The Musketeers - 'A Marriage of Inconvenience', 'The Prodigal Father', 'The Accused' and 'Trial and Punishment'

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After a marathon wrap up of The Musketeers, herewith my final reviews and series two round up.

In 'A Marriage of Convenience' Rochefort makes his move to corner control of the court, while an assassin stalks the king's cousin, part of a vital diplomatic wedding to cement a Swedish treaty. In a surprisingly subtle move, the episode hits us with a Romeo and Juliet dummy before revealing the old 'false victim' routine. We end with the Musketeers once more blamed for whatever seems to have gone wrong and Rochefort First Minister of France.

Constance confronts her husband over her decision to shack up with D'Artagnan. He hits her and is later killed by the assassin, dying in his rival's arms while spitting out a venomous final curse.

"Stannis?"
"Davos."
"Right."

'The Prodigal Father' wraps up an ongoing thread about Porthos' paternity. His biodaddy turns out to be the Marquis de Belgard (Liam Cunningham), who welcomes him to a home apparently dominated by Porthos' slinky, ice queen half-sister Eleanor and her racist husband. While Porthos decides if he belongs with the Belgards or the Musketeers, his comrades uncover Eleanor's trade in 'innocents'.

While the boys are thus distracted, however, Rochefort further isolates the King and, incensed to learn that he regifted a crucifix that he gave to her to Aramis, makes his move on the Queen in a rather nasty scene which is thankfully interrupted by the arrival of Constance and a hairpin to the face which secures Rochefort the eyepatch he has been missing.

'A Marriage of Inconvenience' is a good entry into the overall plot of the second series, but 'The Prodigal Father', while it brings Rochefort's pigeons home to roost and is not bad, squanders Porthos' subplot in a single hurrah. Since the crux of the story is Porthos questioning his place with the Musketeers, it was all raised and resolved a little too quickly. It might have worked better with the story salted more evenly through the series.

The blessed sisters of awesome.

Anyway, this brings us to the concluding two-parter, in which the spurned Rochefort plays his endgame. In 'The Accused' he deploys a letter he advised the Queen to write way back in 'An Ordinary Man' to accuse Anne of plotting with Spain, and when that looks set to fail to secure her execution, has Marguerite the governess testify that the Queen and Aramis are lovers and the Dauphin Aramis' son... which is actually true. The Queen is spirited away to safety, but Constance and Dr Lamait (a supporting character utterly doomed by being so gosh darned lovely) are arrested.

'The Accused' sees the return of the Blessed Sisters of St FuckYeah, the most awesome nuns ever. They don't mount a defence of the convent against bandits this time, but one of them does forge Rochefort's handwriting to lure his Spanish spymaster into a trap. Sadly, before anything can be done Lamait is executed (see, doomed) and when the Queen returns to face her accuser, Aramis is also arrested.

Serious props for using the sword and not the axe, and using it
right.

In 'Trial and Punishment', the Musketeers - including Treville and aided by Milady - go full-on maverick cop, rescuing Constance from execution before rushing to help Porthos capture the spymaster Vargas. It is then a race against time to get Vargas to Louis and reveal the plot before Rochefort can secure an execution order for Anne.

Although all is resolved and we end with a wedding, we also end with France going to war with Spain and a salutary reminder that the Musketeers are a military regiment. Constance's honeymoon is apparently two hours in the Captain's private room at the Musketeer barracks, although when Athos didn't go to meet and run away with Milady I more than half expected her to pull a Lorna Doone on the ceremony. Aramis also departs to join a monastery, although his comrades are intent on retrieving him for the duration of war at least, having offered himself to a cloistered life if Anne should be spared the consequences of his sins.

The Musketeers continues to be a lot of fun, and much better than it has any right to be. The performances are all excellent, and while Peter Capaldi is missed as Richlieu, Marc Warren's smug snake Rochefort is a treat, a villain you love to hate and whose success never fails to enrage. Tamla Kari transforms the simpering Constance of the source into a proper character, with strength that she shows standing up to her husband's tyranny of convention and calling out her boyfriend's failure to understand why disgrace is a much bigger thing for her than for him, as much as by being a badass with a sword.

Overall, the series does an excellent job of evoking, if not the actual period, then of a time and place where there is a very marked double standard, and what seems easy for a man is colossal for a woman. This actually affects almost all of the major female characters: Milady was originally condemned in part because she hid her past from Athos, making him doubt her when she needed his faith; Athos' almost-sister-in-law rails for a lost position that she can not regain without male support; Queen Anne needs a son in order to secure her own position; even Marguerite is trapped because Rochefort's revelation of her affair with Aramis would destroy her.

In addition, the series makes no bones that the leads are devoted to the service of a vain, selfish, short-sighted and ungrateful sovereign whom they will never betray. It makes for a tense narrative as they struggle to retain their own honour alongside their duty.