Is The Serpent Queen’s Aabis Based on a Real Person? – The Serpent Queen fills a unique niche in a time when historical dramas predominate in the world of streaming content with a mix of comedy, drama, and magic. The upcoming STARZ series, “The Serpent Queen,” is an attempt to humanize the sometimes disgraced queen and is based on the book of the same name by Leonie Frieda.
Samantha Morton portrays Catherine de Medici in all her splendour on the Serpent Queen poster, but Liv Hill’s portrayal of the young Catherine in the show takes us back to the misjudged monarch’s early years.
The Serpent Queen on Starz tells the tale of the notorious Catherine de Medici while concentrating on how she came to hold that moniker. The programme, which takes place in a 16th-century French court, depicts a challenging game in which one poor decision might spell doom for an individual. Both simple people and nobles can agree that this is true.
The others around Catherine are likewise attempting to use her position to improve their lives, much like Catherine. Aabis is one such individual. Aabis quickly transforms from someone Catherine feels she could rely on to the target of her resentment. For any of them, this doesn’t make things any simpler. You could ask if someone like Aabis actually lived at the same time as Catherine de Medici, given the nature of their relationship. Does she have a real-life counterpart? Let’s investigate.
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Is Aabis Based on a Real Person?
Catherine de Medici carried a sizable entourage with her when she visited France. Everyone was involved in this, from housekeepers to perfume producers, artists to hair stylists, courtiers to dressmakers. We barely see a small portion of Catherine’s entourage in “The Serpent Queen,” which is a clever move to keep the attention on Catherine and avoid overcrowding the screen with characters.
Aabis wasn’t as significant to Catherine’s story as one might assume because she was chosen out of all her companions in real life. Aabis is not one of the show’s real-life characters, despite others like Cosimo Ruggeri. Aabis is not mentioned in any historical accounts of Catherine’s life, indicating that the character was created purely for production.
The Serpent Queen’s core subject is survival. Even though Catherine is the major subject of the narrative, everyone else is driven by a desire to survive and maintain their status in the court. Aabis shares the same motivation. With her Ottoman heritage and conversion to Christianity in a nation that is experiencing its own religious turmoil, she is already an outcast. Although she is Catherine’s protégé, their friendship is tumultuous, primarily because Aabis is more attractive than Catherine. She finds the whole situation quite challenging due to everything, but she is nothing, if not a survivor.
Actress Amrita Acharia said of her role in “The Serpent Queen” that Aabis was “very variable in terms of both allegiances and her sexuality.” Aabis’s acts are “very much anchored in a want to obtain something, whether that’s an emotional yearning, or if it’s a highly political move,” just like everyone else in the show, especially women. I believe it portrays sex as a chess piece in the game, where it is actually a very strong move that you can choose to make or not, rather than just being there for the enjoyment of your viewers or the males in the plot.
Aabis is skilled at making the most of her attractiveness, but this also makes things tense in her friendship with Catherine. “There’s always a kind of distance, obviously, between them because of where they are in the hierarchy of the story and history. The only thing they can trust is that anyone could stab you in the back,” Amrita remarked.
With all of this in mind, it is evident that even though Aabis is based on a particular real-life person, the show’s writers have portrayed her in a way that is both realistic and true to the character of someone who is trying their best to survive under those circumstances.
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— The Serpent Queen (@serpentqueen) September 18, 2022
Stream “The Serpent Queen” episodes on Starz.
