St. Bartholomew's Day is Every Day.

I've always been a sucker for period dramas. Ever since I watched The Tudors, I was hooked both on that type of show and more broadly on history. Last night, I finished watching one of the better period dramas to emerge out of recent years, The Serpent Queen which tells the story of Catherine de Medici as Queen and later (more importantly) Queen Regent of France during the 16th century.

Based on a book by Leonie Frieda and starring the phenomenal Samantha Morton, it already had every reason to be a good show, and I've got to say, it was. Not exceedingly historically accurate, but then, these shows almost never are. Besides, it was fun, and enjoyed a kickass finale, in my opinion.

After mounting conflicts between the Catholic and Huguenot (Protestant) factions in France, the show culminated with a fantastic depiction of one of the biggest wins for the Catholics -- the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day.

I love this image of Catherine just strolling smugly among the corpses. Credit

Game of Thrones fans will recognize the setting - a huge Paris-wide blow-out to celebrate the wedding of Catherine's daughter, Princess Margot (the future Queen Margot, she of barley fame), and the Protestant leader Henri, King of Navarre. A seeming moment of unity, the marriage of an ardent Catholic to the newly-appointed Huguenot leader, it rapidly devolved into one of the biggest massacres in the history of France, with Catholics all over the country slaughtering reveling Protestants in their sleep or in their cups.

Casualties are estimated between 5,000 and 30,000. Of course, it's commonly accepted that Catherine de Medici was the brains behind this slaughter.

And there's this one scene where young Princess Margot, outraged, demands of her mother

So you get to decide who lives or dies?

To which the Queen Mother replies,

Someone has to.

It brought back for me a question that's long haunted me, both as a spectator and as a human being living in this conflicting world of hours.

How come we love such characters on screen, but not in real life?

By many accounts, Catherine de Medici is celebrated by our modern culture as an impressive leader and most importantly, a feminist icon. Indeed, she did succeed at obtaining and holding power in a time where the world belonged almost exclusively to men. No small feat. But to have done so, it stands to reason she must've been a proper cunt, doesn't it?

That was one thing I really liked about this show. I'm not a fan of this matronly, pacifist depiction of female rulers (see House of the Dragon) who want peace and harmony, but stupid men force their hand to war. Nah-hah. Women can be fucking awful, really cruel and vile when we want to be, and this show depicts that. Almost every woman on this show - Catherine, Elizabeth I, Jeanne d'Albret - is a fucking bitch. I like that. That's honest.

So on the one hand, we've got a feminist icon, on the other a psycho bitch nicknamed the "serpent queen". Yes, it was impressive for a female to wield so much power and for so long in that time. However, I seriously doubt the thousands of slaughtered Protestants ascribed much to this "girl boss" fawning. Catherine took the "slay queen" ethos waaay too literally.

The show reminded me of Succession in that it focused on the toxic dynamics of a deeply dysfunctional family, whose grief stemmed overwhelmingly from its figure head. Another hugely successful show where, let's face it, Brian Cox's character does manage to win you over at times, even as you recognize him to be a horrible person. It's a fairly common TV archetype, the ruthless leader (be it of a business or a country), which means it draws an audience.

We love to watch these excessive, ambitious, merciless despots on screen. Well, why not in real life?

Credit: Francois Dubois

Much of our conflict as fairly aware human beings relies on the denial and disbelief that somewhere out there exist these ruthless, decisive, psychotic leaders (Not necessarily political leaders) who are in charge of deciding what happens. Who lives or who dies. Time and again, I've come up against the question "But why would they do that?".

Because somebody must.

Or at least, so they think, which amounts to the same thing.

We have a natural tendency to trust our leaders, be they kings, religious figure-heads, or presidents. We need to believe they have our best interests at heart. And I'm sure they think they do, just like Catherine de Medici, I believe, acted in the way she thought was best.

... for the larger good.

Not to be mistaken with the individual good. When confronted with dubious and worrisome political agendas, the general population will blink and say "but why would they do that to us?". Why would they give us contaminated vaccines? Why instigate wars? Why lie about seemingly everything? Why attempt mass technological control? Why dismantle and de-sex our society, scrambling inter-sex dynamics in the process?

We keep making this mistaken assumption that it needs to make sense, on a personal, individual level.

The good news is, it's not against you individually. None of the big guys hate you specifically. The bad news is, they don't care that you exist. Meaning that if your suffering, poverty, or even death is deemed necessary for the larger good, they won't hesitate. You are one of the thousands of slaughtered Huguenots, gone down nameless and faceless in the annals of history. For the greater good. It might not look like it now, but France remained a Catholic kingdom. Which was the larger good for a Catholic Valois monarch.

What always bugs me about this kind of show is that we love watching this type of character on screen, yet somehow persist in the belief that they belong exclusively to the screen. What sense does that make?

We're perfectly willing to accept that some four hundred years ago, this Catherine de Medici woman lived and did all these nasty, extreme things. We're willing, even, to sympathize with her on certain points. And yet, when it comes to fast-forwarding to our own present, we assume our leaders blameless and inherently good?

I would ask "Why?", but it's a higher-logical why. In truth, the why is simple. It's fun to watch on screen, but to acknowledge that any minute, troops could come and begin slaughtering us in the streets is too much. There's something deeply terrifying in realizing that St Bartholomew's Day could be every day. Tomorrow. Today, even.

(And I mean specifically, personally to us. Acknowledging that is a reality for people in foreign, faraway places like Gaza or Ukraine isn't the same. I don't believe you can genuinely acknowledge that terror unless you live it. And I hope you never do.)

Would it matter if we did acknowledge it? Maybe. If more of us accepted our leaders' willingness to sacrifice us as individuals, fewer people might've gotten vaxxed. More of us might resist the growing digital control spreading across our Western world. Would it make a difference in the long run? I don't know. But it's worth a shot.