10 thoughts on “Top 5 Random Thoughts on The Serpent Queen

  1. Totally agree about the Turkish women. A Sultan didn’t let his women (Ottoman sultan’s technically didn’t have wives, only concubines) be seen by any male who wasn’t a eunuch. And indeed nor did any Turk well-enough-off that he could afford to keep his womenfolk at home and send servants to do the shopping, etc.

    I like to think that the entire daft ‘Suleiman as wedding guest’ was thrown in there mainly because the costume designer was pining to have a crack at replicating that turban but wasn’t really interested in concubine gear (and probably knew the director wouldn’t want anything authentic but would insist on belly-dance stylev gear.

    Re Mary of Scots: I don’t know about chatting up random guardsmen, but actually it is true that she turned up unexpectedly. The Scots were expecting her but they hadn’t expected her quite so soon, and the welcoming delegation and the organisers of the ceremonial processions, music and feasts had to scramble to get ready. Also, she had left france in a flotilla of two galleys and two ships, but the ships had been detained by Queen Elizabeth’s fleet and only turned up later – minus all Mary’s horses which had been kept back as having no import papers! – so she didn’t have anything like the full royal retinue that would have been expected for the reigning queen of Scotland and dowager queen of France.

  2. PUPPERS! And thank you for more of the eye candy with those hot hot hot men too. Looking at the Turkish women, they could have even done something like Eva Green’s costume in mmm was it Kingdom of Heaven, which was gorgeous and total hotness (although that might’ve been just, well, Eva Green).

  3. The Titan portrait, minus the hat, shows a style that shows up a fair amount in Italian, specifically Venetian art. Basically Venetian ladies taking the short sleeved, hip length jacket like the one that the Turkish lady in the b&w woodcut is wearing, and wearing them over an Italian chemise as informal, at home wear.

    1. In all fairness, we’ve only just got to Queen Catherine’s time as regent: she’s got far more room to manoeuvre now that the men in her life are mostly overgrown boys and the King is her baby boy.

      I expect even more blatant Evil Queen-ing future seasons.

  4. I admit to having a fondness for this species – it might just be that those opening titles created an overwhelmingly positive first impression, but Ms. Liv Hill didn’t hurt and CHARLES DANCE as Il Papa (RIP) just sealed the deal on this one as a guilty pleasure.

    Then the show’s version of Mary, Queen of Scots, showed up and I cast aside shame with all the force of Saint Michel casting Lucifer out of Heaven.

    She is my very, very favourite adaptation of the historical person and I dearly want her to appear in a satirical murder mystery in which the former Henry, Lord Darnley, is revealed to have been murdered with half the Scottish political establishment as accessories to the crime (and the other half chewing the Early Modern equivalent of popcorn as they watched the entertainment).

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