Reign 1.21 “Long Live the King” Recap

The Duke of Guise leads the victorious French soldiers back to court, with Mary’s friends whispering about whether Leith would return after what happened with Greer. While Kenna is disappointed that Bash is once again chasing the Darkness in the woods, Mary and Francis spot each other in the crowd and embrace, having reunited after months apart. But as the Duke hypes up the crowd about the fall of Caillas, Henry interjects that he’s had spies following the English and that Mary Tudor is dead – their own Mary, Mary Queen of Scots, can now ascend to the English throne and the French can rule half of Europe.

After reconnecting in their bed, Francis tells Mary he thought she wouldn’t forgive him for bailing on Marie, but Mary assures him that since her mother has escaped the castle and fled Scotland, they’re okay. They get called away, though, when Henry presses Mary for her response to the death of Mary Tudor. He believes Elizabeth knows she’s vulnerable prior to the coronation and that if they’re going to strike and seize the English crown, it’s going to be now. Mary doesn’t want to make her cousin her enemy for life, of course, but Henry doesn’t care – he wants the crown and he wants Mary to be the one to take it. Meanwhile, Lola and Julien have moved into a new home away from court, complete with servants who complain about his self-sufficiency. Lola, however, wants to live somewhere further from court and Julien deduces that she’s worried about what the child will look like, that people will piece together that she was pregnant out of wedlock; he informs her that it won’t matter how the child looks or who it belongs to, since the two are together and, most importantly, happy.

Out in the woods, as an eclipse breaks across the sky, Bash comes across more sacrifices and a bloody body in some brush – however, the body, that of a little boy, turns out to not be dead after all, as it rises when Bash blows the whistle that was in his hand. Though those he’s with warn him against taking the child, Bash takes it upon himself to rescue the boy from the horrors of the woods. He brings the boy, who still won’t speak a word, to Nostradamus, who determines that the blood isn’t that of the boy and that the whistle in his possession was a warning of the coming Darkness. While Bash presses the boy for information, Kenna causes him to retreat when it’s clear that the boy isn’t speaking not because he can’t, but because he’s afraid of Bash. Back at the castle, Mary approaches her uncle to talk business and he chastises her for writing Elizabeth with wishes of peace and to relinquish her claim to the English throne. Mary doesn’t want the blood of the thousands who will give their lives to put her on the throne on her hands, wondering aloud whether Scotland could be enough for Henry; the Duke, though, tells her that as a queen, she’s always at war and she can’t afford to disarm herself at such an important moment.

Elsewhere in the castle, Catherine learns from a spy that Henry has refused to delay the invasion of England. Originally, he wanted to wait a week to celebrate, but troop mobilization has already began. Meanwhile, Julien’s uncle Bartos arrives at his house and discovers that the man claiming to be his nephew isn’t, in fact, Julien. It’s Remi, Julien’s secretary; Bartos is angered that his nephew would continue evading his family after traipsing throughout the continent, so he decides to stay put until the real Lord Julien turns up. Remi then runs up to Lola’s room and spills everything – Lord Julien died in a fire in Bavaraia and when he put on his master’s cloak/crest, people automatically assumed that he was the real Lord Julien. She’s disgusted at the thought of marrying a grave robber, though he denies murdering Julien and pleads with her to help him get Bartos out of the house. Francis meets with Mary and Catherine, who inform him of the fleet setting sail for England; in short, it’s to be a bloodbath for France, since they needed the time Henry originally gave them to rest up, replenish their supplies, and ready themselves for what was sure to be a rough battle. With Henry’s madness showing no signs of letting up, Catherine implies they should set him up for murder, but Francis rejects the idea, telling his wife and mother that his father is not a sick animal they can just put down. Once he leaves, though, Mary and Catherine discuss what ways they can possibility take out Henry, with Catherine urging Mary to think like a queen now rather than a little girl. As much as Mary will be giving up by getting rid of Henry, Catherine will be widowed, her children won’t have their father, and she’ll be handing over the power she’s worked so hard to acquire and hang on to to Mary.

Remi manages to convince Bartos that Julien was on the run from gambling debts he acquired, leaving behind a very angry and very pregnant wife. Bartos agrees to financially take care of Lola and the child – until he sees Remi wearing Julien’s ring, something that his nephew wouldn’t have left town without. While Kenna cleans up the boy and learns that his parents passed away, possibly before being taken to a town in the mountains called Visigoth, Catherine informs Mary of her plan to take out Henry. The only place he’s completely vulnerable? When he takes communion, so she suggests they poison him and use their one chance to get him off the throne. Bash decides to track down Visigoth, since it’s the place where the Darkness resides, though he leads Kenna on to believe that he’s taking her away from court and, most importantly, away from Henry. His motivation? To protect her and to use the opportunity to exorcise the darkness that has seeped into his soul, a result of his killing two men. Out on the battlefield, Henry shares a story with Francis about his father, telling him of the time his father was captured by the Spanish and traded him and his brother as hostages for his freedom – an arrangement he orchestrated himself. It was then that Henry learned that sons are to sacrifice for their fathers, but Francis urges him to let the past go, that God’s doing His work through him and that there’s so much more to do in France before Henry can even begin thinking about England.

Though Remi argues that he has the ring to keep Julien from gambling it away, Bartos notes that there are no boots or cloaks that fit his nephew; just then, Benjamin comes in and inadvertently outs both Remi and Lola, offhandedly mentioning that the man before him was Lord Julien and that Lola was his wife. Bartos and Remi then begin tussling, with the former choking the latter on the table. Lola comes over to try and break things up, but in her attempt to separate the two, she sends Bartos flying into the fall, an errant nail piercing the back of his neck and killing him. While Kenna and the boy, who reveals his name as Pascal, leave the castle, despite Kenna’s disappointment in Bash not coming with her, Francis rushes to Catherine and Mary to inform them he convinced Henry to stay in France for the time being. Catherine, though, believes they can’t risk it and the hit continues on as planned, despite Francis’ protestations and Mary’s weakening. Except that as Henry is about to take communion, he gets attacked by a guard, who he beats to a bloody pulp.

Catherine then reveals that she stopped the poisoning in time and that the guard attack isn’t from her. She quickly deduces that the Duke is the one behind this, as he stands to win either way – if the hit succeeded, he’s already promised a job with Francis, and if the hit failed, Henry’s paranoia will return and he can take advantage of that by turning the king against his queen. For now, Henry will listen to no one but the Duke. Meanwhile, Remi and Lola try to determine their next move with a dead man in their new home – though she tries to get him to flee with her, Lola ends up returning to court alone, as Remi burns down the house (including the body of Bartos) and leaves on his own, opting to keep the woman he loves from coming into contact with the destruction he leaves in his path. Before they part, though, he tells her to never be alone while at court and to let the father of her baby, who will now be born with a name and respectability due to their marriage, see his offspring. While Pascal says a rhyming prayer to himself in the carriage with Kenna, the subject being the father that Bash killed out in the woods, Mary apologizes to Francis for not including him in the plan, telling him that she and Catherine wanted to spare him. She claims she did all this for France, something he wouldn’t have hesitated to do before, while he wonders just who she’s becoming while under Catherine’s wing.

In Henry’s war room, he mentions how he misjudged Francis, that his son would be content to hide and that fear is not something he can tolerate in his empire. Since God spared him, he’s going to destroy Elizabeth, kill Francis, and marry Mary.

Additional thoughts and observations:
-“You’re a very imaginative murderer.”
-Apologies for how ridiculously late this recap has been. You may have noticed that it’s upfronts season, aka TV blogger Hell Week. I’ve been over at ScreenFad dealing with renewals, cancellations, scheduling announcements, and trailers, so unfortunately, shows that I’ve regularly covered have suffered. However, upfronts are nearly over and I should be back in action, with the Reign finale recap to come soon after the East coast airing. Thank you to everyone who’s stood with me through this and who inquired about the recap absence – sometimes it can feel like I’m writing in a vacuum and that there’s nobody out there, so it was nice to know that people are there and that they appreciate these things.
–Reign-iest Reign Moment of the Week: Henry’s final rant to himself was just marvelously kooky. One of the things I’m looking forward to about the finale is to see what the heck they’re going to do regarding his mental state and redeemability, but hearing him go on about how he has to kill Francis and wed Mary was both hilariously soapy and strangely compelling, further twisting an already messed up royal family dynamic into something that could become much darker than a typical CW soap.
-Did you have Lord-Julien-isn’t-really-Lord-Julien in the Lord Julien Dysfunction Junction betting pool? Admittedly, I wasn’t expecting it, so I thought it was a nice twist that kept him from being too much the villain. While Lola throwing a grown man into the wall was a little silly, there was a sadness to her final scene with Remi that I liked and I appreciated that they didn’t give him a sense of closure. He’s got some demons that’ll have to be slain off-screen, both as a result of him taking on Julien’s identity and the crumbling of his marriage, and Lola is now in the interesting position of returning to court with no protection from the royals. Will she try and quickly find someone to marry? Or could she end up leaving court on her own?
-My favorite twist of the episode, though, was Bash murdering Pascal’s father some episodes ago. I love a show that’ll keep you on your toes regarding seemingly inconsequential elements – the murder was important for Bash’s psyche and all, but I didn’t expect it to come back up like this, his misdeeds literally staring him right in the face. You have to wonder how Kenna will react when she finds out, since she’s been good at getting the boy to talk, and whether slaying the Darkness will be worth it for Bash if he loses his wife as a result.
-Plus, everything about the woods and the Darkness is visually impressive, with the discovery of Pascal’s body particularly well-filmed.
-The score felt a little intrusive here, particularly during Kenna and Bash’s final moment. Sometimes it’s better to just let a moment breathe rather than piling on the music to tell us how to feel, y’know?
-I like how the final Mary/Francis conversation found them in completely different roles. It wasn’t perfect, since it was just a couple of episodes ago they had alternative perspectives, but it felt in line with who Mary’s become during the second half of the season and most of the weirdness came from the show time jumping between episodes. I’m hoping that a second season will take place in a more condensed time frame or, at the very least, there’ll be two distinct halves of season two that will be broken up by one big time jump. The show has a lot of historical ground to cover, but it misses out on some crucial character development by fast-forwarding when and how it does.
-I appreciate the show giving Henry a human moment during his story about his father. It has sometimes leaned on his craziness a bit too much, losing the man behind the madness, so learning something interesting that greatly informs who he became as both a man and a ruler was a nice touch.
–Next time on Reign: It’s the season finale and while Mary and Francis take drastic action to deal with Henry’s escalating madness, a terror in the woods puts everyone in peril.