#She is the BEST mom and yall made her absent?? Ugh fuck you Shondaland and writers

[viscountessevie]

In the Bridgertonverse, would Mary be asked for her approval/blessing for a Kate/Anthony betrothal? She has not put herself forward as head of the family, nor is she in a position to bestow a dowry on Kate. Curious what your thoughts would be. (this is for Show Mary, not Book Mary).

Thanks for this ask anon and for waiting. This is such an interesting ask, so I really appreciate and am flattered that you thought to ask me! Shoutout to Trivia @hptriviachamp for helping me figure out how much authority widows in HR have :D

Okay so the Bridgerverse - especially the world building of the show version is a mess. At least the books' were somewhat historically accurate so I shall also offer you those facts later.

Within the show, by right she should be their head of household because the show Cowpers are a good example but Lady Cowper seems to run the show so by that predence, Mary is the head of the household and should be running things like Anthony is.

I think the frustrating thing about Show!Mary is that they made her so absent, they didn't even bother establishing who officially is the Head of Household for the Sharmas. Because Kate acts like she is and then when they arrived in London, Lady D takes over for them. So it's quite murky.

However, Trivia just informed me that despite her absence and lack of assertion in S2, Mary is still the official head of household for the Sharmas, as much as a widow can be. She doesn't have the same flexibilities or authority that a patriarch of a family would because hello Regency sexism, but Anthony would have approached her for a blessing of sorts. Triv helped shed more light on this:

Within the HR universe of rules and precedents, she cited Secrets of a Summer Night which has Annabelle in a similar family situation:

So I imagine this is how it would have gone down with Anthony and Mary (God we deserved to see that - we got all the scenes with Violet and Anthony why not Mary fussing about her girls??)

And while it was said that Kate dealt with the finances, they did have some money that could have passed off as a small dowry for Kate even though we all know Anthony would have waived it because he loves his wife.

All in all, Mary does have the power and enough money to give her blessing and provide a respectable dowry for Kathony but we just never saw that cos the writers suck.

Thanks for reading yall and again to the anon for a great and interesting ask!

#Bridgerton #Brb forever grieving how they barely used Mary in S2 like WHAT THE FUCK #She is the BEST mom and yall made her absent?? Ugh fuck you Shondaland and writers #Mary Sharma #Kate Sharma #The Sharmas #Anthony Bridgerton #Sanji Answers