The Serpent Queen Recap: The Virgin and the Witch

It was hard to drag myself away from watching the DNC’s ceremonial roll call on a loop, but this week’s time with Catherine de’ Medici and family really paid off. Dare I call this the best episode yet of the season? One might say this season’s Diamond? I do dare! Catherine finally gathered herself together and is being the Serpent Queen. That’s what we’re all here for, and instead, she’s been a mess all season. If I wanted to see a woman running around with no idea of what to do, I’d watch yet another Mary, Queen of Scots, vehicle.

This is a horrifying statement, but I’m … looking … forward … to the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre? That can’t be right … but it is! In reality, this was clearly awful, but in this fictional realm where we’re smushing timelines together and making up relationships and aliving people who were unalive at the time, the Protestants are a really giant bee in my bonnet, and I need Catherine to have a win. I just want her to stop Sister Edith, even though Edith makes some very good points about monarchies being stupid. But this show isn’t called Sister Edith. Plus, she’s making people convert under threat of death, and that’s not cool.

Catherine discovers that Charles has consumption. At the beginning of the episode, she is still confused and says some truly horrible things to Anjou, like it’s his fault Hercule and now Charles will die, and he has shamed her his whole life. Then she gets into a whole thing about deviance and how he needs to hide who he is. Anjou replies that whatever it is that shames her about him, it lives in Catherine as well, which she confirms to the camera. What? What? I was still in the headspace of “she’s saying terrible things to her queer child,” so I read that as implying she is also queer, which I don’t think she is textually. So it must refer to his temper and selfishness? But presumably, she is also saying she’s ashamed of the queerness, so I oppose that line on the grounds that it is confusing.

Margot is on the board now and being used by everyone for their own ends. Well, except François de Guise, who tries to pull a Harry and the Hendersons by being mean to her to get her not to want to marry him. Unfortunately, he does this by telling her it’s not safe for her to be close to him, which is exactly how to get her more into him. He calls her “little girl,” and I expected him to start singing “Sixteen Going On Seventeen.” Isn’t Margot like twenty-five? François also refers to her as a child when Antoinette wants him to marry her to appease the Catholic League. (Philippine Velge, the actor playing Margot, got their BA in 2018, so I’m guessing 28? I’m just saying it’s weird.)

The Catholic League is threatening François with skinning his brother, the cardinal, and burning him alive if François doesn’t marry Margot. Good Lord. They want this so they can put François on the throne until his presumed son with Margot comes of age, and then they’ll have a solidly Catholic ruler. I thought Charles was one already, but then he gets baptized as a Protestant, so there goes that theory. Charles is trying to figure out how to save France, which turns out to be a very difficult thing to do. His solution is to become a Protestant and hopefully calm down Edith’s followers. Sure, why not?

But what about his proposed marriage to Elizabeth? Elizabeth already indicated her preference for Anjou, which Catherine realizes. Elizabeth also knows what consumption looks like, and she says she watched her own sister succumb to it. No, she didn’t! Mary I likely died from cancer. Then Elizabeth says, “She wasn’t always known as Mad Mary.” Was she ever??? Literally, the only thing I could find for “Mad Mary” was writer Charles Lamb’s unfortunate sister Mary Lamb. You can’t just make things up! What if people start going around talking about Elizabeth I’s mentally ill and consumptive sister who never existed?

Okay, but Elizabeth’s last scenes at the French court really are great. I just got very thrown by those back-to-back bananas statements. Elizabeth gets a tip that Anjou is not at his best at the moment, so she proposes they go visit him in his rooms to announce their engagement. When Elizabeth and Catherine walk in, there is a full-on drunken orgy happening, complete with a young man going down on Anjou. Elizabeth, saying she imagines Catherine and Anjou have lots to discuss, leaves. Anjou tells Catherine to shut the door because he’s not quite finished. So here we are. Given what Catherine said to Anjou earlier, though, I’m not incredibly surprised.

The next morning, Catherine is really hitting rock bottom. Rahima is missing and unable to make Catherine presentable, her children are dropping like flies, and Elizabeth is now leaving court. Catherine realizes that Elizabeth never intended to marry either Charles or Anjou, and she accuses Elizabeth of coming to France for whatever advantage she could find for England. Elizabeth is like, well, yeah. Catherine advises her that her whole, giggly/flirty schtick won’t last forever, and Elizabeth says, “Let me explain something to you.” Yesssssss. I love a “the façade comes down” moment. She basically says that men can do what they want but that Elizabeth has to pose as a virgin and Catherine as a witch for them to get anything done.

Then, as a parting doing-her-a-solid, Elizabeth shows Catherine the paper signed by Louis de Bourbon, and tells her to get her house in order, because clearly Catherine doesn’t know what’s going on at her own court. This is a mark of respect! Damn, this Elizabeth is great, aside from the weird, made-up stories about her sister.

The Bourbons see Elizabeth leaving and hightail it out of court right before they’re arrested for treason. So now they’re with Sister Edith, along with Jeanne and Henry and Aabis and Montmorency. And the cardinal, but he’s a spy at court, so shhhhhh. Catherine clearly has a plan now, especially after finding out her half-brother is using her for money (I mean, you barely know him, Catherine), and Rahima is banging him in a forest. Why! Were beds not available? Do you know how many insects live in a forest?

Catherine goes to see Ruggieri right before he leaves, and he helps her have a vision. Okay, when she could identify five of the six traitors, but not the last, and he is like, here’s something to drink to help you see who the last one is, didn’t you think it was going to be him, and he’d poisoned her or something?? That felt like a classic betrayal moment, but nope, he just genuinely helps her have a vision. The sixth traitor is a child. Catherine asks if it’s one of hers, and Ruggieri says, “Who can say?” Okay, so that’s useless. Everyone is someone’s child. Are you kidding me, Ruggieri?

Margot asks Catherine if she can marry François, and Catherine is like, yes, of course, which means she is lying. She uses one of Rahima’s sexy spies to find out about the Catholic League wanting to put François on the throne, and she apologizes to Anjou for what she said. It’s a nice apology. Is it real? Who knows! Maybe.

We end with Catherine striking a deal with Sister Edith just before Charles’s baptism, where Antoine’s son Henry will marry Margot, and Catherine will make Edith regent. How is that legal? I do not know, but I’m definitely not researching sixteenth-century French regency law. I have my limits.

Sister Edith sucks, and I want Catherine to have a master plan that goes very well, so hopefully, that’s next week. Also, what if we have a spinoff called The Virgin and the Witch, in which Elizabeth and Catherine are con artists pulling fast ones around the world? I will only support this if Minnie Driver and Samantha Morton are cast. Although I will also accept Megan Follows.