Katsullivan

Thank you everyone for answering my questions! Please can someone tell me about the book version of Marina's story?

Just to say that I agree with this and I feel it was a missed opportunity for the movie to show the Tragedy of Immortality. As much as she loved Steve and wished they had more time, she would never have enough time with any of her friends or lovers because she would outlive all of them. I wish they had incorporated this more, instead of making it seem like she was mourning just him.

It's not Simon's fault that they live in a society with fucked up rules. For a Regency man, he is forward thinking. He refused her dowry, he asked for consent before having sex. After their disagreement, he has the right to keep her in an unhappy marriage and even demand sex but he chooses instead to physically separate from her while letting her keep with the title and comfort of her status. They might not be equal by the law, but he treated her as an equal, and always respected her choices. Daphne is the partner who disrespects choices. He says he doesn't want to marry her, she tricks him into marriage. He tells her he can't have children, she finds out that he doesn't want to have children, and she tries to trick him into getting her pregnant. From a religious point of view, yes he broke a vow to God to have children, but he never promised Daphne children so he wasn't breaking a vow to her. Her insistence that they can't be happily married without children after telling him they can is an emotional betrayal, especially as being loved for being less than perfect is a big deal for Simon. I don't see how he violated the code by his personal vow to his father because he made it for fucked up reasons, it was something he did long before he met her, based on abuse that happened to him. In fact, it's only when Daphne stops making everything about her, and starts trying to understand his trauma, that their relationship is able to heal. I want to be clear that I'm not saying that Simon didn't do anything wrong or that Daphne is bad or evil. Neither of them are perfect, they both hurt and betrayed each other on different levels. Unfortunately, there's more emphasis on Daphne's feelings and Simon's mistakes than vice versa, so it looks like he's the only one at fault when it's actually both of them.

Please can someone summarize the Pall Mall incident and the significance of the lucky mallet?

I think it’s because her shows are guilty pleasure viewing. Other shows might be critically better but we the unwashed masses flock to Shondaland. I read this as would, could, shonda. :)

As someone who coded ShowEloise as queer early within moments of her appearance, I’m perfectly happy to see the show take her in story in a different path from BookEloise. The Marina angle just gives me an additional reason to want this. Very spoilers question to book readers... are there any major deaths in the series? I need to know early on and emotionally detach myself.

So until now, I didn’t expect anyone to take the position that Lady Featherington was right to fake that letter to break Marina’s heart. Of all the morally ambiguous actions she committed, I thought that was the one thing that least excusable. Is the point of absolving Lord and Lady Featherington of blame to make Marina solely responsible for her tragedy and therefore easier to condemn? Marina was too used to bad things happening to her to be hopeful.

I think this is a very good point about Simon's own agency and sense of betrayal that the story kind of overlooks. His reasons behind his choice to not have kids are definitely fucked up, but that was still his choice, and everyone's choice should be respected, not just Daphne's. If we're talking about informed consent and betrayal, we also need to talk about Daphne promising Simon that she was OK being without kids and just being an aunt, then going back on that the moment she realised she could make him give her children. Even if that scene never happened, her immediate about-face from "I'm happy being childless with you" to "OK, you owe me kids and I won't be happy until I get them" was a betrayal.

I know this has been said ad infinitum but the casting for Filip is uncanny!

Yep, I expect good things from Clarissa. She was a "spanner in the works" in season 3, and I thought her character had potential there. Knowing what I know from the books, I'm glad to see her back.

Clarissa's mods were obtained illegally at least, as revealed in season 3. The shady medical operation probably means that they can't be removed without killing her. Some mods are legal. I remember in the very first episode, a rock hopper got his arm amputated and Shed (anyone remember him?) talked about new prosthetics that were better than an actual arm.

Oh for some reason I thought that Penelope found hidden letters. This makes more sense. I shipped Pen/Eloise from their first episode, and I've gone back and forth whether I see Eloise more as ace or a lesbian who's still finding her way. I definitely want to see Benedict revealed as gay or bi.

Because Simon vowed never to have an heir, so it's thematic that his story ends with him breaking that vow. The Hastings line would continue with his son.

Did Mrs Featherington ever explain why she hid George’s letters? Since he accepted responsibility for the baby, wasn’t it a simple matter to send Marina to the Cranes and let her become their problem?

If the Featheringtons's home was entailed, how could Lord Featherington gamble with the deed?

Eloise also seemed to be ace. But the actresses who play her and Penelope have good chemistry together, and the future seasons could easily go there if they wanted to. It would also be a nice tongue-in-cheek nod to real-life stories of spinsters who lived together, grew old and died together, and even got buried in the same tomb... but historians insist were only "just very good friends". 😂

What I'm surprised that no one has mentioned is that Marina's speech to Penelope - that she was completely friend-zoned while Colin say her (Marina) as a woman - was probably what pushed Penelope into publishing that article. When I read all the comments explaining all the ways Penelope could have exposed Marina discreetly, it seems more than obvious that it wasn't just about protecting Colin or even feeling entitled to him. It was a very specific act of revenge. Both instances of white women behaving badly to POCs and the narrative hand-waving their actions. As someone mentioned above, whether this was done deliberately or not, the optics are terrible.

I'm sorry about your experience and that you felt I was trivializing it because that was never my intention. At the same time I will call you out for victim blaming. Yes, Simon probably should have explicitly defined what he was willing to consent to during sex. But he said No. He said Stop. Regardless of who is the man, woman, or position of power, No will always mean No and everything that Daphen did afterwards is violating clear explicit withdrawal of consent. And to be clear that this is not a matter of opinion. The gender reversed equivalent of what happened between Simon and Diane would be a non consensual condom removal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-consensual_condom_removal#:~:text=Non-consensual condom removal%2C or,a form of reproductive coercion. Men found guilty of this have been convinced of sexual assault, reproductive coercion and rape in different jurisdictions. Another thing I will take into task is your phrase "actual violence of real rape" which I think is a very unfortunate choice of words. Rape is unconsensual sex. Sometimes consent is removed with violence but in many instances it's not and part of the challenges real life rape convictions face is the instance that unless a rape is done by violence then it's not real.

😂😂😂 I love this. Question for book readers: what was reason behind the old Lord Hastings’s hang up over his son’s stuttering? Obviously it can’t be the same as the show, where he’s the Regency version of Eli Pope.

Without hurting her...? I don't think sex works that way. Very much sure that no amount of lies justifies being raped. If their genders were reversed, people won't even be arguing this.

This is fantasy Regency. Much like Negro Queen Charlotte and colored people in the peerage, I don't think we're supposed to assume it's an exact duplicate of real historical events or attitudes. Reading through the thread, I'm not surprised at people defending Penelope basically for being conventionally unattractive, regardless of her actual actions, so I won't touch that. What interests me is the confirmation (?) that book Benedict and Eloise are not queer! I assumed Benedict was bi, and Eloise was at least aromantic, or maybe even a lesbian who hadn't yet come out. The show seemed to hint at something with her and Penelope in the beginning, until it became obvious that Penelope had a crush on Colin. Interesting. Hopefully, these were done deliberately to steer them this way. As to the inevitable naysayers, if we can have Black Dukes, we can have gay Lords and Ladies, thank you very much.

Well the Baby Ever After ending was sentimental enough to almost make me forget the rape that preceded it. Almost. I guess this isn't the kind of show that invites deep speculation into our designated heroes's motives. Daphne gets everything she wants without her own actions being questioned or examined. Simon's trauma was solved by the power of her couche. The reveal of Penelope is assuming book canon because it made even less sense than Dan Humphrey and that's saying something. It casts her friendship with Marina in an ugly light that I'm not sure the show realizes since apparently we're still supposed to root for them? Were those sex scenes filmed before or after the Covid outbreak? Does anyone know if this is a limited series or if there'll be more? I know there is a book for each Bridgerton's romance, but I don't know what the TV series's deal is.

Why would they have to change her character to flesh her out. She won't be a different character if we got more of her backstory. People demanding that race-bent characters be elevated from flat stereotypes isn't unreasonable. This seems like such a weird thing to kick against.

Rewatching the show after re-reading the books this quarantine, and examining the way characters like Ashford and Drummer were centered over Fred Johnson, and the way Naomi's character and her dynamic with the others was changed, the anti-blackness behind these these decisions is starkly obvious.

But no show of support for their Black community? Typical.