Gentle reader, this author is going to come right out and say it: It's high time we gave Cressida Cowper the credit she deserves. In the flouncy, frilly world of Bridgerton , there are many hopeful debutantes vying for a ticket to freedom from their family homes via a church aisle and a wedding ring. The ballrooms are filled to the brim with candy-colored gowns, each worn by a young woman hoping to secure the Queen's favor, to fill her dance card, or to catch a moment alone at the lemonade stand with a mutton-chopped suitor.
Since the show's first season back in 2020, Cressida Cowper (Jessica Madsen) has been painted as the cold villainess. Among these hopeful brides-to-be, she is the fashionable, smirking Queen Bee. Cressida's dirty tricks in the ballroom (almost) foiled our heroines on their journeys to true love.
Her failure to secure a match in Seasons 1 and 2 felt like a satisfying and just comeuppance to her villainous ways...
Or so we thought. In Season 3 , we finally begin to see the Ton through her eyes. And in Bridgerton (Cressida's Version), things are bleaker than the poppy orchestral score would lead us to believe.
Could it be that we all misjudged Cressida? Could it be that Cressida is, in fact, the unsung heroine of the show? Let's dig deeper...
As this season has progressed, we've been offered a peek inside Cressida's private life, and the Cowper home she returns to after each frothy ball is worlds away from the gentle house of the Bridgertons or even the sill.