Amazon’s Lore
Season 2, Episode 2: “Elizabeth Bathory: Mirror, Mirror”
Directed by Alice Troughton
Written by Ashley Halloran

* For a recap & review of the Season 2 premiere, “Burke and Hare: In the Name of Science” – click here
* For a recap & review of the next episode, “Hinterkaifeck: Ghosts in the Attic” – click here
This episode is based on the infamous Blood Countess, Hungarian noblewoman Erzsébet Báthory, who’s alleged to be the most prolific woman serial killer in history. Her highest supposed victim count was 650, alleged during her trial.
We begin with a young woman having her wounds stitched up. She also has her mouth closed with stitching, as well. It’s the year 1609, and “the most beautiful woman in Hungary,” Elizabeth Báthory (Maimie McCoy), lives in the sprawling Čachtice Castle. A young woman, Lady Margit (Ella Hunt), is received there by the Countess. Báthory tells Lady Margit of her husband, Count Ferenc Nádasdy, saving their land from Turkish hordes, dubbed the “Black Knight of Hungary.” Eventually, death took him, and she was left alone.
Lady Margit appears thrilled to be at the castle. But the Countess hasn’t brought Margit there for work. She’s preparing to replenish the stocks. She needs good blood, and a “highborn” girl like Margit should work well. For the time being, she gets a few drops from her servant Ava (Rosalind Eleazar) before they get a refill.

“She’s far better than any tale”

The Countess tries to put some meat on Margit’s bones while getting to know her, too. The young girl has no idea what’s going on, as her rich benefactor susses out if her family will miss her— y’know, should she somehow go… missing. Lots of cuts and scrapes around the castle, which Margit starts noticing, though she couldn’t possibly know why people are being bloodied on a daily basis. She only knows of the “healing arts” the Countess practises at the castle.
At night, Lady Margit hears someone crying. Ava stops her initially from seeking out the source. This doesn’t stop the young lady from heading out afterwards to go searching. Meanwhile, the Countess is busy keeping records of the 649 corpses she’s tallied so far. By the sounds of it, she’s headed for 650. From a tower, she watches Ava and another servant prepare a sacrifice. Servant Sofi (Anna Kaderávková) is tied to the ground, blood poured over her, and attacked by hungry dogs.
Gradually, Margit began seeing something wasn’t right. She was concerned for Ava, seeing her cuts and the strain the castle was putting on her. She tried helping with her infected wound, wanting to get her a doctor. An infected wound in the 17th century was about 60/40 odds in favour of death, maybe even more. And no wounds were being tended to there by the Countess, unless it was in pursuit of torture. Margit made Ava show the Countess her wound, and a doctor was allowed to come.
Yet Elizabeth was positioning herself to be done with the young noblewoman, needing good, fresh, vibrant blood. She worries, because when her husband died she seemed to crumble. Then when Ava came to serve her, she accidentally hurt the Countess while brushing her hair, and this got her a smack, drawing blood. You know where it all leads. This also leaves Ava with a sense of guilt and responsibility for awakening the woman’s blood lust.

“If I don’t take her blood, her beauty, her youth, then I will fade.”

When Lady Margit sees Sofi, mangled and broken, she knows things are bad. She confronts Ava, who eventually reveals what occurs at the castle. Ava helps her get out, but it’s then Margit realises she was one of the people helping the Countess, only winding up in the dungeon downstairs.
Margit has her mouth sewn shut. That should keep her quiet while they bleed her dry. Ava’s already been done in for being a “traitor.” Simultaneously, a bloody yet living Sofi makes a run for it with the book of victims Báthory was using to keep count of her sick thrills. She brought it to the authorities, who went to Čachtice Castle several days after Christmas to find the Countess in the act, bathing herself in the blood of innocent Margit. Ironically, she was walled up inside the very castle where she lived, where she spent four years before dying, entombed like a mummy where she aged, unable to rejuvenate her beauty with the blood of the young. She tried using her own. It just wasn’t the same.

“Your pain pleasures me— fuels me.”

What a haunting episode. Father Gore’s long been interested in the Countess. In fact, he wrote a short film for director Benjamin Noah that’s (loosely) inspired by her story, currently in post-production, titled New Woman. Part of Báthory’s obsession with beauty, as evidenced by this episode’s title, was inspiration for the “Magic mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” bit in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, too.
“Hinterkaifeck: Ghosts in the Attic” is next.