2/17/2024 0 Comments Daphne bridgerton simon hastingsLord Berbrooke arrives and complains that he wore his satin knee breeches for the visit, which is I guess the early-19th-century dandy version of “I shaved my legs for this?”Īnthony, who is being extremely hard to love these days, has promised Daphne’s hand to Nigel Berbrooke, which prompts the question: Why on earth is everyone so anxious to marry this girl off? In the pages of The Duke and I, Daphne is in her second season - she appears to be no more than 20 - and therefore is a hair closer to being a spinster, but Bridgerton makes her a debutante fresh from the schoolroom. Eloise enters and requests some sex education before admirers pour in to visit once-again hot girl du jour Daphne. In the Bridgerton drawing room, Hyacinth helpfully explains that third youngest sister Francesca will be off practicing pianoforte with Aunt Winnie in Bath this season, in case you’re keeping track of all eight siblings. Penelope reveals to Eloise that she knows a pregnant woman - in this case, a “maid” - and both girls wonder how an unmarried woman comes to be pregnant. In the streets of London, Eloise delivers a feminist monologue, so we’re reassured that even if Daphne seems more or less willing to roll with the status quo, future seasons will deliver some Wollstonecraft-adjacent content. ![]() ![]() Lady Featherington declares that Miss Thompson is to be kept away because her condition is “catching,” which is precisely what to say to a young person if you want them to launch a congressional investigation on the causes of pregnancy. Phew, ladies, there is a whole book genre that could help you out. The faux couple negotiates their continued courtship with chemistry to spare.īack in the Featherington house, the girls speculate on Marina Thompson’s condition, betraying that they have no idea where babies come from. Violet and Lady Danbury write some SimNe (or is it DaphOn?) fanfiction beside the Serpentine while watching them together. Simon, living up to his reputation as a raking rake who rakes, slides out of a burgundy-sheeted bed with a satisfied lady to promenade in Hyde Park with Daphne as part of their social ruse. Whistledown announces that Daphne is back in the spotlight after her triumphant appearance at Vauxhall owing to dancing twice with the elusive Duke of Hastings. For Simon, falling in love and continuing the family line would mean giving up a large slab of the bedrock on which his armored, assured, and rakish adult persona is based. Simon learns to control his stutter and menacingly hover over his father’s deathbed, but the first shoots of love strip away his defenses and compensatory strategies. The episode suggests that the Bridgerton Hastings lineage is not the long-established dynasty of The Duke and I, the source material, and Pepple’s Hastings views his son’s perceived deficiencies as fissures that will cause the dukedom just granted to the family to dissolve in one generation. “Shock and Delight” starts with the duchess’s death and ends with the duke’s, but while Simon’s mother remains a mystery, his cruel father is carved into his mind. In the opening scenes, we meet the origin of the season’s most formidable antagonist (Simon’s own resistance to love and family): the original Duke of Hastings, played with conviction and verve by Richard Pepple. Simon is so resistant to the destiny envisioned by his father that he refuses to even have the dust covers removed on the duchess’s chambers for fear of discovering a wife therein that might continue what he views as a cursed family line. The number of names draped on the crying infant clues us in to the source of his inner pain: He’s viewed by his surviving parent not as a person but as a means of continuing the lineage. Simon Arthur Henry Fitzranulph Basset is born as his mother dies. ![]() It’s the second bite of a historical romance, and that means it’s time to unfurl some deep, parent-inflicted trauma that will haunt our main characters from now until the moment they’re seemingly past the possibility of reaching happily ever after! In all seriousness, one of the most hopeful parts of reading historical romance is encountering an array of human wrecks who have virtually no childhood to speak of - and then watching as they grow a whole lot, both for and through love, all without the assistance of modern psychotherapy.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |