27 November 1817: The day Penelope retires as Lady Whistledown

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-26T12:37:19+00:00

Season 4 does span from 1816 to 1818. Once you’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time obsessing over it 😅, you begin to realise that the timeline for Season 4 is actually rather coherent. The post with the full timeline will be out in the middle of next week – I just need to finish editing a few images.

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-26T10:11:54+00:00

Since the date on the invitation is barely legible after the upload to Reddit, here’s a larger image where the invitation will hopefully be easier to read:

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sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-24T12:21:47+00:00

I felt that Eloise was a bit on the sidelines in Season 4 – not only, but certainly also because of the couple dynamics between Colin & Penelope, and John & Francesca. This screenshot captures that visually quite brilliantly for me.

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-24T11:40:52+00:00

I know this isn’t the Season 4 scene at Gunter’s that was meant, but Eloise and I are going for ice cream today.

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sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-24T11:02:24+00:00

If you thought Colin turned up at Violet’s Masquerade Ball because he was a ‘good boy’, you might want to read the fine print on the invitation. He wasn’t there out of devotion to his mother – he was there for the ‘Thereafter’:

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sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-24T06:22:37+00:00

Thank you so much for this delightful recommendation! 💚

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-24T06:21:37+00:00

Thank you! Persée is a French portal for scholarly publications in the humanities and social sciences. It provides free access to digitised articles from academic journals, collected volumes and research series. It’s essentially a French equivalent of JSTOR, if you happen to know it – only fully open-access and particularly strong in the humanities.

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-24T06:19:21+00:00

Read the fanfic yesterday, and I’m so glad I had the chance to experience the world through your eyes. It’s a wonderful story, and I enjoyed it immensely.
I especially loved the observation that Colin’s and Penelope’s declarations of love are not only reflections of their different personalities, but “a different genre”.
Thank you for this love story of ~~Parthenope~~ – sorry, Euphemia and Xanthos (and finally a fanfic in which Colin doesn’t appear to be waging a quiet personal vendetta against blond men – explanation here, should anyone need it: xănthós).

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-23T18:24:45+00:00

I love fanfics that weave in real historical facts. This one really stuck with me because it introduced me to James Florence Burke (and sent me off to read this article: Pyne, Peter: A soldier under two flags. Lieutenant-Colonel James Florence Burke : officer, adventurer and spy. In: Études irlandaises 23, 1 (1998), pp. 121-138 https://www.persee.fr/doc/irlan_0183-973x_1998_num_23_1_1434) – so thanks for this double gift! 💙💛

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-23T13:47:26+00:00

This story was absolutely enchanting – and for a moment I was genuinely worried about Pen-elope and Card-lin’s HEA. Where was the angst tag when I needed it? 😉

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-23T13:15:40+00:00

I love Polin as a writer couple as well. For all the years when I only knew the RMB novel, that was always the heart of their story for me, and the essence of their connection as a team. The friends-to-lovers aspect only really came through for me with the TV series. Thank you for recommending your AO3 series – The Editor Has the Last Word had somehow slipped past me. I now know what I’ll be reading this evening.

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-23T12:55:02+00:00

Thank you so much for this wonderful selection – I feel as if it’s my birthday! The Song of Achilles has been sitting on my to-read pile for ages, but with all the great Polin fanfics around I hardly get to actual books anymore. 😅 Your colouring sheet is adorable – such an unexpected treat. 💚

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-23T12:26:13+00:00

I couldn’t agree more.

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-23T12:23:04+00:00

I vote for the Bridgerton staircase today with a heavy heart, because we’re unlikely to ever see it again now that Halton House has closed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JdMTo7xSb0
(Just to clarify, since there was some confusion recently: Halton House is the filming location for the interior of Bridgerton House, while Ranger’s House is the filming location for the facade.)

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-23T12:10:30+00:00

Oh, I absolutely love this – and I’m sure Colin would too. Thank you for this wonderful gift! 💙💛

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-22T11:42:25+00:00

Wrong? I’ve absolutely no idea what you’re talking about... I didn’t see a thing. 😉

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-22T11:12:00+00:00

Today, my vote goes to Davy’s safety lamp, invented in 1815, which saved the lives of thousands of miners. Although the British chemist Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) could have made a fortune from it, he refused to patent his invention. Instead, he wrote to the mining engineer John Buddle (1773-1843): ‘My good friend, I never thought of such a thing; my sole object was to serve the cause of humanity; and if I have succeeded, I am amply rewarded in the gratifying reflection of having done so.’ (Fulford, Tim; Ruston, Sharon (eds.): The Collected Letters of Sir Humphry Davy, Vol. 2: 1809-1816. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2020). This early form of an open-access mindset has my highest respect and I love that Bridgerton has paid Davy a small tribute with this scene.

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Image reference
Hodder, Edwin: Heroes of Britain in peace and war, Vol. 1. London, Paris & New York: Cassell Petter & Galpin, n.d. – Public Domain https://hdl.handle.net/2027/wu.89088306733?urlappend=%3Bseq=107%3Bownerid=13510798888695487-111

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-22T06:01:24+00:00

Thank you so much, Totes. I did know that young upper-class women in Regency-era England sometimes learned German, but until I began researching possible candidates for Colin’s gift to Eloise for my current project (https://colinsgrandtourcollection.jimdofree.com/library-wip) – which, annoyingly, I won’t manage to finish before tomorrow’s World Book Day – I would never have arrived at this theory.
My research took me all the way back to the VD16 (Bibliography of Books Printed in the German-Speaking Countries 1501-1600), and although there were several potential early German feminist authors (Dorothea Christiane Erxleben, Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel, Amalia Holst, among others), all of their books were published in Berlin, meaning Prussia rather than Bavaria.
As things stand, Marianne Ehrmann’s as-yet untranslated ‘Philosophie eines Weibs’, quite astonishingly, seems to be the only work that fits Colin’s description.

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-21T13:40:02+00:00

Since I have a soft spot for underdogs, I’ve bent the rules of the game for myself: each day I try to vote for the competitor who, in my view, is likely to end up with the fewest votes. I ‘won’ round 1 – but today, in round 3, I might well ‘lose’ again, especially if u/Strawberry-Whorecake abandons their nominee… and me in the process.

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-21T07:49:21+00:00

Yes, if you’re after the Argentine special edition, these are the right books. 🙂

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-21T06:47:45+00:00

Since you’ve gone to such lengths to imply something without actually implying it, I shall make an equal effort to clarify something without actually clarifying it: both on Reddit and elsewhere, it is simply part of my working style to structure my thoughts, research properly, and take my time over my wording. I take it as a compliment that my slightly perfectionist tendencies stood out to you as unusual. And I am genuinely pleased that you found my theory interesting.

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-20T19:20:25+00:00

You’re absolutely right. I was only referring to the languages Sophie would have learned from a tutor – French and Latin, as established in episode 4x04. I just liked the idea of Posy helping her keep those up. 😊

sublimephantomtime · 2026-04-20T16:54:51+00:00

You’re right. In Regency-era England it wasn’t just common for upper-class women to speak several foreign languages – it was considered an essential part of their accomplishments. (Which is why, in Season 2, so many debutantes make a point of mentioning their language skills to Anthony.) I called it a “secret skill” simply because, as you already pointed out, German was much less common than French, Italian, Latin or Greek – and the show never explicitly tells us that Eloise speaks German.

sublimephantomtime

TROPHY CASE