'Victoria' Season 3: “Et in Arcadia” Recap
Previously on Victoria: The Chartist movement continues to pick up steam, as the threat of armed conflict grows. Victoria eventually backs down from having her military fire on her own citizens and the protestors present their People’s Charter unimpeded. The queen’s quite upset over the prospect that her people might not love her as much as she assumed they once did and, following the birth of her sixth child (Louise), she and the royal family flee London even though much of the public escalation with the Chartists turns out to have been engineered by her own Foreign Secretary. Elsewhere, Skerrett and Francatelli secretly marry, even though Nancy appears to harbor severe misgivings about leaving the queen’s service. (Need more details? Our recap of "London Bridge is Falling Down" is here.)
After two episodes of darkness, Victoria gets back to its soapy roots with an episode stuffed full of romantic intrigue, political squabbling, bad parenting and blackmail, all set against the beautiful scenery of the Isle of Wight. This is what we precisely the sort of thing we tune into this show for, at the end of the day. And “Et in Arcadia” is certainly the most entertaining episode of the season thus far, even if half of it is almost certainly made up from whole cloth.
Albert has shuffled Victoria and the rest of the family off to Osborne House, ostensibly to keep them all safe from the encroaching Chartist threat, but also because he clearly wants to feel like the one in charge of the royal family for a bit. He and his wife are having a sudden bout of marital disharmony, and the show barely bothers to explain why, beyond some wild speculation from Feodora that having babies makes her half-sister crazy. Those of us who have assumed from the beginning that Victoria would be unable to resist the siren call of setting two half-siblings who had a generally cordial relationship against one another are proven correct this week, as Feo plays both Victoria and Albert off each other, all the while blackmailing the philandering Lord Palmerston to lie on her behalf so she can remain in England. This is, of course, a deeply ridiculous plot twist, but when the show leans into it so heavily by showing Feo lurking around corners, smirking and deviously scheming, it’s too entertaining to resist. It’s Days of Our Lives in period dress, and I’m here for it.
