Bridgerton Season 2 spoilers ahead.
If you've watched the entire second season of Bridgerton, then you, like me, will probably have spent a large part of it cheering on Kate and Anthony as the pair's obvious chemistry continued to grow. In fact, so well loved are the couple, that fans of the show (and the books by Julia Quinn) have started to call them #Kanthony. And it's hard not to fall for their love story… the secret longing, the looks across a ballroom, the increasing yearning to kiss and the endless moments where they end up alone and the atmosphere is electric (even through the screen). It's exciting, it's forbidden and it's so clear that the two are meant for each other.
And so, when the couple finally get together (we only had to wait EIGHT episodes), there is a real sense of celebration, we feel satisfied with the conclusion and, as all those who have read the book know, the pair themselves go on to have four children and live, as far as we know, happy ever after. But what about Edwina? So wrapped up in the fervent love between Kate and Anthony, we neglect to think about the younger Sharma sister, who was betrayed by her older sister and her fiancé, whom she professes to love, all in one fell swoop… and, on top of that, left feeling embarrassed, angry and manipulated.
“I haven't read the Bridgerton books, but as the story began to unfold, I could feel myself getting more and more angry on Edwina's behalf, rather than enjoying the obvious connection between Kate and Anthony,” Jess* tells me. “I found myself thinking of her whenever I watched a scene where Kate and Anthony were having a private conversation, or brushing lips or confessing their secret desires.”
And the reason for this pull toward Edwina and her plight? “I've been Edwina,” she tells me. “And it took me years to get over it."
Jess was 24 when Luke* first followed her on Instagram: “We had a friend in common but I had never met him, though when he first followed me I recognised him immediately.”
“He said he'd seen me in a tagged photo with our mutual friend and wanted to reach out and say hi. He joked that he'd checked I was single first,” she laughs. “And I thought he was really polite, interested in what I had to say and asked loads of questions, which is a trait I'd found to be thin on the ground when dating."
The pair went on a date soon after and seemed to have lots in common. In fact, the evening went so well that Luke asked Jess on a second date before they'd even finished the first, he even insisted on ordering her a cab so that she didn't have to get the bus home on her own.
“We went on quite a few dates in a short space of time, and about a month in, he asked if I wanted to come to his friend's birthday at a bar in town,” Jess explains. When she arrived, she found everyone to be “friendly and inviting” and was soon sitting outside with several of his friends.
Luke wasn't sitting with them though, and Jess could see through the window that he was standing talking to a girl in the kitchen. “They were quite handsy with each other but in a sort of friendly way, nudging each other and that kind of thing. I was sort of aware of it but didn't feel panicked… he'd brought me here as the girl he was seeing, so I just didn't feel there was a need to feel territorial.
During the night out though, Jess felt as though wherever they were in the bar, this other girl ("let's call her Sophie*") was there too. “She was chatty and friendly with me, but her and Luke seemed to have a lot of private jokes and I was surprised that she hung around so much given that she knew we were newly dating and might want to spend time together.”
“At one point Luke and I went out for a cigarette and Sophie said she would go and find the others,” Jess tells me. “But when we came back in I felt like Luke was sort of distracted. He was talking to me but his eyes were kind of flitting about the room."
At the end of the night, Sophie said she was going to meet a friend and Jess was surprised by Luke's response. “He asked who it was and when she said the name of a boy he seemed to get a bit funny. One of his friends noticed I was watching and told me that Sophie could be a bit reckless and Luke just liked to look after her. ‘That’s just Luke,’ he told me, and then led me away to the pizza place everyone else was queueing at."
For a while, Jess didn't see Sophie again and things continued to progress with Luke. “I couldn't fault anything about the way he treated me, but I did feel like he didn't always tell me everything and would sometimes become quite consumed by his phone.”
Several months later Luke invited Jess to a BBQ at a friends, telling her that it was an “all day thing” and so she could just pop round whenever she wanted. “I arrived at 4pm after meeting a friend for lunch, and Luke was already there, sitting in the corner of the garden with Sophie. I went to go over but one of his female friends sort of ushered me back and explained that Sophie had just been dumped and Luke was just making sure she's alright. She suggested that I go inside and get a drink with her instead.”
I noticed that Sophie avoided us and on several occasions I looked up and caught her, or the people she was standing with, watching us.
Luke came over a short time later and spent the rest of the day with Jess. “We played beer pong and joked around with each other about our mutual competitiveness, but I noticed that Sophie avoided us and on several occasions I looked up and caught her, or the people she was standing with, watching us."
“When we got back to Luke's house I told him that I thought Sophie fancied him, but rather than brush it off he was super-inquisitive as to why, asking questions and continuing the conversation even when I tried to change the subject.”
Everything came to a head after five months together. “He took me to Sophie's birthday — which I thought must be a good sign, because you don't invite a girl whose boyfriend you fancy to your party, do you? — but when he got there his friend muttered to him about Sophie having brought a guy. I didn't hear exactly what he said but I just felt from that moment on that I had lost him.”
“His eyes were just constantly flitting to Sophie,” she adds. “He kept having to ask me to repeat myself because he was obviously struggling to focus on anything other than her. I kept trying to console and convince myself that I was being overly jealous but I felt really hurt, and paranoid that everyone knew something I didn't."
“At the end of the night, I approached Sophie to thank her for inviting me. ‘I didn’t actually think you'd come,' she laughed. I felt mortified and confused, she'd never been unkind to me before. Her friend chimed in to say that she was just ‘really drunk’ and she ‘always gets like this’ but it didn't make me feel any better.”
Jess found Luke and told him what Sophie had said, hoping that he'd make her feel better. “But instead he just ran straight off to find her. I just left. It confirmed my fears.”
Jess felt stuck. She really, really liked Luke, but she just knew it wasn't right. “I called our mutual friend to explain. She wasn't very close to him but said she would try and find out some information from people who were.
“There's definitely something going on,” Jess's friend told her. “Apparently they've always had chemistry and that group always joke that they'll end up together. Supposedly their friends are all pretty bored of the saga and think they should just get together and stop playing around.”
“I was gutted,” Jess says. “I knew I shouldn't be surprised but I was just really gutted to have it finally confirmed to me. I felt like everyone must have been laughing behind my back, confused why I kept showing up to events or mocking the fact that I was the only one in the room who didn't understand what was going on.
And I know, that just like the viewers, no one really cared about where I was in those moments, they were just rooting for Luke and Sophie to finally get together.
“There were so many moments in Bridgerton where I recognised myself in Edwina. So many times where I feel she clearly plays down what she's seen and puts blind faith in Anthony again and again,” she explains. “All those times that Daphne or Lady Danbury noticed the spark between them but didn't bother to warn Edwina, it just feels cruel to me. All those scenes where we watch Anthony and Kate get close, while Edwina is nowhere to be seen, they make me angry because I know that somewhere, on several occasions, I was standing around with his friends while Luke and Sophie probably had similar conversations.
"And I know, that just like the viewers, no one really cared about where I was in those moments, they were just rooting for Luke and Sophie to finally get together.
We don't really see how much Edwina is struggling. In fact, during one scene, as Kate and Anthony stand side-by-side giving each other knowing looks, Edwina asks: ‘Were they always this obvious?’ – but we are too fixated on the lovestruck pair to really care.
Even during the scenes after the cancelled wedding – where the Sharmas, Lady Danbury and the Bridgertons get together for a ball that no one else attends – Edwina is clearly aware of Kate and Anthony's interactions. “I know it's just TV, but when they have that first sex scene in the garden afterwards, all I kept thinking was, I bet Edwina is inside somewhere, imagining where the other two have gone and feeling totally rejected and lost,” Jess says.
As for Jess's story: “I ended it and blocked Luke on all social platforms, but I spent months replaying all sorts of situations back in my head, trying to pick out all the things I'd missed or imagining all the things going on when Luke wasn't by my side," she sighs. “They're together now though.”
When I ask her how she knows this, she says she's embarrassed to admit that she asked that same mutual friend. “I just had to know,” she tells me. “Apparently they're very happy."
“I am too,” she adds. “Now.”
*Names have been changed.
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