The Apothecary Diaries Season 2

Episode 32

This is the point when I confess that I know way too much about arsenic poisoning. I used to volunteer as a docent in a small museum, and one year I curated an exhibit of domestic poisons, things people used regularly that turned out not to be so good for you, alongside such delights as “female pills” (abortifacients) and Zonite (weak bleach for your lady parts), arsenic featured in many “medicinal” and cosmetic preparations. And I bring it up now because one of the things it can do is help preserve dead bodies.

Arsenic has popped up at least in theory before in The Apothecary Diaries, as a potential source of Lady Lihua's poisoning back in season one. But now it seems more likely to be at play in the story with the dowager empress' request for Maomao: she wants to know if she cursed her late husband. The reason for this, as well as for the near-perfect preservation of his rooms in the former rear palace is that a year after his death, his corpse was also nearly perfectly preserved. Since neither the current emperor nor his mother could come up with a reasonable explanation for such a thing (and there are several; look up the Catacombe dei Cappuccini di Palermo if you're feeling a little ghoulish), and given that he was, to put it mildly, not a good man, a curse seems like a reasonable answer. At least, it's reasonable if you're not Maomao.

This episode is one of the clearest set-up episodes that the series has indulged in, and it's a testament to how good the show is that it doesn't feel like it lags even without a major forward-moving plot. It's not entirely unfair to also frame this in light of a recap episode, although it's far from a clip show; several salient plot points that we've known before are brought back up so that they're fresh in our minds for what's to come. Chief among those important details is the fact that the previous emperor was a pedophile, deliberately choosing the youngest concubines and in no way waiting for them to grow up before sleeping with them. The dowager empress looks more like the emperor's older sister than his mother, and that's because she's only about twelve years older than him – apparently, the minute she hit menarche, the former emperor got her pregnant. Since she was so young, the current emperor had to be delivered via C-section, and I suspect that's a much more important detail than anyone's letting on.

Just because Luomen knew how to do it doesn't mean he could do it so that the dowager empress' fertility was preserved, something Maomao may be considering, especially given Ah-Duo's history. When she muses that the emperor's younger brother would have been born when the dowager empress was in her 30s, we can see the wheels turning. Would a man with a clear preference for underage girls sleep with an adult woman? But if he wouldn't, does that mean the imperial brother isn't the late emperor's son? We already know the story of Ah-Duo's and the dowager's concurrent labor, and the suspicion has already been voiced that the imperial brother is an imperial son, so Maomao's musings may be moving towards confirming that. But even she's socially canny enough to know that she'd better keep these ideas to herself…for now, at least.

The dowager empress' story may feel familiar. Maomao muses that during her reign, the women abolished slavery, and she notes that many of the courtesans working in the pleasure district were just slaves by another name. Does the dowager see herself as one of those women, sold into sexual slavery to a sick man who tormented her? It's a thought worth having, especially since she doesn't seem too broken up by the thought that she may have cursed her late husband to death. He was effectively her master, and with his death, she came as close to being free as she could be. If she did curse him, or more likely poison him, I suspect plenty of people would call it a job well done.

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