Versailles Season 2 (2017)

If the most powerful monarch in the world must suspect a single dish set on his own table, what exactly did that power protect? Season 2 is built on this paradox. The palace advances toward completion, but within it poisonings, rumours of black magic and an obscure conspiracy spread at once, and the spy Fabien Marchal chases the source ever deeper into the dark. Unlike the first season, which laid the foundations of power, this one digs into how that power gnaws at people and addicts them to suspicion — and that deepened thematic awareness makes ★4.5 a price well worth it.

What it’s about — The Shadow the Affair of the Poisons Casts Over the Court

At the centre of this season hangs the shadow of the real historical scandal known as the Affair of the Poisons. Figures of the court meet mysterious deaths one after another, and the spy Fabien Marchal pursues the source, descending ever deeper into the dark. At the same time, the conflict between Louis and his brother Philippe, the intrigues surrounding the king’s mistresses, and rituals tangled with religion and mysticism make the story more sinister still. Lavish balls and festivals continue to fill the frame, but beneath them sits an unease and dread grown thicker than before.

Direction — A Dark Tone That Turns Even the Dinner Table Into Suspense

The directing team led by Thomas Vincent and Mike Barker keeps the elegance of Season 1 while pulling the tone of the frame a shade darker. The contrast of candlelight and shadow is stronger, and the camera moves stealthily, as if to dig out a character’s secrets. In the scenes where the terror of poison spreads, even an everyday meal turns into a stage for suspense. Foregrounding a mystery structure gives the story more drive than Season 1, but unfolding several strands of conspiracy at once leaves the impression that information crowds in toward the back half. Even so, the density of the direction in conjuring atmosphere has grown a degree more seasoned.

Acting and characters — A Monarch Grown Harder and Lonelier

George Blagden’s Louis XIV is at once harder and lonelier this season. He expresses, through the slightest shifts of his gaze, the isolation of a monarch who, at the summit of power, can no longer trust anyone. Alexander Vlahos’s Philippe remains the work’s emotional centre. Love and resentment toward his brother, the anguish over his own identity, and the conflict among those he loves come alive in three dimensions through his performance. Tygh Runyan, playing the spy Fabien, is given more screen time this season and persuasively renders the interior of a man who crumbles the closer he draws to the truth.

What the series says — Absolute Power Leads to Absolute Solitude

The core of Season 2 is the emotion of suspicion. Power makes a person fearful, and fear in turn breeds suspicion. To protect himself, Louis turns ever more people into enemies, and in the process even those closest to him grow distant. The work shows coldly how absolute power leads, in the end, to absolute solitude. Even as it borrows the provocative subjects of mysticism and poison, beneath them lies a reflection on what a human being loses upon seizing power. The theme of Season 1 — that the lavish palace is in fact a vast prison — grows only more vivid here.

Ratings & reception

The Versailles series holds an IMDb rating of 7. Season 2 won praise for strengthening its mystery and thriller elements and moving faster than the first season, with its darkened mood and the matured performances of the cast drawing a particularly good response. Some pointed out that the strands of conspiracy grew so numerous that focus scattered, but the assessment that the series had firmly set its own colour prevailed. As a French-Canadian period drama, the visual polish held to the same high standard this season too.

Verdict

Season 2 is the season in which the series matures a step. It makes up for the slow pace of the first season by adding the tension of mystery, and the relationships among the characters grow more complex and precarious. Its dark, elegant rendering of the price the holder of power must pay is striking. The reason I gave it ★4.5 is that this season did not simply pile on more events but dug a degree deeper into the themes of power and suspicion. The tension Blagden and Vlahos generate as brothers is the season’s greatest engine.

Recommended for

• Those who love a mystery and espionage thriller set against a royal court
• Those drawn to the themes of a ruler’s solitude and suspicion
• Those who, having seen Season 1, expect a story turned darker