Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
There is a knee-jerk impulse to brush off pedantic complaints about historical fiction.
It matters who is a Duke and who isnt.
Class differences are also power differences, and understanding the social order is vital to understandingBridgertons fictional stakes.
How will the rest of society see the Sharmas, newly arrived from India?
How will that affect their marriage prospects?
What are the biggest cultural differences between them and the Bridgertons?
Do they think of themselves as English or Indian or both?
How badly do they need to marry well?
(DoesBridgertons Regency England include popular broadsheets arguing about the phrase people of color?)
Why set a romance in the Regency period and then ignore the things that make it Regency?
SoBridgertonattempts to go half-and-half modern when the show feels like it, historical when it wants to be.
Fantasy can be excused as trivial ornamentation when its an errant zipper.
Are we supposed to read that as departing from civilized English society?
Kate Sharma happily embracing a life in India?
(Or abnegating her Britishness?)
The Sharmas snobby relatives require Edwina to marry an English nobleman.
No wonder its narrative world feels paper-thin.
Knowing those details might make any ofBridgertons romances more meaningful, more poignant, or more human.
ButBridgertonnever offers more than a shrug.
