eleanorofaquitaine

Yeah, I said something similar in one of the other threads. I think that they'll have to adopt slightly more of a soap operatic style, where even the married couples have conflicts and thus some kind of story line.

I don't particularly like Austen and actually kind of agree with Madison that he is no kind of "alpha male" - but then again, "alpha males" are the ones like Thomas Ravenal and no one would mistake him for any kind of a good person. So not being an "alpha" is not an insult, IMO. But with all that I don't like about Austen, I don't see how he was gaslighting her at all. They've broken up. She treats him like dirt. He's not required to tell her about his hook ups. I don't see how NOT telling his ex-girlfriend that he hooked up with some other woman is gaslighting her. Beyond that, I think that something is truly wrong with her - she does need to be the center of the attention and she's acting like she's soap operatic super villain that everyone secretly respects, which, no. Treating people as if they are beneath you - whether it's Austen, Danni, and yes, even Kathryn - does not engender respect. Madison seems to think that Queen Bee Mean Girl behavior is going to make her Queen of the show, and she's going to be able to snag the hot guy (Pringle, I guess?) like she's still in high school and I suspect that Pringle is probably reassessing his interest.

I don't think we're supposed to see Lady Featherington as evil, just a smarter version of P&P's Mrs. Bennet. The fact is that with three daughters, Lady Featherington knows that her and her daughters' financial security is only secured by making a good marital match. Her daughters likely can't inherit their fathers' estate, so in order for them to not be destitute once he dies, at least one of them but preferably all of them need to find someone who can support them and ultimately, support her. She also knows that Marina is in a pretty precarious position and she's trying to get Marina to be a little more practical than Marina actually is. Now, both are willing to resort to trickery towards Colin, and so that makes her something less than a heroine. But I don't think she's bad or evil. Polly Walker does an excellent job in this role, so that we can see Lady Featherington is a schemer but ultimately isn't trying to do bad things or is a bad person. It will be interesting to see what Lady F does with her husband's death putting the family in even more jeopardy.

Philip doesn't love Marina, the only reason why he offered to marry her is because he feels very strongly about providing for her because of his brother. It's not unbelievable that, so long as he remained unattached, he would marry her because that feeling of obligation doesn't go away just because she rejected him. She's still pregnant with his brother's child, and he still feels like he needs to provide for her and the baby. He likely didn't feel any sense of personal rejection, so I don't have that much of a problem believing that he did come back to marry her.

Ha, Jamie Beamish kind of reminds me of how people reacted to seeing what the actor who played Ossie Whitworth on Poldark, Christian Brassington, looked like IRL. Make up can do wonders to make decent-looking actors look badly. Re that video on Regency slang - I obviously read too many Regency novels because I knew all of them but can we take a moment to marvel at Rege-Jean Page's accent there at the end? Flawless.

Yes, George III served as king from 1760 to 1820 - it is, let's just say interesting, that they are casting him as progressive on issues of race since in reality, George III opposed the abolition of slavery and, in fact, one of the charges that Jefferson initially included in the Declaration of Independence was George's support of slavery. (That section was removed before approval, which is a major plot point in the musical 1776). I mean, I get it as an alternative history (and have no problem from it from a plot perspective but in real life, the guy was pretty problematic on a whole host of things).

Yeah, no. Not to looks shame or anything but Tiger Woods was never that handsome, even in his prime.

I agree that they are unlikely to go full soap, what with its marital infidelities and such. But the fact is that Simon spent a lot of years feeling unloved and unwanted, and those feelings don't go away overnight. And Lord knows that just having a baby doesn't solve all of those problems. So I'd be down with seeing more of Daphne and Simon's domestic life, particularly because I actually did find the idea that Daff wasn't the perfect Duchess from jump pretty interesting. Obviously, they aren't going to be the focus of a Season 2, presuming it is Anthony and Kate but they could weave in a story line where they got the same amount of time as Anthony got with Sienna this season. The only book in the series I really liked is the second book - I just thought that the characters were well thought out, their conflict made sense and they were well-matched. (Not the least is because they were both dealing with trauma from a death of a parent early in their lives). I feel like in the subsequent books, Quinn had some pretty good set ups, but sort of lost a sense of compelling drama, which is why I mostly lost interest in her books. That being said, Eloise and Philip will, by necessity, be more dramatic but more importantly, so will Colin and Penelope. IMO, that is where I really did lose interest in Quinn's writing because I felt like the set up between Colin and Penelope was really good - and then the book was mostly disappointing. With this situation, the set up is 10 times more dramatic than it is in the book because Penelope did something that directly impacted Colin's life with her writing as Lady Whistledown. So I'll be interested to see if they can follow through. I didn't think that Daphne was colorless but I actually do think that the set up was a little better in the book (as opposed to with Anthony, where I think that giving him a lost love helps flesh out his character a bit). Perhaps it is because I grew up with a bunch of brothers but I definitely understand the challenge of growing up in a household of boys as a girl, and how that gives you both insight into guys but also often means that you end up being "friendzoned" because you're not interested in simpering to them. Daphne being someone who can go toe-to-toe in conversation with men makes a lot of sense to me from that perspective, but I could also see how that would lead her into being thought of as "just a friend." But in combination with her having been out before, I think it makes her motivation to just find a husband more compelling. IMO, they should have at least kept the plot point that this was her third season, IIRC.

I hope so, too. Edwina's a nice character because even though she is the season's Diamond, she doesn't get caught up in the usual society machinations. I always liked the idea of the Diamond really just wanting to settle down with a quiet life with an academic, but she's willing to do her duty to her family - the dynamic between Kate and Edwina is rather lovely and would be nice to see her romance progress as more than just a plot point. I'll be interested to see if they take more of a soap opera approach to the story-telling in Season 2, as opposed to a romance novel approach. By that, I mean that in romance novel series, while you will see couples that were in one book appear in another book, usually they are happy and their conflicts behind them. So Daphne and Simon appear in the other Bridgerton books, but at that point they are happy and we don't hear that they have any other issues. But in soaps, once the couple gets together, they'll still have issues and conflicts that impact their marriage. I'm just wondering which direction they'll choose - I assume season 2 is going to focus on Anthony and Kate (I'm assuming they'll keep that basic story, and if not, I'd be disappointed) and I also assume we'll see Daphne and Simon but I'm just not sure if we'll see more of their marriage in depth. With regard to Anthony - I'm kind of glad that they gave him more of a backstory as a set up for his own romance. Don't get me wrong, losing a parent is traumatic and suddenly being thrust into the role of head of household at the age of 18 would likely create a lot of challenges. But his reasons for not wanting to get emotionally attached in the book are a bit thin, so I think that giving him the backstory with Sienna helps flesh it out a bit more.

On the "Friend or Foe" question, I think we're supposed to come away with recognizing that both Marina and Penelope were in a situation where they choices were limited and both made some bad choices. In short, I don't think we're supposed to see either Marina OR Penelope as "villains" - we're supposed to have sympathy for them while also recognizing that they both made some pretty questionable decisions. It's one thing I appreciate about the romance genre - they allow women to make bad choices, to sometimes seem "unlikeable," but also to say that even women who occasionally do the wrong thing deserve happy endings. Marina's situation was bad - unwed and pregnant, with no prospects was definitely a bad situation for the era - but also, she was not without her own agency. She got into the situation she was in because of her own bad choices and throughout the series, we see her choosing to believe that she was entitled to get everything she wanted in her own way - child, marriage to someone she could love, a comfortable situation. She was definitely trying to deceive Colin and as he himself said, if she had actually told him, he would probably still gone for it. Now, it's understandable why she didn't - the risk was too high - but that doesn't mean she still wasn't trying to be deceitful to him. Penelope was being guided both by wanting Marina to be happy - after all, she's the one who discovered that her mother forged the letter to Marina - and by her crush on Colin. To some extent, I wish that they hadn't introduced her crush on Colin as a factor, because at the end of the day, her actions were completely understandable if it were her just protecting a friend. But nevertheless, she did betray both her friend and her family, but she had also run out of options to stop a marriage that would have been built on a foundation of deception. I don't think any of these characters are despicable - I think that they are human. But I am a bit surprised that people are casting Pen as a "villain." IMO, she's not, she's a character who was in a no-win situation who made a bad choice. That's true of Marina, as well, but neither are villains.

In general, most romance novels that are set in this period will acknowledge class differences or barriers for romance/marriage. It's actually pretty unusual for romance novels to include actual kings or princes (or princesses) as characters - if they are involved at all, they are usually secondary characters. So the rules around marrying royalty don't come up but a lot of books in the genre understand that there are unwritten rules around marriage in the aristocracy - in fact, it often becomes a plot point.

This is a world that includes Black dukes and other member of the aristocracy, so I think it is safe to say that the rules of the actual aristocracy in early 19th century England aren't the same rules as the rule of early 19th century Bridgerton England. With regard to Eloise, I like the character but I'm partial to liking the outspoken, bookish kind of heroines. On another note, the actress reminds me an awful lot of Carey Mulligan - they look a lot alike to my eyes.

So I finally watched this episode and at the end of the day, I felt like it was written with enough ambiguity that IMO it doesn't fit the definition of non-consensual sex but also it is valid to criticize Daphne for handling this pretty badly. Simon was pretty enthusiastically participating through all of it and doesn't even really tell her to stop but also, Daphne was withholding her reasons for wanting to engage in sexual activity in that way. So she wasn't being honest in that encounter, though I suppose she felt that was the case with Simon in every single one of their encounters - he was also not being honest with her. In short, it's a bad moment for them as a couple - one that would be solved by simple communication - but not in my view an issue of assault. I also think it is no coincidence that the episode's parallel storyline - Marina and Colin - was also about people withholding information necessary for informed consent about a major life decision. Marina was omitting information that was kind of important for Colin to know before they married. Simon was not forthcoming about his relationship with his father and about the reason he "couldn't" have children. Both attempts to withhold critical information blew up spectacularly.

In The Viscount Who Loved Me, Anthony Bridgerton is the protagonist. He's courting the season's diamond, a woman by the name of Edwina, who is a perfectly lovely character, but he's not really interested in her. In fact, the reason why he's courting her is because he feels no spark with her, so he's not really afraid of falling in love with her (he doesn't want to actually love his wife for reasons that have to do with his father's death). Anyway, the problem with his plan is that he actually does feel a spark with Edwina's sister Kate, who is plainer than her sister, but over whom Kate is very protective. Through machinations, Kate, Edwina (and Mary, Edina's mother and Kate's step-mother) end up at the Bridgerton estate, where they end up playing a very competitive game of Pall Mall. (It's like when you go miniature golfing with your siblings and try to mess them up). It also becomes important because Anthony begins to realize he actually does really like Kate as a person, despite the antagonism they have towards each other (Kate has been antagonistic towards Anthony because she - rightly, in a lot of ways - doesn't trust his intentions towards her sister and because they've had a couple of run ins where he gives her reason not to trust him). The Lucky Mallet is just a part of the whole scene but no greater significance than foreshadowing it, I assume.

The discussion around Phoebe Dynevor's looks and whether or not she would be a "Diamond of the First Water" remind me a little bit of the discussion that took place after the 1995 Pride and Prejudice and whether Susannah Harker was really "prettier" than Jennifer Ehle. (To my mind, both women were beautiful, so the argument was a little silly but putting that aside). Beauty standards change. What is considered the height of fashionable beauty in one era isn't the same in another. For the Regency period, it's my understanding that a more "classical" look would be considered the height of fashion, and I think that Dynevor has that look. This may also been an era that didn't like a more showy kind of beauty - in other words, the Cressida Cowpers are considered a little gauche because she is too showy in her looks. Daphne is both pretty and demure, and since we haven't really seen the other competition beyond Cressida and the Featherington girls, it's not that difficult to believe she'd be the diamond of that season.