'Marie Antoinette' Recap: Season 2 Episode 1

Marie Antoinette airs Sundays at 9:00 pm on WTTW and is available to stream by WTTW Passport members. Recap the previous and following episodes and season.
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Marie Antoinette has been queen of France for a decade. While out on a carriage ride through Paris, she spots two snow effigies of herself and her husband, Louis XVI. They are presumably in gratitude for the aid they have distributed to their people during this brutally cold winter, but a man lies frozen near to death in between them. Antoinette stops the carriage and brings him a fur for warmth, but a crowd of cold, destitute people gather at the sight of her. When the suffering man reaches out and touches her, her guards hit him and shuffle her back to the carriage through the crowd.

Back at Versailles, surrounded by glittering chandeliers and gilt mirrors, Antoinette asks Louis for more money for her aid efforts. He agrees to spare it. Antoinette also refuses to buy an opulent diamond necklace made by the jeweler Boehmer, despite his best efforts; she deigns to let her friend and children’s governess Yolande choose a ring instead, to keep Boehmer’s debts at bay.

Antoinette is again pregnant, but she and Louis rarely see each other (or their two children), busy as they are with affairs of state and weighing requests for money from nobles. Among those is the Marquis de Lafayette, back from America to try to get more funds for George Washington and the Revolutionary War. Louis refuses; he’s already contributed plenty to the cause.

Among the soldiers fighting with the nascent United States on behalf of France is the Swedish Count Axel von Fersen – with whom Antoinette happened to fall in love before he sailed away three years ago. She writes him love letters in lemon juice, visible only when held up to a flame, and keeps them in a hidden compartment of a desk drawer. Only Yolande knows about these – and she is the one to tell Antoinette that Fersen is returning from the Caribbean.

For such attentiveness and loyalty, Antoinette and Louis decide to elevate Yolande to a duchy – a request she had previously made on behalf of her husband and their lover, but had been refused by Antoinette, who believed clearing their debts was enough.

But now Antoinette wants to show the court that loyalty will be rewarded and titles aren’t only for ancient families, like the Rohans. Antoinette finds Cardinal Rohan particularly odious; it is his requests for favor that spurred her and Louis to promote Yolande and other servants.

But Yolande and her men still need more money, since her lover is again drowning in gambling debts. Now that she is a duchess, his debts have been called in – with a violent warning. And they will transfer to her husband if the lover dies. So Yolande tells both men to flee to the countryside while she finds the money. She doesn’t want to beg the queen again, so she instead decides to try installing her friend Calonne as Louis’ financial controller – a position from which he will have access to public funds that he can steal to pay the debts.

Louis is aware of this potential for corruption; it’s why he refused to appoint his brother Provence to the position. But the position has been unfilled for too long, so he needs to find a candidate.

When Antoinette arrives at a supposedly intimate gathering for Yolande, she is surprised to find a crowd. Furthermore, Yolande is rude to her, having just learned her husband and lover fled without saying goodbye. Yolande apologizes to Antoinette the next day, but distrust has grown.

So when Antoinette’s secret letters to Fersen disappear, Antoinette considers Yolande a suspect. She reveals the existence of the letters to her aide, Breteuil, and asks him to find the thief – but doesn’t tell him that Yolande also knows about them.

The actual thief is a stranger to Antoinette and the court. Jeanne is a poor woman who dresses up as nobility to visit and rob Versailles. Despite pickpocketing both Yolande and Lamballe, she has so far been unlucky in receiving much of value. Even pretending to be a country royal collecting funds for fallen women has not worked yet. She burns stolen books for warmth in the attic room she shares with Villette, who prostitutes himself out to people for food and money.

Jeanne caught sight of Boehmer’s chest of jewelry while at Versailles and has become obsessed, believing that it contains a rumored diamond necklace. She receives confirmation when she has Villette fake a seizure as a distraction for her to sneak into Antoinette’s private apartments. She finds the desk’s secret compartment and takes Antoinette’s love letters for writing paper, as well as a sketch of the necklace and some other trinkets.

As she and Villette leave court, one of Antoinette’s aunts approaches her and offers to become her patron and thus attract more donations to her cause. She gives a starting donation. Villette wants to use the money to start a new life in the countryside, but Jeanne contrives a plan to buy the necklace on behalf of Antoinette in order to have it for herself.

The disgraced Chartres also wants to return to Versailles, but he was banished after deserting a naval battle in order to bring news of it to Antoinette, whom he adores. He has since turned his dwelling, the Palais Royale, into a den of iniquity, and is viewed by much of society as a libertine and coward, as Provence points out to him. Among the people who gather around him are the independent and intelligent Félicité; Lafayette; the violinist and composer Saint-Georges (whom Provence had banished from Versailles after shying away from a duel with him); and the polymath Beaumarchais. They all favor democracy over France’s monarchy, and want to convince the king and queen to produce one of Beaumarchais’ subversive Figaro plays at Versailles.

Yolande sets in motion her own plan to install Calonne as Louis’ financial controller, contriving to have the king run into Calonne after visiting his children at night. Antoinette summons Yolande, but she refuses, needing to be available to introduce Louis to Calonne. Antoinette goes searching for Yolande and collapses in an out-of-the-way corridor as she has a miscarriage. While Louis and Calonne hit it off, Yolande glimpses Antoinette on the ground through an ajar door – and closes it, following as Louis insists that she join him and Calonne in his chambers.

Lamballe saw Yolande shut the door from afar, and goes to look behind it as the trio leaves. She calls for help for Antoinette. As the queen recovers and Yolande sits by her bedside later, Lamballe warns Yolande that she will eventually tell the queen that Yolande left her for dead.

Meanwhile, Louis decides to appoint Calonne as financial controller, despite seeing through Yolande’s plan to install him. If Yolande trusts Calonne, then Louis does. His adviser Vergennes warns that the court won’t like an ally of Yolande’s family, the Polignacs, in the position, but Louis doesn’t care.

Calonne has an impossible task on his hands. Despite publicly touting a surplus, the French state is actually deeply in debt. Only some four people know the truth – and Calonne is now one of them.