WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT *THAT* EPISODE OF THE CURSED QUEEN
WE HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS
HELLO. WARNING. MAJOR spoilers for The Cursed Queen, Season Two, Episode 8, ahead. I warned you!!!
So, if you are a regular person, you've been watching The Cursed Queen every week, and you've been crying hysterically all night. This was "the truest episode", as the commercials said - George Powell said that for this one, he just lifted action from the notes of the era and made it into a script. In this episode, we get the most information we've ever gotten about Wilhelm. If you've read The Cursed Queen, then you would have known all of this already - for the rest of us, it's new information that hopefully will appear on Wikipedia now that it's getting so many articles written about it!
If you need a recap of the episode, look here. For right now, we're going to focus on the 1526/1512 timeline and all that stuff we just found out. We literally all knew that Wilhelm was the best character on the show (come at me. I dare you). And last night's show, with a flashback from Wilhelm's POV, just cemented that place in our hearts. We're just going to take a little walk through the show to point out all the reasons this is true.
So, what we knew about Wilhelm going into this episode was that he was born about 1494, he’s been married to Elka since 1510, when they were sixteen, and that they didn’t have any kids until William, in 1538, when they were forty-four! (Natalie Andrews, author of As Alike As Two Suns, is writing a book about Elka!). Wilhelm has been a kind of friend/servant/companion/spy person for Conrad since before the show started, and we know that he and Elka did a lot of taking care of John and Conrad when they were kids. Conrad’s dad was the court doctor, and John’s father’s close friend because he was a good doctor, so his son was allowed to hang out with John, the prince’s second son.
If you have read The Cursed Queen, like me, then you knew some more stuff. If you haven’t, unless you spend a lot of time reading a lot of Wikipedia pages (Wilhelm should have his own, TBH—how do people have time to do an episode guide but not one for Wilhelm?) then the backstory we got in this episode was new to you.
The setup is the 1526 section. In 1526, the court of Kollstansze goes to visit Scharrau. Some *stuff* happens—Prince Frederick stabs a guy during dinner (true), they visit the disturbing lodge where kids are raised (also true—see The So-Called Mad Kings), Ludvik and Federica throw up after visiting (true), and uncle-Viscount-Frederick breaks down in tears after visiting the lodge (true, but he was actually Maleen’s cousin).
It comes down to a political argument. Ludvik says that he will NOT negotiate with Scharrau, but Maleen and Viscount-Uncle Frederick push him to. Conrad, understandably, is like, “WTF, Maleen? You can’t negotiate with him.” Maleen’s like, “the greater good, Conrad”, and we’re all sitting here like, “NO, MALEEN, THIS IS NOT FOR THE GREATER GOOD! THIS IS A BAD THING!” But Ludvik breaks down and agrees (true).
Maleen and Conrad are still super mad at each other, and make an effort to have make-up sex. She’s super ready for it, because at this point, it’s been like six months since she had sex between baby+recovery. She goes for it and Conrad freaks out and leaves without explaining anything. Conrad goes to find Wilhelm and Elka and breaks down in tears (all true).
Wilhelm flashes back to 1512, which is where we pick up with Conrad’s father’s notes, which start in 1512 with this day. Wilhelm is maybe eighteen and wakes up next to Elka. They’ve been married for about a year and it seems like she can’t get pregnant—they’re sad about that and have sex before the day starts (that’s technically not in the notes, but Wilhelm as a character in Conrad’s father’s notes admits that they’re trying super hard to have a baby). Then Elka goes off to the kitchen, and he goes upstairs, where he’s some kind of minor errand-running, door-opening usher (true).
So Wilhelm’s standing outside a door when Conrad’s father comes down the hall and sees him. Wilhelm’s the only person there and Conrad’s father is glad to see him. He asks him to come essentially babysit John and Conrad (who are like, seven) for “just an hour”. One of the tutors usually in charge of them just abruptly quit, and the other one went on break before they knew he quit. Wilhelm is like, “okay”, and he goes and gets stuck in the library with the two kids (John back when he could still walk, pre-accident). They don’t actually seem to need that much watching, but it’s pouring outside and they need something to do. They start teaching Wilhelm to read, and when the other tutor comes back, he passes them off to him and goes happily off about his day (all true). That night, he teaches Elka what he learned (it’s technically not in the notes, but she can’t read in 1512 and she can read in 1513, and the only thing that changed is Wilhelm learning, so it’s likely).
This becomes a regular thing, while the prince, John’s father, looks for another tutor. Wilhelm show up a little early one day and finds John just kind of by himself in the library while he’s supposed to be learning. Conrad and the other tutor are “somewhere else” and John doesn’t know where. They come back—it’s a little off—but Wilhelm just kind of figurers that’s how upper class people do things. But then that happens a couple more times—he finds Conrad alone, and John alone again—and then he tells Elka, and she’s like, huh, that’s a little weird. This keeps going on, until Wilhelm starts spending his time figuring out where exactly the somewhere else is—it’s a room down the hall totally empty that time of day. And we’re all like, Wilhelm, show us some sign that you understand that bad things are happening.
Wilhelm does not. He marches down the hall like he’s expecting some kind of tea party and stumbles in on the tutor doing some bad stuff. The tutor tries to buy silence, but Wilhelm refuses the money, takes Conrad, and walks out. Later, he goes to Elka, and they go to Conrad’s father. We see him turn away and try not to break down crying, and then he turns around and tells Wilhelm and Elka that he’ll deal with it and have the guy replaced, but that they are not to tell John’s father, because he’ll flip out and never be the same way to John again. He sends Elka out and offers money for the silence, but Wilhelm refuses that, too. Conrad’s dad is super thrown off—he didn’t expect that, and was under the impression that the tutor had been dealing with paying Wilhelm over the past few weeks.
All of this is true—it’s the story from Wilhelm that Conrad’s father writes down. At night, he goes to the tutor and tells him to leave—the guy goes pretty willingly, and in the morning he tells the prince he just took off. The prince is not pleased with this, but he brings in the first replacement tutor he found and asks what he’s supposed to do about the rest of the time. Conrad’s father suggests Wilhelm—when pressed on what he can possibly teach, he suggests good behavior, piety—basically a list of all the good things about Wilhelm (true). He asks his wife to ask Elka to join her as a sort of servant (true).
So Wilhelm and Elka kind of just start doing whatever they want, because the new tutor is a million years old and mostly just good with languages, and the kids are joining John’s brother for other stuff for now (true). They become in charge of taking them outside and running around, and basically teaching them how to be nice people. They’re also the ones who get woken up after nightmares--a lot by Conrad, less often by John (true). Wilhelm’s in charge of calming John down after the accident when he’s twelve and keeping him calm for the doctor’s version of physical therapy (true). He and Conrad get into a fistfight with some of Prince Ludvik’s friends in 1521 (true). He’s also in charge of monitoring everyone, all the time. He works for Conrad’s father. It’s his job to be physically present and prevent any similar tutor situations from ever happening again. He’s aware of every intrigue. He reports faithfully (true). When Conrad is sent to Italy to get Princess Barbara, his father sends Wilhelm with him and tells Wilhelm to do the same reporting to Conrad, which he does. When Conrad goes to Kollstansze in 1525, Wilhelm and Elka go with him (true) and help to figure out the switch with Maleen (true). Wilhelm stays with Conrad until his death in 1551, and trains his son William to be just like him—William begins reporting and watching the day his father dies. We've known Wilhelm was like this, but this backstory explains SO MUCH about William.
AND THAT WAS JUST PART OF THE EPISODE. That isn’t even talking about the part where we found out Maleen helped poison her son! This isn’t talking about Maleen thinking about her mom and how messed up she was after growing up in the lodge!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go watch it three more times.
If you need to debrief some more, there's a fan theory about Wilhelm and the bishop and this story here (TL; DR: Wilhelm's going to stab that tutor to death and bury him in a shallow grave in Season 3, 1526 sequence).
So, if you are a regular person, you've been watching The Cursed Queen every week, and you've been crying hysterically all night. This was "the truest episode", as the commercials said - George Powell said that for this one, he just lifted action from the notes of the era and made it into a script. In this episode, we get the most information we've ever gotten about Wilhelm. If you've read The Cursed Queen, then you would have known all of this already - for the rest of us, it's new information that hopefully will appear on Wikipedia now that it's getting so many articles written about it!
If you need a recap of the episode, look here. For right now, we're going to focus on the 1526/1512 timeline and all that stuff we just found out. We literally all knew that Wilhelm was the best character on the show (come at me. I dare you). And last night's show, with a flashback from Wilhelm's POV, just cemented that place in our hearts. We're just going to take a little walk through the show to point out all the reasons this is true.
So, what we knew about Wilhelm going into this episode was that he was born about 1494, he’s been married to Elka since 1510, when they were sixteen, and that they didn’t have any kids until William, in 1538, when they were forty-four! (Natalie Andrews, author of As Alike As Two Suns, is writing a book about Elka!). Wilhelm has been a kind of friend/servant/companion/spy person for Conrad since before the show started, and we know that he and Elka did a lot of taking care of John and Conrad when they were kids. Conrad’s dad was the court doctor, and John’s father’s close friend because he was a good doctor, so his son was allowed to hang out with John, the prince’s second son.
If you have read The Cursed Queen, like me, then you knew some more stuff. If you haven’t, unless you spend a lot of time reading a lot of Wikipedia pages (Wilhelm should have his own, TBH—how do people have time to do an episode guide but not one for Wilhelm?) then the backstory we got in this episode was new to you.
The setup is the 1526 section. In 1526, the court of Kollstansze goes to visit Scharrau. Some *stuff* happens—Prince Frederick stabs a guy during dinner (true), they visit the disturbing lodge where kids are raised (also true—see The So-Called Mad Kings), Ludvik and Federica throw up after visiting (true), and uncle-Viscount-Frederick breaks down in tears after visiting the lodge (true, but he was actually Maleen’s cousin).
It comes down to a political argument. Ludvik says that he will NOT negotiate with Scharrau, but Maleen and Viscount-Uncle Frederick push him to. Conrad, understandably, is like, “WTF, Maleen? You can’t negotiate with him.” Maleen’s like, “the greater good, Conrad”, and we’re all sitting here like, “NO, MALEEN, THIS IS NOT FOR THE GREATER GOOD! THIS IS A BAD THING!” But Ludvik breaks down and agrees (true).
Maleen and Conrad are still super mad at each other, and make an effort to have make-up sex. She’s super ready for it, because at this point, it’s been like six months since she had sex between baby+recovery. She goes for it and Conrad freaks out and leaves without explaining anything. Conrad goes to find Wilhelm and Elka and breaks down in tears (all true).
Wilhelm flashes back to 1512, which is where we pick up with Conrad’s father’s notes, which start in 1512 with this day. Wilhelm is maybe eighteen and wakes up next to Elka. They’ve been married for about a year and it seems like she can’t get pregnant—they’re sad about that and have sex before the day starts (that’s technically not in the notes, but Wilhelm as a character in Conrad’s father’s notes admits that they’re trying super hard to have a baby). Then Elka goes off to the kitchen, and he goes upstairs, where he’s some kind of minor errand-running, door-opening usher (true).
So Wilhelm’s standing outside a door when Conrad’s father comes down the hall and sees him. Wilhelm’s the only person there and Conrad’s father is glad to see him. He asks him to come essentially babysit John and Conrad (who are like, seven) for “just an hour”. One of the tutors usually in charge of them just abruptly quit, and the other one went on break before they knew he quit. Wilhelm is like, “okay”, and he goes and gets stuck in the library with the two kids (John back when he could still walk, pre-accident). They don’t actually seem to need that much watching, but it’s pouring outside and they need something to do. They start teaching Wilhelm to read, and when the other tutor comes back, he passes them off to him and goes happily off about his day (all true). That night, he teaches Elka what he learned (it’s technically not in the notes, but she can’t read in 1512 and she can read in 1513, and the only thing that changed is Wilhelm learning, so it’s likely).
This becomes a regular thing, while the prince, John’s father, looks for another tutor. Wilhelm show up a little early one day and finds John just kind of by himself in the library while he’s supposed to be learning. Conrad and the other tutor are “somewhere else” and John doesn’t know where. They come back—it’s a little off—but Wilhelm just kind of figurers that’s how upper class people do things. But then that happens a couple more times—he finds Conrad alone, and John alone again—and then he tells Elka, and she’s like, huh, that’s a little weird. This keeps going on, until Wilhelm starts spending his time figuring out where exactly the somewhere else is—it’s a room down the hall totally empty that time of day. And we’re all like, Wilhelm, show us some sign that you understand that bad things are happening.
Wilhelm does not. He marches down the hall like he’s expecting some kind of tea party and stumbles in on the tutor doing some bad stuff. The tutor tries to buy silence, but Wilhelm refuses the money, takes Conrad, and walks out. Later, he goes to Elka, and they go to Conrad’s father. We see him turn away and try not to break down crying, and then he turns around and tells Wilhelm and Elka that he’ll deal with it and have the guy replaced, but that they are not to tell John’s father, because he’ll flip out and never be the same way to John again. He sends Elka out and offers money for the silence, but Wilhelm refuses that, too. Conrad’s dad is super thrown off—he didn’t expect that, and was under the impression that the tutor had been dealing with paying Wilhelm over the past few weeks.
All of this is true—it’s the story from Wilhelm that Conrad’s father writes down. At night, he goes to the tutor and tells him to leave—the guy goes pretty willingly, and in the morning he tells the prince he just took off. The prince is not pleased with this, but he brings in the first replacement tutor he found and asks what he’s supposed to do about the rest of the time. Conrad’s father suggests Wilhelm—when pressed on what he can possibly teach, he suggests good behavior, piety—basically a list of all the good things about Wilhelm (true). He asks his wife to ask Elka to join her as a sort of servant (true).
So Wilhelm and Elka kind of just start doing whatever they want, because the new tutor is a million years old and mostly just good with languages, and the kids are joining John’s brother for other stuff for now (true). They become in charge of taking them outside and running around, and basically teaching them how to be nice people. They’re also the ones who get woken up after nightmares--a lot by Conrad, less often by John (true). Wilhelm’s in charge of calming John down after the accident when he’s twelve and keeping him calm for the doctor’s version of physical therapy (true). He and Conrad get into a fistfight with some of Prince Ludvik’s friends in 1521 (true). He’s also in charge of monitoring everyone, all the time. He works for Conrad’s father. It’s his job to be physically present and prevent any similar tutor situations from ever happening again. He’s aware of every intrigue. He reports faithfully (true). When Conrad is sent to Italy to get Princess Barbara, his father sends Wilhelm with him and tells Wilhelm to do the same reporting to Conrad, which he does. When Conrad goes to Kollstansze in 1525, Wilhelm and Elka go with him (true) and help to figure out the switch with Maleen (true). Wilhelm stays with Conrad until his death in 1551, and trains his son William to be just like him—William begins reporting and watching the day his father dies. We've known Wilhelm was like this, but this backstory explains SO MUCH about William.
AND THAT WAS JUST PART OF THE EPISODE. That isn’t even talking about the part where we found out Maleen helped poison her son! This isn’t talking about Maleen thinking about her mom and how messed up she was after growing up in the lodge!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go watch it three more times.
If you need to debrief some more, there's a fan theory about Wilhelm and the bishop and this story here (TL; DR: Wilhelm's going to stab that tutor to death and bury him in a shallow grave in Season 3, 1526 sequence).