Always a Catch!

Episode 11

Come, come, Your Highness, jealousy does not become you – not as a person nor as the heir to the throne. But then, going back to episode one, Renato's never been particularly good at thinking things involving emotions through. His first appearance was renouncing the wrong woman, after all, based on some very wrong ideas about Aida. So perhaps it isn't surprising that he'd be petty and jealous about Ireneo and his cousin's relationship with Mimi. Given Ireneo's reputation as a woman-devouring playboy and Mimi's romantic innocence, it's not a long jump to the jealous place where Renato ends up.

But it is, once again, demonstrative of his inability to think critically when emotions are involved. Even discounting Ireneo himself, Renato of all people ought to know that no one could foist affections and advances she didn't want on Mimi. Even her startled reactions could kill an elephant, so there's no way whisper-thin Ireneo is going to land any untoward touches on her person and survive. But more than letting his emotions run away with his senses, Renato's jealousy of Ireneo shows that he's never even tried to understand his cousin.

It's true that Mimi's in a better position to see where Ireneo's coming from. After the queen explained his past, she immediately saw the parallels between his position after Renato and Placido were born and her own after Teo's birth. Neither Mimi nor Ireneo resent the loss of their position, but both were put in a very uncomfortable place by adults from a young age: they may not have been counting on inheriting, but their backers absolutely did. In Mimi's case, it was the Annovazzi family soldiers and retainers who were sad she wouldn't be the next duchess, and that was hard enough for her to deal with. She admits that coming to Rubini was a welcome escape from their disappointment. But as a prince, Ireneo didn't have that option, and the people who were invested in his royal future were political schemers rather than buff soldiers with hearts of mush. When Ireneo was moved from crown prince to second, and then third in line for the throne, his backers lost real power. It wasn't him they were upset about; it was their own fortunes.

Seen in that light, Ireneo's not just the no-chance rival; he's a very sad character. He admits that he wasn't sorry to lose his position any more than Mimi was, but what happened next was far worse than “gaining adorable little brother.” Ireneo was assumed to have bad intentions from the start, probably because of his backers trying to recoup lost power. He may have become a womanizer in an effort to deliberately distance himself from the throne, and in the intervening years, he's gotten used to people being cruel to him or assuming the worst. When he tells Mimi he never actually ate the peach tart, what he's admitting is that he never got to just enjoy anything; every tart or word was laced with expectations. So can you really blame him for wanting to just have a drink and a snack with the one person who has seen him as a person?

It's probably asking too much of Renato, as we see when he still has Ireneo dragged off to the dungeon for the crime of a social interaction with Mimi. (And the fact that his ex has done some truly unhinged stuff, but that's on her, not him.) And hey, now Renato knows that the Annovazzi family veggie juice craze is probably about more than mere health! But Mimi's treatment of Ireneo is further proof of why she's going to make a great queen someday. She's always unabashedly herself, and she has a heart of gold. It's not hard to see why Renato fell so hard for her.

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