I have little hesitation in declaring Episode 6 of The Serpent Queen Season 2, “Courting the Valois”, the best thus far. Most of the problems I’ve been complaining about in previous recaps are lessened here, and the good stuff comes to the forefront. Less Margot and Elisabeth is good; more Elizabeth I and Catherine is even better.
Even the testy relationship between Charles and Anjou reaches a compelling turning point, with the sibling rivalry being folded into the catty politics. The same will presumably be true of Sister Edith once Elizabeth’s meddling comes to fruition, but we’ll catch up more with that side of things later.
Elizabeth Settles In
At the end of Episode 5, Elizabeth turned up as a prospective bride for Charles, which certainly threw the Bourbons for a loop. After Edith mugged them off about not knowing she was in Flanders, they’re even more dismayed to learn that she’s literally amongst them.
Elizabeth’s mere presence in the French court gives this episode a completely new sense of energy. When the trade deal with England was theoretical and Louis was off being sexually manipulated by the so-called “Virgin Queen”, it felt so distant. But now she’s throwing aside her skirts and telling him to make himself useful on his own doorstep. The stakes are sufficiently upped.
Catherine wants the marriage between Elizabeth and Charles to go ahead, not realizing that Elizabeth – as she explains to Louis – really wants to trample all over the meek French king and rule France from England while the Bourbons keep things ticking over. This also means arming Sister Edith and her followers, which now include Cardinal de Guise, but more on that in a minute.
Elizabeth invites Catherine on a hunt and declares whoever gets the biggest deer will be able to set the terms of the marriage, but Charles falls off his horse and almost dies because he’s a useless moron.
It’s A Sign
Also, Catherine sees a crow eating a snake, and a nest of broken eggs, their baby birdie contents presumably feasted upon by the avian, which Cosimo later explains is symbolic of England.
Just a side note here, but the supernatural elements of The Serpent Queen are really stupid. I know we’re not supposed to take them too seriously – we’re really to understand that Catherine believes in all this mumbo-jumbo, and that ought to be enough – but even on an interpersonal level they’re silly.
For instance, Catherine brought Cosimo to France and has known him for years, and yet despite this, when he wants to send her a message he leaves an omen made of twigs on the pillow next to her like a creepy weirdo. When Catherine discovers this she’s understandably fuming and tells Cosimo that she’ll send her guards to burn his little forest encampment down whether he’s still in it or not, which is fair enough, really.
Crisis of Faith
Other dumb stuff in “Courting the Valois” includes Cardinal de Guise becoming a Protestant, but not for the reasons you’d think. A crisis of faith isn’t exactly unheard of even for the most ardently pious people, but Charles confesses to Edith he never believed in God in the first place, so it’s even more understandable.
No, the silly thing is that after baptizing him, Edith sends him back to court to spy for her, but it’s public knowledge that he was baptized as a Protestant and so nobody wants anything to do with him. So, who is he going to spy on, exactly? Nobody’s going to say anything in front of him!
This isn’t even the cardinal’s biggest problem. For the same reason he allied himself to Catholicism despite his lack of belief in the first place – France is deeply Catholic and a tremendous amount of influence is exerted through the religion – he needs to keep repping the brand.
The Serpent Queen | Image via STARZ
What’s Rahima Up To?
Rahima’s continued sidelining in The Serpent Queen Season 2 continues to puzzle and irritate me, but she does seem to have a subplot blossoming with Catherine’s dodgy brother Alessandro.
In “Courting the Valois” Rahima suggests to Catherine that Alessandro might be skimming off the top of the Tuileries project, and Catherine takes it in stride and tells her to check again since she must be mistaken. Instead, she goes to Angelica and tells her that since she showed such initiative in swapping the poison for something non-lethal when Aabis tried to assassinate Sister Edith, she might as well look into the Alessandro matter as well.
Why – and this is a question Angelica herself asks – would Catherine not trust Rahima, her most trusted confidante, to do this? Well, good question. We see later that Catherine seems to have intuited that there’s something going on between Rahima and Alessandro – he turns up in her chambers to tell her that yes, he has indeed been taking a little sweetener out of the Tuileries funding, but he knows she has been doing the same, so they’re in a stalemate. And they also seem to be in bed together.
I’m not sure whether we’re to believe that this is the first time they’re hooking up or that it was already going on and Catherine got a whiff, but either way, the outcome remains the same. Rahima finally has something to do.
What’s Up With Charles?
Towards the end of Episode 5, Catherine manipulates Charles and Anjou into a petty fencing contest, promising to wed the winner. Refreshingly, Anjou sees right through this, but ever-needy Charles calls Anjou a nasty slur to goad him into fighting.
Still, Anjou takes the moral high ground and abides by Catherine’s wishes that he throw the match. But unfortunately, his efforts amount to nothing, since Charles overexerts himself and promptly collapses. When Catherine is helping him to his feet, he coughs blood into her handkerchief. Uh-oh!
This is especially worrying since the real Charles IX died of tuberculosis, which it seems very much like this is. As predicted by Cosimo, he isn’t long for this world. But there are quite a few horrendous things for him to accomplish in the meantime unless The Serpent Queen continues to subvert history as it has with Elizabeth.
Time will tell.
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