Summary
The Serpent Queen suffers for less focus on Catherine and almost none at all on Rahima, as the royal children fill the runtime with largely uninteresting subplots.
Generally speaking, I like The Serpent Queen quite a bit, but something occurred to me in Episode 5 of Season 2 that gave me pause – I only really like Catherine and Rahima, and in this season Elizabeth I. Everyone else is quite dull, which is a shame since “Time with the Family” spends almost all of its time with everyone else.
It can’t just be me who’s largely uninterested in Catherine’s kids since the show itself isn’t very good at keeping track of their plights and personalities either. Hercule is dead so we don’t need to worry about him. But what are the others doing? Charles seemingly has no function beyond being a tokenistic head of state for Catherine to operate behind the back of, Margot is suddenly kind of awful – and there was all that business with Charles in the previous episode – and Elisabeth is suddenly so dutifully subservient to the family that she’s willing to become a bride of political convenience.
Oh, and there’s Anjou, I guess, but he doesn’t have much personality or plot function beyond “being nuts” and “being gay”.
What Is Alessandro Up To?
I’m still unsure what to make of Alessandro de Medici. He has followed Catherine back to France, ostensibly to oversee her palace construction project. Is that all, though?
One suspects not. In Episode 5 he pitches Catherine for sponsorship of a colony in Florida. That seems like a viable ulterior motive, but Catherine is smart enough to put it on the back burner given the kind of religious turmoil France is presently in.
But it nonetheless floats the idea of Alessandro being up to something. He also introduces himself to Charles and Montmorency as Catherine’s brother, and both of them are a bit thrown by the revelation. Tellingly, it’s later floated to Catherine that the sudden arrival of a relative might be a little too convenient, and I’m inclined to agree.
Suffer The Children
As mentioned, most of “Time with the Family” is indeed about the rest of the family, even to the extent that Catherine factors in. Let’s start with Anjou.
At the start of the episode, Anjou remains under house arrest, but he doesn’t remain there. Angelica outs Catherine’s plot to poison Sister Edith, which infuriates Montmorency and Charles, so Catherine owns up to it and offers to step down from the council so she isn’t inclined to act rashly again.
Catherine only wants one thing in return – Charles to release Anjou and appoint him in her place. Since this wouldn’t be ideal for optics, Catherine forces Anjou to sign his best friend’s forced confession for drowning that random Protestant. Anjou isn’t wildly keen on this idea since he knows his friend is innocent and doesn’t love the idea of him being beheaded in his place, but needs must.
A Marriage Of Convenience
The Serpent Queen | Image via STARZ
Meanwhile, Elisabeth has rather curiously taken to tending to Philip, who is not doing well since getting kicked by the horse he was trying to needlessly torture in the previous episode. Catherine senses an opportunity here and pushes Elisabeth to marry Philip to consolidate power between France and the Holy Roman Empire, which is politically shrewd but doesn’t seem like something Elisabeth would go in for given her prior characterization (it also annoys Charles when he finds out since Catherine just can’t help going behind his back.)
Still, Catherine gets her way, and the marriage is consummated in a hilarious scene where Elisabeth has to lay with a stand-in for her new husband. One toe touches another, literally, and the marriage is approved. Politics is easy.
Catherine pulls this off, by the way, at least in part by having Rahima orchestrate a plan of drugging and debauchery that keeps all of the relevant royals out of the way so that Elisabeth can be spirited off to her new home. Catherine isn’t exactly devastated to see the back of another kid, but you know she is.
Sister Act
What’s not easy is dealing with Sister Edith, especially since her influence has only increased after her miraculous resistance to assassination-by-poison. At this point, Edith is more powerful than any of the monarchs.
If you recall, Edith was supposedly central to the Bourbon ploy to usurp the French crown with Elizabeth I, so Antoine and Louis turn up at her base camp to offer her a tempting alliance. But Elizabeth inadvertently makes the Bourbons look like idiots – which admittedly is pretty easy to do – by setting off to visit France personally. By the time the Bourbons meet with Edith, she has already landed in Flanders, which Edith knows and they don’t. All of a sudden, this partnership doesn’t seem very much like a partnership at all, and Edith has the upper hand.
In case the Bourbons needed reassuring of this fact, Edith holds a flame to Antoine’s arm to establish his Protestant bona fides, but despite all the religious doomsday rhetoric, it’s a show of power more than anything else. Who can possibly hope to compete?
Well, possibly Elizabeth herself, who arrives in a carriage at the end of the episode, presumably ready to cause some trouble. It’s about time! I, for one, am looking forward to some flagrantly ahistorical scenes between Elizabeth and Catherine.
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