Farewell Post
Goodbyes are never fun.
I just watched the latest episode of Reign, and I’m speechless. I’ve never been one to stay up on Wednesday nights, waiting for the links, but after hearing the ominous reports after the Canadian airing, I decided that I needed to see for myself if it was as bad as I feared.
It was worse.
Mary is unrecognizable to me. The way that she talks to Francis as if he is a monster, defending Conde at every turn…Who is this woman? How in the hell can she turn to Francis, who has done so much for her, sacrificed so much, and lecture him on what loyalty Conde has? Conde, who is at court as a spy for the Bourbons? I swear to God, if I were to suffer through one more second of Conde’s self-righteous bullshit, I would drown in a puddle of my own vomit. To stand there and declare that he has been a friend to the crown and to Francis, when he is openly professing his love for the queen and pressing her to admit her feelings for him—high treason, mind you—behind closed doors…I have no words.
I can no longer root for Mary. I don’t understand her, and after tonight, I have officially crossed over into actively disliking her. Yes, she was raped. But if you can’t see that rape as a ploy to garner enough sympathy to carry her character through an affair—be it of the heart or the body—and still remain in our good graces, justifying whatever out-of-character behavior she feels like indulging in, well I suggest you look up Bad Storytelling 101.
The last two scenes were the straws that broke me. I thought it would be the rape, but even then, I still held out some hope for Frary. That hope is gone. Every single last thing I once loved about this show has been officially ruined beyond repair.
So, as of tonight, I am deactivating my blog. It pains me to think of all the time I’ve wasted writing about Mary and Francis, and it’s devastating for me to see it gone in the blink of an eye, but it’s time to walk away. I’ve truly enjoyed sharing my thoughts with all of you over the past 1 3/4 seasons, and I’m so very grateful to all of you who took the time to reach out to me with your own. In the end, the show may not have been worth it, but you were.
I’ll leave you now with a glimpse of what could have been.
What should have been.
"If I am resting Sleeping on my couch, I hear him speaking to me, I feel him touch me, In work, in entertainment at court,   He is always with me. I see no other thing As beautiful if he is not in it… True love, not feigned,  Is not diminished by separation.” - lines written by Mary Stuart upon the death of her husband, Francis II
"…he was the object of her first affections, and reigned in her heart without a rival.”
- Agnes Strickland, Life of Mary Queen of Scots: Volume I
Whatever happens on Reign won’t change the sad, lovely history of the real Mary and Francis.
They deserved a better telling of their story, and so did we.