The Serpent Queen 1.06
Oct. 17th, 2022 05:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which the departures from history grow ever more bonkers, but the characterisation and themes rock.
To get the historical nitpicking out of the way, because I'm sorry, I can't shut that voice inside me up - where to start? Charles V., like Francis I. before him, is kept alive for far longer than he lived in reality in this show. Even taking into account this episode mixes two very different events - the marriage between Mary Stuart and Catherine's oldest son Francis II, and the tournament as the result of which Henri II died which took place during the festivities of the marriage of Catherine's oldest daughter Elisabeth de Valois with Charles V.'s son, Philip (II) of Spain (yes, the one with the Armada etc.) - , Charles V. would not have been Emperor anymore at either time. He had abdicated, split up his realms between his son and his brother (as the result of which Spain and the HRE were no longer ruled by the same person), retired to a monastery in Spain and died three years later. One reason (though not the only one) for said abdication was that Charles at the point where he decided to do this was nearly crippled by gout. Moving had become extremely painful, which since due to the sheer size of his Empire he was governing from being on the road all the time meant he decided he couldn't do it any longer. So even if he had continued to live into the era of either marriage (Mary Stuart/Francis II, and Elisabeth/Philip II), he really could not have attended. Equally dead when all this happened was his sister Eleanor of Austria - both of Charles' sisters, Eleanor and Mary of Hungary, went with him to Spain, and all three siblings, who were very close, died within a year.
Now, none of this means I can't understand why the show kept its Charles V. alive and let him sinisterly show up in this episode when he really really could not have. And no, I don't think it's simply because that way, the audience doesn't have to remember another monarch impacting French politics. (Philip II. is so prominent in the English speaking audience's Tudor heavy pop culture that I don't think it would have been a burden to name check him and make it clear that Philiipp = son of Charles.) I think the creative decision was made because the show's Henri II (and his long dead brother the Dauphin) were both characterised as abused children (during their hostage years) which impacted who they became as adults (though in very different ways), it's highly relevant to the way the show presents the Henri/Diane relationship, and to what both Catherine and Henri decide to do in this episode. That Henri finds himself unable to deny Diane the request of receiving a monarch who didn't just fight him but, the show strongly hints in this episode with the "Henri was always my favourite" line, abused him, is the ultimate symbol of the way he's trapped himself and from which he can't escape in another way than death. (Sidenote: in rl, after Francis I. broke his promises, his two sons were treated badly as hostages, though not by Charles V. in person, who has the iron clad alibi of not being around them to do it. Like I said, the man was on the road all the time. He also was lucky in that his wife, Isabella of Portugal, his aunt and several of his sisters were very able regents for various parts of his Empire. But of course, not being personally around does not make him any less morally responsible for the conditions for the two child hostages changing from honored guests to harshly treated prisoners the moment their father broke the treaty. Then again, that is the point of hostages.)
(Otoh, the show's antagonists collectively plotting to invade England as a "united Europe" was a) one of those things where you have to wonder who the Brexiteer on the staff is, and b) even if there isn't one, write this off to being ever so English a plot twist. During some of the events taking place in this episode, Elizabeth (I) wasn't Queen yet, her sister Mary was, which means that far from Spain having any invading-England-with-French-Help plans, Spain (in the person of Philip II, who was Mary Tudor's husband) was fighting France with English help. (Spain won the most important battle, the Battle of St. Quentin. Also present at that battle: the Dudley brothers, Robin (as in, Elilzabeth's childhood friend and later favourite, the Earl of Leicester), Ambrose and Henry, recently released from the Tower.) The war went on for a while longer, and by the time there was a definite peace treaty, Mary I. of England had died, which was one of the reasons why Philip II. was free to marry Elisabeth de Valois as part of said peace treaty, and like I said, the tournament during which Henri II. died was part of those marriage festivities. There was still no sinister Spanish plan to invade England yet, not least because Philipp was still trying to get Elizabeth I. to marry one of the candidates he suggested, but also because his own marriage not withstanding he maintained the Habsburg distrust of France, and the idea that France, Scotland and England would have been ruled by the same monarchs - i.e. Mary Stuart and Francis II - was abhorrent to him.)
Okay, history nitpicks out of the way, let's focus on the show verse. I had been wondering at the start why the show chose to let Catherine believe Henri would finally commit to keeping her advice and make their marriage real one more time, when it hadn't worked the previous times; we'd done those emotional beats, so to speak. But that was when I still thought the show would go with basically the narrative all the fictional renditions of the Catherine/Henri marriage and Henri II's death employ, i.e. Catherine loves him unrequitedly till he dies, there's the "she has a dream, tries to prevent it, it doesn't work, he dies" story, which also hardly any fictionalization can resist using. Including this one, but they also go for a very different twist. In this version, Henri breaking faith with Catherine one time too many is when she makes the next major step to Machiavellian Overladydom, having decided it#s not Diane, it's Henri, he's simply not capable of extricating himself out of the relationship or change it so that he's able to say no to her. However, the show doesn't present the reason for this the traditional "led by his dick" cliché. It instead shows it as tragic, as the result of Henri the abused child hostage being resented by his father (more abuse) and then as a teenager seduced by teacher/mother figure Diane, who, in turn, has her own backstory trauma of having been an abused child bride. When she says "I loved you the only way I knew how" to Henri and to Catherine "what you don't understand is that Henri and I fit", she's actually not lying. (Though she is saying it as part of her latest attempt to get her will done.)
Meanwhile, Catherine has reached her limit of with the hope/rejection cycle she's been in with her husband, she also can see it's bad for the country (this is where the thematic justification for the show's very different French politics comes in, as in showverse Diane via bribery by the Guises is given a reason to promote both Mary/Francis and the alliance with Charles V.), and she's on her own tragectory of increasing ruthlessness. The first time she's been willing to sacrifice a life, it had been someone she had cared for, but external forces created the circumstances of that choice. This time, though, she's given ample time to consider, it is a far more deliberate decision, and it's a person she does not only care for but loves/loved.
(BTW: that her motives here are hopelessly entangled - she wants to get out of the enternal humiliaton conga that is her existence as the sidelined wife, Henri had made her believe and then broken faith with her one time too many, AND it's the best thing for France - instead of being clear-cut is why I keep liking this show so much.)
This by itself would already been efficient storytelling and a "for each woman kills the thing she loves" tale. (Sidenote: I also appreciate that the show doesn't - so far, at least - actually commit to the existence or none-existence of magic. The point is that CATHERINE believes she's making a choice here, and that she did earlier with the tailor.) But we get it in parallel to the Henri and Diane scenes, and then as the big climax Catherine balks at the last moment and wants to save him, only for Henri to understand and decide to die instead in their last exchange of looks, because he sees no other way out of what he's become - that really got me. Congratulations, show: this is really the first version of Catherine's life where I came to care about her marriage in other ways than feeling sorry for her, seeing it as a double tragedy instead of only hears.
Meanwhile, in the framing narration, Rahima realises that Catherine did, indeed, frame her, though she and the audience don't know yet why. (We the audience only find out in the last scene that Ruggieri is somehow involved.) Though one of the reasons has to be to stop Mary from sticking around in France and having power there. Incidentally, given that the last few fictional Mary Queen of Scots I've encountered were hilariously over the top tolerant (Reign's Mary was even cool with pagans, never mind Protestants; the Mary of the most recent movie never had an intolerant bone in her body and certainly the red she was wearing at her execution had nothing to do with seeing herself as a Catholic martyr; and then there was the Mary from the audio series The Stuarts who was just minding her own business - I get a real kick out of this one being 100% "Catholicism is the one true religion and everyone should be a Catholic!" I mean, this show's Mary being all "but I don't understand why we should fight a Catholic monarch like the HRE" is just as unrealistic as Reign's super tolerant Mary - because good lord, not only do England vs Scotland fights predate the Reformation, so do France vs Spain, France vs Burgundy, France vs the HRE wars, which any Scot raised as the French court would know - but her being a hardcore Catholic with absolutely no time for heretics as a teenage Queen is still way closer to history than all the Enlightened! Marys before.
As to what exactly Catherine really wants from Rahima, and why she goes about it in such an elaborate way? Your guess is as good as mine. I mean, obviously it can't be Mary's death, because Mary is history protected and will be off to Scotland soon, and while the show prolonged Charles V's life, he's not around anymore in the framing narration, either.
To get the historical nitpicking out of the way, because I'm sorry, I can't shut that voice inside me up - where to start? Charles V., like Francis I. before him, is kept alive for far longer than he lived in reality in this show. Even taking into account this episode mixes two very different events - the marriage between Mary Stuart and Catherine's oldest son Francis II, and the tournament as the result of which Henri II died which took place during the festivities of the marriage of Catherine's oldest daughter Elisabeth de Valois with Charles V.'s son, Philip (II) of Spain (yes, the one with the Armada etc.) - , Charles V. would not have been Emperor anymore at either time. He had abdicated, split up his realms between his son and his brother (as the result of which Spain and the HRE were no longer ruled by the same person), retired to a monastery in Spain and died three years later. One reason (though not the only one) for said abdication was that Charles at the point where he decided to do this was nearly crippled by gout. Moving had become extremely painful, which since due to the sheer size of his Empire he was governing from being on the road all the time meant he decided he couldn't do it any longer. So even if he had continued to live into the era of either marriage (Mary Stuart/Francis II, and Elisabeth/Philip II), he really could not have attended. Equally dead when all this happened was his sister Eleanor of Austria - both of Charles' sisters, Eleanor and Mary of Hungary, went with him to Spain, and all three siblings, who were very close, died within a year.
Now, none of this means I can't understand why the show kept its Charles V. alive and let him sinisterly show up in this episode when he really really could not have. And no, I don't think it's simply because that way, the audience doesn't have to remember another monarch impacting French politics. (Philip II. is so prominent in the English speaking audience's Tudor heavy pop culture that I don't think it would have been a burden to name check him and make it clear that Philiipp = son of Charles.) I think the creative decision was made because the show's Henri II (and his long dead brother the Dauphin) were both characterised as abused children (during their hostage years) which impacted who they became as adults (though in very different ways), it's highly relevant to the way the show presents the Henri/Diane relationship, and to what both Catherine and Henri decide to do in this episode. That Henri finds himself unable to deny Diane the request of receiving a monarch who didn't just fight him but, the show strongly hints in this episode with the "Henri was always my favourite" line, abused him, is the ultimate symbol of the way he's trapped himself and from which he can't escape in another way than death. (Sidenote: in rl, after Francis I. broke his promises, his two sons were treated badly as hostages, though not by Charles V. in person, who has the iron clad alibi of not being around them to do it. Like I said, the man was on the road all the time. He also was lucky in that his wife, Isabella of Portugal, his aunt and several of his sisters were very able regents for various parts of his Empire. But of course, not being personally around does not make him any less morally responsible for the conditions for the two child hostages changing from honored guests to harshly treated prisoners the moment their father broke the treaty. Then again, that is the point of hostages.)
(Otoh, the show's antagonists collectively plotting to invade England as a "united Europe" was a) one of those things where you have to wonder who the Brexiteer on the staff is, and b) even if there isn't one, write this off to being ever so English a plot twist. During some of the events taking place in this episode, Elizabeth (I) wasn't Queen yet, her sister Mary was, which means that far from Spain having any invading-England-with-French-Help plans, Spain (in the person of Philip II, who was Mary Tudor's husband) was fighting France with English help. (Spain won the most important battle, the Battle of St. Quentin. Also present at that battle: the Dudley brothers, Robin (as in, Elilzabeth's childhood friend and later favourite, the Earl of Leicester), Ambrose and Henry, recently released from the Tower.) The war went on for a while longer, and by the time there was a definite peace treaty, Mary I. of England had died, which was one of the reasons why Philip II. was free to marry Elisabeth de Valois as part of said peace treaty, and like I said, the tournament during which Henri II. died was part of those marriage festivities. There was still no sinister Spanish plan to invade England yet, not least because Philipp was still trying to get Elizabeth I. to marry one of the candidates he suggested, but also because his own marriage not withstanding he maintained the Habsburg distrust of France, and the idea that France, Scotland and England would have been ruled by the same monarchs - i.e. Mary Stuart and Francis II - was abhorrent to him.)
Okay, history nitpicks out of the way, let's focus on the show verse. I had been wondering at the start why the show chose to let Catherine believe Henri would finally commit to keeping her advice and make their marriage real one more time, when it hadn't worked the previous times; we'd done those emotional beats, so to speak. But that was when I still thought the show would go with basically the narrative all the fictional renditions of the Catherine/Henri marriage and Henri II's death employ, i.e. Catherine loves him unrequitedly till he dies, there's the "she has a dream, tries to prevent it, it doesn't work, he dies" story, which also hardly any fictionalization can resist using. Including this one, but they also go for a very different twist. In this version, Henri breaking faith with Catherine one time too many is when she makes the next major step to Machiavellian Overladydom, having decided it#s not Diane, it's Henri, he's simply not capable of extricating himself out of the relationship or change it so that he's able to say no to her. However, the show doesn't present the reason for this the traditional "led by his dick" cliché. It instead shows it as tragic, as the result of Henri the abused child hostage being resented by his father (more abuse) and then as a teenager seduced by teacher/mother figure Diane, who, in turn, has her own backstory trauma of having been an abused child bride. When she says "I loved you the only way I knew how" to Henri and to Catherine "what you don't understand is that Henri and I fit", she's actually not lying. (Though she is saying it as part of her latest attempt to get her will done.)
Meanwhile, Catherine has reached her limit of with the hope/rejection cycle she's been in with her husband, she also can see it's bad for the country (this is where the thematic justification for the show's very different French politics comes in, as in showverse Diane via bribery by the Guises is given a reason to promote both Mary/Francis and the alliance with Charles V.), and she's on her own tragectory of increasing ruthlessness. The first time she's been willing to sacrifice a life, it had been someone she had cared for, but external forces created the circumstances of that choice. This time, though, she's given ample time to consider, it is a far more deliberate decision, and it's a person she does not only care for but loves/loved.
(BTW: that her motives here are hopelessly entangled - she wants to get out of the enternal humiliaton conga that is her existence as the sidelined wife, Henri had made her believe and then broken faith with her one time too many, AND it's the best thing for France - instead of being clear-cut is why I keep liking this show so much.)
This by itself would already been efficient storytelling and a "for each woman kills the thing she loves" tale. (Sidenote: I also appreciate that the show doesn't - so far, at least - actually commit to the existence or none-existence of magic. The point is that CATHERINE believes she's making a choice here, and that she did earlier with the tailor.) But we get it in parallel to the Henri and Diane scenes, and then as the big climax Catherine balks at the last moment and wants to save him, only for Henri to understand and decide to die instead in their last exchange of looks, because he sees no other way out of what he's become - that really got me. Congratulations, show: this is really the first version of Catherine's life where I came to care about her marriage in other ways than feeling sorry for her, seeing it as a double tragedy instead of only hears.
Meanwhile, in the framing narration, Rahima realises that Catherine did, indeed, frame her, though she and the audience don't know yet why. (We the audience only find out in the last scene that Ruggieri is somehow involved.) Though one of the reasons has to be to stop Mary from sticking around in France and having power there. Incidentally, given that the last few fictional Mary Queen of Scots I've encountered were hilariously over the top tolerant (Reign's Mary was even cool with pagans, never mind Protestants; the Mary of the most recent movie never had an intolerant bone in her body and certainly the red she was wearing at her execution had nothing to do with seeing herself as a Catholic martyr; and then there was the Mary from the audio series The Stuarts who was just minding her own business - I get a real kick out of this one being 100% "Catholicism is the one true religion and everyone should be a Catholic!" I mean, this show's Mary being all "but I don't understand why we should fight a Catholic monarch like the HRE" is just as unrealistic as Reign's super tolerant Mary - because good lord, not only do England vs Scotland fights predate the Reformation, so do France vs Spain, France vs Burgundy, France vs the HRE wars, which any Scot raised as the French court would know - but her being a hardcore Catholic with absolutely no time for heretics as a teenage Queen is still way closer to history than all the Enlightened! Marys before.
As to what exactly Catherine really wants from Rahima, and why she goes about it in such an elaborate way? Your guess is as good as mine. I mean, obviously it can't be Mary's death, because Mary is history protected and will be off to Scotland soon, and while the show prolonged Charles V's life, he's not around anymore in the framing narration, either.
