Now that Mary & George has set the scene for Mary Villiers’ loathsome exploits in its dastardly premiere, the show can start getting truly down and dirty, coating itself in the muck of royal revelry. In the limited series’ second episode, Julianne Moore’s Mary is coaxing the favor of not just King James I for her son George (Nicholas Galitzine), but of a potential wife for her troubled first-born child John (Tom Victor), as well. John’s violent impulses could spell trouble for Mary and George’s larger plans with the king, so it’s in her best interests to marry him off and put him out of mind.
But that’s far easier said than done once a slew of new enemies step in to block her path. Oh, well! She’ll just throw them onto her ever-growing list of adversaries. Episode 2 shows us that there is no danger or foe that Mary is incapable of staring down with a steadfast glare and a smirk.
In 1615, about a year or so after George first met King James (and almost lost his hand for a violent outburst that followed), Mary ventures to a brothel, where she meets a young prostitute Sandie (Niamh Algar), who propositions her for sex. “Why pay for a fruit so easy to pluck?” Mary asks Sandie. “I say you need something, love,” Sandie says, eyeing Mary up beyond just what Sandie can see of Mary on the surface. “I’ve seen enough half-souls in my days, worn down by mistress time, those who never feel full of heart. And, I see you.”
But Mary has business to attend to. She’s meeting Sir David (Angus Wright), sitting in the corner, munching on brothel prunes. (No, that’s not a euphemism.) Sir David has become Mary’s ally inside the king’s court. He’s desperate to get rid of the pompous Earl of Somerset (Laurie Davidson), who has the king wrapped around his finger. Sir David can promise George a direct road to the king—literally. George will stand on a dirt road that the king’s court is using to pass through the country, pouting his gorgeous lips in the way he does, hoping to attract the king’s attention. Mary sees it as a bad deal, but Sir David tells her it’s a rare opportunity. Somerset has had the king all but locked up in cocksure pleasure. Sir David explains that the Queen hates all of the king’s bedchamber companions (for obvious reasons, jealousy being the first of them), but that she sided with George after his savage display in front of the king because perhaps, she’s entranced by George’s “girlish” features.
On the country road where he’s to meet the king, George finds that he has a whole lot of unexpected competition. Beautiful young men from the countryside have gathered there, all hoping to draw the royal’s gaze so they can escape their provincial lives to be one of the king’s mouths or holes. George attracts an older, brutish man in the crowd, who comes onto George by asking if he’s a “hammer or anvil, shovel or bucket, or both.” George refuses to answer the veiled top-or-bottom question, telling the man he’ll punch him in both of his eyes. “I don’t mind, I like it rough,” his suitor purrs in return. The man explains to him that Somerset originally lured the king by breaking his leg at a joust, where the king took pity on him. George, however, is confident he needs no such sympathy to attract King James. But when the king and his men ride by, George can barely get a glance from the king inside of his carriage, falling into the path of horses trying, and just narrowly avoiding being trampled.
With his pride bruised, Mary beckons George for a hunt. They are, however, not actually hunting, but rather cleaning up a problem. John has murdered one of their servants’ dogs. “A man’s hands choked him,” Mary says. “It was a docile thing, for all its yapping. If its body is found, people will know it was John. His wounds, his moods, the servants talk, Other houses talk. We are on the edge of something. Who marries John if this is known?” It’s a pressing issue, given that Sir Edward Coke (Adrian Rawlins) is looking for a “soft, delicate man” to wed his daughter. When George balks at these adjectives, Mary tempers him. “Who does not have some violence in their heart?” Mary asks. “John needs a future too, now won’t you help your brother? It would involve a lie, and to lie well, you must believe it too.” With that, George shoots the dog’s dead body to make the death look closer to an accident.
At a dinner with Sir Edward Coke and his wife, Lady Hatton (Nicola Walker)—who kept her late husband’s name and his massive fortune—Edward speaks about being more in favor of Queen Elizabeth than King James, to his wife’s dismay. “Just because Elizabeth never shared a bed, or admitted to it, why must she be touted as some magic hymen savior of all mankind?” Lady Hatton asks rhetorically. “Is King James really any worse because his favorite pursuits are here to hunt and to fuck?”
Sir Edward asks his wife to remember the young, virgin ears or their daughter and Mary’s younger children, a suggestion which Lady Hatton laughs off. “Aren’t we here for the exact opposite fucking purpose? The point of this dinner is to consider sacrificing Francis’ body and mind to a union with him,” she says, referring to John. “How dare you pretend he’s good enough for her? And you want my inheritance to pay the dowry? I would rather strangle her dead, it would be a kindness. Thank goodness I don’t rely on my husband’s money to do anything, what an ever-closing prison that would be.”
Mary considers this to be a thinly veiled jab at her marrying up, which rightfully concerns her. If others don’t perceive Mary as a woman with power, then she’s not working hard enough. So, Mary hatches a new plan to get George in front of the king once more. “Perhaps we should take a trip together to London, move things along,” Mary suggests. “We need to be less like the hound and more like sweet John. Let us seize what should be fucking ours.”
Mary returns to the brothel, where she once again meets Sir David, who arranges a meeting for her with Queen Anne (Trine Dyrholm). The queen inquires if Mary’s family, the Beaumonts, are a noble line. (If you’ll remember from Episode 1, the Beaumonts are not Mary’s real family but rather her former employers who were paid off by Mary’s first husband to forge her lineage so as not to besmirch his name.) Mary lies to the queen with the same conviction she asked George to have earlier in the episode, and the queen believes Mary that George is of pure blood.
Mary sets up a dance performance for the king, in which George will perform and steal the king’s wandering eye. After the show, the queen tells her husband that their son, the prince, is sick, and Somerset doesn’t care to follow as the king checks on his child. In that moment of privacy, the queen brings George over to give him a proper introduction. “I think it’s time for a new member in your bedchamber,” the queen says. The king, awestruck by George’s beauty, asks him to kneel. George is knighted and welcomed into the king’s sexual fold. While all this is happening, Mary once again goes back to the brothel to meet Sandie, and two of them make love. It’s an erotic experience for Mary, but like everything else she does, it’s partly a power play. With Sandie under her thumb, Mary has a lackey who will do her bidding when needed. When that will be, Mary just doesn’t know yet.
A man who followed Mary to the door of the brothel sits and waits outside all night. Sandie suspects it’s someone looking for intel on her, or perhaps someone who already knows something Mary doesn’t want them to. “If I were you,” Sandie says, “I would clean house before he burns it all to the dirty fucking ground.” Mary heads to her bookkeeper, Xander (Ankur Bahl), who was also the executor of her husband’s will and the keeper of the secret surrounding Mary’s lineage. Unfortunately, someone else beat Mary there, and in turn, beat up Xander, who gave up her secret about not being a Beaumont by blood, but rather by money.
A few days later, the king’s court goes for a hunt in the woods, during which George falls from his horse after a tussle with an envious Somerset. Having gotten a tip from that man who propositioned him for sex back on the dirt road, George gets up, steadies himself, and bolts to smash himself into a tree to worsen his wounds. Just as he expected, the King finds George and takes pity on him, even going so far as to suspect foul play by Somerset. The king ensures that George’s wounds are dressed, and safely back at the palace, asks George to fuck him. “Take me, bury me, I want to forget who I am, I’m nothing but your subject,” the king says as George bends him over.
Meanwhile, Mary narrows down her suspects, determining that Sir David is the one who is after her secret. She guesses that Sir David may be a double agent, working with Somerset to deceptively get rid of any man who might curry the king’s favor. That, or he’s doing his due diligence to make sure the king doesn’t dally with anyone who isn’t of noble blood. Either way, Mary can’t have it. Always one step ahead, Mary gives Sir David and his assistant a dose of drugged brothel prunes. Sir David dies, but his assistant lives, waking up hours later. The assistant brings Sir David’s finger and ring as proof of his death, along with the signed certificate that explains Mary’s background, to Sir Francis Bacon (Mark O’Halloran), the king’s attorney general.
This could spell trouble, not just for Mary, but for George too. Lying to the king is punishable by death, and though King James is a wanton, amiable man who prioritizes his pleasure, he doesn’t take kindly to betrayal. But if we’ve learned one thing from just two episodes of Mary & George, it’s that Mary always has a Plan B, and it’s anticipating all of the villainous ways that Mary will put that plan into action that makes the show so damn exciting.
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