"In the north parts, they use your name to terrify their children..."
Oh my. There's soooo much going on here. Yet the overall trajectory is clear: Henry's court is always a place of peril, both geographically and conceptually, and for Cromwell, this may be the beginning of his slow end.
For the king, he keeps failing to get Reginald Pole. Those rumours about him wanting to marry the Lady Mary just won't go away. And the schemes he is forced to use, because of the king, are beginning to affect others' opinions of him. Most obviously, the Lincolnshire rebels, who see him as a literal antichrist... but there is mistrust and misunderstanding everywhere. The ending of last episode sort of broke Cromwell emotionally, and suddenly he is alive to how he is seen.
Those jibes from Lady Rochford (possibly my favourite character) hit harder. Bess mistakenly believes she is to marry the father, not the son, and even Gregory suspects Thomas of designs on his wife. Ouch.
The King continues to be scary and volatile. Chapuys continues to be a fun character, the ultimate player of ten dimensional chess. But the atmosphere is, if such a thing were possible, all the more dangerous. Even Jane, in the things she begs for, risks angering the king. If she were not with child, well... it's clear that her reputation as Henry's favourite wife owes not to any real affection on his part but what she gave him in her death. Poor woman. But I get ahead of myself.
We end with a bombshell: Cromwell has an illegitimate daughter. Yet the peril seems so much more...
Superlative telly. As if it needed saying.
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