Why I Cheered for Murder
I’m so sick of running as fast as I can
Wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man
-Taylor Swift, The Man
[Contains spoilers for the Amazon Prime Show, Vikings.]
“Is it wrong that I’m this excited about murder?” I wiped tears of joy from my eyes and punched the air, yelling, “Yes, Queen!” at the TV screen. Lagertha, my favorite character from the Amazon Prime show, Vikings, had just stabbed her fiancé in the heart.
But let me tell you the back story and why I cheered and shed tears of happiness upon witnessing this brutal death.
Lagertha was married to the the show’s main character, Ragnar, who eventually becomes an earl and later, king. Ragnar impregnates another woman and instead of owning his mistake, wants to cohabitate with both his wife and the other woman.
Lagertha essentially says, nope, not gonna happen. She leaves Ragnar (a moment I also felt extremely proud). Because women can’t really survive without protection and because Lagertha has her own son to think of, she marries another earl. This earl beats her and rapes her and Lagertha repays his kindness with a knife in his eye (a stab that reaches his brain), thereby claiming his earldom and becoming the only female earl of the series to that point.
Lagertha rules as earl and turns down many offers of marriage. She entrusts her earldom to her right-hand man when she goes raiding (like vikings do). When she gets back, her right-hand man has usurped her earldom, and her ex, Ragnar (who is now king) refuses to help her get it back.
While raiding again, the right-hand-turned-betrayer tells Lagertha that he desires her. She responds by telling him she’s happy for them to become lovers, as long as he his fully aware that one day she will kill him. He doesn’t seem to have a problem with this, and the two become an item.
A few years go by and Lagertha’s new lover magnanimously seeks to share the earldom with Lagertha. He even kills anyone who is against her ruling as his equal. Eventually he proposes to Lagertha and she accepts, at which point my heart kind of sinks.
“Doesn’t she remember that he stole the earldom from her?” I said to my watching buddy.
Apparently, Lagertha heard me because she decided to kill her right-hand-turned-betrayer-turned-lover-turned-fiancé on their wedding day. She completes her long game by walking amongst her people, wedding dress covered in blood, surrounded by women that she trained as warriors as they proclaim her earl.
This is why I cried. In a world of violence and betrayal, where women were often at the mercy of more powerful men, Lagertha took her life back, empowering other women along the way.
Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash