France. She is betrothed to heir apparent Price Francis played by Toby Regbo.

Here's the first tweak: history has it that Prince Francis died a teenager; Reign's Prince Francis looks anything but a teenager.

In an interview with AccessHollywood, Toby Regbo commented, "They've really aged him up, sexed him up, beefed him up a little bit. He's got balls 'cause the real Francis didn't have testicles. Well, he did, but they were undescended [sic], so that's not the way I'm playing it. ... So, I go by what they write in the script rather than the period."  

Same is with Princess Mary and the posse of her four ladies in-waiting. They seem like a gang of BFF's right out of a teen drama, precisely what the critics are calling the ambitious project from CW.

To clarify what Reign is all about, the cast says that it is not a periodic drama in the real sense of the term. It is historic fan-fiction where known characters from England's history are portrayed in hypothetical situations.

"It's like historical fan-fiction. You've got these people we've all heard of, and we're watching them experience relationships and events that never happened...We've kind of created a new world; it's fantasy history," said Anna Popplewell in an interview of HollywoodLife. Anna plays Lola, Mary's lady in-waiting.

The broad plot developments remain the same: Francis and Mary will marry, King Henry II will die making way for the coronation of his son and eventually Mary and other landmark events up to the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.