How Bridgerton season 2 differs from the novel The Viscount Who Loved Me

The art of adaptation is a tricky one.

It requires you to expand or elide story, find space for supporting characters who are perhaps minor on the page, and find a way to make something that can be extremely interior on the page more inherently cinematic.

That's the task before Bridgerton, which it did in season 1, building out the world and ensemble around its central The Duke and I love story between Simon (Regé-Jean Page) and Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor). In season 2, writers now have to get viewers invested in a new romance, principally between the enemies turned lovers, Kate (Simone Ashley) and Anthony (Jonathan Bailey).

There is also the task of making sure all those other characters still have plenty to do. That means introducing entirely new characters and storylines that don't appear in the novel, including further drama with Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel), Eloise's (Claudia Jessie) new fascination with printer Theo (Calum Lynch), and the Featheringtons' freshly arrived scheming heir, Jack (Rupert Young).

In case you're keeping score, here are the major ways in which Bridgerton season 2 differs from its source material, Julia Quinn's novel The Viscount Who Loved Me.

The Love Triangle

The biggest and most central shift here is the decision to make the love story more of a definitive love triangle. In The Viscount Who Loves Me, Anthony does pursue Edwina first, as one of the most attractive and promising women of the season. But Edwina is only interested in him so far as she knows he's a good match to fulfill her duty. We never get the sense that she has any true depth of feeling for him.

In season 2, Edwina and Anthony form more of a genuine connection — and Kate is forced to routinely deny her desires and growing attraction to him in order to protect her sister's heart. On the page, the conflict is merely her shift from hating Anthony to loving him, while here she must contend with those confusing emotions and the added complications of not wanting to hurt her beloved sister.

The Sharma Backstory

The Sharmas have been re-named from the novel, in which they were the Sheffields (though the series keeps a tie to that name with Lady Mary's maiden name). In the novel, they're merely on the more financially challenged end of the aristocracy, but there's no bad blood with Lady Mary's parents or stipulations on Edwina's suitors to ensure she secure a wealthy dowry.

In the series, the Sharmas, who have traveled from India, rather than merely the English countryside, have a more complex reason for wanting to marry Edwina to someone with a title — it's the only way to make sure the entire family has enough money to live on. Additionally, Lady Mary has a much more thorny relationship with her parents in the series, having been virtually disowned by them for running away with Kate's father to India.

Kate's Unresolved Trauma

Season 2 does give space for Kate and Anthony to connect over their grief at having lost their fathers. But it removes another key piece of Kate's backstory — the fact that her mother (who is not Lady Mary) died when she was a young girl. In the novel, Kate does love Mary like her own mother and is grateful for being treated as a true daughter. But she also has unresolved trauma, triggered by rainstorms, over losing her mother so young. It's a key parallel between her and Anthony and the ways they've chosen to lock their hearts away.

Edwina

Both creator Chris Van Dusen and actress Charithra Chandran have expressed their desire for Edwina to be more than a prop in someone else's love story, which to be honest, she kind of is on the page. In the novel, Edwina is a demure and naïve young woman who will agree to marry a man she doesn't love purely because she knows she's supposed to. We don't get to see any of her inner monologue, though we do know she is bookish because she loves to read and says her true romantic ideal is a scholar — and she even ends up with one!

But Van Dusen and Chandran have breathed new life into her. She has as much a journey as Kate does in season 2, learning to speak up for her own wants and desires. She recognizes why Anthony is the fulfillment of her duty, but she also genuinely cares for him and believes him to be the man of her dreams for a time. Here, Edwina goes from dutiful daughter and hopeless romantic to an empowered woman. She doesn't get her scholar, but the Queen is keen on pairing her off with a prince, perhaps.

Edmund's Death

In the novel, Anthony doesn't see his father die. He and Benedict come home from a day out on their estate to discover the terrible news. He still immediately assumes the mantle of heir and head of the Bridgerton household, but it's not as visually dramatic as portrayed in the series. On the show, Anthony is present for the moment his father is stung by a bee, and he holds Edmund in his arms as he succumbs to anaphylactic shock. Grief and trauma are complicated, but this shift certainly makes it abundantly evident why his father's death really, and we mean really, messed Anthony up.

The Bee Sting Incident

Besides the Pall Mall game (which plays out largely as it does in the book, only sans a certain Duke), the bee sting scene is probably readers' favorite moment in The Viscount Who Loved Me. When Kate is stung by a bee in the gardens, Anthony panics due to his experience with his father. Out of his mind with worry, he presses his mouth to Kate's bosom to try to suck the poison out. Naturally, this is the exact moment when Lady Featherington and a group of society mamas walk up the path and discover them, forcing them to marry to avoid a scandal.

The bee sting moment still happens, and it creates yet another moment of delicious sexual tension between Kate and Anthony. But it stays a private incident between the two of them. They are not discovered and Anthony continues pursuing Edwina after it. Van Dusen told EW he didn't want to repeat season 1's storyline of the lovers being caught in a compromising position and forced to marry, which was a major reason for the change. However, he did add a similar moment of Lady Featherington's own devising, where she arranges for a group of women to discover her own daughter in a compromising position in the gardens with the new Lord Featherington.

The Wedding

Following the bee sting incident, this is where things start to radically diverge from the book. Instead of being forced to marry Kate to protect her reputation, Anthony proposes to Edwina and makes it all the way to the altar. But when a chance moment occurs and Anthony and Kate lock eyes, Edwina finally realizes that Anthony has feelings for her sister, not for her. Chaos ensues as she must debate whether to call of the wedding entirely, and Kate wrestles with her guilt.

Edwina ultimately chooses her own happiness, and Kate and Anthony finally kiss in a heated moment in the now empty chapel. None of this occurs on the page.

Kate's Accident

Both the novel and the series employ a serious accident involving Kate Sharma as the inciting incident for Anthony to realize how much he loves her. In the novel, Kate and Anthony are already married after their garden interlude when she gets into a carriage accident (along with Edwina and her scholarly suitor).

Distraught at the idea of Kate being hurt (or worse), Anthony climbs under the carriage and tries to keep Kate calm and rescue her from the upturned vehicle. It's in this moment that he realizes what he's been trying to deny all along, that he really and truly loves her and any attempts to lock his heart away from safekeeping have failed.

In the series, Kate instead gets into a horseback riding accident, falling from her horse after attempting a jump and being knocked unconscious for at least a week. It has the same effect on Anthony, making him finally admit how deeply he cares for her. But it allows the series to be a bit more full-circle, bringing us back to Anthony and Kate's first meeting while out riding in episode 1.

Kanthony Forever

In the novel, Kate and Anthony marry while there's still a good third of the novel left. But those chapters follow their marriage as Anthony still tries to prevent himself from falling in love, Kate's hurt at her husband's odd behavior, and their eventual arrival at marital bliss. In the series, the two don't get together until the final moments, kissing under a shower of fireworks, before cutting to the future where they've returned from their honeymoon.

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