The Spanish Princess – Episode 2 “Fever Dream” Recap & Review

The Allied Nations

Be warned, the recap below continues big spoilers about the plot, do bear this in mind if you haven’t watched this episode!

We return to The Spanish Princess with Catherine and Arthur leaving the church, finally married. In her bedroom, Catherine burns all her letters and is met by her husband, who looks very nervous. Unfortunately things go awry as Arthur feels rushed and doesn’t seem to want any physical contact with Catherine.

The next morning, he tells her that they will need to attend a Banquet. Prince Henry arrives and teases his brother about the night he spent with his new wife. Lina makes the bed and looks concerned, it looks like they haven’t consummated the marriage. The king’s mother has also noticed Maggie is avoiding Princess Catherine but she vehemently denies it. She also tells her that she expects her and her husband to report on how the Prince and Princess are doing.

At the banquet, as they celebrate the new union between England and Spain, Prince Henry (or Harry as everyone calls him), can’t stop staring at Catherine. To make matters worse, the tension continues to grow between Queen Elizabeth and Maggie Pole. Determined to settle things once and for all, Catherine meets with Maggie to beg for forgiveness over what happened to her brother and tells her she wasn’t made aware of it.

Elsewhere, the king informs his daughter, Meg Tudor, that she is to marry James IV of Scotland to form a treaty with them. This leads Meg and Catherine to speak about having choices made for them as she is facing a similar fate but the difference here is that Catherine has known about it since birth. Arthur and Catherine then leave for Ludlow.

Maggie and Arthur then share a touching moment as they reminisce about Teddy, who died, and Arthur reveals that his mother asked him to spy on her. At night, Catherine tells Arthur all about her and her home. This helps them both grow closer together before they finally consummate their marriage.

The next day, Meg is not happy about her union as the Scotsman currently residing at the castle are behaving very rudely and her future husband is very old. However, England have promised 100.000 crowns to Scotland for Meg’s dowry but they can’t afford it until Spain pays for Catherine. Elizabeth wants to postpone the wedding until they receive the money from Spain but the King wants the treaty to happen. Thankfully, they tell him he can wait as Scotland will not go into war now that they have Spain as their allies.

The next day, Catherine finds out Arthur is very ill and has “the sweats” which is extremely contagious and dangerous. Maggie and Catherine decide to pray together for the sake of his health and despite everyone’s warnings, Catherine visits her husband who is getting worse.

The King and Queen arrive too but are told their son didn’t make it. At the funeral, the King tells Catherine she will return to Westminster with them and tells her that he hopes that she is with child. Due to her husband’s ill health, her future is now uncertain. Maggie tells Elizabeth that she warned her the day she let the two innocent men die, coldly informing her the Tudor curse will get her and her children.

Lina wakes up with her fever gone and finds out that Ovedio has been watching her day and night to make sure she got better. Meanwhile, the King’s mother speaks to Meg and tells her that because of the recent events and the uncertainty with Spain, they will need to go ahead with the Scotland treaty.

Continuing on from the previous episode, The Spanish Princess continues to add layers of political intrigue to the storyline. There’s a great deal of it here too, with the interesting treaties between the Spanish and Scottish weighing heavily over the plot line. It helps to add some natural tension to proceedings too while Catherine’s journey is consistently interesting and dramatic. Personally, I’m not a massive fan of the romance between Lina and Ovedio but it serves its purpose to break up the main plot line.

Although not as strong as the first episode, there’s enough here to make for an intriguing watch nonetheless.