Thirty Days of Medici: Favourite Antagonist

Day 04 ~ Favourite antagonist

Well, no question about that. Mind you, this is a show which on the one hand isn’t exactly subtle about who the heroes and who the villains are – hint: members of the old nobility going on about their privilege and calling for war aren’t the white hats - , but it still does quite well in letting its villains be three dimensional. In season 1, the main antagonist, Rinaldo d’Albizzi, at first seems to be your avarage one dimensional scheming bad guy, but then it turns out that he might be a stiff-necked conservative unwilling to compromise, but he does have a personal code of honor (and thus is not responsible for the murder that starts off the show); also, our protagonist Cosimo screwed him over first (however inadvertently). It’s also Cosimo who before the season is over crosses his own ethical guidelines, not Albizzi. (Doesn’t mean one roots for Albizzi, not just because of his political goals but because he’s utterly devoid of a sense of humor or a sense of empathy with anyone outside of his own personal circle. Cosimo can be a jerk, but he does have compassion for people not of use to him.) So while as far as straightforward villains go, he’s relatively well done one, he’s not serious competition for the main contender.

Young Rinaldo and young Cosimo were friendly for about five minutes, and clearly the scriptwriters thought they could improve on that one for season 2. Come the second season, the role of chief antagonist gets divided into three characters. There’s the boo-hiss-worthy evil old patriarch, Jacopo Pazzi, played with Sean Bean with just a very few flickers of humanity. (His s1 equivalent isn’t Albizzi, it’s old Giovanni de‘ Medici, who might be our first season hero’s father but is responsible for a great many miseries of the plot.) There’s the young schemer with an understandable motive, Salviati (the motive being that his parents were financially ruined by the Medici and as a consequence ended up dead), who, however, is also minus any virtues such as courage to endear himself to the audience.

And then there’s the show’s first tragic antagonist, who gets to be conflicted, have a friendship backstory with the main protagonist and a present day enemies-to-friends-to-enemies storyline, and gets to show positive emotions (concern, tenderness) towards other people (to wit, his brother and for a while his wife). (Also, depending on your slash goggles, he's got UST with the hero.) So naturally, I’m joining the vocal majority of viewers here and have Francesco de‘ Pazzi as my favourite antagonist. With the caveat that going by what I could find on fanfiction and on tumblr, I see him somewhat darker than said vocal majority does. (You can draw a straight line from the season opener in which he’s responsible for something very brutal to the season finale where he’s – well, that’s history. For starters.) Hence also this story of mine, which is probably the darkest bit of m/m I wrote since that (unrequited) Londo/Cartagia thing.

( The other days )

Far Out...

Essay by Art Spiegelman about how the golden age superheroes were shaped by the rise of fascism. Was originally declined publication for a sentence which sums up the state of affairs today: „Captain America’s most nefarious villain, the Red Skull, is alive on screen and an Orange Skull haunts America.“

I hear you, Mr. Spiegelman. In other news, the other Captain America is dead: I wonder whether Peter Fonda ever faced legal trouble from Marvel for giving his Easy Rider character that name? (I should know; I did read his memoirs, Don’t tell Dad which are two thirds entertaining and occasionally moving/disturbing (i.e. if you have a repeatedly institutionalized mother who slashes her throat and only find this out via the media…), and one third far too much sailing for a non-sailor like me.) Mind you, Peter Fonda in the 60s or early 70s actually could have played Steve Rogers, and I wonder what a counterculture 60s/70s version of The Winter Soldier would have been like. For added Fonda family psychodrama, Henry could have played Alexander Pierce.

In said memoirs, Peter mentions one of the countless articles published at the time referring to him as „the mouthy little brother“, which, he adds delightedly, would make for a great epitaph. Sure enough, Jane is quoted today as saying: He was my sweet-hearted baby brother, the talker of the family. If you’re a Beatles fan, Peter Fonda also comes to mind as the unwitting inspiration of She said she said. (The Beatles met him in Los Angeles during one of their last US tours, when they’d just gotten into LSD – well, John and George had – and Peter mentioned shooting himself by accident as a child, which led to a near death experience. This to a tripping John Lennon was so not the kind of story he wanted to hear, but he couldn’t get „I know what it’s like to be dead“ out of his head, hence the song on Revolver. Or, to quote both Fonda and Lennon on the event:


PF: “I remember sitting out on the deck of the house with George, who was telling me that he thought he was dying. I told him that there was nothing to be afraid of and all that he needed to do was relax. I said that I knew what it was like to be dead because, when I was 10 years old, I’d accidentally shot myself in the stomach and my heart stopped beating three times while I was on the operating table because I had lost so much blood.“

JL: “Peter kept on saying, in a whisper, ‘I know what it’s like to be dead,’ and we said, 'What?’ And he kept on saying it. We were saying, 'For Christ’s sake, shut up! We don’t care, we don’t want to know!’ But he kept going on about it.“

PF: „”John looked at me and said, ’You’re making me feel like I’ve never been born. Who put all that shit in your head?' “

The result of that encounter was one of the more nightmarish songs in the Beatles catalogue, but certainly memorable.