Art credits in captions.Margot Verger’s Tale of Two GorgetsThe wonderful theghostofabigailhobb

Art credits in captions.Margot Verger’s Tale of Two GorgetsThe wonderful theghostofabigailhobbs asked me about Margot’s neck jewelry; ask, and ye shall most likely receive. Probably there are all sorts of thoughts running through your head looking at the images I’ve chosen to go along with Margot’s costumes. Hint: herein, we will discuss class, patriarchy of the most literal familial sort, abuse, pain-bearing and martyrdom, sweet, sweet triumph, and…a nihilist universe. (Yeah, this one doesn’t end on a high note.)On a purely aesthetic level, my thoughts here are fairly straightforward. The first necklace or collar is simple, nearly flat, silver-colored, and very explicitly protecting her throat. My immediate association was a gorget, the piece of plate armor that, well, shields one’s gorge (throat). It’s very thematically appropriate: she has just been wounded both physically and emotionally, yet again, by her brother. Moreover, her attempt to kill him has brought her all kinds of unpleasant attention and opprobrium. The gorget as an expression of a desire for protection seems natural. Secondly, she’s extremely guarded here: she’s still taking Hannibal’s measure. While she speaks openly, even expansively, about her attempt to kill Mason, it’s obvious in the moments that she turns away that she is not feeling nearly so much bravado as she’d have Hannibal believe. This is a consistent survival skill and coping mechanism for her: we’ll see later in her scenes with Mason that she mouths off when he’s frightening her (more than the baseline). So in the sense of both symbolic armor as self-care (boy do I know about that) and shielding herself against Hannibal’s perception, the gorget fits nicely. (It also looks fucking awesome and I want one.) On the flipside, though: that defiance is still real and important and admirable. You put on armor when you’re going into battle. She’s shielding herself, but not in an entirely yielding way—as is borne out by her unabashed declaration of her continued hatred for and desire to eliminate Mason.The second necklace, meanwhile, looks less like armor and more like adornment. Instead of utilitarian flat silver, it’s tooled gold; rather than sit inconspicuously under a collar (not wanting to announce its presence, and the vulnerability it signifies, too loudly), it is set off by the bold red and black of her outfit, exposed along with her skin. As the second painting above suggests—but other art might demonstrate more clearly—the texture is not unlike that of a ruff seen edge-on. In a nutshell, the overall effect is decidedly regal. (Compare again to the painting, which is a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I.) This is obvious: she is now in charge. She’s queen. She has ascended the throne and she is about to deal out some pain to Mason. This is her coronation, her moment of triumph, her promise of what her rule will bring. That she should appear not only powerful but specifically regal is appropriate: the Masons are not quite aristocracy, even by American standards, but boy, do they perform it. Their family arrangement is highly controlled in terms of bloodline and succession; it is patriarchal in the extreme; it restricts its women to incubators and assets. They have horses and stables, horseback riding being a pursuit of the wealthy (and, discounting Western riding—in which Margot is emphatically not engaging—very associated with the Old World). In Mason, they have the bizarre eccentricities and capriciousness commonly associated with the idea of highly privileged, possibly genetically limited families of power, and the indulgent trappings to go with them (the pet pigs, a special Italian manservant solely for the purpose of weaponizing said pigs, eels, teartinis, etc). Mason’s Summer Camp of Emotional Vampirism is, on the surface, very much in the mold of the whole “do good unto the peasants” mentality of some members of the aristocratic class. For god’s sake, they basically live in a castle:And in the moment where Margot appears to us in her royal garb, I direct your attention to Mason’s trappings as he lies abed:The canopy, the baroque textile on the footboard, the ornate stonework—it’s all very Old World aristocratic, isn’t it? (With the jarring addition of the medical devices and steel framework. What do we call this? Healthpunk? I dig it. The juxtaposition is sort of embodied by Mason’s headgear, which looks like a shop mannequin having a very bad day with a medieval torture device.) This reinforces the idea of royal succession. The king is dead; long live the queen.So the aesthetics already communicate a great deal. But one does not simply go around using images of Joan of Arc and Elizabeth I without having something to say about it. WE NEED TO GO DEEPER.Initially, Joan of Arc (our lady in armor above) was not someone I had in mind for any character reasons; Google Images was just being super unforthcoming on the subject of gorgets, and I thought, “aha! There’s loads of Joan of Arc art out there, I bet that’ll do it! And then I won’t have to compare Margot to any MEN in armor.” And then I thought: “…wait.”Let’s not overstate this. Margot is not a messenger of God (even allowing Hannibal’s interpretation of himself as a sort of godly avatar, she isn’t really acting on his behalf she is leading no armies; she hears no whispers of righteousness. She is not even, strictly, a martyr: while she suffers greatly and sympathetically, she does not do so for any cause outside her own survival. (Which is plenty noble enough, if you ask me, but that’s not really what martyrdom is about.) Also: she is not dead! Where she and Joan of Arc meet is on the subject of pain-bearing and perseverance in the face of torture and absurdity.While in my admittedly not incredibly painstaking research, I had trouble finding an actual source credibly stating that Joan of Arc was tortured after the English captured her, certainly in the popular imagination she was at least threatened with it. It is definitely more explicitly known that she feared sexual assault while in captivity, and she said it was attempted at least once. Notably, her tactic for sparing herself this horror—going back to wearing mens’ clothing—was the pretext for her execution: heresy was only a capital offense when repeated, and she had sworn off dressing as a man to avoid such a punishment. What I’m saying here is: she was held captive and at the very least threatened with horrific bodily violation of more than one type, and executed on a pretext based on her use of men’s clothes (taking on an aspect of masculinity) to protect herself from patriarchal violence. It’s easy to see resonance with Margot here. This all ties back into the gorget as a form of protection: she is literally armoring herself against bodily violence from her captor, even if it’s mostly symbolic. Moreover, Margot overwhelmingly wears clothes reminiscent of equestrian gear. (The main exception I can think of is the green blouse she wears when she sleeps with Will [ugh], which doesn’t have to count because the entire thing is subterfuge anyway. She was going for vulnerable and ~feminine~ and she succeeded.) This puts her in relatively masculine wear (compare to Alana and Bedelia). Joan wore men’s clothes to protect herself from her male captors; Margot’s first onscreen outfit is an expression of self-defense against her male captor. Regarding Joan’s use of manliness: Margot’s plot to produce an heir is essentially an attempt to hijack the masculine system of heredity she was born into. It was meant to be her escape from the trap her father’s will had left her. Just as Joan’s use of men’s clothes to protect herself served as the excuse for her execution, so did Margot’s employment of male privileges (specifically that of controlling heredity) form the trigger–with Hannibal’s help–for Mason’s violation of her person, the obliteration of not only her child but her ability to create life. Both times, the attempt to take on masculine privileges in pursuit of bodily autonomy results, due to patriarchal violence, in some version of execution.Will: Survive him. I specifically said pain-bearing because each of these women achieves a kind of transcendence through their experiences of violence. Margot is not especially noble in any of her actions or beliefs, but her sheer perseverance, her survival, her resourcefulness, her ability to carry on under Mason’s dominance is breathtaking. Joan is remarkable not simply for her godly connection or her military prowess or even her death, but for her ability to display grace under incredible pressure. I think that to some degree, this is what Hannibal sees in Margot as worthy–not just her capacity for violence, but her ability to bear it and keep a sense of herself. In that area, she shares some qualities with Abigail. Margot’s appearance in his office at all, with her armor, is a sign of her strength and worth. Her ability to carry on and plan a revolution (however private and familial) under the burden of her scars is what finally draws Will in. And her willingness to stand some measure of her ground after Mason’s violation of her body is what, eventually, earns her the opportunity to get her own back.Regarding that violation, let’s return to Elizabeth. Elizabeth I was known as the Virgin Queen because she took no consort nor lover, and refused to name an heir. This was, very explicitly, a power play; she knew that any royal husband could usurp her power, and that any named heir could serve as a pawn for her deposition. So she simply eschewed the entire patriarchal lineage tradition that normally sidelined women of her bloodline. The connection to Margot here should be obvious, if somewhat inverted: where Elizabeth sidestepped the system of succession to preserve her power, Margot tried to game it, failed, but then found for herself an heirless, partnerless coronation. It should be noted that Elizabeth did not bear her state of affairs with total equanimity. There were men she favored and at least one she seemed to be very attached to–but she never indulged in that side of life, because she knew the destruction it held for her. Margot is in a somewhat inverted position. She has no sincere interest in men, and actually has much to gain from engaging in the whole broodmare aspect of things (horrible as that is). Elizabeth employed singleness and childlessness to maintain power; Margot, despite enforced singleness and childlessness, ultimately gains it.I think it’s remarkably telling that the two women who best visually call back to these bookending jewelry pieces* are women who were incredibly, anomalously powerful in their times, and who operated as such without male support or influence. Together, they and their associated collars tell us several things. Margot is not interested in men; she is not interested in serving men (though she has to at times). Margot starts from a position (within her family) of the underclass; Joan was a commoner. She ends with royal imagery; Elizabeth was a powerful, independent ruler. Where Joan was a divine messenger, Margot is proof of the godlessness, the senselessness, of the universe; where Elizabeth was the personification and sanctification of virginity to her public, Margot has been violently made a signifier of barrenness.The good part is this: Margot begins as a young woman’s embodiment of suffering, and ends as an unsexed ruler. She gets past the martyr’s execution and accedes to the throne. This final scene, as I said near the beginning, is her triumph, and we love it, and rightly so: it’s cathartic. But still, I’m afraid, after all that: the sad part. A collar’s a collar, no matter the style**. She comes to us with a collar, and with a collar on her she leaves us: she remains shackled to Mason by her father’s will. She’s holding the other end of the chain, but the chains endure. Joan died in captivity and so, in her way, did Elizabeth. There is no God to glorify Margot’s deeds and no adoring public to sanctify her person***. In the end, she is still, always, alone with Mason, with the Verger collar on her. It’s just a better collar, and a better way to be alone.For my other writing about Hannibal, check the meta page!_________________________________________*I really want to emphasize that I did not start out thinking of Joan or Elizabeth at all. The associations emerged organically via the search for visual references. I don’t care if it was intentional, the author is dead, resonance is resonance, I ran with it, it matters.**What? If they can do Sesame Street, I can do Dr. Seuss. Even if it is ironic and tragic in context WHOOPS DID I DO THAT***To some degree, Hannibal and Will play these roles, but only in very minor ways. They’re more like little grace notes alluding to those parallels than they are actually functional. -- source link

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