Reign S04E08 Recap

- Advertisement -

SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.

Mary and Darnley’s relationship continues to deteriorate. It seems that since his indiscretions with Keira last week and with Mary’s refusal to forgive him, their prospects as a happily married couple are getting increasingly and rapidly worse.

Darnley continued his streak of screw ups by insulting Francis in front of his Medici cousin, Lucrezia, who’d gone to Scotland to attend Mary’s wedding. As an important Catholic ally whose support was of great necessity to Mary, he very nearly soured any chance she had of securing Lucrezia to her side. I understand that, as he said, he wanted to defend Mary from rumours of being barren, but he could have done that without seeing any negative toward anyone, Francis especially.

He upset Mary as well. He knows how much she loved Francis. Darnley has not been doing himself and favours lately. I still love him and Mary as a couple (when they work) and am hoping that at some point they get past this. That is if Lord Bothwell doesn’t find his way into Mary’s heart – and bed – before that can happen.

Mary just so happened to run into him whilst on her way to speak to the owner of lands she promised to Lucrezia as an apology and wound up spending the day with him when they had to abandon their row boat in a flash flood. Bothwell reveals himself as the Loyal Watchman; he used to work closely with her mother and promised to “watch over” her whens he returned to Scotland. He doesn’t like Darnley either.

Whist he and Mary are in the woods drying off from their boat escape, a scruffy looking man comes up to them and delivers a message from Bash; that she can have love or an heir but not both. His prophesy only strengthens Mary’s need to marry Darnley. She’ll likely fall for Bothwell and he’ll end up being the “love” she can’t have if she wants an heir.

Mary and Darnley’s troubles aren’t done just yet because James discovers that Keira is still in Scotland. To make matters worse, Darnley was seen leaving the castle without an escort. Mary sends James to make sure that Keira leaves Scotland this time and in his effort to remove her from the inn she was staying at, she is run over by a horse and dies. As it turns out, Darnley didn’t know that Keira was still in Scotland and she had been because she was too ill to travel. Now Mary’s actions have gotten her killed and he doesn’t know if he can ever forgive her. There really is no salvaging this relationship.

Luckily for Mary, everyone’s favourite Queen Mother, Catherine, arrives just in time to console her and she begs her to get her out of her marriage with Darnley. Aside from Catherine probably not being the best person to ask such a favour of since her solution to everything is murder, she has her own troubles at French court to take care of.

Before she left French court, at Leeza’s urging, to attend Mary’s wedding, Charles was still very much a Protestant. Not even Nicole’s womanly wiles were enough to convince him to at least pretend to be Catholic in order to save face with France’s Catholic nobles. Surprisingly enough, the person who does get through to Charles is Luc.

His and Claude’s marriage is not exactly going well since she is busy mourning her relationship with Leith and fearing for the lives of her brothers. With Charles a Protestant and Henry on his way back home since Catherine sent for him, Leeza’s plan to incite civil unrest in France (and kill one of her brothers in the process) is well under way. So Luc decides to cheer her up by speaking to Charles. He does so under the guise of wanting to know what she likes she so he can please her, but really, he’s there to convince Charles to go back to Catholicism.

Charles wants to remain Protestant because he fears a return to Catholicism will ruin the peace he has attained since converting and he doesn’t want to be under the pressure of the Vatican as a Catholic king. That’s all well and good, but like Luc points out, Charles will be under pressure from anyone regardless because he is king. Charles actually listens to Luc and invites Catholic nobles to court. Unfortunately Luc later finds him in the same state of madness he had been in before.

In England, even Elizabeth is under the thumb of Spain. An English pirate, John Hawkins, stole gold from the Spanish and they are demanding that she imprison and punish him for his crimes against them. He earns himself Elizabeth’s mercy by getting drunk with her, demonstrating the wonders of the New World (tomatoes and turkeys) and encouraging her to think beyond Europe and to explore the New World as well; to obtain the wealth and power that Spain has, or even more than, in doing so. Elizabeth eventually agrees with Hawkins and gives him a royal charter to explore the New World on behalf of England.