Original release 26 décembre 2013
Previous episode S07E14 - Georges Clémenceau, un Tigre au grand coeur
Number S07E15
Episode runtime 95 minutes
Country France
Original language French
Genres Documentary, History
External links TheTVDB page
IMDB page
TheMovieDB page
Last update 23 octobre 2026 - 05:37
on 11 databases

Gayatri Devi, une princesse au pays des maharadjahs

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Direction l'Inde pour découvrir le destin romanesque et hors norme de la maharani Gayatri Devi. Issue d'une famille royale du Bengale, elle épouse, en 1940, à l'âge de 20 ans, Sawai Man Singh, le maharadjah de Jaipur. Elle reçoit de nombreuses personnalités, de Jackie Kennedy à Elizabeth II.
En mettant sa couronne au service des femmes et des plus démunis, Gayatri Devi devient une véritable légende vivante.
Elue au Parlement, elle participe à l'émancipation des hindoues et crée de nombreuses écoles. Stéphane Bern retrace l'histoire de cette femme à la beauté éblouissante qui a indéniablement marqué l'Inde.

BetaSeries' opinion

Secrets d'histoire Season 20 Finale: Stéphane Bern's Messalina Episode Ends a Season About Reputations on Trial

Twenty seasons in, "Secrets d'histoire" can still surprise its audience. The Season 20 finale aired on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, at 9:10 p.m. on France 3, and Stéphane Bern closed the season with one of the most notorious women of antiquity: Messalina, the third wife of Emperor Claudius. If you watched it, you already know it was more than a parade of Roman scandal. It was a careful re-examination of a woman whose name has been shorthand for depravity for almost two thousand years. If you haven't caught up yet, this debrief shows why the episode, and the whole season, deserves a place in your watchlist.

A finale that puts history's verdict on trial

The question at the centre of the finale was simple: does Messalina deserve the brutal nickname history gave her? Roman writers handed down a woman driven by insatiable desire and a hunger for power. Bern's team took that portrait apart piece by piece. They asked who wrote the story, why they wrote it, and what they gained from it. This is the series at its best. It doesn't simply retell a legend. It looks into how the legend was made. Messalina's world gave the episode plenty of drama: Caligula, Nero, Agrippina and the freedman Narcissus all appear, each with their own agenda in the deadly politics of the Julio-Claudian court. Without spoiling anything for latecomers, the finale's real emotional pull comes from the gap between the caricature and the young woman caught up in a machine much bigger than she was.

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