[Straz] The Serpent Queen Episode 1 Recap “Medici Bitch”

France, 1560: The queen needs a new maid for her son’s coronation, which is coming up soon. who’s the queen? We’re talking about Catherine de’ Medici, who is called The Serpent Queen (StarzPlay) in the title of the show or, in Samantha Morton‘s character. The Serpent Queen is based on Leonie Frieda’s praised biography of Catherine de Medici, which showed her to be a survivor, a pragmatist, and a much better political negotiator than most people gave her credit for. The Serpent Queen is a different kind of history that tries to change the past.  There is also a lot of swearing, misogyny, sex, violence, death, and a prince who is more like a man-child than a Byronic hero. Catherine de’ Medici has been portrayed in history for the past 400 years or so as a scary, cruel, sneaky, desperate, and evil old woman who mixed potions in a dark room — Hence the “serpent queen.”  www.tvacute.com provides a comprehensive recap on this page.

The Serpent Queen Episode 1 Recap

The teenage Catherine (Liv Hill) and Morton’s 1560s regent break the fourth wall a little bit. Catherine was left without a family just weeks after she was born and got married when she was 14. Catherine tells the story of her life to one of her servants, Rahima (Sennia Nanua) about how she went from being a hated orphan to getting married at 14 to the second son of the French king. In the first episode, Catherine starts telling Rahima her life story. Rahima’s mentor will slowly corrupt her, or is that teaching her how to stay alive? We see flashbacks of her life from the time she was born in Florence to the time her parents and grandmother died, all the way up to when she joined the convent. She sails to France with a group of people she chose herself. Among them are a perfumer who seems to have poisoned her father and a fortune teller with questionable morals.

Catherine’s uncle, Pope Clement, is played by Charles Dance. Catherine has an interesting relationship with her uncle. Clement is always telling his niece that she isn’t very pretty, but he respects her intelligence and ambition in the background and lets her talk out of turn when he knows she’s right. Together, they come up with a plan to get her married off by lowering the French guard with finery so they don’t focus on Catherine’s appearance. When she sees Henry for the first time, she falls in love with him. At least she thinks she won’t be alone any longer. But because they don’t want to save money getting Catherine ready, her large dowry can’t be paid in full.

This puts Catherine behind enemy lines with few allies except for an eccentric entourage and an older cousin, Diane de Poitiers (Ludivine Sagnier), who is sleeping with Catherine’s new young husband. Diane is the person Catherine feels she can trust, and with two people to rely on, she feels more confident in her situation. Until she finds out that these two people are having an affair behind her back. Catherine knew right away that Henry had a special relationship with Diane and that Diane seemed to like him a lot. Because Diane was almost twice as old as Henry, Catherine thought that their relationship was more like that of a mother and son. Diane is even happier now that she knows he is going to marry Catherine.