In a scene from the season 2 finale of Hulu’s The Great, the Russian Empress Catherine (Elle Fanning) addresses her court at a wedding celebration. (Light spoilers ahead.)
“I have carried a romantic idea of people all my life, perhaps too romantic,” she says. “That has changed quite a bit recently. I saw a great love as a kind of perfect love. Maybe it’s not. Maybe a great love, like a great country, or a great leader even, is a flawed one. Maybe what makes it great is its embrace of our failings, our scars, our fucked-up-edness, as
