Characters / The Serpent Queen

Courtiers and royals

Catherine de Medici

Played by: Samantha Morton (adult), Liv Hill (teenager)

• Abusive Parents: She arranges to have her own son kidnapped.
• Animal Motifs: The snake—cold and calculating.

• Cold Ham: Particularly as an adult, when she's played by Samantha Morton, her voice rarely rises much above a whisper, and yet people are often intimidated by her.
• Color Motifs: Catherine wears a lot of green to symbolize her serpentine character, and potentially her jealousy of Diane.
• Driven to Villainy: How Catherine views herself. And in fairness, she has not had it easy; orphaned as a baby, treated like a meaningless pawn by surviving family, and then cruelly (if unintentionally) humiliated by the husband she loved.
• I'm a Humanitarian: She drinks a broth containing her husband's heart.
• Informed Attribute: The way others talk about her, one would think that Catherine is hideously ugly, even though in reality she's (at worst) somewhat plain.
• Love Martyr: Downplayed. Henri isn't abusive towards her, but he's negligent, choosing Diane over her time and again although he's consistently apologetic about it. Despite this, Catherine refuses to give up on their marriage.
• Manipulative Bitch: Gains Rahima's trust, then tricks her into getting caught snooping through Mary's things. Afterwards, she has the gall to gaslight her about it. On another occasion, she manages to scare Mary off marrying Francis by convincing her he's impotent.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Since she's usually soft-spoken and stoic, you know the situation is dire when she screams at her magician for tricking her into murdering her husband.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Lampshaded when Henri remarks that while he was a "toy soldier wrapped in cotton wool" at war, Catherine was back home using her cunning and diplomacy to be an excellent regent.

Henry II of France

Played by: Lee Ingleby (adult), Alex Heath (teenager)

• Color Motifs: Black and white, just like Diane, symbolizing the extent to which he is in her thrall.
• Driven to Suicide: Possibly. When Catherine warns him not to joust as she saw in a dream that he would die, Henri goes ahead and jousts anyway. On his deathbed, he tells Catherine he chose to joust because he knew she wanted the dream to come true.
• Eye Scream: Dies after being impaled through the eye with a lance. Although the hit itself doesn't kill him, the wound quickly becomes infected.
• Friend to All Living Things: As a teenager, he's shown to be interested in animals, particularly frogs, which he delights in catching and showing to any woman who catches his fancy. As an adult he's also shown to be good with his and Catherine's children.
• Mellow Fellow: Henri is very passive, indecisive and Weak-Willed, and also Super Gullible and easily influenced, much to the dismay of his father—and the delight of almost everyone else. This becomes somewhat harsher if you view it as the result of his experiencing frequent sexual abuse from a young age.
• Puppet King: How he is viewed by his court, who see him as being completely controlled by Diane. They're mostly right.
• Rape as Backstory: is implied to have been raped by guards while imprisoned by The Holy Roman Emperor. By the standards of the present day, this is also what Diane does to him, since their relationship has been going on at least since he was fourteen.
• I Want to Be a Real Man: Henri finally gets fed up with everyone seeing him as a pushover who is always under Diane's thumb, and decides to prove his masculinity by participating in a joust with another knight, whom he specifically orders not to go easy on him. This leads to his suffering a significant head injury and, ultimately, dying from the wounds.

Diane de Poitiers

Played by: Ludivine Sagnier

• Ambiguously Bi: Preys on Henri, but also kisses Angelica when trying to manipulate her into betraying Catherine. It's unclear whether she is genuinely attracted to her, or just trying to seduce her into doing her bidding.
• Betty and Veronica: A loud, opinionated, self-proclaimed "whore" who bathes in gold, Diane is the Veronica to Catherine's more humble Betty.
• Berserk Button: She really doesn't like it when people bring up her age.
• Color Motifs: Wears exclusively black and white, to reflect that she was both sad and happy that she became a widow. Although by the end of the series, gold is definitely the color that viewers will most readily associate with her.
• Depraved Bisexual: Uses her sexuality to get her way, and doesn't care much about the gender of the person she's seducing.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Very strongly averted—Diane has blonde hair but is tremendously catty and self-centered, not to mention that by modern standards she'd be viewed as a child molester. She does, however, eventually manage to get golden skin, which is exactly as weird as it sounds.
• I Just Want to Be Beautiful: She's obsessed with appearing younger than she is, and her (often rather disturbing) beauty rituals are depicted on-screen.
  Angelica: You want to be noticed?
  Diane: I want to be unforgettable.
• Manipulative Bitch: Grooms young Henri, then manipulates him into doing whatever she wants most of the time.
• Ms. Fanservice: She's shown fully naked multiple times and even engages in a bit of Girl on Girl Is Hot when she makes out with Angelica.

Mary, Queen of Scots

Played by: Antonia Clarke

• The Fundamentalist: She's very strident in her Catholicism, to the point where even members of the court who are Catholics themselves call her a religious zealot. This results in an amusing exchange at the wedding of Mary and the Dauphin:
  Louis de Bourbon: We, uh...we wish you all the best.
  Mary, Queen of Scots: (smiling) Ah! And I pray you'll be spared God's wrath, as I pray for all Protestants.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: After ascending to the throne, Mary outlaws Protestantism and has followers of the religion hanged from trees.

• Historical Villain Upgrade: The real Mary did not lead a violent persecution of Protestants in France and was said to be quite sweet.
• Stepford Smiler: The psychotic kind. Will smile in your face while implying that you'll burn in hell.
• Unwitting Pawn: The Holy Roman Emperor convinces her it's her destiny to lead a United Catholic Europe. He then tells Catherine that he has manipulated the "silly girl" into causing civil war in France, destabilizing the kingdom and thereby promoting the status of his.

Antoine de Bourbon

Played by: Nicholas Burns

Louis de Bourbon

Played by: Danny Kirrane

Francois de Guise

Played by: Raza Jaffrey

• Everyone Has Standards: He wants to triumph over the Protestants. But unlike his niece, he does not want to kill them.

Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine

Played by: Ray Panthaki

• Everyone Has Standards: He'll seize Protestants' property and eventually criminalize them. But when his niece Queen Mary begins to execute them, even he objects.
• Straw Hypocrite: A Catholic priest who persecutes Protestants for their perceived heresy, whilst openly not caring about his vow of abstinence.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: His mother is always negatively comparing him to his older brother, and it seems to sting.

Francis I

Played by: Colm Meaney

Francis II

Played by: George Jaques

• Mercy Kill: With his consent, his mother feeds him poison laced with opium to allow him to die peacefully without pain.
• Nice Guy: He is a sweet boy who adores his wife and lacks confidence in himself.
• Puppet King: Much like his father, Francis is easily led by his wife, who seems to be the real power behind the throne.

Servants

Rahima

Played by: Sennia Nanua

• All of the Other Reindeer: Referred to as "it" by other servants.
• Corrupt the Cutie: A sweet young girl who is manipulated by Catherine into becoming more cold and calculating.
• Hidden Depths: Pretends to be uneducated and illiterate. She isn't.

Mathilde

Played by: Kiruna Stamell

Aabis

Played by: Amrita Acharia

Angelica

Played by: Ruby Bentall

• Abusive Parents: Her father was driven mad by ingesting too much gold, and apparently attacked his daughter, until "she stopped him".
• Lipstick Lesbian: Somewhat inevitable as 16th Century France would not have supported a woman dressing in trousers, but Angelica wears beautiful dresses.

Sebastio

Played by: Adam Garcia