Won’t someone please think of the children? Reflections on the middle episodes of Bridgerton…

So Eloisa is finally granted an independent storyline and a romance of her own. She has found a radical journeyman printer – a young man who will probably speak at Peter’s field in a few years time and witness the massacre.

This could be the most transgressive relationship so far in the series.

The problem with developing this storyline is going to be how to keep Theo Sharpe’s radicalism vague enough to avoid a corrosive interrogation of the material basis for this strange fantasy civilisation.

I was suddenly reminded that not only is the Prince Regent absent from Bridgeton but so are all of his brothers and sisters. The real Queen Charlotte had no fewer than fifteen children, thirteen of whom survived to adulthood. Maternal anxiety was the dominant emotion of Charlotte’s life and existence. The Bridgerton Charlotte exists as a childless hostess whose adoption of “diamonds” feels like a compensation for a familial deficit.

This means that while all these Bridgerton aristocrats are obsessed with lineage and continuity and perpetuating their line – the Royal Family seems oblivious to any such obligation and nobody remarks on who is to succeed the “old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King”.

Perhaps this wouldn’t matter if this version of Britain were a parliamentary democracy and the hereditary principle no longer had any constitutional weight. But if this really were (as it was not) the case – then what is Theo Sharpe protesting against, especially?

In the meantime – guess what! – I was right! The constant bickering between Anthony and Kate masked a all consuming erotic attachment! Who (apart from anyone who has ever read a book or seen a movie) could have imagined that?

Colin is being prodded towards Penelope – who was brutally “friend-zoned” earlier in the series. Benedict has fallen in love with an artist who funds her studies by working as a model. This new pairing share a common relaxed attitude to nudity and Benedict strips off about ninety seconds into their first conversation.

If you’re the sort of person who tries to read the titles of the books on the shelves behind people who are being interviewed on news programmes, then you’ll share my frustration with the fact that the tense romantic scene in the library did not involve us being told which book Kate Sharma was getting down from the high shelf.