Reign Recap: Episode 2

 

I want to apologize for my neglect of the blog lately. I've been in the midst of a job search, as well as taking a writing class and working on a new proposal for my agent.  Then Mercury in retrograde happened and most of my electronics stopped working including my cable which is why my recap of the CW's REIGN is so late.  I had to watch the episode on my computer since Time Warner Cable doesn't have the CW on demand and my cable is also out until tomorrow when the technician can finally come to fix and hopefully give me a new cable box.  So without further ado here is the recap and my thoughts about this week's episode of REIGN.  Just an FYI, there will be spoilers in this recap, so please don't read further until you have watched the episode.

When last we left Mary, Queen of Scots things, weren't looking so good. Someone attempted to poison her at the convent where she was living, then when she arrived at the French court she discovered that her fiancé was not so keen on getting married.  Unbeknownst to Mary, Nostradamus (played by Donald Sutherland's other son) predicted that a marriage to the young Queen of Scots would result in his death. Catherine de Medici was not having that, so she bribed/coerced one of Mary's men to drug Mary and then seduce her or make it look like she'd been seduced. Unfortunately for Colin, Mary never drank the drugged wine, so she was quite awake when he attempted to ravish her.  Poor Colin, who was the sweetheart of one of Mary's maids, Lola, was tortured and then beheaded.

This week's episode opens with a surprise *SPOILER ALERT* young Colin is not dead after all.  The wrong door was marked with an X and a petty thief was beheaded in his place.  A small creature wearing a white hood releases him from the wrack and helps him escape.  Catherine de Medici is not pleased.  This means that if Colin is found, he might just spill the beans that the whole plot was her idea. Oops!

Mary and Lola are of course thrilled that Colin isn't dead after all.  This means that he can be questioned and Mary can deal with his transgression herself.  Colin had managed to tell her that the threat to her life was at the French court.  Who could possibly mean her harm? To Mary's credit, she does suspect that her potential mother-in-law doesn't have the best of intentions.

Another one of the royal children is trotted out, this time it's the future Charles IX who has been betrothed to someone named Madeleine who is not important because he never ended up marrying her, if she existed at all. Madeleine is arriving in France and Mary decides to accompany the little royal groom along with Francis to greet her.  An English ship is spied off the coast and Mary gets all bent out of shape, thinking the English have come to get her. It turns out that the English ship was just helping out little Madeleine's ship.

Back at court, the English envoy named Simon (no last name, no title, nothing. Just Simon) makes veiled threats against Mary, warning her not to marry Francis.  Mary stands up for herself and puts him on notice. While Charles and his future bride are playing, the boy wanders off and Mary follows him. He tells her that he has a friend who is invisible but who seems to know all sorts of stuff. Her name is Clarissa.  Mary thinks that Clarissa is the same entity who warned her in the last episode.

Back in her rooms, Mary discovers a strange woman trying on her dress. The woman falls to the ground claiming to be poisoned. Mary runs off to get help but when she gets back the woman is gone. There is a secret passage off of Mary's room but the woman is not there. Francis is most upset that Mary's guards were no where to be found.  Mary decides to ask Clarissa what she knows, using marbles that she found earlier.  The answer is unclear but Clarissa leaves a key for Mary. When Mary uses it, it turns out not to lead to Catherine de Medici's room but to Simply Simon's room. Mary enters his room and discovers him in flagrante delicto with the blonde woman that Mary thought was poisoned. Simon admits his dastardly plans and confesses that Catherine de Medici is involved. 

There's some discussion about Mary Tudor dying, which would leave the throne of England vacant, and that some would look to Mary as Queen since Elizabeth was considered illegitimate. Mary rejects the English crown and demands that England leave Scotland alone. That's about as historical as this episode got folks. Meanwhile poor Colin ends up dead in the woods.  Bastian finds him and reveals that he speaks an ancient Celtic language which surprises his brother Francis.  It turns out that Catherine de Medici had Colin killed yet again, but this time she tried to make it look like the heretics in the woods did it.

Oh, and in a minor subplot King Henri Horndog decided that he wanted a little more of one of Mary's ladies in waiting Lady McSlutty. However, Lady Slutty decided that she didn't want to be the King's mistress but Sadie, Sadie, married lady. So Henri Horndog comes to her door which she opens wearing the 16th century equivalent of a push-up bra and tells her that's arranged for her to marry a day player named Robert, Vicomte Lorraine. 

So that's it for this week's episode. It was about as scintillating as watching paint dry. It's beginning to look like every week Catherine de Medici is going to try and find some way to either kill Mary or get rid of her some other way.  That's going to get old fast.  In an effort to say something nice, the costumes this week look like they came from Anthropologie and Stevie Nicks' closet. Seriously they are all over the place, the women's dresses look medieval and the men's costumes look vaguely 18th century. In one scene, Francis was wearing a multi-colored turtleneck and a vest.

There was also a hilarious moment when Mary and her maids wandered through the halls in their unmentionables to get breakfast which was left outside in the hallway for some reason.  Oh, and Diane de Poitiers was not in this episode, she was at the 'country house' which is pretty funny when you consider the 'castle' in which everyone is living is also in the country.  However, it is a very pretty castle.

I know I've harped on this before but the actual history of this period is so rich, and what the writers are making up is just terrible.  If they want court intrigue, about including Mary's French family, the Guises? The Guise family was incredibly powerful and well-connected. They should be at court trying to protect Mary, trying to force the marriage while Catherine de Medici tries to curb their power.  Instead of a fictional bastard son of Henri II and Diane de Poitiers, why not a Guise cousin as the third part in this fictional love triangle the writers seem determined to create?

Announcing the winners of the Marie Antoinette Giveaway

I want to thank every one who stopped by the chat last with Juliet Grey.

 

And now to announce the winners of the Giveaway.

 

The winner of the Betsey Johnson Fleur de lis ring is

 

 

 

Lauren from Marie Antoinette's Gossip Guide to the 18th Century

and

 

 

The winner of the complete Marie Antoinette Trilogy is

 

Leanna Renee Hieber

Congratulations to both winners! Please email me at scandalouswoman at gmail dot com.

Announcing Live Chat Night with Juliet Grey

Announcing Live Chat Night with Juliet Grey, author of Confessions of Marie Antoinette!!!!

Welcome everyone!!!

Passages to the Past is so thrilled to have Juliet Grey, author of Confessions of Marie Antoinette, here for Live Chat Night!  She has graciously taken time out of her busy schedule to stop by and answer a few questions for us...thanks Juliet!

 

 

 

 

Here's how Chat Night will work:

All corresponding (questions and answers) will take place in the comments section of the this post.  I will start off the Chat Night with a welcome message and a question or two to get the ball rolling and then the floor is open to whomever has a question for Juliet.  

If you have a question or even a comment on another question or Juliet's response, just enter it into the comment box. 

 

 

About CONFESSIONS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE
Publication Date: September 24, 2013
Ballantine Books
Paperback; 464p
ISBN: 0345523903

Confessions of Marie Antoinette, the riveting and sweeping final novel in Juliet Grey’s trilogy on the life of the legendary French queen, blends rich historical detail with searing drama, bringing to life the early years of the French Revolution and the doomed royal family’s final days.

Versailles, 1789. As the burgeoning rebellion reaches the palace gates, Marie Antoinette finds her privileged and peaceful life swiftly upended by violence. Once her loyal subjects, the people of France now seek to overthrow the crown, placing the heirs of the Bourbon dynasty in mortal peril.

Displaced to the Tuileries Palace in Paris, the royal family is propelled into the heart of the Revolution. There, despite a few staunch allies, they are surrounded by cunning spies and vicious enemies. Yet despite the political and personal threats against her, Marie Antoinette remains above all a devoted wife and mother, standing steadfastly by her husband, Louis XVI, and protecting their young son and daughter. And though the queen and her family try to flee, and she secretly attempts to arrange their rescue from the clutches of the Revolution, they cannot outrun the dangers encircling them, or escape their shocking fate.

About the Author

Juliet Grey is the author of Becoming Marie Antoinette and Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow. She has extensively researched European royalty and is a particular devotee of Marie Antoinette, as well as a classically trained professional actress with numerous portrayals of virgins, vixens, and villainesses to her credit. She and her husband divide their time between New York City and southern Vermont. 

For more information please visit www.becomingmarie.com.  You can also find Juliet Grey on Facebook.

 

If you run into any issues while Chat Night is in progress you can always email me directly and I will get back to you ASAP.

scandalouswoman at gmail dot com

Thanks everyone, I'm so glad you could make it and I hope we have a blast!

Women of the White Queen: Jacquetta of Luxembourg

 

(Janet McTeer as Jacquetta in The White Queen)

If you have been watching Philippa Gregory’s THE WHITE QUEEN on Starz no doubt you are captivated by Janet McTeer’s performance as Jacquetta Woodville, Elizabeth Woodville’s mother.  Since the series starts when Elizabeth meets and marries the Queen, the audience is only privy to Jacquetta’s story through dialogue and her interaction with other characters.  Jacquetta’s story, however, is interesting in its own right.  Elizabeth Woodville would never have thought she could aim so high as to marry the King of England if she hadn’t had the example of her parents’ marriage before her. If a mere knight could marry the widow of a royal duke, brother and uncle of a king, then nothing was out of the realm of possibility. Jacquetta managed not only marry for love which was almost unheard of in the 15^th century, but she also managed to thrive and survive not only under the Lancastrians but under the Yorks as well. If that weren’t impressive enough, she also managed to beat a charge of witchcraft.

Jacquetta was born sometime in 1416; the exact date is unknown, probably at the family chateau in France. She was the second child of a noble family. Her father Peter was the Count of Saint-Pol, Conversano and Brienne.  He eventually inherited the title of Count of Luxembourg after the death of his great aunt.  Her mother Margaret de Baux was descended from Simon de Montfort and Eleanor of England. Although her family wasn’t royalty per se, Jacquetta was a distant relation of Sigismund, the Holy Roman Emperor, and King of Bohemia and Hungary.  She could also claim that she was descended from the water goddess Melusina who married Siegfried, the first Count of Luxembourg. Their marriage lasted until he saw her in her true guise, half-woman, half-fish, in the bathtub.  He was understandably a little freaked out.  Melusina and her bath sank through the rock of the castle and disappeared.

The world she was born into was a world at war.  England and France had been fighting over the French throne since 1337.  England claimed the throne through Edward II’s wife Isabella who was the daughter of Philip IV of France.  Since France operated under Salic law, which meant women couldn’t inherit the throne, the crown had gone to distant branch of the family, the House of Valois. By the time Jacquetta was born the year after the English victory at Agincourt; the war had gone on for almost 80 years, decimating both France and England.

Her family was vassals of the Duke of Burgundy who sided with the English against their traditional enemy France. Jacquetta’s Uncle Louis served as John, Duke of Bedford’s chancellor for 10 years and was named executor of his will. Her other uncle, Jean of Luxembourg, was Joan of Arc’s jailor after one of his vassals captured her at the siege of Compiegne and brought her to Beaurevoir, the family chateau. Jean held her for 4 months while his wife, step-daughter and great-aunt pleaded with him not to turn Joan over to the English.  However after his great-aunts death in 1430, Jean accepted 100,000 livres from the English to hand her over. 

Jacquetta’s education was typical for young woman of her class. She was probably taught to read, but not to write.  Rich people had scribes for that kind of thing. Nowadays we call them personal assistants. She was probably sent away as a young girl to live with noble relations, serving as a maid in waiting.  She would have learned the skills necessary to be a lady of the manor, embroidery, music, dancing, how to manage servants and the household. She would need all those skills in her new life as the wife of John, Duke of Bedford. His wife, Anne of Burgundy, had died in November of 1432.  It was a dynastic marriage, cementing the alliance between England and Burgundy.  Five months after his wife’s death, 17 year old Jacquetta married the 42 year old Duke in a service performed by her uncle Louis. Apparently the Duke of Bedford fell hard for Jacquetta’s beauty and youth.  However, the marriage came at a price.  The Duke of Burgundy was furious; he considered the marriage an insult to his sister’s memory. The Duke of Bedford’s marriage brought neither territory nor a dowry. The alliance between Burgundy and England was hanging by a thread.  Burgundy would soon ditch England and throw in his lot with the French.

Jacquetta was now the first Lady in France and the 2^nd Lady in England behind Catherine of Valois, the Queen Mother.  That must have been a huge responsibility for a 17 year old, but Jacquetta rose to the challenge.  The marriage seems to have been happy although they never had children.  Her husband not only had a huge library but also an alchemy laboratory, what more could a girl ask for? The couple spent a year in England after their wedding. The Duke of Bedford was at a crossroads.  After devoting much of his life to overseeing English territories in France, he longed to retire but the situation in France was too dicey.  Things weren’t much better in England.  There was a power struggle going on in England between Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the uncle of Henry VI and Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset.  This power struggle would eventually end up as what we know as The War of the Roses.

Jacquetta barely had time to adjust to being the Duchess of Bedford before her husband died at Rouen on September 14^th, 1435.  Before his death, he had appointed a 30 year old soldier as the new captain of the Calais garrison. As the Duke’s health failed, Jacquetta and Richard grew closer.  The Duke of Bedford made Jacquetta his sole heir, left her his lands for life, and also left his priceless library. A widow at 19, she was wealthy but her life still was not her own.  She was granted a widow’s pension but on the condition that she didn’t marry without the King’s permission.  But the heart wants what the heart wants, and Jacquetta and Richard fell in love.  They married sometime in late 1436 or early 1437.  When the King requested that Jacquetta come to England to court, the couple confessed and Jacquetta was fined £1,000 for her misalliance.  The King eventually forgave the couple, perhaps his heart was softened since his own mother Catherine of Valois had fallen in love with Owen Tudor.

Over the next twenty years, Jacquetta was kept busy raising her children when she wasn’t at court.  Like her daughter, Jacquetta gave birth to probably fifteen children, thirteen of whom survived to adulthood.  The Woodvilles were vassals of William de la Pole, the future Duke of Suffolk from whom they purchased the manor house of Grafton.  Richard had also served under Edmund, Duke of Somerset. They also spent time at court after Henry VI married Marguerite of Anjou.  Marguerite was a kinswoman of Jacquetta.  The new Queen’s uncle had married Jacquetta’s sister.  The two women became good friends.  They were both foreign women who had married into the English royal family.  Over time, Jacquetta became one of the Queen’s chief ladies-in-waiting.  Jacquetta tried to help the new Queen navigate the English court, advising her to temper her favoritism towards Edmund Beaufort and de la Pole but her advice fell on deaf ears. 

Jacquetta and her husband were loyal to the King, despite whatever they might have thought in private about his fitness to rule. They had both been raised to respect The House of Lancaster. Jacquetta had married into it; her husband had been raised to serve it. They had been well rewarded for their services; Richard had been made Baron Rivers. When they arranged their daughter Elizabeth’s married, it was to another loyal Lancastrian, Sir John Grey.  They proved their loyalty to the crown in many ways. When the King went into a catatonic state, and Marguerite tried to keep it a secret from the court, Jacquetta knew.  When the Duke of York was Lord Protector, he sailed from England to Calais. Woodville raised the chain across the harbor to prevent York from entering which didn’t endear him to the Duke.

However the Woodvilles were pragmatic. Despite their loyalties to the Lancastrians, they did not follow the royal family into exile, pledging to continue the fight. No, the Woodvilles made their peace with the new king.  Richard Woodville and his son Anthony were appointed to the King’s Council, and Jacquetta continued to receive her widow’s pension. Their position was solidified with their daughter Elizabeth’s marriage to the young Edward IV. The Woodvilles now rose higher than they ever had under Henry IV.  Jacquetta once again took the stage as a leading lady at the royal court as mother of the Queen. Richard Woodville was eventually made Earl Rivers in 1466 and Constable of England, and all of Elizabeth’s siblings made advantageous marriages.

The Woodville’s rise of course made them powerful enemies.  When the Earl of Warwick, who felt marginalized by the Woodvilles, rebelled against Edward the IV, the Woodvilles felt the sting of his blade literally.  Richard Woodville and his son John were captured and executed without trial by Warwick. Then just to stick the knife in a little more, Jacquetta was accused of witchcraft by Warwick. Witnesses claimed that Jacquetta made a love charm consisting of lead dolls of a man and a woman (presumably Elizabeth & Edward IV) bound with a gold thread. There is no proof one way or the other that Jacquetta dabbled in witchcraft although Philippa Gregory’s Jacquetta in The River Queen most assuredly does.  Jacquetta probably knew about the secret relationship between her daughter & the King, encouraged it, and helped things along. Elizabeth was beautiful and the King was randy, witchcraft probably had very little to do with the attraction between the two.  When you think about it, it’s kind of insulting to suggest that the only reason that the King married Elizabeth was because he was bewitched.

The punishment for witchcraft was death.  It was to be Warwick’s revenge against the family that supplanted him. Jacquetta must have been scared shitless.  Her husband had been murdered by Warwick, and her son-in-law was now a prisoner.  She was alone and defenseless.  She had seen at firsthand what happened when women were accused of witchcraft.  Joan of Arc had been condemned to death for witchcraft. Eleanor Cobham, the Duchess of Gloucester and Marjorie Jourdemayne had also been punished for practicing witchcraft, the former with imprisonment, and the latter to death.  No doubt Jacquetta thought her time was up. And then a funny thing happened. At the last minute, Warwick released her, without explanation. No one knows what changed his mind. Jacquetta had powerful friends amongst the Lancastrians still including Marguerite of Anjou.  Or it might just have been that once he realized that he couldn’t rule without Edward IV, he thought better of killing the King’s mother-in-law. Whatever his reasons, Jacquetta joined her daughter in The Tower of London.  Once Edward IV had been released by Warwick, Jacquetta appealed to the King to clear her name.  The witnesses subsequently recanted and Jacquetta was officially cleared of the charge of witchcraft.

Jacquetta lived long enough to see her son-in-law restored to the throne and proclaimed King once more in 1471.  She died in 1472 at the relatively early age (for us at least) of 56.  Through her daughter Elizabeth, she was the great-grandmother of Henry VIII.  After her death, the allegations of witchcraft survived.  In 1484, Richard III revived the allegations, claiming that she and Elizabeth charmed Edward IV into marriage through witchcraft.

Sources:

Sarah Gristwood – Blood Sisters:  The Women behind the Wars of the Roses, Basic Books, 2013

David Baldwin, Philippa Gregory & Michael Jones – The Women of the Cousins' War: The Duchess, the Queen, and the King's Mother, Touchstone, 2011

Save the Date: Announcing the Scandalous Women Live Chat Night with Juliet Grey, author of Confessions of Marie Antoinette! - OCTOBER 2ND AT 7:30 PM EST

 

 

Mark your calendars!! 

To celebrate the release of her third novel in the Marie Antoinette trilogy, CONFESSIONS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE Juliet Grey will be here at SCANDALOUS WOMEN for a Live Chat on October 2nd from 7:30 - 8:30pm EST!
 

 

 

 

 

Exciting giveaway!! One lucky winner will receive all 3 books in the Marie Antoinette trilogy

update:  one lucky winner will also receive this lovely ring

 

 

But you have to join the live chat to be entered.

 



CHAT NIGHT DETAILS

When: Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013
What Time:  7:30 - 8:30 pm EST
Where:  http://scandalouswoman.blogspot.com

 All corresponding (questions and answers) will take place in the comments section of the Chat Night post (not this one).  I will start off the Chat Night with a welcome message and a question or two to get the ball rolling and then the floor is open to whomever has a question for Juliet.

 

Here are links to previous chat nights at Passages to the Past so that you can get an idea of how they work:

Live Author Chat Night with Gillian BagwellLive Author Chat Night with Christy English  
 

 

About CONFESSIONS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE
Publication Date: September 24, 2013
Ballantine Books
Paperback; 464p
ISBN: 0345523903

Confessions of Marie Antoinette, the riveting and sweeping final novel in Juliet Grey’s trilogy on the life of the legendary French queen, blends rich historical detail with searing drama, bringing to life the early years of the French Revolution and the doomed royal family’s final days.

Versailles, 1789. As the burgeoning rebellion reaches the palace gates, Marie Antoinette finds her privileged and peaceful life swiftly upended by violence. Once her loyal subjects, the people of France now seek to overthrow the crown, placing the heirs of the Bourbon dynasty in mortal peril.

Displaced to the Tuileries Palace in Paris, the royal family is propelled into the heart of the Revolution. There, despite a few staunch allies, they are surrounded by cunning spies and vicious enemies. Yet despite the political and personal threats against her, Marie Antoinette remains above all a devoted wife and mother, standing steadfastly by her husband, Louis XVI, and protecting their young son and daughter. And though the queen and her family try to flee, and she secretly attempts to arrange their rescue from the clutches of the Revolution, they cannot outrun the dangers encircling them, or escape their shocking fate.

About the Author

Juliet Grey is the author of Becoming Marie Antoinette and Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow. She has extensively researched European royalty and is a particular devotee of Marie Antoinette, as well as a classically trained professional actress with numerous portrayals of virgins, vixens, and villainesses to her credit. She and her husband divide their time between New York City and southern Vermont. 

For more information please visit www.becomingmarie.com.  You can also find Juliet Grey on Facebook.


First Look: The CW's Reign

There are many great things about living in New York, and one of them is the Paley Center in midtown.  The Paley Center is a museum that is dedicated to one thing only; television.  For the past several years, they have given members as well as the public the chance to get a first look at the new fall television season.  This year, I was lucky enough to get to view the pilot for the new CW series about Mary, Queen of Scots, called appropriately enough, REIGN.

 



(Mary and Francis have a tense moment)

 



I tried desperately to check my brain at the door and throw away and preconceived notions that I might have had from watching the extended preview online.  However, that proved difficult once the show started.  Granted, I’m clearly not the intended viewing audience for this show.  The CW tends to skew hella young and most of the shows are geared towards teenagers and twenty-somethings.  REIGN is definitely skewed towards teenage girls; there is man candy, pretty dresses and lots of jeweled headbands.  I wouldn’t be surprised if FOREVER 21 and the CW hooked up to do a dress and accessory line based on the show.  The show is basically GOSSIP GIRL + 16^th century France + supernatural elements = REIGN.

Adelaide Kane (who looks a heck of lot like actress Michelle Trachtenberg) plays Mary, Queen of Scots.  And if you have seen the preview commercial, you know that she does not have red hair, it’s more dark brown with red highlights.  She’s also not particularly tall or Francis is particularly short, I can’t really tell.  (According to IMBD, she’s only 5’4”, the real Mary was 5’11”).  She plays Mary as rather tentative at first but then she finds her inner feistiness.  When we first meet Mary, she’s been living in a convent in France away from the court as a way of keeping her safe.  After a rousing game of football, an incident occurs that makes the Reverend Mother realize that it is time that Mary leave the convent and head for court.

 

(The royal court waits to greet Mary)

 

Once she gets there, Mary soon realizes that her betrothed is not that happy to see her.  See Francis (Toby Regbo) is on the fence about whether an alliance with Scotland is really what France needs to protect her from her enemies.  In his spare time, he’s been forging swords and armor for the French army.  Catherine de Medici is played by Megan Follows who played Anne of Green Gables years ago.  She’s also not happy to see Mary, since her good buddy Nostradamus gave her some bad news about Mary and Francis’ future.  While Francis blows hot and cold towards Mary, his bastard half-brother Sebastian (played by Torrance Combs) catches Mary’s eye.  Sebastian is the son of Henri II and his mistress Diane de Poitiers.  I smell potential love triangle, don’t you?

(Mary and Sebastian get acquainted)

 

Mary has a small group of maids who followed her from the convent.  Historically, these girls were also named Mary, and were known as the ‘Four Marys’.  Since that would be way too confusing for a teenage viewing audience, they’ve all been given new names, Lola (I kid you not), Greer, Aylee and Kenna.  The scenes with all five girls are some of the best in the show.  You get a real sense that Mary is a teenage girl with none of the responsibilities yet of ruling.  There is a very telling scene late in the episode, when Mary tells the girls that they are her friends and she will protect them, and Lola reminds her that they are her subjects not her friends.

Besides Mary’s arrival at court which seems to be somewhere on the Normandy coast (there are many lovely shots of what is actually the Irish sea since the pilot was shot in Ireland), the first episode deals with the marriage of Princess Elisabeth, eldest daughter of Henri II and Catherine de Medici, to Philip II of Spain who is depicted in the series as a young hot guy close to Elisabeth’s age instead of a widower in his thirties.  The episode turns into soft porn when the girls decide to watch the wedding night behind a screen.  Although they don’t stay for the consummation, all of them are incredibly turned on.  They start running around the palace rubbing themselves against the furniture like they’re in heat.  Seriously, one of the girls starts to pleasure herself in the hallway.

So far Megan Follows as Catherine de Medici is the best thing about the show.  You get the sense that she is the real power behind the throne, not her husband.  Henri, so far, has been depicted as nothing more than a horn dog.  It will be interesting to see if they develop the relationship between Henri and Diane and the animosity that Catherine felt towards her rival.  In the pilot, I don’t think Diane had more than one line. Nostradamus pops up in the pilot and like everyone else; the actor playing him is about twenty years too young for the role. I mentioned earlier that there was a supernatural element to the series. Nostradamus is part of that element, but there is also apparently a ghost that haunts the royal palace who warns Mary of dire plots against her.  Oh and there is also a dark forest which Sebastian warns Mary away from after her dog Stirling runs away.

Everyone in show speaks with a sort of English accent which is interesting since Mary and her maids were Scottish, and the court French.  Catherine and Henri had ten children; it will be interesting if any of them show up in the series.  The costumes, at least for the woman, look as if the costume designer raided FOREVER 21 during prom season. There are lots of sparkly headbands and sleeveless dresses. At one point, during the feast after the wedding, the girls kick off their high-heeled pumps and dance the night away.

Although I found many moments in the show hilarious, I’m willing to give this show a shot.  Although if you disliked The Tudors because you thought it was historically inaccurate, you will really hate this show.  Since the show is called REIGN, if it gets picked up beyond the first season, at some point Mary will have to go back to Scotland to reign.  The show is up against some heavy competition on Thursday, but it might just keep the VAMPIRE DIARIES audience and pick-up those viewers who were devoted to GOSSIP GIRL. I will certainly keep blogging each episode as long as the show is on.

Fact vs. Fiction:  Well, the big one is that Diane de Poitiers and Henri II never had any children.  Diane was 19 years older than the King.  Although their affair started when he was 16, and she was 35, it seems that either Diane was no longer as fertile or she took measures to prevent a pregnancy.  The King did however have an illegitimate child by Janet Fleming, the governess of Mary Queen of Scots. Her daughter Mary was one of the young queen’s “Four Marys.”  Princess Elisabeth did marry Philip II of Spain, but she was married to him by proxy in France.   They didn’t marry in person until Nostradamus did spent time at the French court; Catherine de Medici was one of his admirers.  It is also a fact that Catherine de Medici was never that fond of Mary.  However, Mary was raised at the French court with Francis and his siblings.  Princess Elisabeth was one of her closest friends (Elisabeth is only scene in the wedding night scene). The real Francis stuttered and was abnormally short.  He certainly wasn’t a strapping hot blond. 

You can watch the full trailer for Reign below:

 

Review: The Many Lives of Miss K: Toto Koopman - Model, Muse, Spy

Title:  The Many Lives of Miss K: Toto Koopman - Model, Muse, Spy

Author:  Jean-Noel Liaut, Denise Raab Jacobs (Translator)

Publisher:  Rizzoli Books

 
Pub Date:   9/3/2013
 
Pages:  244
 
How Acquired:  ARC through Edelweiss

From the back cover:   A life of glamour and tragedy, set against the watershed cultural and political movements of twentieth-century Europe. "Toto" Koopman (1908–1991) is a new addition to the set of iconoclastic women whose biographies intrigue and inspire modern-day readers. Like her contemporaries Lee Miller or Vita Sackville-West, Toto lived with an independent spirit more typical of the men of her generation, moving in the worlds of fashion, society, art, and politics with an insouciant ease that would stir both admiration and envy even today. Sphinxlike and tantalizing, Toto conducted her life as a game, driven by audacity and style. Jean-Noël Liaut chases his enigmatic subject through the many roles and lives she inhabited, both happy and tragic. Though her beauty, charisma, and taste for the extraordinary made her an exuberant fixture of Paris fashion and café society, her intelligence and steely sense of self drove her toward bigger things, culminating in espionage during WWII, for which she was imprisoned by the Nazis in Ravensbruck. After the horrors of the camp, she found solace in Erica Brausen, the German art dealer who launched the career of Francis Bacon, and the two women lived out their lives together surrounded by cultural luminaries like Edmonde Charles-Roux and Luchino Visconti. But even in her later decades, Toto remained impossible for anyone to possess. The Many Lives of Miss K explores the allure of a freethinking and courageous woman who, fiercely protective of her independence, was sought after by so many but ultimately known by very few.

Meet the Author:   Jean-Noël Liaut is a French writer and translator. His books include biographies of Givenchy and Karen Blixen and translations of works by Colin Clark, Nancy Mitford, Deborah Devonshire, and Agatha Christie.

My thoughts:  I’m always excited when I discover a new Scandalous Woman that I can share with my readers.  So when I saw this book featured on Edelweiss, I knew I had to read it.  It just sounded too intriguing to pass up.  Unfortunately the book doesn’t necessarily live up to the hype of the back cover which is a shame because Toto Koopman is one fascinating woman, more than worthy of being featured here on the blog.

Toto was born Catharina Koopman in October of 1908.  Her father was a military officer and her mother was part Dutch, part Javanese.  Despite the rather dim view the Dutch took of interracial marriages and the children born of these unions, Toto’s childhood seems to have been rather uneventful and happy.  Despite her parents’ disapproval, she left her fancy finishing school and headed off to Paris and adventure becoming a fashion model who worked for Chanel among other fashion houses.  She also appeared regularly in French Vogue, which was highly unusual at the time.  Fashion magazines weren’t exactly inclusive back then, so to have a Eurasian model not just on the cover but in the magazine must have been highly scandalous.   When she wasn’t working, Toto seems to have spent her time hobnobbing with everyone there was to no in Paris.   She moves to London to appear in a movie produced by Alexander Korda, but all her scenes are cut out.  No matter, Toto meets Tallulah Bankhead and they have a brief affair.  She then meets Lord Beaverbrook and not only has an affair with him but also his son (as well as Randolph Churchill). 

The author makes much of the fact that Toto’s sexuality was extremely fluid.  I have no idea where she would sit on the Kinsey scale.  She also seemed to have suffered no jealously or guilt over her actions.  For Toto, life does seem to have been a ‘Cabaret, old chum.’  The book catalogs all of her early life and her madcap adventures in Paris and London in about 77 pages.   There’s no in-depth look at how a woman who took money from her lover’s father not to marry him, then turned around and became a spy for the British during World War II working with the Italian resistance.  Toto was arrested in Italy, escaped, was arrested again, and then send to Ravensbruck.  How did she make that change, risking her life and why?  What were her ideals?  Was this just another adventure for her?  The author can’t really explain it.  Toto did have the skills for a spy, she spoke at least 5 languages and she was incredibly enigmatic. Also the details of this period of her life seem hidden behind a wall of gauze.

After the war, Toto meets Erica Brausen who becomes her life partner.  Brausen runs an art gallery, and is responsible for discovering Francis Bacon.  Toto helps Erica run the gallery but she also for a certain point turns her hand to archeology.  All of this is very exciting but again the author is unable to animate Toto from the page.  She remains as unknowable at the end of the book as she does at the beginning.  Life at this point seems to be filled with art openings, traveling, affairs (many on Toto’s part), and building their dream house on an island of the coast of Sicily which they turn into a sort of artists’ colony.  The saddest part of the book is the end of Toto’s life, when Brausen seems to have gone a little off the rails.

The book is incredibly slight (244 pages) for a woman who led such a fascinating life.  Part of the problem is that Toto left no letters or journals, nor did she ever write her autobiography which would have given a biographer material to work with.  Liaut has to piece together her life from the recollections of the few people who knew her that are still alive during his research, and from brief mentions in the biographies of more well-known personalities of the period.  It is a shame that the book is not able to go deeper.

Verdict:  An exuberant but slight account of a truely remarkable woman.