Stylish, bloody, violent, sexually charged – welcome to the voluptuous drama Versailles, which recently returned for its second series on BBC Two. Louis XIV (played by George Blagden, also Vikings’ errant monk Athelstan) has decide to make the nobility submit to his will by imposing a move of the court from Paris to Versailles, in a Machiavellian political manoeuvre. Trapped by their king’s ‘invitation’, the nobles of Paris (including Louis’ brother Monsieur Philippe d’Orléans, played by Alexander Vlahos, seen above alongside the king) gradually come to see the castle as a gilded prison, and soon even his most humble courtiers begin to show their viciousness, as a poisonous atmosphere seeps into the court. Meanwhile, danger threatens the kingdom as the Franco-Dutch war rages on, and Louis confronts his bitter rival,…
