blaaaaaaaaaa

Oh my God, they are the world’s biggest puppies who will have the world’s blondest babies.

Also the way they were looking at Anna and Nikolai here. They know what's up! 😄

Love this family so much 🥹 and it's the first time Nikolai stayed (shockingly) to eat the cake 🥹🥹🥹

Also the way they were looking at Anna and Nikolai here. They know what's up! 😄

Love this family so much 🥹 and it's the first time Nikolai stayed (shockingly) to eat the cake 🥹🥹🥹

Now that I’ve got some people to watch The Story of His Maid, I am going to attempt to get them to watch Вольная Грамота (the freedom papers given to liberate a serf; amazon for some bizarre reason has it as Life of a Mistress though FL is never anyone’s mistress in this.)

This is probably my favorite period Russian show. Unlike Maid, which is deliberately ahistorical and deliberately staged in a theatrical unreal manner (like a Moliere production tho of course I am not saying the writing is Moliere level), Вольная Грамота is a period romance grounded in reality and specific period and actually shockingly good at showing the awfulness and issues of being a serf.

Our FL Polina is technically a serf but she’s been brought up as a beloved spoiled ward of a rich estate owner. He’s given Polina everything - education, clothes, upper class fiance etc etc. everything except her freedom papers so she is still technically a serf. And then he unexpectedly dies and due to a bunch of melo circumstances she is not freed at the time of his death so she is still a serf. And so when the arrogant rich neighbor buys the estate, the buys everything in it, Polina included.

If you think this is one of the many romances where a rich arrogant owner falls in love with his servant (Maid) or serf (Bednaya Nastya), think again. One of the things that is great about this show is the owner never has any romantic interest in Polina and even any sexual interest is minimal and only on general principles of “all my things are mine to do with what I will.” He is much too class conscious and awful for anything else (another thing this show does right is that a monster is a monster. He actually does genuinely fall in love in this show - with a class appropriate woman of course - and it does not make him any less of a monster to others that he is now happy in a mutual relationship.)

So who is the love interest? The owner’s much younger brother Dmitri who returns from the military and at first has no idea she is their new servant.

Dmitri is loving and lovely and a rare instance where a genuine green flag is done well and is interesting and makes sense. He’s an outlier in his family and really makes me think a lot of 17 from LYF both in that and in the fact that his superpower is really sheer decency and ability to sacrifice himself in a quiet steady manner.

Together they are lovely but of course, no way would his brother allow his brother to marry a serf or even free her etc etc.

It’s sweet and angsty and awesome and ultimately has a happy ending. Have another MV:

If you want, we can come back to this conversation one day. But right now, you need to rest.

Eyes say more than words.

Ahahahaha how the tables turned XDDDD

________________________________________________________________