Louis is thinking tres deep thoughts. Rohan is also thinking tres deep thoughts. Louis is tucked up in bed by Bontemps, who snuggles down inside a sleeping bag on the floor. The queen – remember her? – comes in and demands to sleep in the marital bed. Both Louis and Bontemps are quite put out by this. “It is most irregular,” says Bontemps. The candles flicker and the doors creak. Something mauvais is about to happen.
Alors! Henriette is now throwing up blood and has turned up in Louis’s bedroom. Quite the gathering of the clans. Fabien tries to drag Louis away but Louis is in too deep. He wants to stay while the doctor is summoned. The medecin immediately suspects poison. She’s had a lot of practice in this recently. Louis orders the palais to be put in lockdown. “Sequester the palace,” he announces grandly.
Madame de Montespan now barges into le roi’s chamber demanding a piece of the grieving-for-Henriette action. Sensing everything might be getting un peu claustrophobic, Rohan offers to take the Dauphin for a ride. Louis foolishly agrees. He’s going to wish he had Rohan CRB checked.
In another room, Not-So-Bad Philippe is thinking his own tres deep thoughts and starts raging against his frère. So much so, that Louis momentarily begins to doubt himself. Despite being allowed to take the Dauphin for a ride, Rohan is also getting himself into a tizzy. A touch of anger management in Versailles would work a treat. Moncour eyes up Rohan’s special Ring of Doom.
Down in the dungeon, Fabien is interrogating Sophie about her mère, while Henriette is still screaming in agony in le roi’s chambre. Louis and Not-So-Bad Philippe resume their argument, with Louis accusing Not-So-Bad Philippe of always having been crap at politics in école. He reiterates that “L’Etat c’est lui” and witters on about how music and culture will make France the centre of the universe. His case is slightly undermined by the grim techno beats that make up much of the incidental music.
The doc confirms what everyone already knew: Henriette has been poisoned. Louis is now on a roll with his A-level revision and talks through the geopolitical ramifications of Henriette’s death. “England will not be happy that King Charles II’s sister has been killed,” he observes. This is brilliant insight. For a moment, Versailles comes over all Loup Hall.
Back in his dungeon hideout, Fab is giving Moncour a serieusement dur temps and they argue about Madame de Clermont. Moncour ups the ante by getting into Hegelian dialectics. “Sometimes the closer you are to someone, the further away you are,” he reflects. “Perhaps you are looking in the wrong place.”
Fab goes upstairs to try his luck at looking elsewhere and interrogates the fat, useless courtier whose name I can’t remember. Fab may also be suffering from amnesia, as he doesn’t seem to know his name either. Louis interrupts them both to inform Fab that the fat, useless bloke is also one of his security chiefs and that his fatness and uselessness are part of his disguise. Fab then confronts Moncour again and this time Moncour goes ape-merde. First he stabs Fab in the gut, then he tries to whack Louis. Heureusement Fab has the presence of mind to toss le roi his épée and Moncour winds up mort.
While Rohan and the Dauphin are playing soldats in the foret, Louis and Not-So-Bad Philippe are having yet another heart-to-heart. This time they try to resolve some childhood issues. Not-So-Bad Philippe reckons Louis has no memory of an incident that happened at least 20 ans ago. But Louis does, and hands over the yellow plastic figurine he got from the service station on the Autoroute du Sud to prove it.
Despite being a dab hand at treating people who have been poisoned, the doc announces that she cannot help Henriette and that she will die soon. Louis orders the Versailles garden to be brought into his room, and there follows a prolonged death bed scene in which Henriette confesses her love for both Louis and her mari, Not-So-Bad Philippe. Both men have tears in their eyes. As do I. For the first time in 10 episodes, the pace is allowed to drop to let some real feeling creep in through the cracks. Either that, or I was having a weak moment. Henriette dies gracefully. And tastefully. Afterwards, Not-So-Bad Philippe and Mauvais Philippe decide they want to get away from it all and be alone together. Le roi initially tries to stop them, then decides not to get in the way of vrai amour.
The fab Fab isn’t un homme to let a major abdominal stab wound keep him down. Soon, he is pacing the boards, pondering the true meaning of Moncour’s dialectics of Pure Treason. Finally it dawns on him. Rohan est un mauvais bloke. Trop tard, because out in the forêt, Rohan and a gang in plastic masks have topped all the guards and kidnapped the Dauphin. Louis meanwhile is standing on a rock, looking down on the slow progress of his building works at Versailles. Anyone might think he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Only une année to wait till series deux …
