The Serpent Queen
An Attack on the King Season 1 Episode 7 Editor’s Rating «Previous Next» « Previous Episode Next Episode
The Serpent Queen
An Attack on the King Season 1 Episode 7 Editor’s Rating «Previous Next» « Previous Episode Next EpisodeI was not expecting this show to be as weird as it is, and I’m just a big fan of every bananas decision it makes. Make Mary, Queen of Scots, a wild-eyed zealot? Sure. Set up Antoine of Navarre as the comic relief? Do it. Have Charles V hit on Catherine at her husband’s funeral? Well. Maybe that’s realistic.
We switch things up late in the game by having a MARY-narrated episode. I have made no secret of how much I enjoy disliking Mary, Queen of Scots, and her terrible choices, but she is frequently entertaining onscreen, and Antonia Clarke continues to nail it. Mary shows up in Rahima’s cell to tell her part of the story. Why? A good question. Because Mary wants to be queen again and thinks Catherine is a witch/sorceress/dabbler in the dark arts, and she thinks Rahima can find proof. Mary. This person is imprisoned because they were caught trying to find proof of something else. And now you’re like, wow, I know the exact person for this job — the one who was bad at it.
Mary thinks if she tells Rahima all the facts, Rahima will lend her her mediocre snooping skills. So we return to the Tale of the Recent Past when Henry was jousted in the eye and fell off his horse. First of all: THEY SHOW THE LANCE. THEY SHOW THE LANCE IN THE EYE. WHO MADE THIS DECISION. THEY KEEP SHOWING IT AGAIN. It’s truly disgusting, but it probably took a long time, makeup-wise, so maybe they were like, well, might as well get our money’s worth. And I mean, it is a weird way for a king to die. Not that he dies right away! He’s carried into the palace, as they still show the lance in the eye, and when Catherine asks why he didn’t stop jousting when she told him to, Henry says he wanted her dream to come true. This is dumb, but okay, Henry.
When the nobles are standing around, unsure of what to do, Louis Bourbon says the king is strong and will survive, to which François Guise says, “He has a pole in his eye.” I don’t love the Guises, because the humor tends to lie on the Bourbon side, but good one, sir. He DOES have a pole in his eye. Throughout all this, Antoine continues to act like Hugh Laurie in Blackadder, which is so out of place, and I object zero percent. The surgeon doesn’t know if the king will survive, so Diane leads him to the dungeon and has him practice?? On the prisoners?? The first guy immediately dies, as would most people who are not Phineas Gage (and it didn’t really pan out for that guy, either).
There’s a weird scene where Catherine wakes up to music and loud chit chat, and you’re like, is this another vision? Is she still asleep? Which makes it hard to be emotionally invested when you realize, oh shit, this is real and Henry just died after collapsing at dinner, which Diane somehow thought he should attend. To be fair, she’s been ingesting a lot of gold.
Catherine rides out to the forest and shouts at Ruggieri, saying he told her she had a choice and she chose to keep him alive. Ruggieri hands down some harsh truths about how Catherine wanted this, because in death Henry would finally belong to her. Ouch. I mean, in fairness, he’s not interred next to Diane at St. Denis. He’s next to Catherine, and their tomb is creepy af. But I digress.
So now Francis, the former dauphin, is king, and Mary of Scots is queen. Don’t worry, it’s never for long. Mary is very hyped by Charles V’s idea of her uniting Catholic Europe, which begins with France’s alliance with him as the Holy Roman Empire. Again, Charles was Francis’s grandfather’s sworn enemy, and his father and uncle were imprisoned by him as children, but — honestly, I don’t actually see why that’s Francis’s problem. Personal vendettas are their own thing, and political expediency is its own thing. Am I being too Catherine-ish? Only time will tell. By which I mean, if I start plotting to seize control of France, that’s a sure sign.
Diane’s gone. Angelica’s gone. Montmorency is back. After Charles hits on Catherine at the funeral, he tells her she should leave France while she can, since Mary is a child with a sense of religious destiny, which is like a 4-year-old running around a barn with a lit torch. INDEED. But also, Joan of Arc (who Mary is also negatively compared to in this ep) was martyred at 19 after setting the stage to kick the English out of France. If there were ever a child with a sense of religious destiny, it was Joan of Arc. I mean, also the kids in the Children’s Crusade, but that whole incident’s a real bummer, so we won’t talk about it. In this case, however, Mary does seem very bad at her job.
PAUSE EVERYTHING because Antoine of Navarre is going down on Antoinette Guise. Right, the gross mother of the Guise boys. Maybe we should just nix that episode where she comes onto her own son from this series and our minds. Okay, now that that’s done, here’s the fun but evil mother of the Guise boys! Being sexed up by dumb-as-rocks Antoine! I approve of this for both of them. What an unexpectedly delightful pairing. Their scene together also highlights what makes this series stand out among period dramas — it refuses to take itself seriously like, 15 percent of the time. Most period shows now are either entirely ridiculous/past the point of belief (The Great) or extremely sincere about themselves (All Creatures Great and Small). This show is like, okay, it’s some history, and then some magic maybe — MAYBE — and then some breaking of the fourth wall, and then sometimes we’re going to pretend this is a broad comedy. And I love all of it.
Antoinette reluctantly decides she needs to stop sexing Antoine, because the Bourbons are about to go under (no, not that way) and she doesn’t want to feel confused about it. We then get this exchange, starting with Antoinette:
“You’re not going to get emotional, are you?”
“I haven’t decided. I might actually.”
“But that’s impossible. Our families despise each other. And we’re probably related anyway.”
“EVERYONE’S RELATED.”
“… true.”
It’s the best part of the episode. And this is a very good episode. Mary makes Francis sign a decree banning Protestantism and making Catholicism the only legal religion. I was going to avoid researching this, as I am writing this the night that Taylor Swift’s Midnights came out, and it’s been quite a journey this evening, but I can’t just let that potential misinformation sit there. A cursory look at French history indicates that Protestantism was not technically banned until 1685 under Louis XIV, but it’s murky, because during this time, you could apparently raze any house where a Protestant meeting occurred, which is a scorched-earth policy if I’ve ever heard one.
Mary banishes the Bourbons and Antoine screams “I fucked your mother” at the Guises, which is very funny. So now the Guises reign supreme and the Bourbons have to go back to live with their parents. Mary is, even at this earlier point, fishing for info on Catherine, and she chats up Mathilde, opening with how God is known to be close to the afflicted. (Mathilde: “Really? That’s not been my experience.”) Both of their delivery is extremely good. More scenes with Mary and Mathilde, please! Mary threatens to prosecute Mathilde for being complicit with Catherine’s witchcraft, so Mathilde passes Mary info on the Secret Protestant Meetings that Montmorency (did you know his first name is Anne??) is attending. I don’t know how this helps the witchcraft charge, but I like intrigue.
At home, Charles of Bourbon (Louis and Antoine’s father) is railing at them about how they had one job. Louis doesn’t know how they failed, and Charles says it’s because they’re princes of the blood who let themselves be outmanoeuvered by a family of pigfuckers. “We! Are not! Pigs that get fucked!” Charles shouts. Quite right, sir. He tells them they can’t come home because he doesn’t want them there. When Antoine laments that he has nowhere to go, he is reminded that he’s king of Navarre, where he has a wife. (Antoine: “She’s awful”; Louis: “I fucking hate Navarre.”) Those Bourbon boys.
Catherine tells the Bourbons she has a cunning plan wherein they kidnap the king and then it’ll all work out. Charles thinks this plan is trash, but also that it just might be trash enough to work. The plan moves forward.
Back to “now,” in Rahima’s cell, she thanks Mary for opening her eyes. Mary says she asked for her cousin Elizabeth’s help (FOOL) and thinks that Elizabeth has replied, but that Catherine stole the letter. She asks Rahima to find it, which she agrees to. Rahima goes into Catherine’s rooms and finds the letter in like, two seconds. (Isn’t that suspiciously easy, Rahima!!) Catherine suddenly appears behind her, they have a quick heart-to-heart that is full of LIES, and when Rahima goes off to prepare Catherine’s bath, Catherine looks in the direction of the letter’s previous hiding place and smiles. RAHIMA, IT’S A TRAP. She is literally nicknamed the Serpent Queen! It’s the name of the show! Why would you think she was someone who was somehow easy to get one over on? Agghhhhh.
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