#sorry I ended up rambling!! i just think versailles is a bad series and i'm tired of pretending it isn't

[archduchessofnowhere]

Why do you hate Versailles so much? I haven't seen it, but from the point-of-view of someone who knows fuck all about the plot, it looks fine - at the very least, nothing to inspire the kind of violent hatred I have for Maria Theresia. I even considered watching it at one point, but there was always something better on TV or Netflix, so I never got to it. So I guess I just want to be forewarned before possibly throwing myself into it?

Speaking about bad period drama - have you seen that Maria Theresia show that premiered on RTL in 2017? Because for me, it's what Versailles is for you. Except I don't know how much you like Louis XIV., but for all her flaws Maria Theresia is an icon of the former Habsburg monarchy, so I kinda took this show personally.

Hi! Well, that's the thing: Versailles looks fine. I like watching period dramas in general so I had it on my radar, and since I had mostly seen positive reviews of it I went into it with the impression that it was a good historical series. Not good as in "is trashy but in a fun, good way!", not good as in "inaccurate but in a self aware, entertaining good way!". But in an actually good way. So I was almost shocked when I watched the pilot because it is legit one of the worst pilots I've ever seen, like I cannot believe they actually green-lighted the series after that. I kept watching because many series I love have mediocre to bad first episodes so I didn't want it to judge it solely on that, and since it did got better (not hard to achieve, since they touched rock-bottom with that pilot) I ended up watching the whole season. Which in defense of the series, was ok. But season 2 wasn't ok, and I had to force myself to finish season 3 (which I regret, I should've just dropped it).

Ultimately if I had to boil down my dislikeness to one thing it would be that it's just very badly written series, period. When you're watching it you feel as if the series had over fifty screenwriters who never read each other's writings. There is an incredible disconnection between episodes, so many plotlines are introduced to never be properly explored and eventually abandoned only episodes later. Every season felt like a soft reboot of the previous one (season 1 finishes in a HUGE CLIFHANGER... that is immediately solved five minutes into season 2 and then never mentioned again. This was the moment I realized I was watching truly bad TV), the original characters dragged the story and stole the screentime that the historical characters painfully needed, and SA was used for nothing more than shock value more than once (not to Outlander extremes, but still felt very unnecessary).

It is also very historically inaccurate, and I wouldn't mind it (I've read one book related to Louis XIV in my entire life, I don't care much about him as a historical figure) if it wasn't the worst type of historical inaccurate: the lazy type. Inaccuracies not because we think that the real history is boring and needs to be more bold and sexy *looking at all the recent Sisi adaptations*, but because we were just too lazy to research beyond the very basis and thus we accidentally end up creating dozens of plot-holes. Exemple: Philippe Duke of Orléans (Louis XIV's brother) was married to Henriette of England and they had two daughters. During season 1 the daughters are never EVER mentioned, not even once. Henriette even gets pregnant at one point and everyone acts as if this were her first child. So I thought the daughters had been written out of the series (terrible move if they were planning to reach to the point in history where Louis XIV married off his niece to Carlos II of Spain). BUT THEN in the first episode of season 2 when Philippe's second wife is introduced she says something along the lines of "I brought presents for Marie Louise and Anne Marie", the two daughters who had never been introduced to the audience up to that point!! Which is just a terrible way to revel that the two most important supporting characters of season 1, whose relationship had been a key plotline, had had children all along and was just never brought up. At the end the series did reach to the point Louis XIV arranged his niece's marriage so Marie Louise make an appearance, and it showed that never properly writing her into the series before was a terrible move, because suddenly a sixteen-years-old girl popped out in the middle of season 3 and we just had to accept that we had never seen her until that point because her father didn't remember she existed?? Don't you just love how well researched and written this series is??

Versailles is just personally frustrating to me. I've watched The Spanish Princess, which is probably one of the worse if not the worst period drama ever written, and it doesn't make as angry as Versailles. Because with TSP we all agree that it's bad, but with Versailles I feel that I watched a different series that the one everyone else saw because it cannot be that no one else noticed how goddamn bad it is.

And I haven't watched the Maria Theresia series but I probably will, solely because there's not that much Habsburg related media out there. You spoiled me something about it and I remember I actually said WHAT out loud when I read it because I couldn't believe they would get her SO wrong. I'm glad you told me because if I had gone into the series without knowing it would've punched me in the face lol.

#sorry I ended up rambling!! i just think versailles is a bad series and i'm tired of pretending it isn't #asks