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I just KNOW Portia is going to eat up the fact that she and her grandson are Lord and Lady Featherington!!

I want her pinching his little cheeks while calling him “My Lord”

I want her curtseying to him with feigned formality before scooping him into her arms and kissing the top of his head

I want her dancing around the drawing room with him because he’s the first Lord Featherington she’s ever loved

I want her to be the softest grandmama ever because she CAN be!

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When the Bridgerton writers finally give Portia her love match, I want a moment where her partner (a woman would be preferred but a very nice & rich man would be fine too) sees Portia dealing with a situation—full scheming, panicking, losing her mind—and they tell her to relax and let them handle it.

Portia has no idea how to be taken care of and doesn’t trust it at first. But they tell her she’s allowed to rest and she just stands there staring at them like

She deserves an acts of service partner 😭

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yes ma’am

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Manifesting this for Bridgerton Season 4 except it’s Portia Featherington and a hot young widow pressing her against a tree 😌

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PICTURE IT. It’s the opening to Portia Featherington’s spin-off. She’s sitting by the window, alone per usual.

Her monologue begins:

“They believe they know me.

I know what they whisper behind their fans. That I am ridiculous, flagrant, desperate. Tasteless and tactless, they call me. They believe the armor I wear is who I am—a scheming matriarch with no shame, her head held high no matter the storm. A woman either too oblivious to notice their disdain or too foolish to care. But the truth is, I do notice. And I care more than I’d ever admit.

Every glance that lingers a second too long, every pointed silence, every snide remark wrapped in a smile—oh, I feel it all. I feel it more than they could imagine. But I’ve learned that there is no mercy for women like me in Mayfair. Women who weren’t born into the right families. Women who aren’t quiet. Women who are different.

And so I pretend. I pretend that I don’t hear the whispers or see the smirks. I pretend that the scandals I’ve weathered have left me unscathed, that the schemes I’ve spun to protect my family haven’t cost me my soul. I pretend so well that sometimes I almost believe it myself. Almost.

What they don’t see is the exhaustion. The endless, bone-deep weariness of being always on guard. Always fighting for my place, for my girls’ futures, for survival in a world that would gladly watch me fall. They don’t see the nights I lie awake, staring at the ceiling and wondering what it might feel like to rest. To simply be.

I wasn’t born with the easy charm of Lady Bridgerton or the impenetrable dignity of the Lady Danbury. No, I was born to scrape and claw and endure. And endure I do. But I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t hurt. That it doesn’t cut me to the quick every time they look at me as though I am less.

They say I am an outsider, and they’re right. I’ve always been one. Even when I was a girl I could feel it—the distance, the knowledge that I didn’t quite fit. I thought I could eventually earn my place if I smiled brightly enough, if I said the right things, wore the right gowns, married the right man. But no matter how hard I tried, it was never enough. I realized since then that it never would be.

So I stopped trying to fit in and instead, I made my own place. Bold colors and bold words. If they were going to laugh at me, I’d give them a reason to laugh. If they were going to whisper, I’d give them something to whisper about. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t mean I don’t wish things were different.

Sometimes I wonder what they’d say if they saw the truth of me. If they saw how tired I am. How lonely. How much I’ve sacrificed to keep my family afloat, to keep my daughters safe. Would they pity me? Mock me? Or would they finally understand that my armor isn’t proof of my strength, but of my fear?

I’ll never know. I’ll never let them see. In this world survival relies on performance, and I intend to keep the curtain drawn. After all, if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that vulnerability is a luxury women like me cannot afford.

I wonder how much longer I can keep going. How many more scandals I can outlive, how many more insults I can swallow. Sometimes I long to stop, to lay down my armor and let the world do its worst. To let someone else fight for a change. But who would? Who could? There’s no one coming to rescue women like me. No one to swoop in and declare, “Enough, Lady Featherington. Rest now. I’ll take it from here.”

And so I carry on, because that is what I must do. For my daughters, for myself.

I think about my late husband more than I’d care to admit. Not because I miss him—I haven’t missed him for a moment—but because he is the ghost that haunts every choice I’ve made since his death. His gambling debts, his disregard for our future, the shame he left me to bear alone. It’s funny, isn’t it? How a man can ruin a woman’s life and still leave her to carry his name.

I wonder what he’d think of all I’ve managed to survive. Would he be proud? Would he even notice? I suppose it doesn’t matter. He’s gone, and I am still here.

And still I wonder what it would it feel like to belong. To be seen not as a joke, but as someone who has fought tooth and nail for her place in this world? Would anyone look at me and see a mother who loves fiercely even if she doesn’t always know how to show it? A woman who has made mistakes, yes, but always with the best intentions?

Perhaps not. And perhaps it doesn’t matter. Because even if no one else sees me, I see me. I see the woman who refuses to be broken. The woman who, time and again, has rebuilt the rubble into a home. The woman who, despite it all, keeps going.

At least, that’s what I tell myself. Because really, it’s all I have. My pride, my determination, and the unyielding belief that I will survive. I always do.”

If there’s ever a spin-off for her I want IN on writing the script. No one gets her but I do 😔

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all this woman ever wanted was to be taken care of and yet she has spent her entire life in defense mode taking care of herself :(

she craved security for a reason okay!! I’ll bet she never felt safe in her childhood and she thought she was doing the best thing for herself by marrying Archibald. he couldn’t even provide the one thing she wanted and ended up causing her way more damage.

she was so desperate to be taken care of that she was relieved her daughter wasn’t going to marry so she could take care of her. (and yeah, she shouldn’t have treated Pen that way but no one can deny that Portia’s entire existence is so clearly rooted in trauma responses…) she is such a devastating character and I hope we get her backstory one day.

alsoooo I want to see her fall in love with someone in season 4 (or a spin-off mhmm) who lives and breathes to protect her. please, someone romance this woman! let her be loved!

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they’re either going to hate each other or fall in love

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I have an idea for season 4 👀

What if we find out that Portia is actually the illegitimate daughter of a high-ranking lord (maybe a Duke). Instead of casting her out, he did the honorable thing and raised her as his ward, kind of similar to Sophie’s situation in a way. Thanks to his status he managed to secure Portia a marriage to a lower-ranking lord, Archibald Featherington.

Maybe Archibald owed him money because we know he was a gambler. Either way, this marriage was a big step up for Portia—definitely better than she could have gotten on her own. This backstory could explain why she’s always been so obsessed with keeping her place in society and making sure her daughters are protected. She knows what it’s like to live on the edge of respectability and how quickly it can all fall apart. It also could explain why she overdoes it a lot of the time. She desperately wants to fit into a world that wasn’t ever really hers.

Anyway, at the start of the season Portia moves into a Dower House and starts hiring staff for her new household. Instead of Benedict going to Violet for a place for Sophie, he asks Colin and Penelope. They let him know Portia is hiring, which leads to Sophie becoming one of Portia’s maids.

Portia is lonely and looking for some company, so she starts inviting Sophie to tea and asking her questions about her life. (Yes, this is something Portia would do—she’s nosy and hates being bored. She’s also befriended her staff in past seasons so it’s not uncharacteristic of her.) Over time, Portia pieces together Sophie’s story and realizes the truth about her background.

Once she figures it out, Portia becomes super protective of Sophie. She knows exactly what it’s like to feel caught between two worlds and to never fully belong anywhere. Plus, she hasn’t had a good scheme in a while, so naturally she decides to do something about this.

She forms a plan to get Araminta to claim Sophie as a distant relative of the Earl instead of acknowledging her as illegitimate. Maybe she has something on Araminta? Either way, we know Portia will figure out some way to make it happen. Especially if she feels at all maternal towards Sophie because the woman won’t let anything happen to her girls. (This makes more sense than Violet doing it, honestly. Especially the way Violet is written in the show). Once Sophie is legitimized, Benedict can marry her without anyone needing to know where she really came from.

When Sophie asks why she is helping her, Portia just says something like, “Because people like us deserve security too.” 🥹

This plotline would also give us a nod to the rivalry between Araminta and Portia from the books. Plus we would get to see Portia doing what Portia does best—turning the odds in her favor. It’s a backstory for her that makes so much sense when you really think about it!

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One thing people don’t talk about enough is the scene where Portia finds out the truth about Pen being Lady Whistledown. Penelope has hurt Portia over and over (which does not take away from the fact that she also hurt Pen OKAY 🤚🏼) but nonetheless, she has a right to be upset at finding out that her daughter has sown the seeds of her own family’s ruin for years.

But it takes her all of a minute and a half to go from hurt to protect mode. She doesn’t want Penelope to jeopardize her marriage over this, and even when Penelope tells her she will tell Colin anyway, she is right there beside her ready to scheme Penelope out of this if she needs to.

None of this changes that Portia overlooked Pen for years and Portia herself admits to this. But this woman loves her daughters and imo, her love is the fiercest on the show. It just isn’t soft because she hasn’t ever had an example of soft love and she‘s existed in survival mode for so long that it wasn’t something affordable to her.

She is flawed but she is a mother!