Sunday 3 June 2018

Fall of Eagles: The Honest Broker


Narratively speaking, The Honest Broker picks up from where The English Princess left off, except about 20 years have passed and "Willikins", the son of crown prince Frederick and princess Vicky, is now an adult and played by the manny who will play him for the rest of the series - Barry Foster, who was Saul Enderby in Smiley's People, a series that also featured Curd Jurgens.

Bismarck begins grooming Willikins for the succession, which turns out to be a wise move when Frederick becomes ill and dies of throat cancer not long after his own father, Kaiser Wilhelm i, meaning young Willikins is now Kaiser Wilhelm ii. He has no love for his parents and has been impatient to be emperor from the moment his father fell ill, which leads to the first great scene in the episode where he takes soldiers with him to seize his father's papers... on the very same day his father has died. This results in a confrontation with Vicky in which he whines
"You had no softness for me!"


The aging makeup on Jurgens as the older Bismarck is noticeably quite a bit better than that used on the likes of Derek "Shakespeare-denier" Jacobi in I Claudius, although to be fair the amount he needed to be aged was a lot less.

There now begins a power struggle between Bismarck and his former protégé. Bismarck has considerably more experience, but the new emperor has one advantage - that Bismarck's position as Chancellor comes from being appointed by the emperor. The only thing stopping the emperor from removing Bismarck whenever he wants is the simple fact that this would be a really bad idea.

However, Kaiser Wilhelm starts as he means to go on by not letting this small detail stop him, although he is also given bad advice by his self-serving henchmannys, which include Count Holstein (played by Frederick Jaeger, a manny who was in Doctor Who a few times, including as Professor Sorenson in Planet of Evil and Professor Marius in The Invisible Enemy... the makers of Doctor Who must have just thought he looked like a professor) who also stays friendly with Bismarck, clearly hoping to be on the winning side regardless of who that turns out to be.

The best scene of the episode then comes as Kaiser Wilhelm travels to Bismarck's home and sacks him. Their confrontation is dynamite - there is lots of shouting from both of them, ending when Wilhelm walks out and Bismarck is left shouting in denial
"I am Bismarck!"


The final irony then comes when Bismarck meets with Vicky, hoping she can persuade her son to take him back. But he has done too good of a job in dividing them over the years, and she has no influence over Wilhelm. They are both left isolated and defeated in the end.

The early death of Frederick and the removal of Vicky from power effectively prevents the new Germany from reforming towards a more liberal parliamentary democracy along the lines of Britain. Wilhelm will continue to possess absolute power until the end of his reign - the consequences of which will shape the rest of the series.

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