Now, this is some fresh information that not even Lady Whistledown is privy to: Queen Charlotte reveals that, back in the day, Lady Danbury had an affair with Violet’s father, Lord Ledger (Keir Charles). It all starts after Lord Danbury (Cyril Nri) passed away, but before that event, Agatha never felt any affection for her husband. In one episode of the prequel series, she tells her maid, Coral (Peyvan Sadeghian), that she was promised to Lord Danbury when she was merely three years old. After the wedding, her married life was marked by loathing, resentment, and an uncomfortable recurrence of marital rape. Lady Danbury’s storyline is by far the most disturbing of Queen Charlotte — and, yet, when her husband passed away, Agatha couldn’t help but grieve. After all, her life had revolved around him for so long that she didn’t even know how to be her own person.
While trying to figure out who she was without Lord Danbury, Agatha takes to taking walks around her property. She walks for so long that she accidentally trespasses onto the Ledger estate. There, she runs into Lord Ledger, a big fan of walks himself, particularly those that keep him away from his wife. Lord Ledger and Lady Danbury quickly strike up a friendship. This friendship, in turn, transforms even quicker into something else. Although the two only share a bed for one day, at least as far as Queen Charlotte tells us, the affection between them likely lasts for the rest of Lord Ledger’s life.
Little Violet is none the wiser to her father’s relationship with the young Agatha Danbury, although she does witness a few suspicious exchanges between them. As an adult, however, Lady Bridgerton begins putting two and two together. Queen Charlotte has the Bridgerton matriarch struggling with the reawakening of her sexual desire years after the death of her husband. Through a series of conversations with Lady Danbury, she realized that marriage isn’t the end of a person’s story. The two ladies become quite close as Violet tries to understand how she can have a, ahem, love life without her dear husband. But the nature of her relationship with Lady Danbury shifts when, during a visit to her friend’s house, Lady Bridgerton comes across a colorful paper crown that she remembers from her childhood days.
It turns out that Lord Ledger had a habit of making “birthday hats” for the people he loved the most. Violet had mentioned this habit a few episodes prior when confessing to Agatha and the queen that she herself made some hats for Lord Bridgerton. When she was still a child, Violet saw her father making a hat for a friend. She offered to lend him a hand, but he declined, stating that he had to make this hat all by himself. Said hat was the very same one she found all those years later at Lady Danbury’s.
Seeing the birthday hat makes something click inside Lady Bridgerton’s head. Suddenly, all those smiles between Lady Danbury and her father gained a whole new meaning. Throughout the final episodes of Queen Charlotte, Violet tries to get her friend to come clean about her relationship with Lord Ledger. Lady Danbury, however, deflects her insinuations. Still, the show ends with the two women clearly at odds with one another. There’s something standing in the way of their friendship that will have to be dealt with by the time Bridgerton Season 3 comes along.
