It’s not good for multiple characters in Marie Antoinette season 2, episode 4. It looks like Cardinal Rohan may have it worse.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS for Marie Antoinette season 2, episode 4.
Jeanne’s plan for the necklace continues, and it leads to Rohan finally learning that he hasn’t been communicating with the queen at all. Meanwhile, the queen realizes that people hate her, and Yolande has a proposition for the king.
Provance also starts to get jealous of his wife’s affair. Oh, these poor men! They’re allowed to have affairs, but their wives cannot. Oh, the double standard.
Antoinette and Yolande go see a play in Marie Antoinette season 2, episode 4
The episode starts with the reveal of the portrait that Antoinette had drawn of her. It’s a massive event, and it backfires on her and Louis. Many comment about how her clothing makes her look like a prostitute. While Antoinette felt like the portrait was freeing, it’s clear that the people of France are not ready for this.
She decides she needs to go into Paris and see how the people are. That takes her and Yolande to a tavern where there is a play about Antoinette. Well, the lead actress playing Antoinette — who is the woman Jeanne gets to pretend to be Antoinette in the meeting with Rohan — makes fun of the queen. In a way, it’s surprising that people would get away with something like this at the time. They could be executed for it. And yet, it makes it clear what the people really think.
The support for the monarchy is dying, and Antoinette feels terrible for it. All she wants is to be liked, but she’s trying too hard. So, when she attends Court dressed more modestly, it’s not all that surprising when she still gets mean comments. Look, the rich are always going to be stuck up. Antoinette cannot win at this point, and that shouldn’t get to her, but of course it does.
Antoinette does find a way to gain some support, though. She decides on a new portrait, and this time with her children. Plus, she decides to show Louis first in private. It’s a win! Is it enough to undo the damage? Well, we know how history goes.
Rohan realizes that he has been played
Meanwhile, Rohan is dealing with a mess. He meets with who he believes is Antoinette, but she has to rush off before he can get close enough to see that it’s not actually her. Jeanne writes to him to apologize, and she shares that she will send her own guard for the necklace. The meeting was enough to get Rohan to buy the necklace, and he gives it over to the man he believes is Antoinette’s guard.
Of course, it’s not the guard. It’s Villiers, who is then attacked at the meeting point. The necklace is stolen off him, so when he goes back to Jeanne and her husband empty-handed, the husband puts on a show that makes it clear that Villiers will be caught and killed for his actions in all of this. As the husband stabs Jeanne in the stomach, Villiers runs away.
Well, it was all a show. Never trust a conwoman. Jeanne had chosen her husband, and it was him who stole the necklace. They will use it for themselves, although Jeanne is not going back with him. She likes it in the city too much.
She ends the episode to see Rohan, who is slowly piecing it all together that Antoinette hasn’t been writing to him. All of this has been a con, and he has no idea who has played him this whole time. He doesn’t even think for a second that it’s Jeanne. In fact, he opens up to her more. He is destitute, and he can’t afford to pay the jeweler for the necklace, who believes that Anoinette had bought the necklace.
Yolande has a proposition for Louis in Marie Antoinette season 2, episode 4
As for Louis, he goes to see the people to also see what the feelings are like. He tries some of the pate that the farmers make, and he pretends to like it. However, before he goes back to the palace, he wants to go to the beach. It’s a freeing moment for him, and it makes it clear that he feels trapped in the role that he has to play.
Yolande has been his listening ear this whole time. She wants to find a way to help Antoinette, and I can’t figure her out. She’s done things that have hurt Antoinette, but it does seem like she actually cares at times. As she suggests to become Louis’s mistress, I can’t tell if it is to help Antoinette no longer be the villain to the country — because she would be as his mistress — or because she actually wants to be with Louis.
Well, Louis is a respectable man. He makes it clear that he can’t have an affair. It doesn’t matter that Antoinette is clearly still hooking up with her lover; he made those vows and he will remain faithful to her. So sweet, although Yolande doesn’t think so.
Louis does have another task in the episode. Provance realizes that his wife is having an affair with a woman called Margurite, and he is upset by that. He wants his wife back under his control, so he decides to go to Louis to share that Margurite is a spy. She should be sent back to her husband in the country, and that’s exactly what Louis does. He is so easily manipulated by Provance that it hurts. What hurts more is that Provance’s wife has no idea that her husband is the creator of her misery.
Marie Antoinette airs on Sundays at 10/9c on PBS.
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