The WORST episodes of The Rose of Versailles
Every episode of The Rose of Versailles ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of The Rose of Versailles!
Raised from birth as a man, the Lady Oscar commands the palace guards at Versailles in the years before the French Revolution. Her beauty and noble spirit make her a shining figure in the eyes of both men and women but she is torn between her chosen life of service and duty to class and country and her own heart and desires. She lives as a noble amidst the opulence of Versailles but her keen senses and compassion are not blinded to the poverty of the French people.
#1 - Fersen, a Farewell Rondeau
Season 1 - Episode 20 - Aired 2/27/1980
Fersen continues spending nights with the Queen, but the guilt is eating away at him. He begins spending his time at run-down, shady bars while rumors of their liaison spread throughout France. Andre notices that Oscar cannot stop thinking about Fersen and fervently wants him to forget about the Count. Antoinette begs Oscar to tell Fersen that she needs to cancel one of their secret meetings because a friend of the King was coming and Oscar is the only one she could trust. Oscar tearfully tries practicing asking the Queen to stop her affair, but knows that she will not succeed due to their intense love for one another. She delivers Antoinette's message and rides away before Fersen could say too much. Drawings of the nude Queen seducing Fersen sell in great numbers on the street, while the Revolutionary War rages in America and France sends voluntary troops to help them fight.
#2 - Who Wrote the Love Letter
Season 1 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/21/1979
Antoinette goes to a masquerade, accompanied by Lady Oscar and both meet Hans Axel von Fersen. Antoinette and Fersen are instantly attracted to each other, and he finds out that she is the Dauphine. Fersen visits Antoinette in Versailles many times. Madame du Barry takes advantage of this by paying Lazani to make a forged love letter from Antoinette to Fersen in order to destroy her reputation. Lady Oscar finds the letter and uncovers Du Barry's plot, but she kills all witnesses and destroys all evidence, avoiding capture.
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#3 - Oscar in My Heart
Season 1 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/28/1979
With Oscar's growing responsibility and rise in status, Andre begins to feel neglected to the point of having nightmares. Marie Antoinette sees Madame du Barry on horseback and decides to learn to ride. An accident with the horse nearly kills Antoinette and Andre, but Oscar rescues them. Andre is accused of causing the accident and arrested, but Oscar saves him by requesting a trial in the name of the Jarjayes family and claiming responsibility for the accident as Andre's master. Fersen also tries to take the blame, but Antoinette begs the King to spare them all, claiming that the accident was due to her own selfishness and saving their lives. Despite severe injuries received from the accident, Oscar survives and recovers. Fersen finds out that Oscar is a woman, and is impressed by her strength. Andre regrets ever doubting that Oscar cares for him, and vows to protect her with his life.
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#4 - The Beautiful Devil, Jeanne
Season 1 - Episode 10 - Aired 12/12/1979
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are crowned King and Queen of France. Maximilian Robespierre, future leader of the French Revolution, reads them their congratulations. Jeanne has trained relentlessly to become a lady, but cannot enter Versailles because her guardian is not in favor at court. Having just been fired from her job due to the depression, an impoverished Rosalie begs her sister for help, but Jeanne manipulates Nicholas, a man in love with her, into attempting to kill Rosalie. Rosalie desperately attempts prostitution to get money; the first person she goes up to is Oscar, whom she mistakes for a man. Oscar gives her one gold livre for free, and wonders just how bad the conditions in France truly are. Jeanne and Nicholas kill her guardian and forge Marquise Brandvillier's will so they inherit all of her property. Oscar meets them for the first time during the funeral and suspects foul play.
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#5 - Fersen Leaves for the Northern Lands
Season 1 - Episode 11 - Aired 12/19/1979
Antoinette is ecstatic to be Queen and believes that it will grant her the happiness and freedom she's been searching for. Her first act as Queen is to promote Oscar to High Commander of the Royal Guard, giving her a rank similar to that of a Colonel and doubling her salary and pension. Oscar accepts the promotion but turns down the raise due to France's current lack of wealth. Oscar worries that Antoinette's honesty with her emotions will cause her trouble as a sovereign, and that the taxation of the common people would lower her popularity. Her fears are realized when Antoinette begins canceling events and turning down the hundreds of people requesting an audience with her on a regular basis to see Fersen.
#6 - On the Morning of the Duel, Will Oscar...?
Season 1 - Episode 12 - Aired 12/26/1979
Antoinette is easily swayed by Beltin Dressmakers into spending an extravagant amount of money on their finery. She spends more time entertaining herself than attending to her duties as Queen. Despite her earlier worries, Oscar decides to let Antoinette do what she wants because she senses that Fersen's leaving has left her very lonely. Guemenee and Orleans try to manipulate the King and Queen into canceling audiences with peasants, but Oscar advises Antoinette against this, and she listens. Oscar and Guemenee get into a fight over each other's behavior, so Guemenee challenges her to a duel. Orleans and Guemenee decide to hold the duel in a place where Oscar would be temporarily blinded by the rising sun at a crucial moment.
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#7 - Winds of Arras, Answer Me...
Season 1 - Episode 13 - Aired 1/9/1980
Antoinette is entranced by singer Yolande de Polignac and invites her entire family to move to Versailles—one of the many decisions that would lead to her eventual destruction. Against the rules of her confinement, Oscar takes a trip to Arras, a peasant village under her family's care. There, she learns of the terrible condition of the common French people. The peasants treat her coldly because of her noble lineage. Robespierre, there on a trip to help them, tells her that the majority of French people blame the Queen's hedonism for their unending suffering. Gilbert, the son of the peasant Sugan, falls ill, and is left to die due to his family's inability to pay for a doctor. Oscar takes him to the hospital and pays in Sugan's stead, saving the child, but is deeply affected by everything she has seen and heard.
#8 - The Countess of the Casino
Season 1 - Episode 15 - Aired 1/23/1980
Oscar is released from confinement and put back on duty. Orleans and Guemenee place pressure on Antoinette for her lack of an heir, using her rising insecurity and tarnishing reputation to their advantage. Polignac scares Antoinette into lying that she is pregnant. She feels horribly guilty, but Polignac persuades her from turning back. Polignac and her friends begin gambling illegally with Antoinette under the guise of cheering her up; in reality, the games are fixed so they could cover their own gambling losses. Antoinette from then on becomes addicted to gambling. Oscar confronts Polignac, but is unable to report her because the Queen's reputation would be further tarnished if the public knew of her activities. Antoinette becomes 500,000 livres (55 million U.S. dollars) in debt, but Polignac's crocodile tears help her avoid punishment.
#9 - Now, the Moment of Encounter
Season 1 - Episode 17 - Aired 2/6/1980
Oscar and Rosalie go to court to introduce Rosalie to the Queen. Rosalie finally encounters Polignac and the two of them recognize each other at once. Oscar stops Rosalie from killing Polignac with a hidden knife due to the large number of witnesses, and uses threats to prevent Polignac from revealing Rosalie's poor background. Afterwards, Oscar, Andre, and Rosalie begin searching for Rosalie's birth mother. Polignac rigs a chandelier to fall on Oscar, but Andre saves her life. She then tries to have Oscar killed in the middle of the night by assassins, among them own brother. Oscar is injured while trying to protect Rosalie, but Fersen arrives just before the finishing blow.
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#10 - Farewell, Little Sister!
Season 1 - Episode 19 - Aired 2/20/1980
Polignac agrees to marry off 11-year-old Charlotte to Duke Guiche, a powerful but shady middle-aged man with an unhealthy fetish for young girls. Charlotte is so terrified of her suitor that she faints upon meeting him. She begs Polignac not to force into the marriage, but to no avail. Rosalie trains and improves drastically in order to avenge her mother, but Oscar wonders what Rosalie would do after this is accomplished. Andre finds out that "Martine Gabrielle" was the former first name of Polignac; in other words, Rosalie's birth mother was the murderer of her foster mother. Rosalie accidentally overhears Andre telling Oscar this, and claims that she feels no love for Polignac in spite of their relation. Oscar tells Rosalie that she had lied when she offered to help with her revenge, hoping instead that time would've caused her to abandon her revenge plans.
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#11 - The Silk Dress and the Ragged Dress
Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/14/1979
Antoinette and the Crown Prince visit Paris. Lady Oscar prevents an assassination against the Crown Prince. The culprit, Charles Colder, commits suicide by poison. His co-conspirators Duke Orleans and Duke Guemenee avoid capture. Jeanne, a poor peasant girl, meets the Marquise de Brandvillier and persuades her to take her in, leaving her family behind.
#12 - The Necklace Shines Ominously
Season 1 - Episode 22 - Aired 3/12/1980
Two years after Fersen leaves, the Queen has given birth to daughter Marie Therese and son Joseph. She moves to Petit Trianon, a small villa, to spend more time with her children---and thus, ignores her Queenly duties and ends all audiences for good while the troubles of the peasants grow with each passing day and the nobles are frustrated due to their inability to talk to the Queen. Oscar, knowing the harm that Antoinette is causing, chooses to ignore it because the Queen has not been so happy in years. Empress Maria Theresa dies worrying about her daughter. Boehmer, a jeweler with a 1,600,000 livre diamond necklace (200 million US dollars) was unable to sell it to the Queen four years ago and now asks Jeanne for help. She convinces Rohan that Antoinette wants the necklace and had asked Rohan to be the guarantor. Instead of delivering the necklace to the Queen, Jeanne separates each of the diamonds and asks Nicholas to sell them in England.
#13 - Minuet of the Unrequited
Season 1 - Episode 25 - Aired 4/2/1980
Oscar is promoted to Brigadier, but revolution is ablaze in France's streets. The royal family is hated, commoners are assaulting nobles and vandalizing mansions, and some nobles have even joined the civilians against Louis and Antoinette. Fersen returns to France after a seven year absence, much to Oscar's delight and Andre's carefully hidden jealousy. He tries to keep his return a secret and resolves not to see the Queen, but heads to Trianon to support her once he realizes the graveness of her situation because he still loves her. He pledges his life to her, but promises not to rekindle their romance in order to avoid anymore trouble. He advises her to return to Versailles and break ties with Polignac's clique, and she listens. With her hopes that Fersen is no longer in love unrecognized, Oscar is distracted by thoughts of him during duty and feels ashamed. She dresses up as a woman for the first time and attends a ball as a magnificent, unnamed foreigner.
#14 - Even if I should Lose the Light...
Season 1 - Episode 27 - Aired 4/16/1980
The Knight escapes while Oscar tends to Andre. The doctor tells him to keep bandages over his eye until it is healed to avoid blindness. Oscar decides to investigate Royale after the Knight steals 200 new rifles. She questions Orleans, but learns nothing, and is instead taken to his salon where young intellectuals and "Liberalists" from all classes gather regularly to talk. Oscar investigates the Liberalists under the guise of light conversation, but the Knight is watching from a distance and decides to take Oscar hostage in order to blackmail firearms from General Jarjeyes, her father and the one in charge of all the Royal Guard's military weapons. After being held in a cell for two days, the Knight asks Oscar to write the ransom letter, falsely thinking that the "weak pride of nobles" will lead her to do so. When Oscar does not return, Andre takes off his bandages, dons his Knight costume, rides to Royale, and steals Oscar's cell keys.
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#15 - André, a Green Lemon
Season 1 - Episode 28 - Aired 4/30/1980
Andre begins to experience blurring vision in his right eye due to the stress he must put on it ever since his left eye became blind. Fersen visits Oscar, and figures out that she was the unnamed woman he danced with. Oscar runs from him in tears. The two of them agree never to meet again because Fersen cannot return her feelings for him. Andre temporarily experiences a moment of blindness. He rides out into Paris and joins in the merrymaking of the French Guards for an entire night to take his mind off of the knowledge that he will eventually go blind. Oscar quits the Royal Guards because she wants to do riskier jobs in order to ensure that she will always live life as a man. She dismisses Andre, telling him that she wants to be able to live independently.
#16 - The Doll that Began to Walk
Season 1 - Episode 29 - Aired 5/14/1980
Oscar is appointed as the Commander of the French Guards Company B, a particularly rough regiment filled mostly with commoners. She tells Andre that she does not hold the other night's incident against him. She promises to avoid seeing him because she does not love him back, similar to what Fersen did for her unrequited love, but Andre joins Company B so he will be able to see and protect Oscar, much to her chagrin. Company B decides to boycott Oscar's inaugural troops review because they do not want to be commanded by an aristocratic woman. She responds by challenging one of their troops to a duel, saying that she would leave the French Guards if they lost, but that they would have to do the review if she won. She wins, and the review takes place, but Alain de Soissons, the group's squad leader, tells her that winning one fight will not gain her full acceptance, and that the majority of soldiers in Company B are only in it for the salary.
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#17 - A Lilac Blooming in the Barracks
Season 1 - Episode 31 - Aired 6/4/1980
Rising crime rates make Oscar's job busier than ever. The Ardelos family comes from Spain for a goodwill envoy to the French Royal Family and is in danger of terrorist attacks. Company B is assigned to protect them because the Royal Guard is busy and Oscar is the only French Guard Commander who knows noble etiquette. Saint-Just targets the Ardelos' and plants a traitor in Company B to kill Oscar before they begin their attack. Oscar defeats the traitor, but Andre and Alain shoot him before she can question him. Saint-Just's men set fire to the building the Ardelos' are residing in, but Oscar chases him off just before he can kill the family. Saint-Just's men get away via use of an explosion which knocks out Oscar, Andre, and Alain.
#18 - On the Night of Their Passionate Vows
Season 1 - Episode 37 - Aired 8/6/1980
Oscar discovers that she has tuberculosis. Since the only known cure for it is rest and a good environment, her doctor tells her to quit the military and move to a country mansion—or else she would die in half-a-year. She also finds out that Andre is going blind. Company A is dispatched to fight armed citizens, and Company B is told to stand-by. Civilians begin raiding food and firearms. Oscar's portrait is finished. It portrays her as Mars, the Roman God of War, and is hailed as a masterpiece, but Andre can not see it. He describes Oscar's beauty in the painting with his imagination, moving Oscar to tears because he describes things that are not there. Company B is ordered to suppress a riot, and the two of them prepare to leave for the guard barracks. General Jarjayes is also dispatched. Before he leaves, he tells Andre that he would've allowed him to marry Oscar had he been a noble, and begs him not to die.
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#19 - Before the Door of Fate
Season 1 - Episode 38 - Aired 8/20/1980
Company B is summoned to subdue the protest at the Tuileries Square in Paris, but they decide to fight with the civilians under Oscar's command if a riot breaks out. A child is killed by a soldier of the German Cavalry Regiment, causing violence to erupt throughout the city. The people are armed well, but disorganized, causing them to retreat against the army during the first battle of the French Revolutionary War. The former Company B forces the German Cavalry to retreat without gunshots, but are still distrusted by the revolting civilians. Oscar walks into their crowd weaponless, saying that she would not mind begin shot if her men could be trusted. With the help of Bernard, she gains their trust.
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#20 - His Smile is Lost Forever!
Season 1 - Episode 39 - Aired 8/27/1980
Oscar's men rush to take Andre to a doctor, relentlessly charging through rows of firing enemy soldiers. At Tuileries, more than 10 doctors tend to his wound. Andre expresses a strong will to live, saying that he can not pass away with so many beginnings surrounding them, but dies nevertheless, smiling and crying tears. Believing that she would not be able to take charge in her despair, Oscar asks Alain to lead the group in her stead, but he persuades her to continue doing so. She wanders through the night consumed by grief, regret, and nostalgia, before collapsing from her illness in the rain. Alain finds her in the morning, and they join the civilian army headed to storm the infamous Bastille Prison.
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#21 - Fly! The Butterfly of Austria
Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/17/1979
Marie Antoinette arrives to France. Oscar foils the Duke Orleans' plot to prevent the marriage of Antoinette and Louis XVI, though he manages to avoid suspicion. Antoinette meets her future husband and is deeply unsatisfied.
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#22 - Adieu, My Beloved Oscar
Season 1 - Episode 40 - Aired 9/3/1980
Mortally wounded, Oscar's last request is that the former French Guards continue firing and seize Bastille Prison. She dies on July 14, 1789, listening to the sounds of the Storming of Bastille. It surrenders an hour afterwards. Five years later, Rosalie and Bernard visit Alain at his farm, filling him in about the fate of the King, Marie Antoinette, Hans Axel von Fersen and other figures of the Revolution. Polignac and many other nobles had fled the Queen's side, but Fersen returned to Paris to help the Royal Family escape. His plan failed, and Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and their children were executed, though the Queen's mind was comforted whenever she thought of Oscar.
#23 - Sparks Fly at Versailles
Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/24/1979
Antoinette meets and instantly dislikes the king's mistress Madame Du Barry for being a former prostitute and commoner. She talks to every other lady in the court except for her, invoking DuBarry's wrath and making the two of them enemies from then on out. The entire court soon hears of this vendetta and begins taking sides. Duke Orleans takes this opportunity to strike an alliance with Du Barry; as the Dauphin's cousin, he would become heir to the throne if Louis XVI and Antoinette were to die. Oscar decides to remain neutral, but Du Barry sends her mother an invitation to become her lady-in-waiting, forcing the Jarjeyes family into dangerous court intrigue against Oscar's will.
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#24 - A Sought Encounter with the Black Knight!
Season 1 - Episode 26 - Aired 4/9/1980
A masked vigilante called the Black Knight begins stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. His popularity increases to the point where marches are being held for him in the streets. Andre begins spending an abnormal amount of time outside during the evenings, causing Oscar to suspect him of being the Knight. She starts attending every ball available, because that is where the Knight usually strikes. He does so one ball after Andre mysteriously disappears. Oscar chases him into Palais Royale, Orleans' manor, rumored to be an anti-monarchist meeting place. Oscar is injured by the guards, but the Knight stops them from killing her. She escapes, collapses on the street, and has a nightmare where Andre is the Black Knight and is killed during a mission. Oscar is rescued by a peasant family housing Rosalie. She tells her that she left the Polignacs when they tried to force her to marry Guiche in order to expand their prestige.
#25 - With Tears of Dignity...
Season 1 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/7/1979
Du Barry fakes crying to get the King enraged at Antoinette and plots with Orleans to get Prince Louis killed in a hunting "accident". The plot fails when Louis drops the rigged gun on the ground, causing it to harmlessly explode. The King and Du Barry pressure Mercy to get Marie to "correct her attitude". He tells the Dauphine that the treaty between Austria and France would be broken if this continues. Not wanting Europe to be engaged in war, Antoinette frustratingly relents, but her three aunts prevent this from happening at the night's next party due to their personal hatred for Du Barry. On New Years Day, Antoinette finally speaks two sentences to Du Barry, and runs from the party in tears, telling Oscar that she would never speak to her again. Oscar, admiring her dignity, swears to protect Antoinette with her life.
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