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Home / Recaps & Reviews / Reign 2.14 “The End of Mourning” Recap

Shilo Adams in Recaps & Reviews, Reign Feb 18, 2015 0

While out playing in the snow with Lola and Kenna, Mary gets pulled aside by Conde, who asks her permission to take Lola with him to his estate. It\'s simply for the two to get to know one another better, so Mary is more than happy to let him go. Things aren\'t so happy for Kenna, though, as Bash reacts badly to watching Antoine flirt with her; rather than siding with her husband, she blames him for always working and never having the time for her that she needs. Conde then pulls his brother out of this latest bad situation and tries to get through to him that going after Kenna is not going to lead anywhere good. But Antoine doesn\'t want it to lead anywhere at all - he\'s simply looking for a distraction to take his mind off of his dying wife, who\'s at home about to succumb to a cancerous tumor. Given that she only wants those closest to her at her bedside, Antoine is understandably distraught at not receiving an invitation.

Back at the castle, Mary receives a visit from the Duke of Guise, looking to continue his position as king\'s magistrate. However, he doesn\'t get it due to running when the plague was spreading and his talk of the Bourbons circling the French throne doesn\'t curry him any favors with the queen, who must then attend a family luncheon. The topic? The poisoning of Catherine and Henry, with Narcisse and Catherine laying out what they know about the poisoned Bible. They don\'t know who did it, but the main suspect is Frederick, one of Henry\'s valets; he was the one who urged the former king to seek solace in scripture and when Henry succumbed to the wounds inflicted at the joust, Frederick fled the country. As such, Catherine promises this man, who has hurt her entire family by leading their patriarch to an early grave, will pay the price for what he did.

Catherine then runs into the Duke in the hallway and he attempts to resume their flirtatious relationship, saying that the main reason he\'s at the castle is to court her. She dismisses what they once had as ancient history, but he tells her that he wants to spend his remaining days with someone he considers to be an equal. The Duke argues that the two could build an empire that supports Francis\'s rule and provides a fatherly figure for her younger children, words that seem to hit with her. Bash finds out that Frederick had ties to Conde, as he served under Louis in Spain, so he proposes that Mary help keep her friend in France long enough that he may gather the proper evidence to build a case. While Mary tries to defend Conde, Francis assures her that this wouldn\'t be an indictment of her, should Conde be the one behind the poisoning; it\'s just a side effect of the rivalry between the royal family and Conde\'s family. Elsewhere, Lola and Kenna pay a visit to Greer, who\'s living in an inn after having Castleroy\'s assets seized. When they arrive, she\'s obviously intoxicated and inadvertently reveals that she doesn\'t have enough money for food.

Narcisse meets with Catherine and wonders what her deal is with the Duke, telling her that he thought she was done with all this dating mumbo jumbo after Henry\'s death. Catherine then reminds him that plenty of men find her desirable and uses the choices he forced Francis into to get Narcisse to comply with following the paper trail surrounding the poisoning. Mary gets Conde to agree to stay by dangling the idea of a royal dinner in his honor as bait, but things quickly turn when he informs her that word around the castle is that she and Francis aren\'t staying together anymore. He tears into her manipulation of him, saying that he\'s only a chess piece to her anyway, and presses her about whether she wants him to continue courting Lola. Mary admits that she doesn\'t want the relationship to continue, though she doesn\'t specify the reason as to why. Meanwhile, Francis has a similar conversation with Lola, who is more receptive to the idea of not following through on the arrangement with Conde. What she tells him, though, is that she misses when the two used to co-parent their son, as Francis hasn\'t exactly been willing to spend time with her, even in mixed company, since Mary caught them sleeping in the same bed. Lola understands Francis pulling back to preserve Mary\'s feelings, but she still mourns the loss of the closest thing to family that she has right now.

Greer gets some much needed cash from Lola and laments the fact that she can\'t return to Scotland. There\'s no way her father would welcome her back after all this, so she\'s decided to be a lady to a foreign noblewoman who doesn\'t know about her reputation. Their conversation gets interrupted, though, by what seem to be sexual noises from the room next door. However, when Greer goes to investigate, it turns that her neighbor Charlene, a prostitute, was just hammering the headboard back into place. She began using the space behind the headboard as a hiding place for her possessions, which have become all the more valuable since her reputation was slandered beyond repair. Back at the castle, Antoine again flirts with Kenna, this time over the strawberries and snow delicacy that will be served at the royal dinner. This time, though, Kenna tells him that he\'s making her uncomfortable, to which he apologizes and she quickly forgives.

As the Duke of Guise taunts Narcisse with the end of the latter\'s relationship with Catherine, Catherine comes by and tells him that they are to meet at the lavender house that evening after dinner. Narcisse then receives a message from one of his men, just as Mary laments having to manipulate one of her few true allies to Francis. Just then, Bash comes in and breaks the news that the valet (and prime suspect in the poisoning) is dead, having been murdered in Conde\'s region. He still believes that Frederick was behind the poison, given that the man had mountainous debt that was taken care of after an encounter with Conde. Francis then decides that the time is right to confront the Bourbons, which he does by bringing the tainted Bible to the dinner table and questioning Conde as to whether Frederick was under his orders. Conde denies any involvement in the poisoning and fires back an accusation that this was all due to what happened between him and Mary. Just when things seem ready to explode, Catherine bursts into the party to let everyone know that it wasn\'t Conde who was behind the poisoning. It was the Duke of Guise.

Conde is understandably furious about being thought of as a murderer. He calls the royals out on their hypocrisy, given that they were behind the death of his brother and countless other unknown souls, before leaving; Antoine, though, stays behind to formally forgive Bash for acting on a king\'s order. He might not like what happened, but he knows that he must forgive Bash for his soul and the sake of relations between their two countries. While the Duke\'s carriage is stopped in the middle

of the night, his body littered with arrows, Greer hits the bar again, still lacking the fundage for a proper meal. To make matters worse, she gets mistaken for a prostitute by a lonely out-of-towner, though she at least gets to direct some business to Charlene.

Mary finds Conde and he goes off on her for lying to him and continuing to take advantage of him. He also confirms that what he wrote in the letter to her is very much true, still to this day. Antoine isn\'t exactly a fan of how Conde is handling this situation and accuses his brother of bringing up their suspicions in order to protect Bash. With Bash\'s life saved, as any act on it would be traced back to the Bourbons, Antoine knows just what to do in order to make the man suffer. Elsewhere, Greer finds herself on a job interview with a Hungarian countess, only for things to fall apart when Charlene bursts in. The prostitute was apparently slipped something in her drink, as she woke up with her long hair shorn off and the john Greer set her up with nowhere in sight. Greer loses the job opportunity, just as Mary tries to write a letter to her mother explaining what happened to the Duke. Francis tells her that he hates that they didn\'t discover the poison earlier, as that was the catalyst for everything that happened since, but Mary\'s heart is still decidedly closed toward him. She doesn\'t want to force things between either Conde and Lola or herself and Francis, though Francis laments that his heart is closed without her.

Antoine meets with Narcisse in secret and it turns out that the two conspired to set the Duke up. Antoine is the one responsible for the poisoning, with Narcisse paying off the right people to forge the necessary documents. The two now have the noose in which to hang the other, but Narcisse, fresh with an infusion of gold, is more concerned about making a move against Francis. While Charlene gives Greer her cut of the john\'s money, enough to buy the latter food for the first time in a while, and Kenna receives strawberry and snow cakes from Antoine, Conde confronts his brother with his suspicion that he was responsible for the poisoning. He comes down on Antoine for making him a liar, saying that he\'ll never trust him again, yet Antoine is more than happy at sullying Henry\'s reputation and showing the world what type of monster the man truly was. Francis and Lola attempt to resume their friendship, given that he\'s missed her as much as she\'s missed him, while Mary meets with Conde and informs him that she knows she took advantage of him. She made him call off the thing with Lola because she didn\'t want to lose him, yet the two can\'t do anything about their mutual feelings for one another, with the lack of freedom Mary has, the fact that she\'s still recognized as a married woman, and her undying loyalty to France.

-"If you\'ll excuse me, I have to speak to the whore next door."

-"You\'re just going to look for another prostitute, aren\'t you?"

-"He\'s probably off somewhere petting it now, the pervert."

-First off, apologies for this recap being as late as it is. I ran into some personal issues this week that got in the way and this ungodly weather isn\'t doing me any favors. I promise the next recap will be much more on time. Thanks to those of you who\'re hanging in with me.

-Even though I think the romantic angst is the worst part of this show, its status in season two being either episodic filler or fan base pandering, I kind of love that they\'re leaning into Mary and Conde. Mary has been shown as being someone so focused and so aware of how the public views her, so it\'s kind of nice to see her listening to her heart for once instead of her head, even when she knows what kind of impact this relationship could have on her rule. There\'s no way she could continue as she was living, not when she\'s not as cynical and jaded as Catherine, and I think being with someone that she feels understands her and someone that she chose to be with could do her some good.

-Favorite dress of the episode: The Grecian-y that Mary wore to the royal dinner was beautiful. The white very much stood out within the show\'s color palette. I also liked that fierce hat she wore while playing in the snow.

-I\'m very curious what the show is going to do with Kenna. It feels like they\'re playing on her past here, as Kenna isn\'t someone used to her feminine wiles not being enough for a man; she\'s not used to dealing with real relationship problems, so in the face of having to be an adult, she runs back to how she operated before she married Bash. She gets the attention that she desires from Antoine, the same attention that she\'s used to getting from men, while she positions herself with a man of greater power than her husband, almost as an insurance policy. But would they have her full-on leave Bash for Antoine, especially since the audience knows that Antoine is only interested in her to ruin Bash\'s life?

-I actually liked all the reveals from this episode. Having Antoine be the one responsible for the poisoning connects the two seasons in nice ways and makes him much more of a dangerous (and compelling) figure than he would have been otherwise. The alliance with Narcisse is particularly intriguing, as teaming up the season\'s antagonists can only ratchet up the tension from here on out. Not only are there now more secrets lingering on the castle walls, Narcisse has the capital to make some noise, which can only put Francis on his back heels and put political pressure on the king that will truly test his mettle. Narcisse could have been a pretty strong character had he stayed chained up inside the castle longer, but he flourishes when shoved into the middle of the action and I\'m more than ready for Craig Parker to mix things up over the next eight episodes.

-Greer of Kinross, Accidental Pimp is my favorite potential

spin-off yet. Aside from the immense comedic value this particular storyline had, I love seeing any women on this show take their future by the horns and make a life for themselves without being connected to a man. It won\'t be easy for her, but it\'s a good way to use the character without a marriage or Mary to rely on and I like that it might give us a regular glimpse at life in the village. The latter, in particular, could be a way for the show to keep tabs on public sentiment about the royals, so even after being banished, Greer might prove especially valuable to her friend.

-The shot of Catherine after Diane gets brought up makes me think that we\'re only a few episodes from that little skeleton dancing its way out of her closet.

-I might be into the idea of Narcisse and Catherine. He gets tamed by a woman with power and presence; she gets to have a little fun with a handsome new sparring partner. At the very least, they would make excellent allies and exquisite scene partners, given that Parker and Megan Follows are giving my two favorite performances on the show.

: Mary\'s mother warns her of a threat to the throne, while Kenna receives an intriguing offer from Antoine.

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Shilo Adams is a contributor to KSiteTV who has written for the likes of TVOvermind, ScreenFad, and TVHackr. You can e-mail him at sda2107@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @shilo_adams.

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