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underragingwaves · 2 years

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The Mirror Women: Freydis & Katia

Let me preface this by stating that I do not hold the writing for Vikings in very high regard. I believe that the best of the show was brought to the table by the cast and crew on the ground, with the writing and scene editing often letting that hard work down by not being up to snuff. I also believe that the good moments in the show's writing primarily come from a mix of the cast knowing their stuff and the happy little accidents that happened to Michael Hirst while he worked on some scripts. (There are plenty of Hirst-quotes to pull from interviews and commentary that highlight the issues in his writing, but that’s not the main focus here.)

Hirst’s writing is particularly problematic when it comes to writing female characters, who’re often underdeveloped in comparison to their male counterparts and fulfill a specific role in-narrative entirely in support of the motives/goals of the male characters without having any notable motives/goals of their own that could cause conflict with this. Vastly oversimplified, we see that most women in Vikings are reduced to three stereotypes: the maiden, the mother, and the whore.

Last night, I realized that one particular female character in this show hits all three of these stereotypes at different points in her narrative: Freydis. She starts out as maiden, progresses to mother, and finally ends up as whore. Freydis is romantically linked to Ivar. The only other woman romantically linked to him is Katia, who’s played by the same actress! And if we look at Katia, we see something rather funky: her arc is the absolute reverse of Freydis’s. A perfect mirror image, not just in looks but also in narrative.

Here's the breakdown of that, below the cut. 😊

Freydis’s Arc

We are introduced to Freydis in York. She is a nameless character at this time. We do not know where she comes from and which family she was born into. We are introduced to her through a scene with Ivar, in which she strips naked at his behest and perches on his lap. She’s his to command, in this, as the only thing we really learn about her is that she is a thrall who can potentially serve as human sacrifice. In this scene, Freydis tells him “I will do anything you ask me to do” and elevates his character from crippled man to someone who is very special and “destined for great things”. She is the maiden come before his throne, the unknown placed in a powerless position, the ‘innocent’ who may serve by potentially yielding her own life as sacrifice.

In that same scene, however, Ivar releases her from servitude. He elevates her to become a free woman, and when we next see her she approaches him. He allows Freydis to come close to him, fascinated by her as he is, and she in turn offers him her full devotion. We learn her name now that she becomes part of Ivar’s inner circle. More than that: she becomes his wife. And in becoming his wife, she also transitions into the role she embodies during most of the narrative: mother.

Freydis’s pregnancy is front and centre in many of her actual scenes. It is not Ivar’s child, but this is something he does not realize or acknowledge at any point in the narrative. Freydis is framed through the lens of impending motherhood, with a near-ethereal quality that visually makes her the brightest point in the room, and her giving birth is one of the rare birthing scenes we see in show. There’s something wrong with her baby, something that may very well mean her son will not be healthy enough to survive, but Freydis calls out for him and visibly loves her child all the same.

Ivar’s response to her child is the polar opposite: he observes the mirror image of himself in what he sees as his son, and therefore decides to leave the baby behind in the woods to die. And Freydis, when she finds out what happened to her beloved child, is a mother scorned: she turns on Ivar. She turns on him so utterly that she betrays Ivar to his brothers, who’ve come to wage war on him, and she does so in a way that highlights her secretiveness and her prowess at scheming. She transforms into the ‘whore’: the liberated woman taking agency in her own life, manipulating where necessary, all the while playing the perfect wife to Ivar’s face until the ruse drops.

And when the ruse drops, and Ivar realizes the depths of her betrayal, Freydis does not live. She dies beneath his hands, choked out and then positioned in their marriage bed with the bones of her dead child beside her. She dies without us ever learning more than her name.

Katia’s Arc

We meet Katia in Rus. She is immediately introduced by name and by status: she is a princess, come to marry Prince Oleg. And Ivar, well, Ivar looks at her as though he has seen a ghost: to him, she is the spitting image of Freydis. He believes her to be a part of a game that Oleg is playing with him, something that will render him utterly powerless and at Oleg’s mercy even more than he already is, and directly acknowledges that he believes her to be Freydis.

After her wedding to Oleg, Oleg reveals to Ivar that Katia has told him she reminds Ivar of someone. Ivar is forced to admit that Katia reminds him of his wife, Freydis, thus cementing the suspicion that he is being toyed with. Oleg and Katia both seem to form a united front in playing this game with him: this time, it is Ivar placed in the position of powerlessness as Oleg ropes him into undressing Katia. Ivar becomes a spectator to their sexual intercourse, then later becomes subject to Katia’s attempts to seduce him.

Katia, from the start in this, embodies that whore-archetype that is fully cognizant of her power – sexual or otherwise – and utilizes it to the fullest in the games and schemes she has devised. We know she is not to be trusted. We know that Ivar continues to see her as his dead wife, even when his brother Hvitserk indicates that Katia does not resemble Freydis at all. Katia uses Ivar’s weaknesses against him throughout the narrative and blindsides him utterly, just as Freydis blindsided him in the final days of her life.

The difference, here, is that Katia’s schemes are not directed at Ivar’s downfall. They’re directed at Oleg. And here is where Katia transitions into her next role in-narrative: that of mother. When it is revealed what her play is (and we only learn a fraction of it, of that I am convinced!), she is the one who helps orchestrate their escape from Kyiv. She is the wildcard, the pinnacle around which the narrative suddenly revolves, and here she aligns more closely with Hvitserk (who embodies this same role in his whole arc) and is seen working seamlessly alongside him. More importantly, however, we see that Katia is the one to spirit a child away from Oleg’s clutches: Igor, whom Ivar treats as his son.

In taking care of Igor, Katia fulfills the role of mother. She becomes Ivar’s counterpart in this care, at least for a brief stretch of time, and helps bring Igor to safety. And it’s in this same safety that we learn that Katia is pregnant, too. She does not visibly show it, nor is there ever a time we see her truly heavily pregnant, but there is the notion of impending motherhood all the same. Ivar again refers to this baby as his child, even when there is a chance it might not be, and this is where the narrative for Katia shifts again.

Because now, free of Oleg, she states she is reunited with her family. We do not see her family on screen at any point, nor do we learn anything else about them. When Katia acknowledges Ivar’s love is for Freydis and not her, when she outright states he confuses her with Freydis in his own mind, she also says that she will only disappoint Ivar when he realizes Katia is not Freydis. In this, then, she is rendered almost nameless: we know less about her than we ever did before, and we part from her with the idea that she may be utterly different from what we have come to know her as. She is now the maiden with an unknown position of power. She is the ‘innocent’ who has served a throne and could potentially have sacrificed her life in the process of that servitude.

Yet Katia lives. Katia lives, walking away from Ivar with a child that may or may not be his in her belly, escaping from the clutches of Ivar’s narrative without it ever being revealed what became of her. She walks away and all we have of her is her name.

#vikings #freydis #princess katia #urwmeta #if you'd told me I'd one day write meta about these two I would've laughed you outta the house #but here we are now in a desperate attempt to make Hirst's writing make cohesive sense #also I think this highlights that he can't write well-rounded women for the life of him lmao #anyway Freydis and Katia are narratively linked in every way and to understand one is to grasp at the other ty for coming to my Ted Talk

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