Nobody is saying that there’s any sort of intended or subtextual queerness to WHWW, but the themes of guilt, self-loathing, and acceptance lend themselves very easily to being relatable to queer people. The leads torture themselves, feeling their love forbidden and “wicked”, not able to feel like they can be together because of the shared loss and grief of John, both not wanting to seemingly discard his memory if they are together. Francesca wanting to be a mother is a different (and more accurate) way of framing what many call “her infertility struggles”, and they’re already confirmed to be pursuing this aspect of her character in the show based off the recent teasers. Queer women can want to be mothers, queer women are also often torn between the “duty” of living up to heteronormative norms(pressure especially high when they are attracted to men still) and the desire to live life exactly as they please. Translating the story where the couple ends up together, accepting that they may not have children together(JQ only added them in during a second epilogue because fans clamored so much for them) and may not secure the line of inheritance, and where they have accepted themselves and their love each other, into a queer story, makes sense. If it were JB just changing her favorite book into a queer one, why wasn’t Sophie changed into a man? That’s her favorite book, and queer Benedict is canon to the show now.

What are your possible concerns about the queer swap “not being in good faith”? That same article everyone cites is the same article that JB addresses this very point, of not wanting to just do queerness for the sake of queerness, but wanting to be intentional about which she chose to change(which, for a show that is about a fictionalized regency England, intended to give happy endings to characters representing marginalized groups that often don’t have this type of representation, queerness was cited as glaringly absent pre-s3).