Time is accelerating now. Episode 5 covered six weeks; episode 6 covered four days; but episode 7 tracks only part of a single afternoon. This is less staccato, but also means there’s less plot. Will finally makes a clear-sighted choice and is a more sympathetic figure because of it. But his embarkation into aristo life drifts ever further from the premise of the show, so we’re only half-interested. The Tournament is very well staged and has some terrific visuals. On the other hand, none of the three heroes take part, and two don’t even attend. So all in all, the verdict on this episode would have to be a mixed one — yes, but no — if it weren’t for a terrific ending.

We open with our first shot of the Tournament grounds by day, the Tripod full-frame and presiding. It towers high over the tents in a fully convincing effect, though they’re not small either. The grooms exercise the horses and we hear the synthesised fanfare music in full for the first time. There are drum rolls: the great day has come at last, we are being told. Will has found still another previously unseen Castle room in which to brood, but Eloise hunts him down. “I thought you would know, I’m nearly seventeen years of age.” This is all a recap in case we missed episode 6, of course. Eloise is in her finery, and tells Will he should be, too. The music segues into a lushly tragic love theme such as wouldn’t disgrace Ultravox (whose “Vienna”, 1981, was a defining sound of the period) but, as Will reaches out and tells her his decision, it resolves into a major key after all. Perhaps everything will be all right. Eloise is still uncomprehending of his dilemma, but we the viewers aren’t, and Will is talking as much to us as to her.

Cut to fruit punch in a silver bowl, and the sound of mingling: the Count’s pre-match reception, under canvas. An enormous pork pie on one table has yet to be cut open. “Quelle belle journée,” the Count remarks, though in some shots it does look as if it might be quite blustery outside. (A thin rain is surprisingly invisible on camera, so it’s hard to be sure.) Will now has a stylish cream suit with a botanical tie, though his puffy shirt-cuffs are pretty frou-frou. The Count and Countess, who display such true affection that it’s impossible not to like them, give him an enigmatic little box, and — after a brief baring of fangs by Sarlat, who’s in competitor’s garb — the Count announces Will’s betrothal to Eloise in an elegant speech to paper over what all of the guests must be thinking: i.e., how was this old fool taken in by a low-born nobody? Will finds that the box contains an engagement ring and, obliged to make a speech, manages the one line “Je ne trouvé [sic] pas les paroles… Merci”. All present applaud, in that what-a-clever-child way the French have when foreigners try to speak their language. Will’s future is now fully mapped out: Capping at the New Year, wedding on the Spring equinox. We then bump into the Comte de Saclay, who makes a swivel-eyed speech right to camera about the evils of Paris — the point, of course, to rub in the bargain Will has made: lots of fruit punch, but no arguing. “People are watching us,” hisses Eloise: he is not even allowed to look annoyed. Saclay is a fun character, but don’t get attached, this is his only scene.

And so at last the Tournament assembles, with mounted knights and their French damsels. All applaud the Ricordeaus — of whom there are now four. Will’s inclusion in the privileged few, applauded even by the other dukes, and followed by his own servant and bodyguard, is conspicuous here. Throughout these sequences Will and Sarlat exchange looks of deep loathing, which adds an edge. A more cynical adaptation would have seen Will himself jousting, fencing and loosing off arrows in some grudge match vs. Sarlat. He would have been instantly good at the local high-status sport, like Tom Brown at Rugby,[1] or Harry Potter at Hogwarts.[2] Instead, and much more realistically, he’s back to being a child looking on at an adult ritual. His clothes may be richer, but he’s made no progress in growing up since Capping Day back in episode 1. Narratively, this is a good choice. But these splendidly-shot scenes do suffer from the fact that we don’t really care about any of the contestants.

What we see is inevitably scaled down from the huge tournaments held in France from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries, which sprawled over miles of land. Though these were court events, dedicated to princesses or either high ladies, they were also disorderly and unpredictable. One of the last to be held, in 1559, saw the king himself killed by a splinter from a broken lance, and nearly forty years of civil war followed. The BBC presents us with only eight knights, and contains the event to a single field, but otherwise the format is authentic enough to suggest that the makers had done their history homework. As was the French custom, two stands face each other, one for the chateau’s people, the opposite for visitors. Contestants wear colour- and shape-coded body padding (with their squires to match) and will play off in a four-round contest. Note the hanging pennants representing who’s still in the game, and the Tournament banner showing all eight designs in an abstract way. The knights peal away until they’re riding in single file to the base of the Tripod — the traditional regars, or review — and then the music swells, and the Count very theatrically declaims: “Let the Tournament… begin!” —

— cutting us to Henry and Beanpole’s only cameo in the episode, peasant boys in servants’ clothes plodding through a cornfield twenty kilometers away to the south, and speculating on Will’s future: a quiet little scene, patchily acted towards the end, but filmed engagingly with a handheld camera which moves unobtrusively around them as if we, the viewers, are also walking briskly through the corn, at what is precisely the half-way point of the first season of the show —

— and now round 1 is well under way. This is the mêlée, a form of cavalry battle with blunted weapons. Here it involves riding with clubs to knock over rotating targets and little sandbags with painted oriental faces, which smash very satisfyingly into flying sand, then racing back to the mark. One rider falls, another’s clubbed by Sarlat. The music’s quite busy, making the action seem still more frenzied. Will supports Trouillon: the Count doesn’t care who wins, he’s just into the excitement of it all, out of his chair with enthusiasm. Yellow and purple are eliminated, so six contestants remain. Sarlat looks as if he’s planning something, as indeed he is. Round 2 is archery, though not with the round targets we saw earlier: here we have stylised woodland animals to shoot at — deer, rabbit, wolf. Out go dark blue and lime green, which takes us to the semifinal, fencing. This looks cool, too, with the fencers chained by their left arms to wooden stakes. Trouillon (light blue diamond) defeats purple stripe, the oldest knight in the tourney. Sarlat (grey stripe) disarms red triangle, then gratuitously scars his face. The blood is convincingly done and it’s a disturbing moment.

A breather in the refreshment tent before the final. Will is faintly shocked by Sarlat’s behaviour, Eloise rather pleased by it. Will ducks into the armoury tent — swords, shields, jousting poles, arrows, surrounded by rather grand hangings — to wish Trouillon luck in the final. Trouillon hears out his clumsy but passable French, and then there’s an encounter with Sarlat. “It is me who will win,” says Sarlat in clumsy but passable English, “and then we will see how happy your days are.”

Round 4 is inevitably a joust. Like all the Tournament scenes, it’s filmed violently enough not to seem play-acting. The peasants line up on the left, the aristos sit on the right, the Tripod stands high over all. Drum-beats and fanfares. Sarlat is on a bay horse with a white stripe, Trouillon on pure white, in case we have any doubt who the good guy is. The camera’s POV shots are excellent and the music overlays considerable menace, which goes a long way to making us care which of these two dukes will win. The Count adjudicates: it’s a best of three, and Sarlat and Trouillon take one each. When Sarlat almost falls, dangling upside-down from the saddle as his horse runs on around the leg of the Tripod, his helmet thrown free, we get probably the best stunt performance in the show. There’s just a little slow-mo for the final charge, a clear knockout blow. The grey banner is then affixed to Sarlat’s lance. “Je suis votre champion,” he yells to the Count, not waiting to be told.

Everything happens quickly now. Nobody has explained this to Will, but the champion now chooses the Queen of the Tournament, and the music emphasises that this is a sinister business as Sarlat’s lance pokes at Will’s face and then offers his banner to Eloise: she’s to be Queen. All applaud. The bugler bugles, and the Count is brought a crown with a hanging gold tress which looks positively medieval, something Eleanor of Aquitaine could have worn. As the Count crowns his daughter there’s an ominous sense of a Capping ceremony here, and indeed everyone immediately lines up in front of the Tripod. Will finds himself in a procession to a dais which has already been set up, Eloise saying her goodbyes. “The Tournament Queen goes to serve the Tripods in their city of gold, it is the supreme honour.” She is beatifically happy. “Remember me.” She gives Will the grey banner — Sarlat’s banner — and the music turns into an almost-snarling, as if the Tripod above is a dragon to which a princess is being sacrificed. Sarlat helps her to a cushioned chair, goes through the motions of a courteous leave-taking, and steps back with total satisfaction, his revenge complete. Rising church-organ voices fill the soundscape. The Tripod’s tentacle picks up the chair and carries her aloft in style, consumes her, closes up and, as a tracking shot follows a tearful Will stumbling on foot towards it, the Tripod stomps away with both speed and heaviness, right to left out of frame.

Works cited:

  1. Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857), by Thomas Hughes. Wikipedia.
  2. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997), by J. K. Rowling. Wikipedia.

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