'Marie Antoinette' Recap: Season 2 Episode 6

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 previous season.
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As the trial of Cardinal Rohan for the theft of a diamond necklace opens, his powerful great aunt Madame de Rohan accuses her unexpected ally Orléans (formerly Chartres) of using the trial as “propaganda for your radical ideas” against Louis’ absolute monarchy. Conservative as she is, she threatens to denounce Orléans as a class traitor if the cardinal is found guilty. Unfortunately, Orléans knows that they can’t prove the cardinal’s innocence unless a witness like the “queen’s guard” who took the necklace – Jeanne’s accomplice Villette – is located.

At the trial, which Antoinette insists on observing from behind a screen despite her pregnancy, the cardinal says Antoinette was the thief: he bought the necklace on her behalf because he had fallen out of favor.

The king’s prosecutor Fleury asks Antoinette outside of the trial about the cardinal’s accusations, including meeting Antoinette in a garden and exchanging letters. She cannot rebut the accusation that she met the cardinal because she was with her lover Fersen at the time; saying so would reveal the affair publicly, even if Louis accepts it. She wonders if the cardinal is telling the truth, but someone was hired to impersonate her.

But for now the only witnesses at the trial are the cardinal and Jeanne. The latter testifies that she is from a royal family that fell on hard times; the cardinal exploited her innocence and had her solicit donations for what turned out to be a fake charity. She knew nothing of the necklace. (This is all lies, of course, as both Jeanne and the cardinal know – he has realized, thanks to his lawyer Target, that he was conned by Jeanne, but it’s his word against hers.) 

It seems that the cardinal might be convicted. Louis needs this victory: the government will run out of money in six months if Parlement, which sits as the cardinal’s jury, doesn’t extend a loan. But they’re dawdling due both to the trial and rumors – planted by Provence – that Louis is planning to institute a land tax. He is, but no one is supposed to know. Louis becomes paranoid about how the information has leaked – which plays into Provence’s plan to depict Louis as incompetent and thus replace him as king.

But the cardinal’s conviction would present a complication to this plan, since Provence and Josephine are hoping that the trial will damage Antoinette’s reputation enough that she will not be allowed to be regent if Louis is removed. Josephine thinks a conviction of the cardinal might encourage sympathy towards Antoinette, given the cardinal’s accusations, so she decides to enlist Jeanne’s help.

She and Provence send Beaumarchais to visit Jeanne in the Bastille. He warns her that a deal with the queen does not have the power to protect her: Jeanne saw how ready the jury was to believe the cardinal’s accusations against Antoinette. He asks Jeanne to take the queen down with the cardinal.

So when Jeanne next testifies and the cardinal’s lawyer Target starts to implicate her as the mastermind behind everything, she says the cardinal boasted of visiting the queen in private, her profligate spending, and her numerous lovers – rumors that play into a public perception of Antoinette. Louis, watching from behind a screen, is furious and leaves. Antoinette insists on staying to watch it all.

This turn in the trial upsets Orléans, who wants the cardinal acquitted. His mistress Félicité, who is the one actually trying to use the trial to destabilize the monarchy and encourage liberal reforms, finally reveals a crucial asset: she has used the Freemason network of the charlatan Cagliostro, also accused in the trial, to find Villette. He refuses to damage Jeanne’s reputation – until Félicité shows him that Jeanne is still alive. She staged her death to get rid of Villette.

Orléans has found another witness, too: the prostitute Jeanne hired to impersonate Antoinette in a meeting with Rohan. She testifies that she was paid to meet the cardinal as the queen by an anonymous man.

Jeanne tries to convince Villette to stick with her story and bring down the cardinal in order to save both of them, but he testifies that he forged the letters to the cardinal and posed as the queen’s guard on behalf of Jeanne. He even has a draft of one of the forgeries written in Jeanne’s hand as evidence.

Antoinette realizes that it will now be hard to convict the cardinal, who has been revealed as a fool conned by Jeanne. So she suggests charging him with damaging her reputation by accusing her of theft – a capital offense. Louis agrees, and extends the charge to everyone in the trial.

A final accused person is first called: Cagliostro. Antoinette recognizes him from Versailles and realizes that he must have been brought in to treat her son the Dauphin’s health problems – and that they are thus worse than she knew. She leaves the trial to see her son while the new charge of damaging the queen is brought.

Target extemporaneously defends the cardinal, saying that none of the accusations he made against the queen are new – she has damaged her own reputation, allowing rumors of lovers and profligate spending to spread. The people on trial had nothing to do with it.

Malherbe, Provence’s ally in Parlement, tells Provence that the jury is split. The trial has damaged the king and queen, but the jury doesn’t want to empower the radical Orléans by turning in a verdict against the king’s wishes. Will Provence step in as king if Louis falls?

Jeanne is found guilty of theft and ordered to be beaten, branded, and sent to prison for life. Villette is banished. And no one is found guilty of damaging the queen. The cardinal is acquitted.

Nevertheless, Louis banishes him. Fersen visits Orléans at the Palais Royal and slaps him, accusing him of orchestrating everything against Antoinette just because she doesn’t love him. Provence and Orléans begin positioning themselves to succeed Louis, telling each other that the best man will win. Cagliostro thanks Félicité and agrees to help her work towards equality of the sexes.

And Antoinette confronts Louis, asking how long their son the Dauphin has to live. You lied to me, she accuses him. You can’t protect me – not from this, or anything.