By Andromeda
In volume three of Le Chevalier D’Eon, D’Eon and Empress Elizaveta have a chance to talk with one another, to talk about Lia. Elizaveta and Lia had become friends during her stay in Russia after saving her life and the Empress wants to know as well who killed her dear friend. With the Empress’ permission, he and the other three are allowed to hunt down Vorontsov and anyone else involved.
While on the hunt for Vorontsov, the four knights must also find out who wants the Empress assassinated. It’s not an easy job to do when you don’t even know all the players in the game. Being a headstrong ruler, the Empress’ arrogance just might do her in if she’s not careful.
There are suspicions of who may want the ruler of Russia gone. D’Eon and his fellow knights aren’t the only ones though that are trying to prevent the death of Elizaveta. Those that would betray the Empress will be betrayed by someone close to them. Unlike the betrayer of France, this person only wants to see Elizaveta safe and helps D’Eon and the others.
Some of those deep burning questions from episode one are answered in volume 3. But there is still that important one… what is the Royal Psalms? Another one is why were all those women killed? There is a connection, but just what is it? The one question I’m still curious about though is the skull known as Belle that is in the possession of France’s Queen.
I’m somewhat familiar with world history, after having taken two years of it in high school. It was one of my favorite subjects and to this day I still read about people and events in history and watch such channels as the History Channel. But I wasn’t familiar with the names Elizaveta, Ekaterina and Pyotr, even though they sounded familiar in some way. After doing very little Internet surfing I realized why they sounded familiar. The spelling that a lot of you may recognize better is Elizabeth, Catherine and Peter. Better yet, you may know Catherine as Catherine the Great.
While doing a bit of reading on Catherine the Great, my curiosity getting the better of me, I was paying attention to the time line of events. Even though the death of Empress Elizaveta, Pyotr’s betrayal and Ekaterina’s succession happen over a broad time line, in Le Chevalier D’Eon the events happen within a month’s time. Of course for you sticklers, you can’t cry foul. After all, do you know how long it would take to actually try to stick to a closer time line?
I’ve already stated in my first two reviews of this series that I love Le Chevalier D’Eon and it’s one that I would actually collect. The artwork on the sleeves that cover the DVD are simply beautiful, not to mention the art of the series itself. I let one of my co-workers borrow the first two volumes and his wife, who is French and wants to see more, said it was remarkable how well drawn Versailles is.
I think the only problem that I ran into while watching this dubbed and subtitled at the same time, was that in the subtitles, the name D’Eon wasn’t consistent in it’s capitalization. Sometimes it was spelled D’eon or d’Eon. Now, I’m not sure if it was my DVD player or not, but the subtitles even seemed to be a bit shaky for a few seconds now and then.
The extras include Historical Notes, Commentary with Chris Hutchison (Bestuzhev) & Steven Foster (ADR Director), commentary with Lesley Tesh (Lorenza) & Amit Patel (Robespierre), Commentary with Alice Fulks (Elizaveta) & Steven Foster (ADR Director), Commentary with Jessica Boone (Ekaterina) & Jose Diaz (Pyotr), Clean Opening and Clean Closing.
Licenser: ADV
Studio: Production I.G.
Length: 100 mins
Retail: (U.S.) $29.98
Availability: Now Available. Volume 4 Available 08.21.07
