We begin on another of what Jess pointed out are EXTREMELY loving shots of Jenna Coleman as Queen Vic. She's in her carriage riding through streets where some people are waving and others yelling; we keep cutting back to very long shots of her staring directly at us. It took me a while to realize she's wearing colored contacts; at first I thought maybe she just naturally looks a bit stoned, but no, I think it's the lenses and I think they're impeding the acting a little bit. (I don't watch Doctor Who, but saw her brief role in the otherwise terrible Me Before You, and she was quite cute and should've been the lead.)
This scene is meant to approximate the Newport Rising. Chartism, the biggest reform movement in British history, centered around trying to give working-class men the vote, having secret ballots and annual elections, paying MPs wages, and stripping land-owning requirements from MPs. It didn't work (although many of those things have since been enacted). And in 1839, 10,000 of them marched on a hotel in Newport to rescue some Chartists supposedly imprisoned there, and they were met with fatal resistance and the ringleaders arrested. (No one knows if Han shot first, so to speak, but apparently the soldiers WERE about this outnumbered -- and just in possession of greater firepower.) We see here what's meant to be that confrontation...
... juxtaposed with Victoria in her little regal bubble doing queenly things. The lighting in this scene is a bit funky, and I suspect it was an attempt to show how the palace would've been lit given the aborted installation of gas lighting and the use of candles only at night. The crowns do swallow Jenna Coleman whole.
The show makes use of The Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I, in discussions about whether Vic should marry. (At the time among other reasons, she was required to live with the mother she largely disliked simply because she was unmarried.) Here, we are gazing down at Vic and Lord M as if we are a portrait of Elizabeth; they are discussing the delicate issue of Elizabeth's various consorts, and Elizabeth is probably thinking, "You're DAMN RIGHT I had consorts. I have needs. A king just wasn't one of them." Amen, sister.
And then lo, some familiar casting: Continuing his costume drama smug-a-thon, Alex Jennings has gone from playing Edward VIII in The Crown to King Leopold of Belgium, a.k.a. Victoria's uncle and the husband of George IV's daughter Charlotte -- whose death made Victoria the heir. Got that?
Anyway, Leopold is smarmy, and even says upon entry something like, "Oh, woe, if only my beloved Charlotte had lived, then I would be here and YOU WOULD NOT," except cloaked as sympathy. Victoria came by her dramatic side honestly.
Vic's ladies do have to get dressed to the nines pretty much all the time, despite very little to do other than listen to her and basically live life largely off-camera. Kind of, I imagine, like befriending a Kardashian.
Leo is the brother of Victoria's mother, but their shared OTHER brother is Albert's father (the duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, after which the ruling house is named once V & A get hitched). So of course he's there to advance Albert's cause, and the subtle Duchess says, in a stage whisper, "TELL HER ABOUT ALBERT," at which Victoria loudly scoffs even though they all try to convince her he's totally hot now.
Also: I gather Belgium voted to be a constitutional monarchy in 1830 and wanted to give it to the son of the king of France, but couldn't, so Leo was voted in instead. Here, Leo! Take a kingdom. Enjoy it. Don't ruin the frites.
If John Conroy was as plotty and rotten in real life as he's portrayed here, then I hope he at least had a better poker face. Because otherwise, it means he was clearly terrible at his chosen pasttime. HOW TRANSPARENT his broody scheming is.
For a moment I really thought the Duke of Cumberland's wife was Isobel "Penelope Wilton" Crawley with an elaborate fake nose. It is not.
Family tree: When George IV's daughter Charlotte died, succession reverted to GIII's children. The Duke was the fifth son; the 4th son, Edward, married and had Vic. Hence the Duke would be the heir if Victoria were to die childless -- which of cousre she DIDN'T -- but it gives him an especial taste for the throne, and he stomps around dripping saliva for it. Thanks to the Fug National who corrected my wonky research on this one.
Victoria is ALL good dresses and major cranial hardware.
The Grand Duke Alexander is back to woo Victoria some more, and they seem to enjoy each other despite him getting so handsy before. I can't decide if she enjoys him, or is just accepting of him as a valid diversion. He's like a starter mustache, preparing her for Albert's. Costuming had a hell of a time keeping Jenna Coleman's headpieces on straight, too.
And, for those of you who enjoy the current Prince George of Cambridge, this is the PREVIOUS Prince George of Cambridge, who later becomes the Duke of Cambridge. He's also another cousin of Victoria's -- and, in fact, eventually the uncle of Mary of Teck. In case you thought people were exaggerating about how, er, close some of the royal marital ties are or have almost been. G is the sprog of George III's SEVENTH son -- but tenth child; man, these people were fertile -- and Cumberland wants him to be the English contender for Victoria's husband.
Lady Portman, one of Vic's ladies ("Lady of the Bedchamber"), is ALL ABOUT getting Vic into Lord M's knickers. She spends the entire hour whispering in his ear about her, and in her ear about him, pushing them toward each other with a knowing wink even though it had to seem HIGHLY UNLIKELY that Victoria would marry a man who was forty years her senior in real life (even if Rufus Sewell and Jenna Coleman are "only" 18 years apart).
Ah, to have a glorious riding coat and hat. And also not to be dreadfully allergic to horses. These two make it look so jolly.
Leopold and the Duchess are such amusing brats. Here, she has leaned in and whispered that she could use a loan as she's "living like a pauper," which results in the most wonderfully enormous eye roll from him. Leopold and Edward VIII probably would have gotten along swimmingly, right up until Ed decided to abdicate and then Leo would have been like, "ARE YOU MAD, YOU SPOILED CLOWN."
Jenna's mouth has a bit of a natural upturn at one corner. It's sort of the opposite of Natalie Dormer's; where Natalie's makes her look mischievous, Jenna's makes her look alternately coquettish or amused, in a way that sometimes results in me being unclear whether she's ACTING that way or it's just what her mouth is doing. This isn't her fault. But it does create confusion in some scenes.
Here, they're all at a dedication for a plaque for her father, and Alexander and George are using this as an excuse to yap about their competition for her rather than being stoic. I assume Alexander is pointing out that George cannot even grow three hairs on his lip.
I just thought you'd like to see the back of her hairdo. We must be thorough and exacting here. Victoria is also realizing, thanks to Leopold inadvertantly planting the idea in an attempt to warn her OFF of it, that she might very much like to marry Lord M. Well done, Leopold.
This is the stand-in for Lord M's place, Brocket Hall, where you can now stay if you choose. There is a golf course, and the website opens its History section with this marvelous line: "[T]he scent of scandal can be found in the fabric of the building back to its roots in the 13th Century." Apparently Lord M's Byron-loving wife Caroline fell off her horse when Byron's funeral procession went by, as she hadn't known he was dead. No Twitter, see.
WHAT MISERY. Such a gruesome place to sit in repose and wallow in one's own impossible romantic crises and existential loneliness.
Victoria pops by to profess her love for Lord M in the most romantic of ways -- namely, by telling him that she had thought of him as a father figure until she realized she wants to seize his Brocket. It's some of Jenna Coleman's nicest acting, though; as Rufus Sewell tells her a story in a long shot that holds on her face, her eyes never once stop devouring his countenance in this adoring manner. It's like, "I'm listening, probably, but also thinking about where I'm going to put your face in a minute."
But alas, Lord M's story is about how some birds mate for life and yada yada yada it sounds like he's pledging his love to the long lost Caroline. He even thoughtfully says he appreciates her heart but has "no use for it." Victoria tries to take this gracefully, but she does give him about a 60 percent flounce when she turns to leave.
The Downstairs stories are a bit dull. The pastry chef is still needling Skerrett about her past at a brothel vis Strawberry Tarts of Symbolism, until she finally admits she worked in the laundry there, not as a prostitute. I keep assuming he's going to blackmail her for sex, but he just keeps saying he wants them to get to know each other and be allies. He's REALLY bad at this, then.
Also, if you're wondering why Skerrett looks familiar, it might be because she also played/plays Laoghaire on Outlander. And she was an unpleasant pill on that show, so it's hard for me to put that away. I keep waiting for her to go full Thenardier like everyone else on this show.
Here, Victoria has dressed up as her favorite, Queen Elizabeth I, for... a costume ball of some ilk. It's surprisingly not a great costume. Maybe she's the younger Elizabeth. Or she needs to fire her entire staff and replace them with a crew that understands wigs and ruffs and gigantic skirting.
Lord M, who has just dumped her, essentially, shows up dressed -- as he tells her -- as the Earl of Leicester, one of Elizabeth's companions. He whispers to her that both Leicester and Liz knew they weren't in a spot to marry, but it felt like he was sort of inching back toward, "But they could quietly and non-committally bang the night away IF THEY WANTED, probably."
Vic is instead refocusing on these two fools, one of whom is handsy, and the other of whom is so put out that she seems to prefer Alexander that he stomps off and snappishly refers to her as a "midget." Victoria hears this, and thus endeth the chances of Prince George, Cumberland's royal protege and last best shot at any kind of sway over the throne.
Oh but Victoria does get SOME satisfaction from the night: When she sorts out that John Conroy might be hoping to get in Prince Albert's pocket, when and if Leopold can get him to England to pitch some woo, Victoria basically informs him that she's no interest in consorting with ANYONE who would accept his counsel. Sir John is hereby wholly neutered. I'm not sure why it took three episodes to drive this point home, as Victoria has never been shy about her loathing of him. Perhaps it took her wearing bejeweled rams' horns to take her seriously.
Oh, and I guess Mrs. Jenkins' nephew is one of the Newport Rising perpertrators who's due to be hung, drawn, and quartered -- the Official Death of British Traitors. She's pretty upset about it. Otherwise, all the Downstairs folks do is take bets on whether Vic will marry the Russian, Prince George, Lord M, or "the German sausage." I BELIEVE the pastry chef has his sixpence on the meat product.
And then suddenly Alexander -- destined to be Alexander II -- is summoned back to Russia, because his father decided he's going to marry some Danish lady instead. If I'm right, though, it appears that in real life, he married a German noblelady a year after Victoria and Albert wed, so I don't know what this is about. His SON, Emperor Alexander III, married a Danish woman. Maybe there's some Alexander confusion happening. At any rate, neither of them seems too fussed about this, with Victoria shrugging neither of them really gets to marry the person they want in this life. He's all, "Yup! O WELL! HAVE FUN STORMING THE CASTLE!"
Mrs. Jenkins breaks down and has to excuse herself, so Victoria asks Skerrett what the deal is. Skerrett hedges that Mrs. Jenkins is simply FROM Newport and is taking the executions hard. Victoria agrees that cutting a dude open as he's dying IS rather intense, and asks if that's a common viewpoint across the land. Skerrett says it is, and Vic is like, WELL THEN. Skerrett has an AWFUL LOT of say-so here.
When Victoria consults Lord M in a mild tizzy, he says that she CAN ask for the sentence to be commuted from Torn Apart By Executioners And Waiting For One's Insides To Evacuate The Cavity merely to Permanent Exile to Australia, and Victoria is relieved. In real life, the government commuted the sentence, and historians don't think Victoria actually cared that much about it at all or was much aware of the populist concerns. That seems like a pretty fundamental character shift.
Her plaid dress, though, is adorable.
Victoria then cheerfully finds these two consorting in a hedgerow and tells Sir John that she has accepted the offer he made her at the ball: He will retreat to his Irish estate, with a title, having outlived his usefulness. (This, too, is a divergence: Victoria in real life specifically did NOT issue him a title because it meant he'd be welcome at court, and so he ended up leaving and settling in his Berkshire family home.) His flight comes with an increased allowance for the Duchess, though she's furious with Conroy for abandoning her after all her defenses of him -- even when he points out that him leaving will win her back her daughter. He also notes it's time to go somewhere his talents will be more appreciated, and I suspect the Duchess is thinking, "I AM PRETTY SURE I APPRECIATED THEM ON THE REGULAR, JOHN."
And then all of a sudden, Victoria comes to her mother to cry about, essentially, not being able to marry Lord M. The Duchess is elated to be snuggling her kid again, and I guess all dreams of picking her teeth with Conroy's sideburns are the faintest of memories.
While Vic sketches Elizabeth I, she tells Lord M -- not in so many words -- that she'd rather reign alone and be in his company forever than marry another. Lord M seems to appreciate this, but suggests she give Albert a go anyway. At least to say she tried. AGAIN, in real life, Vic met him when she was 17 and wrote that she was quite besotted, and that the marriage was assumed. Here, they play it like she was grossed out by him and casting a very real net elsewhere. Interesting that both Victoria and Elizabeth II married the men that were the subjects of their first teenage crushes. When the Saxe-Coburg/Windsors love, they love ETERNAL.
And sure enough, as Victoria favors the room with a piano performance, Albert arrives from the continent and turns the page -- both of her music, and of her ladygarden. I predict heaving bosoms next week.