#farquhar

I admittedly have not read Sense and Sensibility before myself (but definitely got interested in reading it after finding out about this), but I was doing some Googling for reference pictures of Farquhar’s uniform and thought that the uniform worn by Colonel Brandon was a good reference. Furthermore, the novel was published in 1811, meaning that the outfits worn by the people in the novel matches with Raffles and Farquhar’s era - the Regency period.

Also, based on a quick research, Colonel Brandon’s personality is pretty similar to Farquhar’s, being described as ‘the consummate gentleman: honorable, kind almost to a fault, ever loyal and chivalrous’.

Jane Austen’s romance novels back in the early 19th century would’ve been the equivalent of otome games today. (I heard someone even made an otome game based on Jane Austen’s romance novels a couple of years back, but never played it myself.) So all the bachelors in the book are all idealised and romanticised as the perfect gentleman etc. Sounds like a good frame of reference for the characters in my otome game.

His full name is Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, but he always signs off his letters as ‘T S Raffles’, and even his grave plaques have the ‘Bingley’ omitted.

Perhaps that is why the author of ‘The Bonnie, Bonnie Banks of Singapura’ had Farquhar refer to Raffles as ‘Bingley’ instead of ‘Thomas’ or something. I think the idea is that the author wanted to get Farquhar to refer to him by an obscure name of his, just like how Farquhar himself became obscure?

I’m thinking of making this occur in one of the heart events in my game, where Singapore asks Raffles why he never uses the ‘Bingley’ in his name. However, I’m drawing at blanks at how to make him answer her question. Any of you guys got any ideas or know where that part of his name came from, and why he almost never uses it?

Edit: the above link was still working this morning but it seems to have stopped working. Here’s an archived version of the article just in case: https://web.archive.org/web/20240820015152/https://mothership.sg/2016/12/heres-how-therealraffles-would-behave-on-social-media-unfriend-will-farquhar/