The Great
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Does a macaron lessen the horrors of the battlefield?
Would you murder a child psychopath if he threatened your reign as empress?
And what is in borscht, exactly?
This episode is not here to play, so lets talk about those macarons.
First off, I know this isnt the point, but I hate macarons.
Maybe if it were an Oreo.
Catherine and Elizabeth visit an encampment to pose for a painting (?).
There are literal piles of dead soldiers.
Its horrific, and its meant to be.
Here we see Catherine getting an up-close understanding of how little she knows.
This is hammered home later, but lets not get ahead of things.
She tells Catherine that war is inevitable, whereupon Catherine throws the macarons out the window and yellsfuck.
The crisis of the episode lies in some throuple drama.
Peters mistress Georgina is the wife of his best friend Grigor.
They kind of all just go along with the situation because Peter wants it.
But Grigor sees bruising on Georginas neck and loses his shit.
Peter is eating borscht (beet soup) and Grigor scrapes arsenic from the palette knife into the soup.
But what can you do, at that point?
Instead they go play handball.
Peter brings the borscht with him, because who wouldnt.
A very ill emperor means Catherines moment has possibly arrived.
Also avoid blue food.
None of this looks great for Peter.
Catherine prepares her speech for the nobility.
She has a few talking points:
- No more war.
Huzzah!2) Serfdom is immediately ended.3) What are the Urals?
The whole point of this sequence is for her to realize how disastrously unprepared she is to become empress.
Orlo and Archie step in and she rushes away.
(Marial told him.)
Archie, newly named patriarch, wants whats best for Russia, and is seriously dubious about Catherine.
He sends priests throughout the palace in search of Ivan.
Meanwhile, someone discovers Peter does not have cholera and was in fact poisoned.
Orlo suspects theres another Coup Club in play.
Catherine and Elizabeth sneak out to Ivans secret apartments.
Elizabeth tells Catherine to stab Ivan, but she cant do it.
She departs to have a panic attack in her bedroom, leaving Elizabeth behind to play with Ivan.
I was fully expecting Ivan to find Elizabeths knife and stab her.
This would suck because Elizabeth is the absolute best.
Only then she shows up with a dead Ivan.
Or, as my notes have it, Elizabeth has murdered Ivan omgggg.
Peter then wakes up and says hes hungry.
Start studying, Catherine.
