Aunty,
Again, it's quality vs quantity. The 4 minutes were worth gold to me, at least. From Oxyartes' looks of pure discomfort throughout his crowning by his future son in law to Olympias smilingly observing her son's plan being put into motion, I loved every bit of it.
What Alexander counts on is that the enormity of the faith he shows in Oxyartes, who had probably never dreamt of being Shah, has burdened him with a sense of gratitude and immense responsibility to live up his new Emperor's expectations. You can see that Alexander truly respects his loyalty and counts on Oyxartes to uphold his name and administrative policies in his absence. Based on this, I do not see how he could have refused to accept being crowned. 😆 I loved the reference to wada vs koshish, and it reminded me of what Roxanne had said previously about her respecting people who keep their promises.
I totally loved how, after praising Oxyartes' nek dili, he makes it a point to highlight the fact that nothing comes for free. If I give you something (my trust), then I expect something in return - the underlying message being that I am the emperor and I expect my wishes to be fulfilled without objection. He knows that Darius was killed in order to protect Bactria from being sieged by Alexander and that father and daughter will also put the awaam's best interests first in this case. The look on the lion's face as he's zeroing in on the kill - ouf! He looks at Oxyartes and knows that he's got him with his claws.
The master stroke is asking for Roxanne's hand in public despite her refusal to marry him in private - very similar to what he did to get Barsine to stay back as she was escaping the arena. She would not want to see her father dishonored, or his loyalty, for which he is known, to be questioned in any way. It is amusing to see Oxyartes squirm because he does not want to say no, but at the same time he is reluctant to just pronounce a yes without his daughter's explicit approval.
I am curious as to whether she had told her father about Alexander's proposal and her response to it. Roxanne responds with a yes a little too quickly: one, to put her father out of his misery and two, to appear to be doing this for the people of Bactria. Hence the whole line about them being fortunate that Alexander should choose his life partner from Bactria. It is for this very reason, that she cannot go back on her word.
A public acceptance of his proposal puts her in a defensive position that she needs to be careful about, because of the impact on the awaam of any misstep on her part. Especially after his public proposal that shows he respects the new Shah and his daughter for their nek dil and wants to strengthen the bond with Bactria. With such a generous gesture and attitude towards his new subjects, no one would question that he had anything but their prosperity in mind. I do think he is genuine in his use of that adjective for Roxanne because all said and done, he did notice her emotion and level of despair at the loss of Bessus, to whom she must have been very loyal, as her father had been.
Of course, Alexander sees through it and knows she's up to something. Let's hope she's not stupid enough to try to poison him - that will be a laugh riot for Alexander. 😆
Why would he woo her, for goodness sake? As you said, he could have just sent a message and ordered for this marriage to happen if he so wished. The fact that he asks her for her hand in private is, in the first place, a big deal because he had no need or obligation to do so. She didn't refuse him in a polite way did she? She hurt his pride and he wants to make sure she understands this insolence is not something he is going to tolerate. He also understands that dealing with her may not be straightforward, but he is game for whatever she throws his way, dagger or otherwise.
There is a whole undercurrent of do not mess with me in this segment aimed at both father and daughter, and ultimately Alexander succeeds in making his point: that he is in control of his destiny and that whatever he gets is because of his tadbeer and not taqdeer. He refuses to accept defeat from a so called taqdeer which would have said, "you tried but she rejected your offer so forget it and move on". The look on his face as he turns to her and remembers her words was something like "here's my way of dealing with your rejection".
Nope, not our Alexander. He knows what he wants and he does not believe in wasting time unnecessarily on things that for him, should be a breeze. I wouldn't go so far as to say he's trying to tame Roxanne, but he is making sure that she gets a hint of what she's gotten herself into. She may have an affect on his heart, but not on his mind - he didn't get this far as a conqueror without having superior control on the latter.
I am not sure that he'd expected her to refuse. In fact, I think he was aiming for Oxyartes to be put in a position to make that decision or for Roxanne to say a reluctant yes. What he was a little surprised by was how she abruptly spoke up to say what "sounded" like a willing yes before her father could say anything, and how she seemed to immediately try and mount a convincing defense of her decision. A little to eager to please which of course Alexander will never fall for - he thinks the lady doth (not) protest too much! 😆 He had a subtle look of triumph that was expressed beautifully through his eyes and the curvature of his lip.
Why does he want to get married the same night? Yes, maybe he wants to see what she's up to as soon as possible and sort it out. But I want to take a more simplistic stance and say, he wants her and is not willing to wait to be with her. It will be on his terms and not someone's defined/scheduled date. Also, she's thrown him a challenge of sorts, and he's not about to back down that easily and that final closeup of his face as he declared that the wedding would be tonight said it all.
I was extremely impressed with but not surprised about the fact that Rohit can communicate all of this with the narrowing of his eyes, the angle of his chin and the glitter we see in the last scene as he looks not just triumphant, but also eager to begin the next phase of his life with this woman who has captured his fancy. All in all, we see in this episode, once again, how well Alexander understands human psychology.
I too was disappointed by the lack of "appropriate" emoting on Aparna's part in terms of the turmoil she experiences, which I would have wanted to see better communicated through facial expressions and dialogue delivery. Well, let's just say it was standard issue - I have been expecting far more from Alexander's to-be shareek-e-hayaat and it doesn't help that Rohit is killing it in every scene. Shame, because her intro episode was pretty good and she emoted very well. She hasn't turned out to be the firebrand we were expecting, but maybe the CVs will have a couple of surprises lined up for us.
Bamni's injury is supposed to be the segue into the Chanakya track where Puru will go and meet him in Taxila to ask him to help his ailing father. I am already starting to think back to the scenes where Alexander was frantic with worry for Philip as he lay in bed suffering from his injuries and the Greek haakims were called in.
Originally posted by: sashashyam
Folks,
Many of you, after you had recovered from the high pitched melodrama of the Paurav Rashtra segment of tonight's episode, which took up 14 minutes of the 18 minute episode ( a drastic cut from the 31 minutes plus of the last few weeks), might have turned with some relief to the 4 minutes of the excellent Bactrian segment.
Bamni-Anusuya: A requiem: Though I must say that I loved the moment when Bamni and Anusuya linked hands and looked , not in despair, but almost joyful as they prepared to face what they thought was the inevitable. In the last few episodes, their love had blossomed like a comet blazing in its final moments, or a lamp that burns the brightest when it is about to go out. This, incidentally, is why I feel that Bamni will now die, for there was a foretaste of tragedy of late in the very beauty of their love.
Bactrian puzzles: Coming back to Bactria. you would of course have been intrigued and puzzled by
(a) why Roxanne suddenly reversed her earlier refusal and agreed, with startling promptness, to marry Alexander, and then
(b) why Alexander wanted the marriage to take place that very night.
Here is my brief take on the matter, with which you might or might not agree.
A major plus for me was that those 4 minutes, where Alexander was forcing Roxanne's hand openly in a calculated gambit, were far more gripping than the remaining 14 minutes of the Paurav Rashtra goings on, which were all entirely predictable, especially when Puru appeared right in middle of the royal audience hall, totally unnoticed till then, all 70 inches of him, like a Jack in the Box!😆 Predictable was something that the Bactrian part most definitely was not.
The second plus point was that Alexander acted exactly as I had wanted him to do. As I had written in my Sunday post:
Alexander the besotted lover?: I am sure that many here would now expect Alexander to think of ways of wooing this porcupine of a female😉, and trying to find out what she wants in a man. The very prospect of this appalls me.
I am delighted that he handled Roxanne the way an expert rider handles a difficult horse (or he handled the violent Bucephalus. with complete success, when he was just twelve).
He did NOT try to woo her or kowtow to her. Already, as I wrote in my last post, the sudden realisation that he wanted her seriously had made her cocky, and had produced that vitriolic refusal. He was not going to have any more of this arrogance. So he forced her hand by making his demand (for that is what it really was) in public, and left her (and her father) with only two options.
One, to refuse , which is probably what he expected her to do, in which case he would have depended on Oxyartes, and Roxanne's own fears about what Alexander would do to Bactria if he was crossed, to settle the matter the way he wanted it .
Two, to accept, in which case he would be sure she would have done this to get some way of hitting back at him for murdering her azeez Bessus.
Since she chooses option two, he is already on his guard. and will probably wear Achilles ka bakhtarbandh all the time from now on!😆
He wants to marry Roxanne because what he feels for her is something that he has never before felt for any other woman, but as much, if not more so, because he cannot bear to be crossed and to lose, even if the loss is strictly in private. He has to win, and to get what he wants.
So, when he looked at her in the earlier part of the scene, it was not a lover-like look. It was the look of a duellist who is assessing his opponent, to find the best way to attack and win.
In the end, before he says Shaadi aaj raat hogi! , too, the look in his eyes, as they hold hers, is fascinating. He is trying to probe hers, to try and discover precisely what kind of come uppance she is planning for him, so that he can frustrate it.
So I can hope that Alexander is, at this stage at least, not going to let his grey cells go into cold storage only because he has fallen in love for the first time. 😉 Baad ki to baad mein dekhi jaayegt!
Finally, he wants the wedding so soon not because he does not want to give her the chance to change her mind. There is no question of that, for this is not a romantic decision on her part, it is one of force majeure. That cannot be changed without very serious consequences for Bactria - as she would naturally assume - a risk that she cannot afford to run.
It is rather, I think, that he wants to get the duel with her over and done with - and of course he is sure he will win😉 - and then move on to Bharat as soon as possible. So he sees no point in waiting.
Methinks the next two or three episodes are going to be fun.😉 But it was a pity today that Roxanne could not display any nuances in her performance. She looked exactly the same all through, whereas she had even more scope than Alexander to display varied emotions.
Shyamala Di/Aunty
Edited by inlieu - 7 years ago
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