The Serpent Queen Recap: Catherine’s Garbage Children
What is going on with this season? I know we had a long break, but other than Minnie Driver bringing Elizabeth I to life through sheer force of will, it feels half-hearted and weird. I thought I had a bead on Elisabeth and Margot in the first episode, where Elisabeth is vain and bratty, and Margot is quiet and charitable. Now Elisabeth’s out here being called the most generous of Catherine’s children, and Margot’s being a real bitch to the Holy Roman Emperor’s grandniece for no reason. Did they forget how they wrote them in the first episode? Or did they accidentally flip the names in the script? This season had one job: to show Catherine de’ Medici being fun and sneaky, and instead, she’s angsting over her garbage children and ignoring Rahima, who is being fun and sneaky and still needs more screen time.
Catherine’s half-brother Alessandro follows her to Paris to build her palace. He immediately hits her up to sponsor a colony in America, specifically Florida. If you’re like, oh sure, because of how strongly Florida is associated with the French language, that’s fair. The French don’t do a great job of colonizing Florida. Like, they tried, but the Spanish said “nah” and put a stop to that real quick. “WE’LL be the ones demolishing civilizations, thank you,” the Spanish soldiers probably said. Catherine wants to put the doomed Floridian colony on hold anyway because France remains riven by religious strife.
Her children are all off doing their own things this week, and maybe The Righteous Gemstones has indeed ruined me for all TV adult sibling relationship dynamics, but it’s really boring if you have spoiled adult children living together and none of them are even punching each other in the nuts. If they’re not going to act like they’re ten years old, why are they here? Charles is boring, Anjou is making us gays look bad, Elisabeth did her 180 and is an inconsistent mystery, Margot is whatever the writers want her to be in any given scene, and Hercule is dead.
Speaking of Margot, when the previously mentioned grandniece shows up with Charles, Margot accuses her of scheming to marry Charles (okay?), and Charles replies that Margot thinks saying things no one else would say makes her brave, but really no one else says them because what she says is boring and uninteresting. That’s not it, Charles, but good job trying. No one says them because most people are not assholes. It’s clearly interesting to accuse someone of scheming to marry someone else. But when the person deserves it zero percent, then you’re just being a dick.
Charles is dithering along this week, and Anjou is still under house arrest. Or at least he will be until Montmorency helps Charles come for Catherine at the private council meeting (what?). Angelica the Poisoner shows up and testifies that Catherine wanted her to poison Sister Edith, Montmorency’s absolute favorite. Catherine admits it and says it’s probably best if she steps off the council (gasp!) but asks Charles to release Anjou and add him in her place. This is because of some advice from Ruggieri about pitting her children against each other, etc., but unless she’s doing this for an early version of George Bluth’s Boyfights series, I am not interested. Charles releases Anjou, but not before Catherine goes to Anjou and makes him falsely sign his best friend’s confession, saying Anjou’s best friend Lemur (known as Bowl Cut in my home) led Anjou astray regarding the very horrifying drowning murder of a Protestant man. Anjou says okay, and Lemur is beheaded. Damn. Lemur also reads as queer, by the way, so now we have had two queer people being responsible for the death of another queer person in their inner circle. NOT A GREAT LOOK, SHOW.
Speaking of Sister Edith, she remains a zealous nightmare. Antoine and Louis de Bourbon deign to pay her a clandestine visit and offer her the support of Queen Elizabeth. Edith, it turns out, has more information about Elizabeth’s whereabouts than they do, and she tells them Elizabeth landed in Flanders a day ago, along with weapons to help the rebels. This is bananas, by the way; Elizabeth never left England during her forty-five-year reign, but we know all bets are off here, and I want to see Elizabeth interact with other monarchs, so, fine. Louis and Antoine are caught off guard, particularly when Edith asks Antoine if he’s a true believer, and has Aabis hold a flame to his arm until he confesses his sins. We have to watch his arm burn. It’s truly disgusting. Edith says something about how we’ll all be purified in the flames eventually, etc, etc, the kind of stuff religious zealots say, and dismisses the Bourbons. Someone needs to stop Sister Edith. Who? I honestly don’t know at this point. If they gave Rahima the job, she’d get it done in five minutes, but Rahima continues to get like three lines per episode. What a WASTE. A waste!! The whole season could be about her and her army of sexy court ladies. Bah!
Remember when Philip of Spain was kicked by a horse last week? Well, he’s alive but unresponsive. He just sits there, which is clearly an improvement over the horse torture he was attempting when he got kicked across the courtyard. Elisabeth, who is now kind and caring, starts visiting Philip and reading to him, which makes his father, Charles V, very happy. Catherine convinces Elisabeth to marry Philip (sure) to forge an alliance between France and the Holy Roman Empire. The marriage requires a stand-in for the consummation part. Said stand-in touches Elisabeth’s foot with his foot, and the marriage is declared consummated. Okey dokey.
How, you ask, did Catherine make this marriage happen without a whole discussion between the king and the council and everyone else who would surely want to have a say? She had Rahima use her sexy lady army to drug the wine of all the relevant royals, and by the time everyone woke up, Elisabeth was in a carriage with Philip and Charles V, being whisked away to her new homeland. Her siblings’ vibes are basically, “Hm. Okay.” They will likely never see their sister again. Whatever! As Elisabeth’s carriage rolls off, another carriage rolls in. It’s Charles’s prospective new bride. Anjou says, “Fuck me,” as Queen Elizabeth steps out of the carriage. Okay, bonus points for this very last scene because it is very good. Elizabeth I and Catherine de’ Medici scenes next week, I assume! Exciting!