Reign 2.09 “Acts of War” Recap

With the Feast of St. Nicholas approaching, Francis is looking to make peace with the Protestants and show that the minister’s death was not the result of the castle. He pledges more supplies for those who are too afraid to come out of their homes, just as Claude arrives in the hall that Greer, Lola, and Kenna are dancing the tarantella in. After brushing off Kenna’s frustration at the lack of communication between the two of them, she inquires about Narcisse and doesn’t wince when talk turns to him keeping a former wife in a cage. Claude is so determined to antagonize her mother and control her own destiny that she’s thinking about having an affair with someone notorious and older like Narcisse in order to scare off any potential suitors. Meanwhile, Francis returns home and runs into Mary, who tells him of an idea she has – getting Conde and Claude to wed. She surmises that a high-profile inter-faith marriage, especially one with ties to the royals, could help promote the peace that France is in desperate need of while keeping the Protestants from accruing any significant power of their own. However, Francis is too worried about the response of the nobles and backs away from the idea, further driving Mary away.

But Francis can’t wallow in his disappointment for long, as he meets with Bash and goes to see Father Michael, the priest who Catherine tried to get to poison Henry. The man was abducted from his home and taken to the castle by Bash with the intention of interrogating him as to the whereabouts of Lord Montgomery. While Father Michael knows nothing about Montgomery, he does know about Balfont, Narcisse’s man who had been feeding him for the past several months. With Balfont set to visit Michael at the farmhouse he was living at, Francis comes up with a plan that could help get him out from under the thumb of Narcisse, though it’s not quite as easy as leaning on Balfont and getting him to talk. Phase one of the plan involves agreeing to the marriage between Conde and Claude, an engagement that he wishes to be announced the night of the feast. Though Mary is surprised at the sudden change of heart, she goes along with this new Francis that stands before her, if only because this is the only chance she might have to bring about peace to her country. Lord Conde takes some convincing, especially since he was possibly going to marry a duchess, but hearing about the marriage saving lives, helping France, and granting him a beautiful princess, all told through Mary’s voice, proves to be enough to get him to change his mind. Less sure is Claude, who doesn’t want a husband that she didn’t select herself. Catherine then comes into the chambers and agrees with her daughter, pointing out that Conde could snatch the throne thanks to his royal blood; however, Claude rejects this bonding moment, storming out after telling her mother that she’s not a brood mare.

Greer meets with some of Castleroy’s closest confidantes, men with whom he’s collaborating on a school and whose cause he hopes convinces her to convert, while Conde and Claude’s first meeting goes fairly awkwardly. Mostly, it’s her fault as she’s overly aggressive, trying to scare him away with her sex talk and vivaciousness, but it’s not the best first step that any marriage has ever had. Elsewhere, Narcisse confronts Francis about the Conde/Claude engagement that he heard about and Francis begins acting as if he hasn’t slept in a long time, bringing up possibly reversing the edict and writing off Narcisse’s threats to his family line. Narcisse simply encourages him to give the decision some time before leaving and it turns out that this is the response that Francis and Bash wanted him to have. But Narcisse’s first act after leaving Francis behind? Going to Claude to warn her that she’s merely a test subject and that her marriage would be nothing short of a science experiment. He offers to marry her in order to protect her, since she would have a huge target on her if she wed Conde, and tries seducing her to get her to agree. However, Claude merely says that she’ll think about it after listing the reasons that she might not want to give up someone of Conde’s worth.

Yet Narcisse’s words do make an impact on Claude, as she goes to Francis worried about her safety if she agrees to marry Conde. He tells her that everyone in their family is in danger and that this is her opportunity to step up, to feel like one of them after being isolated for such a long time; that’s enough for Claude to tell Narcisse that she’s marrying Conde after all and that she doesn’t care about the danger that she just put herself in. As a result, Narcisse goes to Balfont, frothing with anger at the rejection and claiming that now is the time to retrieve Lord Montgomery and bring up the regicide charges. But Francis isn’t crumbling like Narcisse thinks he is; he and Bash are planning to beat Balfont to the farmhouse that Montgomery is staying in, with the king exchanging a stilted goodbye with his queen that includes an awkward touch and one final look at the woman he married. Even with Francis gone into the woods on his horse, the Feast of St. Nicholas continues as planned and while Catherine warns Narcisse to stay away from her daughter, Mary hears that Francis is meeting with the Vatican to smooth over any kerfuffles that might erupt as a result of the engagement. With Castleroy and Greer opting to head home after the latter confesses that she’s thinking about converting, Mary announces Conde and Claude’s engagement to the confusion of the guests, who don’t know whether to applaud and whose murmuring sends a negative sign about the engagement’s future.

Elsewhere, one of the castle guards makes a run into the village to deliver some supplies, only to be ambushed, killed, and stripped of his armor by a group of rogue Protestants. The men take the guard’s carriage back to the castle and convince the man standing guard outside to let them in, all the while Francis and Bash make it to the farmhouse at the same time that Balfont does. Francis kills him with a blade and the two head into the home to find Montgomery dirty and tied up after spending months in seclusion. Francis gets him to sign a confession, saying that it was for an official royal pardon now that he’s the king; though Montgomery insists that he has no idea why he was kidnapped, Bash kills him when he lashes out about Henry. With Francis now out of the woods for his father’s death, thereby removing the greatest leverage that Narcisse had on him, Bash tells his brother to go back to the castle – he’ll clean the mess up, while the most important things to do are be honest with Mary and kill Narcisse. Shortly after Conde leaves for the night, the Protestants scour the castle looking for Francis, killing all those who cross their path along the way. They find the royal chambers and quickly take hold of Mary, threatening her if she were to scream, yet they soon realize that Francis isn’t in the castle after all.

Some of the men try to get the group to leave, but one in particular volunteers to kill Mary and smacks her to the ground. It turns out that he’s the father of the minister who was displayed in the middle of town and he blames the royals for letting something like that happen to his boy, so after ranting while Mary recovered on the ground, he gets on top of her and rapes her while another of his people holds her arms down. Mary does manage to get the upper hand, though, when she finds a weapon to knock one of them in the head with before fleeing her chambers. Luckily, Catherine was just coming in that direction and when she sees that Mary is obviously in distress, she dismisses her guards and takes Mary to her personal chambers. Mary is expectedly distant and sensitive to the touch before breaking down in front of Catherine. Having learned the reason for her daughter-in-law’s demeanor, Catherine assures her that she will get through this and that she knows what this experience is like all too well. However, Mary being a royal, her duty is to her country, so Catherine suggests changing clothes, washing her hair, and doing anything that will get the stench of the night off of her. Not only would it be for her own benefit, it would benefit Francis, France, and Scotland, all things that couldn’t deal with the young queen being publicly diminished, so she has to pretend like it didn’t happen. But Catherine pledges to get Mary through this, if for no other reason than to keep those who harmed her from triumphing.

Castleroy and Greer return home and hear about the suspected assassins in the castle. Though Mary and Francis are deemed safe, one of the men Castleroy has been teaming with is awfully shifty, asking for resources that will help him get out of town. It turns out, though, that he wasn’t responsible for the men who invaded the castle – it was a third partner, who had been threatened into complying, though he refuses to name the person who strong-armed him. As a result, the school that Castleroy thought he had been helping to build doesn’t exist – the money he was giving his partners went straight to funding the men who attacked Mary. While one of Narcisse’s men rationalizes that the Protestants felt as if they had nothing to lose, Mary makes his first public appearance since the rape and reassures her subjects that the royals are untouched and that those who invaded the castle will be caught and executed. Narcisse then goes to Lola while she tends to the baby and tells her that he still thinks about her, that he was worried for her when he learned what happened, that he feels personally responsible for the unrest that is threatening to tear the country apart.

Francis finds Mary and Catherine as soon as he gets home and when the latter leaves, the former confesses that she was raped during the altercating. However, she won’t let Francis blame himself; all she wants is for the men who did this to her to die.

Additional thoughts and observations:
-“What is he, a whore chaser?”
-“I don’t need a husband. I already have a mother to make me miserable.”
-“Oh, hallelujah, we’re in agreement. This may be a bonafide miracle.”
-“I’m not sure I want you to be king anymore.”
-“If you want someone to die for, I can give it to you.”
-“One can barely hear the sound of people choking on the news.”
-“At least my family will cry at my funeral.”
-Here are post-mortems that Reign showrunner Laurie McCarthy did for Entertainment Weekly and TVLine, if you want her perspective on the episode and where we all go from here.
-Okay, I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I thought the rape scene was well-handled. (Full disclosure: I was a victim of rape in my early 20s, so that incident kind of colors how I view something like this.) Trust me, I know it could have been an offensive, tone deaf mess and that the idea of something like this on a show like this doesn’t exactly gel; however, the show did the right thing in focusing on the build-up and the aftermath rather than the actual rape itself. The incident was extremely short (it’s not like this is an Irreversible situation), didn’t linger on her face as she was being violated, and allowed her to take immediate action afterwards by hitting one of the men over the head and running for safety, so you got the point without being subjected to the brutality that Mary faced. A line does exist between showing the reality of rape and glamorizing the act, and there are shows that could deftly handle a grittier take on the subject, but Reign did the right thing by staying within itself and ultimately focusing on the character and not the act.
-All this being said, the build-up to the rape was the scariest thing the show has done thus far. Reign obviously isn’t afraid to use violence, but they very rarely utilize atmosphere along with it; the show is content to move as quickly as it can and take whatever shortcuts it can to the action, so establishing and cultivating that sense of dread, that feeling of knowing something bad was about to happen, isn’t something that it naturally gravitates toward. Which is why I found the minutes before the wrap so dramatically effective – it’s a new place for the show to go structurally and stylistically and I think the act would’ve read much cheaper/shock value-y if they didn’t spend that time in Mary’s chambers.
-The aftermath was, of course, astoundingly good, good enough to make me cry. Though this season has had its bumps and bruises, Mary’s dynamic with Catherine has been one of my favorite things to watch develop, both in small moments sprinkled throughout the episodes and big moments like “Three Queens,” which heavily focused on their relationship. Catherine being the one to help Mary through the early days of her healing is a dramatically rich decision that feels primed to produce some series best material, with Catherine reliving her own trauma while helping her daughter-in-law, Mary struggling with having to keep up appearances with the attack weighing on her psyche, and Mary’s relationship with Francis likely damaged by his own guilt and her aversion to intimacy. This is a case of going against convention, as it seems more logical for Mary to be confiding in one of her ladies at a time like this, in the best way possible, of confronting the similarities between Mary and Catherine by allowing them to bond through their shared pain. It might not always be pretty, but it feels like the type of material the show should be attacking at this stage.
-I appreciated that the show had Mary confess to the rape very quickly rather than string it along over a chunk of episodes. It felt true to her character, that desire for total honesty with the one she loves, and it saved us quite a bit of narrative dead air. We know he’s going to find out eventually, so moving to the more interesting parts of this type of storyline, from how the rape impacts their relationship to how Mary views herself as a woman/queen/lover following the assault and whether the bonds of trauma bring Mary and Catherine closer together, is the type of thing that can get this season back on track and give the incident from this episode a purpose, for lack of a better. It’s not going to be a rape for rape’s sake – it’s going to have meaning for these characters and it’s going to alter the dynamic in the castle, both of which I’m curious to explore.
-But please. Please. No rape baby. That’s all I ask.
-Best Dressed: Mary’s jewelry at the feast was really pretty. I also loved Lola’s maroon-y dress.
-Random, but I wonder what the show would look like with a longer cold open. Ever since the credits were brought back, the cold opens are never over a minute or two and it feels like a strange choice to me. Sometimes they do some interesting visual stuff, but it’d be nice to see how the show would flow if it didn’t rush past its opening minutes, if it gave more than a brief glimpse of the episode to come. Part of my frustration with this season, as has been noted here, is that it feels repetitious, as if it’s hitting the same beats in the same manner, so something as small as this would help break things up and offer a bit more variety in how the show plays.
-I loved the fact that the significant change in rhythm that was Francis getting one over on Narcisse came as a result of a team-up with Bash. I would already be singing the praises of the storyline if it was just Francis, even if his crazy eyes were some ridiculous overacting that made Narcisse look stupid for not picking up on, but to have it come through teamwork with Bash made everything all the better. They have one of the most interesting relationships in the entire show and they’ve been separated for much of the season, as Bash tends to be out of the castle and Francis has been wrapped up in this conflict with Narcisse, a decision that came at the detriment of the characters and the show itself. After this episode, though, Francis has a firmer connection to someone outside of Mary, an important development considering her recent news, and Bash feels like he’s a part of the main narrative again and not shunted off to parts unknown.
-So, apparently Claude is into being caged up, which is an interesting factoid. I’m guessing, though, that she’s the type of person who will say anything in order to shock the people around her.
-I’m interested to see how the news of the assassins impacts Greer’s thoughts on conversion. Before, becoming a Protestant seemed like a no-brainer – she would be united with her husband and Francis was working on smoothing over religious tensions in France, so she wouldn’t have to worry about her safety. Now, her husband was indirectly responsible for the rape of her friend and the near-assassination of the king, a result of his kind heart leading the way and drowning out the sense of cynicism that he needs in order to survive. With Castleroy likely being unwilling to convert to Catholicism, even with the rising tensions in France and the persecution that he faces, Greer might decide that she can’t stay with him, not when the sword of Protestantism hanging over their heads and not when her friend suffered as a result of this religion.
-I thought that a twist that the men who attacked the castle were Catholics trying to pin the incident on Protestants was coming, but alas, it never did.
-Bash jumping out at Balfont like a spider monkey was just the best. Him flying into frame and landing a blow is a gif-worthy moment.
-No ghost girls and Catherine was showing no ill effects from, y’know, seeing her dead daughters or remembering that her eldest daughter was responsible for their deaths. If we’re going to embrace the crazy, show, can we do it completely? Because this selective craziness is not my jam.
-What do you think Conde’s letter to Mary said? And will she end up telling him about the rape, knowing how dedicated he is to her and how much power she has over him?
-Narcisse crawling back to Lola – desperate move by someone in need of an ally or genuine gesture from a man who really never stopped thinking about this girl? I think that there’s a hint of humanity within Narcisse, but his reverting back to Lola just reeks of frustration at Francis for blocking the marriage to Claude.
-Next week on Reign: It’s the winter finale and while Francis tracks Narcisse looking for revenge, Mary tackles a dangerous mission with Conde, Leith begs Greer to flee, and Catherine receives a visit to her chambers.