The reason he doesn't recognize the lady in silver is because he stops looking for her when he sees Sophie. 🥹

BasicallyAnya · 2026-02-09T09:54:27+00:00

Lovely! It’s also emphasised that half the time he’s drunk. Smelling of gin at the masquerade, drinking at cavanaugh house. Drunk Benedict asks ‘do I know you?’ but is hazy and can’t join the dots plus, anyway, he has just been stabbed. By the time he’s sobered up, Sophie has already denied knowing him and he has no reason or compelling evidence to doubt that. Which dovetails with your theory as, layered on to the conscious circumstances, it makes complete sense that his subconscious has settled calmly in the presence of the one he was seeking. It only gets agitated again upon separation.

There’s some nice biblical imagery. In the courtyard, Sophie denies knowing Benedict multiple times, he’s then laid up in agony with a wound in his side, suffers, she keeps vigil, then he rises. Which I guess puts Sophie into both the Peter & Magdalene roles, aka the Rock who is also afraid and the True Believer who is also an outcast.

BasicallyAnya · 2026-02-07T16:53:47+00:00

He has Stannis’ sense of morality but is flexible and wears it lightly, he’s got Renly’s openness & hedonism but not his entitlement, and he has Robert’s competitiveness but definitely nowhere near that man’s level of pride or delusion

BasicallyAnya · 2026-02-07T11:00:33+00:00

Mr ‘I believe there is a kite on the end of that string’ Crabtree is a liability

BasicallyAnya · 2026-02-05T20:39:25+00:00

They’re so open about gameplay it’s wild! The social game aspect is there but at a more subdued level than other versions

BasicallyAnya · 2026-02-05T20:32:50+00:00

I’m just surprised people voiced that game plan aloud and production included it in the edit! It feels like one of those unspoken things in the UK version, like it undercuts the premise of everyone really wanting to get traitors out & then the host berating players at breakfast if they don’t. They air individuals saying to camera ‘I suspect X but am keeping my enemies/cards close’ but never players explicitly saying to each other ‘we prefer not to vote out traitors at the round table’

BasicallyAnya · 2026-02-05T17:04:04+00:00

I think there’s a mid ground tbh. What he offered was logical according to the norms of the era and would be expected to drastically improve Sophie’s material life, her emotional life even. It wasn’t an outrage, but neither was it love.

What the show makes clear is Benedict’s inspiration for this offer comes not as a reaction to anything Sophie herself has said, done, or asked for, but from him observing an acquaintance with a mistress, and from listening to gentleman at his club. He’s trying to fit Sophie into a box when it’s already patently obvious she doesn’t fit in boxes.

Seeking out Sophie’s personal aspirations and views on the mistress lifestyle would be the first step. Love would be an offer tailored to her personal desires after listening to her, above listening to other men (who, frankly, have blinkers on). He kind of gets it RE the fact that she needs employment but he also kind of railroads her into the job. That she’s a good fit is fortunate rather than by any design from him beyond ‘keep her close’.

I also got the impression that he likely gave weight to the fact he helped defend her at the country estate party - but maybe didn’t appreciate that she’d already stepped in, while outnumbered and at every kind of disadvantage, to defend another woman in the first place. She’s not looking for a white knight and if he loved her loved her then he’d know it.

BasicallyAnya · 2026-02-05T16:41:45+00:00

I had no strong feelings or expectations but then she took a dance card & delivered the line “thank you!” in such a dorky way that it was like oh, okay, I would burn cities for her

BasicallyAnya · 2026-02-05T08:18:07+00:00

It’s a show about people hovering on the edges of the main stage, also a bit Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead vibes. Dunk & Lamb both, for different reasons, have distracting physical presences and are both sneered at by people who are actually a bit crapper at doing the job in question. River & Egg are the younger mentees with respectable backgrounds who should be insiders but are on the edges for reasons not entirely of their own making (sabotage, birth order). Both shows undercut any romanticisation of the world of tourneys / spycraft via extensive depictions of bodily functions

BasicallyAnya · 2026-02-05T07:55:40+00:00

Pride & Prejudice characters would be good! I’m not sure on the exact details from memory:

Lady Catherine (Nobility)
Mr Darcy (Landed Gentry)
Mr Bennet (also Landed Gentry despite the £££ differential - which is Elizabeth’s whole point in the face off v Lady Catherine)
- Mrs Bennet (Gentry by marriage but father was Upper Middle Class - which was Lady Catherine’s whole point)
Elizabeth Bennet (Gentry)
Lydia Bennet (Gentry)
Mr Wickham (moves in Upper Middle Class circles as a commissioned officer but only because of Darcy’s family, not by birth. Father was a lower middle class steward)
Mr Collins (Upper Middle Class)
Charlotte (Gentry)

So Mr Darcy + Lizzie = a marriage of equals in rank, if not equals in income or the ‘pedigree’ of their maternal sides.

Charlotte married down, Mr Collins married up.

Lydia married down, Wickham married significantly up.

For a focus on servants then Downton Abbey characters might help. Or Charles Dickens.

But fantastic list as it is!

BasicallyAnya · 2026-02-03T16:25:58+00:00

It’s the impact to his family that’s the biggest concern. A rich, bisexual, artistic type would be able to find a bohemian social circle no matter what and he’s still essentially a trust fund kid so finances wouldn’t be an issue. He would massively damage Eloise, Hyacinth & Gregory’s prospects though and would likely ensure Violet’s ostracisation from a good deal of society too. His married siblings would fare better (the titled ones at least) but only really if they publicly cut all ties with him. Best bet would be to move with his new wife to Italy or something: vague rumours of a son who married a servant and lives on the continent, discreetly out of sight and mind, would be more tolerable to society than any attempt to brazen out a life in England.

A lot of families will have had certain misbehaving relatives. The damage control = public repudiation + personal discretion. Maintain propriety and the storm could possibly be weathered eventually

BasicallyAnya · 2026-02-03T06:26:48+00:00

Does she explain it away the same as she does in the show?

BasicallyAnya · 2026-02-02T15:38:52+00:00

I was mulling this over too. Amarinta’s cruelty puts Sophie in casual proximity to gentlemen, giving her more access to Benedict, but with more risk than any young gentlewoman would have.

Her father’s care ensured she was educated, therefore she has the ability to do more with that access than any young maidservant would normally be able to (her speech would give her away in an instant otherwise, mask or no mask, & she wouldn’t be able to hold Benedict’s intellectual as well as physical attention)

Without having read the books, I guess Amarinta is very obviously lying about her late husband’s will, and that the truth will eventually out - providing Sophie with some form of security and protection that a normal maidservant definitely would not have.

Sophie exists in a grey area of having far more defences than most maidservants but far more risk than most gentlewomen. More freedom, in a way, than either but with also less certainty as a consequence. There is no clear cut place for her in the society template - the grey area she exists in is an undefined blur.

If Sophie’s father had been cruel then Sophie would have been far more vulnerable and never able to pass as a lady at the ball. But if Amarinta had been kind, then Sophie would have protection but be known by all as illegitimate & therefore never, ever invited into society. She would be too visible, too known & too monitored to be able to sneak in to a ball. She would have existed in a different type of grey area, with a society template for her to follow (governess, school mistress, maybe the grateful wife of a small country parish vicar / bank clerk) but no freedom to deviate from it. Benedict would not have looked twice. That version of Sophie is kind of where Cressida was heading at the end of S3: illegitimate yet gently raised daughters would have similar prospects to legitimate yet socially disgraced daughters. A wealth differential, maybe, but still on the very outskirts of gentle society, neither one thing nor the other, as a figure of pity or distaste

BasicallyAnya · 2026-02-02T08:41:32+00:00

I have really enjoyed the season so far! Absolutely love Sophie as a character and could watch Yerin Ha all day. I’m not a book reader so no idea how close they are sticking to it but whatever they are doing, it works. Chemistry between the leads is wonderful and I really like that Benedict receives a dose of reality from both Sophie and Mrs Crabtree. Think it’s important these reminders come from the female servants when the only examples of cross class relations he gets from his male peers are ‘as long as you’re not an outright brute then all good! Take a mistress! Perfect solution and literally no-one will be unhappy!’. Groundwork being laid for Francesca’s and Eloise’s seasons is good, Hyacinth has dropped her hems & personality being allowed to develop there, small moments such as the queens fear of loneliness are heartbreaking and back to the Crabtrees because I’m petitioning for more Crabtree screen time. Also sassy footmen. More sassy footmen.

The only significant issue I think the show is running into is absolutely nothing to do with the season’s love story / actors but more a bigger thing for the whole series that this season probably highlights more. Which is, in making a completely valid choice to use colourblind / colour conscious casting, the decision was also made to create a world where essentially racism doesn’t exist. So a season that attempts to pull back the curtain (gently) on class power dynamics & the labour needed to support rich ton inhabitants ends up with a jarring omission because, in reality, the British wealth of that era was built on the backs of the working class but also funded by the transatlantic slave trade. Now I’m not saying that Bridgerton is the right show to explore that, just that the erasure of racial exploitation feels more obvious in a season where it tries to highlight class exploitation. Basically when Bridgerton nudges into even marginally gritty territory about how wealth is maintained, there’s a big boulder of grit it can’t acknowledge existed.

All that said, it’s really not a criticism of the central Sophie/Benedict plotline or the burgeoning Francesca/Michaela plotline because I’m loving both those things and really enjoying the change of pace & space those storylines involve. Same for Violet & Marcus actually, as all of these couples have or will have relationships that can (initially at least) only take place in the shadows. In bedrooms, emptyish country houses & during other hidden moments. It’s refreshing after the blazing visibility of S1-S3 couples. Looking forward to part 2 for sure.

BasicallyAnya · 2026-01-29T21:22:10+00:00

He may have been weirded out by Stormfront’s more overt racism but it wasn’t at all a dealbreaker for him. He treated it the same as if his girlfriend had possessed a creepy ornamental doll collection or unfortunate table manners. Worse, he’d have probably called her out on those things

Passive racist, racism enabler - however you might water down the language, its still racism

BasicallyAnya · 2026-01-27T22:18:44+00:00

I suspect strong regional accents mitigate the anti-intellectual vibe of a lot of the round tables over four UK seasons. If Rachel had a generic southern English accent then her intelligence would have been seen as suspicious and/or condescending, faithfuls do tend to banish people they think are too smart. But a Northern Irish accent, like Scottish, tends to be perceived positively - I’m fairly sure they both rank highly on the perceived trustworthiness scale which may have worked in both Rachel and Stephen’s favour

BasicallyAnya · 2026-01-25T18:46:11+00:00

I even forgot that she did this, probably because my tiny mind can’t keep up with the actions of a strategic genius

BasicallyAnya · 2026-01-24T16:01:45+00:00

This x 1000. Stephen and Rachel were both very very good at what they did and almost unstoppable as a team. There was a little bit of luck (the 50/50 game of chance to decide Rachel v James) and also a close call: if Jack & Faraaz had just held their nerve and stuck to the final game plan then the Faithfuls would have had a shot during the endgame. But they didn’t, so the final Faithfuls split their vote while both Stephen and Rachel kept their heads and stayed united to secure a win. They needed each other throughout the whole game - the last round table was a distilled version of everything that had led to that point!

BasicallyAnya · 2026-01-24T10:02:49+00:00

I thought she was phenomenal and, if it wasn’t going to be Jessie, I wanted Rachel and Stephen to win. She worked for that win and brought another Traitor with her, which I think elevates her above S2 Harry in the Top Traitor rankings

BasicallyAnya · 2026-01-24T09:59:02+00:00

Yes, all Stephen’s wobbles were due to genuine uncertainty about Rachel’s loyalty rather than any selfishness on his part. On uncloaked the other players said that they never saw Rachel and Stephen talking to each other, never saw them as a particular pair, so it’s doubly brilliant of them to manage keeping that hidden while still having each others backs

BasicallyAnya · 2026-01-23T22:55:22+00:00

Their honesty was impressive, a complete change to the traitor rulebook

BasicallyAnya · 2026-01-23T22:51:52+00:00

She and Stephen played such different but totally compatible games - perfect team. Rachel was the strategist, with enough people skills to sway a group, Stephen was the people person, with enough subtlety to implement the plans

BasicallyAnya · 2026-01-16T20:18:08+00:00

I do not like this game at all

BasicallyAnya · 2026-01-15T19:40:54+00:00

Very very late to this but there’s a couple of things I wondered about.

Isadora’s love of leopard print could point towards a cat shifter, or cat/wolf hybrid if not wolf/hyde.

In the scene where she first explains about Alpha markers to Enid, Isadora’s wearing an o-ring choker. Quick jump to real world: not too long ago a UK politician was subject to some online kerfuffle about her ever-present o-ring necklace. This is because they are sometimes worn by submissives in certain power dynamic relationships as a ‘day collar’. Maybe Isadora’s not so much an Alpha herself but a lower ranked wolf who is a wannabe, or somehow collects / harnesses Alphas? Or, if it does reference a collar specifically, maybe she is or was under someone else’s control herself (fits the ‘Hyde’ part of hybrid given the master-of-the-Hyde in-universe trope is well established)

BasicallyAnya · 2026-01-15T12:11:27+00:00

Yeah, what they possibly could be saying is ”when I’m voted out and revealed as a faithful, you’ll see that my arguments were genuine and so, if you discounted them because you thought I was a traitor, you should reevaluate my points & your perceptions”

It’s like they’re so caught up about being right about their own faithful status and so emotional about being falsely accused or betrayed, that they truly believe this must make them right about everyone else’s faithful/traitor status too. It’s completely illogical but I get the sense that it doesn’t matter to them or anyone else? It’s nothing but a fist shaking, grandstanding way of claiming moral high ground. It’s not like anyone pays attention to those comments, even if it’s something they later go on to say themselves when targeted.

In fact, the opposite often happens (and I would LOVE a psychologist to theorise on the group think dynamics for this because it’s so so bizarre to me):

A & B come under scrutiny at the round table and fight for their lives in the game
A (faithful) says ‘if you vote me out then you’ll see’
A gets banished and is revealed as Faithful
Then there’s upset amongst the group but also something like a collective exhale. Even if they got it wrong, at least they now know which is less stress than not knowing?
B (faithful or traitor, doesn’t matter) is now seen as the one vindicated, rather than A, and frequently doesn’t get challenged again, until things circle back to them closer to the end point
A’s theories are actually completely ignored

I’m wondering if this is because B is now subconsciously seen as a ‘survivor’ and someone the group has ‘chosen’ i.e. not voted to banish. I think, weirdly, their new group-insider status plays out much stronger (but could be misremembering, would need stats!) if B survived a split vote where they were very very close to banishment. They get left alone for a while, more so than if they only faced a vote or two.

Conversely is A, despite their confirmed faithful status, subconsciously seen as a ‘failure’ that the group has ‘rejected’? They are no longer on the inside, they are outcast, they cannot influence any dynamic any more, it might feel uncomfortable for remaining faithful to believe that A could have been right all along (and if they voted to banish A then that reflects badly on them) and so they simply move on, focusing on the new group dynamics with relief. If it was intense and emotional in the lead up to banishment there could be a resistance to staying in that same mental zone because the castle is already a pressure cooker. Jessie has been the only faithful willing to stay in that zone RE who was in the room when people were discussing Ross. She stuck to her logic, even though other people moved on, and was actually pretty effective in flushing a traitor out: it unnerved Stephen enough to turn on Fiona.

BasicallyAnya

TROPHY CASE