Medici The Magnificent Recap 'Blood with Blood'

Season 2 Episode 4

The fourth episode of The Magnificent explored the tragedy of Volterra, said to be a stain in the legacy of Lorenzo de Medici. The writers also used the episode to explore Clarice’s growing unhappiness in the marriage, due to Lorenzo’s affair with Lucrezia. Clarice promised Lorenzo that she would remain a dutiful wife, though her heart would remain closed to him for as long as he carried on with his affair. When Lorenzo was at his lowest point, horrified that his efforts to avoid war ended in the sacking of Volterra, Clarice came to him, tenderly bathing the dirt and blood off of him, speaking words of comfort. ‘I’ve been a fool’, Lorenzo murmured, as he realised how his wife quietly helped him with his problem with Venice, as he looked at the woman he married as though he was seeing her for the first time. Deeply devout, without the sexual experience of Lucrezia, Clarice nonetheless continued the string of strong, fiercely intelligent women who married into the Medici family (Lorenzo’s grandmother Contessina and mother Lucrezia). It was also a nice mirror of how, in Masters of Florence, Cosimo and Contessina’s hands would find each other when faced with trials. Just as with Cosimo and Contessina, Lorenzo and Clarice’s arranged marriage had flowered into a union of genuine respect and affection. 

Medici The Magnificent Recap 'Obstacles and Opportunities'

Season 2 Episode 3

Clarice arrived in Florence, and her marriage to Lorenzo was consummated, happily. Bianca eloped with Guglielmo, forcing alliances to shift in the Medici and Pazzi camps. Simonetta and Giuliano are now closer to becoming lovers. Obstacles and Opportunities was chock full of Lorenzo's scheming, but they all touched on these three pairings, three couple stories, one brought together by love, one by lust, one by duty.

Medici The Magnificent Recap 'Standing Alone'

Season 2 Episode 2

The second episode of the second season of this Medici saga was very much focused on Lorenzo's efforts to save his family from ruin, yet it was Piero, Piero who failed, Piero who made what could have been a catastrophic decision to allow the Duke of Milan to sack Florence, Piero who knew he never measured up in the eyes of his father and now of his own son, who was this tale's beating heart. Once upon a time, Piero stood in the shadow of the brilliant Cosimo de Medici, a son who was learned, who was dutiful, but who did not quite have the vision that his father had which allowed their family to triumph and to transform Florence into a bustling, prosperous city alongside their own continued accumulation of wealth. Piero inherited an empire that he struggled to maintain; it took men like Cosimo, and now Lorenzo, to build a legacy that was greater than simply being wealthy. Piero lay dying with the knowledge that he had a son who could fight for the family, but also with the realisation that his life was ending without ever having scaled the heights his father did, and his son could.

Medici The Magnificent Recap 'Old Scores'

Season 2 Episode 1

Near the beginning of Medici: The Magnificent, the second season of this chronicle of the lives of one of history's most famously powerful families, there was a scene that showed brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici riding hard as they tried to protect their father Piero from assassins who accosted them on their way from their villa in Tuscany to their seat of power in Florence. Daniel Sharman and Bradley James looked like the perfect princes of one's childhood imagination, dashing and brave, as they rushed toward danger rather than cower from it. When Piero was hit with an arrow from an archer hidden amongst the trees, Giuliano remained with him whilst Lorenzo tried to locate the 15th century equivalent of a sniper. They struggled, and Lorenzo, young, not yet holding the reigns of Medici power, killed a man for the first time.