#rwarb

henry and the mountchristen windsors are prussian royalty, the line that friedrich from the first season represents. that means that he is one of charlotte's Precious Niblings. this is about five years post Franchaela Making Gay Marriage Legal Through the Sheer Power of Love and Being The Queen's Favorite. and henry, second son and awkward, closeted gay boy, jumps at the chance to go spend a courting season with his auntie charlotte The World's First Ally.

because like, hey, he can't get gay married in prussia but like? he could? perhaps??? get gay married in england??? and his auntie is like oh i gotcha boo you're awkward and gay. i can find you a good husband!

we're putting this in the early 1820s, right about when mexico has won its independence btw.

and of course the man that she's trying to set him up with is NOT the son of a woman with a legal separation from her husband who spent decades in mexico, back when it was a spanish colony AND during the pennisular war where the claims on mexico were tenuous between spain and france. no matter who was holding the reins, not only was mexico just a colony, it wasn't even an ENGLISH colony. the fact that her estranged husband is mixed indigenous is not of matter in post-great experiment bridgerton, but the fact that she left the dominion of her queen for SPAIN!?!??! even now that mexico declares itself sovereign (like her own damned colonies reasserted only recently) it seems only more galling. it's not even a sense of loyalty to crown and country that seems to have driven mrs. claremont-diaz and her kin from the americas. it seems the only reason she returned was to care for her ailing parents and set her son up as heir presumptive, in absence of another claimant?

how ghastly. it's almost as ghastly as if she'd settled down with a frenchman on the heads will roll side of the revolution.

and those claremont children... why.... not only is their father of ignoble birth, they were born in spanish colonies. the prejudices surrounding colonists born in certain areas outside of the empire still persist, especially against colonies that are not HERS.

miss and mister claremont-diaz, as they so brazenly insist upon, have entirely too progressive ideas of who constitutes A Person. of course those of wealth and breeding should be afforded high status, regardless of race, ability or sexual persuasion, but trying to afford that to the average woman, struggling against the limitations of her sex and station? why... charlotte has suffered, despite her advantages, why shouldn't they? and those unwashed masses... why, they don't even have the class and breeding to understand WHAT they're missing out on? clearly benedict bridgerton's clever little maid-wife is some sort of exception. the lower classes don't have thoughts or feelings worth respecting- the subjected and poor are that way for a reason.

mrs. claremont-diaz. miss claremont-diaz, and mr. claremont-diaz, however, are causing quite a fuss. their ideas are loud and they are causing QUITE the stir, advocating for the rights of a great many subjects who need not have them. the homegrown catholics, clinging to their tattered old religion like a threadbare stuffed toy, the holdout speakers of welsh and cornish and all those ghastly languages that they have tried to erase, the unwashed masses at home, in ireland, abroad in their further flung colonies- they won't stop talking about it, and it is putting a real damper on the social season.

except, unfortunately, prince henry very into that. no matter how many more respectable young gentlemen his aunt throws his way- he continues to brush them off, hiding himself away like miss bridgerton, who was allowed to hide herself away and reinstate her vendetta against marriage quite early into this season. (miss bridgerton interacted with the claremont-diaz siblings publicly and enthusiastically all but once. it seems that after making such a scene with the radicals of the ton, lady bridgerton decided to ALLOW her to withdraw