I love this. Please forgive my silence; I've been relishing it for days. A backstory for Maria! Her own complicated feelings about her husband! And her portrait of Lady Barbara...!! She is not wrong, and yet I laugh to see how uncharitable it is, how unshaded by tender sentiment. I see Lady Barbara very differently, now that I've seen her through Maria's eyes, and I think maybe I'll always see her thus. (Paradoxically, I think I like Lady Barbara better, now that I've seen her through Maria's eyes? But Hornblower's portrait is so fawningly "not like other girls" that I always want to stab things.) But I most love, of course, is that she takes agency of her story back: she is not a dupe here, but someone with a not-awesome slate of options, who makes her choices with her eyes wide open.
Of course, this only makes me hanker more for the Maria and Barbara fic.
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Date: 2019-07-14 07:03 pm (UTC)Of course, this only makes me hanker more for the Maria and Barbara fic.
Would you mind if I linked this at the comm?