Patrick

[charverz.livejournal.com]

Patrick's romantic life provides a lot of scope for speculation.  The canon only provides Ginty, Claudie, and Nicola.  I'll state up front that, of the three, Nicola is obviously the best match, in my opinion.  Claudie is a non-starter, and unless Ginty gets a massive dose of maturity or Patrick goes off the deep end, we can rule Ginty out.

On the other hand, I see other possibilities.  First Rowan, for all that there's an age difference.  They certainly interact well together at the Nativity play in End of Term.  And I can see each providing the other with something each lacks - a romanticism that would be a nice break from Rowan's constant level-headedness, and a practicality that might help Patrick go somewhere in life.

The other, surprisingly enough, is Ann.  She is the only religious Marlow, and surely between low church Anglican and conservative Roman Catholic they could find some common ground. With the Anglican communion having its own turmoil, Ann might decide she doesn't want a woman vicar or blessings of same-sex unions.  One suspects that Antonia Forest would have found today's religious landscape very interesting (and would have been very happy with the new Pope).

Comments

[liadnan]

I think there's a bit on this in the Hester Stanhope biog, will check when I get home (they met when she reached -I think- Athens, they didn't get on, each presumably thinking that Athens wasn't big enough for both of them. Byron had a boy in tow at the time)

Incidentally I've always been of the school that thinks the "mad, bad and dangerous to know" epithet is a bit unfair. Look who it's coming from, for one thing (Stanhope had her pegged right too). For another, his record as an active parliamentary member of the House of Lords was rather good and his part in the Greek war of independence was extremely level-headed. And extended to doing his best to prevent a Greek massacre of Turks.