Sophie Hunter's Peerage Cred VS Actual Black Nobility: A Tragedy in One Act
So apparently someone in Camp Cunter thought sending me a Bridgerton question would be a flex. Cute. Does she identify as a Regency-era Korean maid now? While we're doing genealogy, let's talk about real bloodlines, not the fictional ones you're trying to cling to. First, let's establish the Hunter "credentials" —such as they are:
Sophie Irene Hunter, born March 1978 in Hammersmith . Daughter of Anna Katharine (née Gow) and Charles Rupert Hunter. Granddaughter of General Sir Michael James Gow, who was indeed Aide-de-Camp General to the Queen . Great-great granddaughter of John Edward "Galloper Jack" Bernard Seely, 1st Baron Mottistone . Very nice. Very British. Very much the kind of lineage that gets you invited to the right parties and mentioned in Debrett's. And yes, she's related to Jane Birkin's family . First cousin twice removed, to be precise . This is the connection her camp clearly thinks matters. Now let's talk about what they're not telling you about that Birkin connection.
Jane Birkin's great-aunt? Winifred "Freda" May Birkin. Mistress of the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII). That's a royal mistress—the kind history half-remembers and polite society pretends not to notice. But let's go deeper, Jane Birkin's ancestry traces to Louise Renée de Penancoët de Keroual. Breton noblewoman. Sent to England by Louis XIV himself as a spy—an agent of the French crown with a very specific mission: seduce Charles II and advance French interests at the English court. She succeeded spectacularly. Became the Duchess of Portsmouth. Bore Charles II an illegitimate son, the Duke of Richmond. And through that line, the Birkin family carries French mistress ancestry that's not just scandalous—it's political. A deliberate infiltration. A bloodline purchased with bedroom politics. So when Hunter's camp wants to play the Birkin card, they're playing a card that says: "My ancestor was a royal spy and mistress who advanced the interests of England's enemy while warming the king's bed."
Now let's compare that to my family, the D'Avalos. You know, the ones in the Holy Roman Empire Association? The one run by the Orsini? The Dukes of Vasto and Milan? Papal Princes? No, I don't expect you to recognize any of this—you're too busy googling whether Sophie Baek is "canon." Let me help you with some names your Wikipedia deep-dive probably missed:
Ferrante D'Avalos: Marchese of Pescara. Condottiero. One of the most brilliant military commanders of the Italian Wars. Captured at Ravenna, ransomed, then proceeded to make Charles V's imperial ambitions actually work. His wife?
Vittoria Colonna.: Daughter of Fabrizio Colonna. Granddaughter of Federico da Montefeltro. Poet. Intellectual. Friend of Michelangelo. The woman whose palazzo was the center of Renaissance reformist thought. Also: Papal Princess. Actual Black Nobility. The kind of woman who had popes and emperors seeking her counsel rather than sending anonymous asks about Netflix. The Colonnas, by the way, have produced:
· Cardinals too numerous to count.
· Generals who actually won things.
· A saint (canonized, not the Instagram kind).
The D'Avalos intermarried with everyone who mattered. We're not talking about some Regency-era costume drama connection. We're talking about the kind of blood that built and broke empires while your ancestors were... well, whoring and spying, apparently. Let's talk about what "Peerage cred" actually means. Because here's the thing about lines that include royal mistresses: they're bastard lines. Illegitimate children of kings are still illegitimate. They don't carry the name. They don't carry the titles. They don't carry the weight. The Peerage is full of people whose ancestors were on the wrong side of the blanket, and they've spent centuries pretending otherwise—while the French spies in their bloodline laugh from the grave.
The Gow and Seely connections are respectable, certainly. Generals, barons, Aides-de-Camp to the Queen. But those are service titles. They served the Crown. They did not wear it. They did not command it. They were not it. My family? We were under the blanket, in the bed, at the negotiating table. Signing the treaties, commanding the armies. Marrying the heirs and being the heirs. The Orsini and Colonna have been feuding and intermarrying and running the Holy Roman Empire's Italian affairs since before England had a proper monarchy. They didn't need to be mistresses—they were the wives and the husbands, and the power behind every throne worth sitting on. The hierarchy is simple:
Your family: Served the Crown. Respectable. Commendable. The kind of people who get mentioned in footnotes and military histories.
My family: Was the Crown. In Italy. In the Holy Roman Empire. In the Papal States. The kind of people who are the footnotes everyone else chases.
Your Birkin connection: A royal mistress and a French spy—someone who gained influence through the bedroom rather than the battlefield or the council chamber. Someone who served against English interests while pretending otherwise.
My D'Avalos-Colonna connection: Commanders, poets, saints, princes of the Church. People who shaped history through force of arms and force of will.
So here's my advice to the Cunter and her trolls:
You can keep sending anonymous messages about Bridgerton. You can keep pretending that "Benophie" is a thing anyone will remember in five years. You can keep clinging to your general grandfather and your baron great-great-grandfather and your distant cousin Jane Birkin with her spy-mistress ancestress. But when you're done? Go to Venice, find a nice café and order a lemon sorbetto. Sit in the piazza and watch the tourists. Because that's where you belong—consuming the surface, enjoying the aesthetic, pretending you're part of something that you'll never actually belong to. Your ancestors may have warmed the king's bed, but they never sat at his council. They may have served the Crown, but they never wore it. The real Black Nobility? Doesn't eat sorbetto in Venice, they built the palazzos it's been served at for six centuries. The D'Avalos and Colonna names are carved into the history you only read about in books. Give my regards to the ghosts of all of those French spies—I'm sure they're very proud of how far their bloodline has fallen.
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