Daphne Bridgerton raped her husband and why it’s important to not romanticize it.

In the wake of the #metoo movement, many woman fearlessly stepped forward with their stories (including me), but one aspect of #metoo that did not get enough serious attention were male victims. Recently, there’s been a lot of buzz generated for the Bridgerton series (based on the novels by Julia Quinn) on Netflix, spearheaded by none other than Shonda Rhimes. It’s a historical romance set around the Bridgerton aristocratic family in Regency England.

One of the major devices that Quinn uses to move her plot along is that Simon, the Duke of Hastings (Daphne’s husband), does not want children because of his own traumatic childhood. Daphne, on the other hand, desperately wants children. It is bad enough that Daphne manipulates the Duke into marrying her by declaring that others saw them in a compromising situation. This already paints a desperate picture of our supposed “heroine,” but then she does something that is even more atrocious.