'Domina' Season 2 is an Improved Foray into the Instability of Rome’s Imperialism

The most satisfying thing about Domina is whenever something gloriously trashy and scandalous happens — a murder, a conspiracy to marry off a relative, or if we’re lucky, a second murder — Wikipedia is right there to confirm that crazy thing happened during the Roman empire. It might not have happened quite the way Domina’s sophomore season shows. But Season 2 brings a confident and improved foray into the instability of Rome’s early imperial days. As we’re unlikely to know what it was like in the days before Jesus shook up the calendar, it’s fun to indulge in dramatic reinterpretation to color those distant stretches of history with the lifeblood of great historical fiction: blood, love, and vices.

Domina’s debut season only gathered momentum in fits and starts but still generated enough goodwill to set us up for more precarious and treacherous Roman intrigue. Livia Druscilla (Kasia Smutniak), wife to Caesar Augustus (Matthew McNulty) and Rome’s first empress, has been painted as a power-hungry, downright evil character in historical fiction past, and creator Simon Burke set out to humanize not just Livia, but all women sidelined in the stories told of the Roman aristocracy.

Upon Julius Caesar’s assassination, Rome was engulfed in civil war, and Livia’s father picked the wrong side to fight for. When her father committed suicide, Livia was forced into exile — only by marrying the leader that defeated her father, Gaius (this is the actual name of Augustus – Roman names were complicated) can she be reaccepted into society, now with two young boys and an entrenched fear that her position is under threat from anyone around her.