In The Bastard Executioner recap, Milus looks to expand his power while the Baroness attempts to find order from King Edward the II….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
A little history lesson ahead of tonight’s recap….
King Edward II became king after the death of his father and his three older brothers and his reign is regarded as one of the worst in the history of England.
Edward was constantly in conflict with other nobles, who didn’t enjoy his relationship with his ‘favorite’ Piers Gaveston, who was actually banished from the kingdom by his father before the new ruler brought him back into the fold. Gaveston influenced nearly all of Edward’s decisions and the two maintained such an odd relationship that many history scholars believe they may have been involved in a homosexual affair throughout their time together.
It’s also theorized that’s why King Edward I banished Gaveston in the first place.
Edward II was easily influenced by the people closest to him and his reign was marked with a long list of ineptitudes and poorly handled battles, many of which he lost, until he was finally overthrown by his wife and her lover and murdered in favor of his son who eventually became king.
So if this brief history gives you any indication of the kind of buffoon we met during tonight’s episode, it’s a frighteningly accurate portrayal of England’s fool king.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of The Bastard Executioner titled ‘A Hunger/Newyn’:
The Scheme of Things
Baroness Lady Love Ventris is on a trek to Windsor where she will hold an audience with King Edward II, who will rule on the future of Ventrishire in the wake of her husband’s death. While she’s away, Milus Corbett unfurls a plan to consolidate his power base by including another powerful Baron from the same area of Wales.
Milus invites Baron Pryce from Pryceshire on the Baroness’ invitation (even though she didn’t actually invite him) but when he arrives and finds out that she was called away by the king, it’s already too late to turn around and go home so they will have to spend a day and night in Ventrishire.
This gives Milus the perfect opportunity to hatch his plan.
Milus wants to open a main port near their shires that will serve as the landing spot for any number of ships as well as all goods going into England from that part of the world and as a result, everyone in those districts will get filthy rich. It was a plan that Baron Pryce actually already had years ago, but King Edward I ruled against him and broke the territory into multiple parts instead and handed them out to his loyal subjects who helped him during the Welsh war.
Baron Pryce has no desire to lend money to a broke Ventrishire to make this plan work, but Milus assures him this will only be a profitable partnership.
“There will be no lending, sire. Because the shire will be yours”
~ Milus
So now Milus wants to reenact that plan by marrying Baron Pryce to Lady Love Ventris, thus consolidating their two shires and giving them the opportunity to finally make the port happen. For his part of the pie, Milus wants to be re-assigned to Baron Pryce as his new chamberlain, but that would require his current No. 2 Chamberlain Dyer to disappear and unfortunately he has deep ties to the king and that could spell trouble if he’s just fired one day in favor of another man.
Worry not, Milus has plans for Chamberlain Dyer….
Ready Made Family
Wilkin dreams of sleeping next to his wife but awakens locked in a kiss with his new ‘bride’ Jessamy, who is really taking this relationship seriously as she continues to call him husband without ever acknowledging that he’s not actually Gawain Maddox.
Wilkin’s ‘son’ is starting to take a real liking to his new father after he agrees to teach the little boy how to read after his previous dad said he was too dumb to do it. The little boy even asks if he can still call Wilkin ‘father’ and the reluctant executioner can’t help but smile and say yes.
Of course, not everything around the house is quite so normal because after returning home from a really hard day’s work (more on that later), he finds Jessamy burning her son with a hot iron after burning herself with it as well. The little boy rushes to Wilkin’s side and when he asks what she’s doing, Jessamy replies that she’s not the one doling out the punishment — he is — the same way he’s always done whenever they needed a ‘correction’.
It seems this Gawain Maddox was a real asshole.
The Secret Order
Wilkin is about to venture out with Toran to the caves where his friends have been living for the past two months when he’s confronted by Milus, who already knows that they’ve been hiding out just a short ride away from the castle. Milus isn’t ready to play his hand just yet, but tells Wilkin that he’ll have to forgo this trip today because he needs to participate in the ‘games’ that are being put on in the courtyard for Baron Pryce’s entertainment.
Out in the woods near the caverns, Annora gets a haunting feeling that something bad is about to happen but when she warns Berber and the others to flee the area and sleep by the shore, they all decline out of loyalty to Wilkin and his protection over the witch/healer.
Annora has bigger problems to deal with right now because it seems she’s part of an ancient order with deep ties to the Catholic church, but all of her fellow priests and priestesses are being captured and cut up into several pieces (remember the murder scene from the first episode?).
It seems an elder in the church is investigating this religious sect that’s best known for the extensive tattoo work across their bodies as a sign of their faith. The elder is also the lead priest for the church where King Edward II resides in Windsor but in his spare time he’s hanging out with a torturer named Cormac (played by Ed Sheeran) as they capture members of this religious sect and cut them up into pieces trying to get information out of them. Thus far no one has given up a thing, but the elder and his Catholic cult are collecting the skins off the backs of all these people they are killing and hanging them on the wall like some kind of poster collection while trying to figure out what all these symbols mean.
The elder is now looking for another ‘seraphim’ and she’s escaped one of a few possible locations — one of which is Ventrishire and it’s clear he’s trying to find Annora.
Back at the caverns, Milus finally plays his hand with Wilkin’s compatriots after he’s informed about another body that was found just outside the castle, cut into pieces with ‘satanic’ symbolism carved into the skin. Obviously, Milus has no idea this is tied to Annora but he uses the murder as cause to arrest Berber and the others and charge them with heresy.
A King In Name Only
Lady Love Ventris and her hand maiden Isabel arrive in Windsor with expectations to meet the king to find out the future of their shire. Instead of being granted an audience, Lady Love meets with the king’s muse Piers Gaveston, who tells the Baroness that she can change into something more appropriate and then plan to meet his majesty for lunch. Gaveston obviously sees what the Baroness is wearing is already more than enough, but his comment is meant in a way that he’s able to exude power of her without actually saying the words.
Lady Love is gifted a new gown and after changing she goes to the hall where she waits for the king to arrive for lunch except there’s one problem — he never shows.
Lady Love is left to take some food from the table and go back to her room to once again wait on the king to call upon her.
Finally, Lady Love is woken up in the middle of the night by Gaveston, who just lets himself into her private room to inform her that the king is ready to meet and grant her an audience. After getting dressed, Lady Love is led down to the river where the king is shooting his bow and setting things on fire for the hell of it.
He gives his regards to Lady Love and offers up his condolences to her husband and then prepares to go back to his bow and arrow. She quickly asks what will happen with her shire, especially after her family held onto that castle for two generations of peace and prosperity. Without so much as a second though, King Edward brushes off the request and says that Gaveston and his chancellor will handle that ruling.
The next morning after a long and arduous trip, Lady Love is packing up and preparing to go home when Gaveston pays her a visit. After consulting with the chancellor, they’ve decided to split the shire into several pieces with the final plot of land with Castle Ventris being handed over to him to rule. Without thinking, Lady Love tells Gaveston that the ruling was all for nothing because the whole reason she traveled there was to tell the king that she’s with child and her son will be the heir to Ventrishire.
Obviously she’s not pregnant but that was the only way to keep her lands in tact without King Edward’s puppet master ripping them apart and taking a piece for himself. Now all Lady Love has to worry about is getting that baby….
A Game of Thrones
Milus plays out his other plan to win over Baron Pryce, but that is what he needed Wilkin for all along.
See, Chamberlain Dyer was the one person in all of Pryce’s traveling court that saw the real Gawain Maddox, who could then identify that Wilkin was falsely portraying him and out his secret. Milus assures Wilkin that he has nothing to worry about because he’ll handle Dyer without any issue.
“Do not concern yourself with Ser Dyer. He plants himself so deeply inside his Baron’s ass he has no vision beyond those bony cheeks.”
~ Milus Corbett
Needless to say, Wilkin doesn’t exactly trust Milus.
“As much comfort as your word gives me, Chamberlain. Never forget you have as much to lose in this as I do.”
~ Wilkin
Later that day, games are played for the Baron’s enjoyment, which includes knights from both Pryceshire and Ventrishire battling with wooden swords and staffs to see who are the superior soldiers. It’s clear after a few rounds that Ventrishire has produced a much better crop of warriors with all of them winning the matches with Pryceshire.
Toran gets in on the action before Wilkin takes the ring and defeats another of the Pryceshire knights. When the new reeve Leon steps up for the challenge, Wilkin quickly dispatches him as well but much more aggressively as he continuously pictures this as the man who killed his beloved Petra.
While Wilkin is battling his own self control, Milus is whispering in Chamberlain Dyer’s ear about how this soldier isn’t really even a soldier — he’s the castle executioner named Gawain Maddox. Of course immediately, Dyer realizes that the man he’s looking at isn’t Maddox.
Finally in a private room away from the courtyard, Dyer reveals to Milus that this man acting as an executioner isn’t Gawain Maddox at all but instead is an imposter! Milus immediately punches the daft chamberlain and that’s when his final plan is revealed….
He shows Wilkin how he’s captured his friends and will keep them under lock and key with no harm coming to them so long as he bows and follows his every order. His first order is Wilkin needs to kill Chamberlain Dyer but do so in such a way that won’t raise suspicision with his Baron.
“Everyone you love or care about is either dead or within my grasp to make that so. He is a pompous annoyance. God will cheer when he drops down to Hell.”
~ Milus
Wilkin has no choice but to comply and he ultimately chokes Dyer to death with a chicken bone to make it look like he tried to take a really big bite and couldn’t quite swallow it down. Wilkin has now committed murder by Milus’ order and with his friends in captivity, he’s under the chamberlain’s thumb for the foreseeable future as well.
Outside after discovering Dyer’s death, Baron Pryce talks to Milus and realizes that this meeting was never arranged by Lady Love. This was all Milus planning and plotting to get Baron Pryce to the castle at a time when the Baroness was away so he could hatch his master scheme while also putting himself in the best position to seize power as the No. 2 advisor to the most powerful man in Wales.
Baron Pryce: “You’re an impressive man, Corbett. And yet my admiration is matched by an equal part of caution.”
Milus: “Embrace the former, good Baron.”
It appears Lady Love is in for a big surprise when she returns home and considering the predicament she just got herself into with King Edward II and the man pulling his strings, she might need Baron Pryce more than she realizes.
Tune into the next episode of The Bastard Executioner on Tuesday night at 10pm on FX
