The Great is one of those shows that just hit different, you know? The “anti-historical” comedy-drama references itself as “an occasionally true story,” and then “an almost entirely untrue story,” that is loosely based on the rise to power of Catherine the Great, Empress of All Russia. The satirical take on the longest-reigning female ruler in Russia’s history is more than a tiny chuckle: it is absurdly witty and orchestrated with such finesse that you’re blind to what will happen in the next second, let alone minute.
My favorite character has to be bisexual Aunt Elizabeth. Played by Belinda Bromilow (creator Tony McNamara’s wife), Aunt Elizabeth epitomizes everything that’s great about The Great. She’s eccentric, ruthless, camp, insane, flamboyant, and extremely smart. And, well, she sleeps with women.
How does Aunt Elizabeth hold up compared to the original Empress Elizabeth? While we are served the real-life Elizabeth’s formidable nature–she really did seize the throne off an infant tsar and imprison him for life–she was never the side character she’s made to be in The Great. I’m not mad at it, she’s valuable and fleshed out on the show, but the real Elizabeth Petrovna wasn’t just somebody’s mad aunt.
In fact, she was Empress of Russia for 21 years. She led the country through two wars, took on numerous construction projects, and remains one of the most popular Russian monarchs because she didn’t have a single person executed during her reign. Her policies brought about an Age of Enlightenment in Russia; she supported education, such as Mikhail Lomonosov’s foundation of the University of Moscow, nobles having a say in government, and the arts.
Catherine the Great gets most of the credit in The Great despite, in history, Elizabeth paving the way for the changes Catherine made. In the show, Russia is depicted as uneducated and artless before Catherine arrives. In saying that, the story is portrayed from Catherine’s point of view and she does have a bit of a God complex. She likes to think she’s single-handedly revolutionizing Russia but we, the audience, see Aunt Elizabeth (among others) persuading and protecting her.
Perhaps Aunt Elizabeth sees Catherine’s love of power, of being in the spotlight, as an opportunity to control how things are run without having her private life on display. She’s sexual, sensual, and free-spirited. While she plays a role in governing the country because Catherine trusts and respects her opinion, she’s unwilling to give up fun. Good on her.
While I love The Great, there is a problem with its portrayal of the Sapphics: the only female character with an interest in the same sex lives her life indulgently, hedonistically. That’s how Elizabeth’s attraction to women is justified: it’s not really serious. The whole show isn’t consistently serious, sure, but other characters’ relationships exhibit both light and dark; The Great is as funny as it is heartbreaking because of heterosexual relationships. They’re in love. The Sapphics are just pleasure-seeking.
More than being a problematic portrayal of all women into women, self-indulgent pleasure-seeking is a particularly old trope applied to bisexual women. That’s the common message: lesbians are damaged man-haters and bisexuals are sexual freaks. Don’t get me wrong, lesbians–like all women–have reason to criticize patriarchy, and men, but we don’t “choose” to become lesbian at all, let alone “because we hate men.”
In the same vein, bisexual women aren’t all sex-crazed hedonists either, even though loving sex isn’t a bad thing. It comes down to homophobia: heteropatriarchy wants to portray female-female attraction as unfathomable, either a “choice” or a kink, to sway lesbian and bisexual women away from living their authentic truth. I’m sad to say that The Great doesn’t miss the boat on that. However, overall, it’s an extremely well-made series and Aunt Elizabeth is still the best character – even if her same-sex attraction is portrayed as flippant indulgence.
