Everything To Know About The Sharma Family In Bridgerton Season 2
They're the talk of the ton.
Bridgerton Season 1 deviated a bit from the book it’s based on, but not in any really *surprising* ways. The same isn’t true of Season 2. In author Julia Quinn’s novel The Viscount Who Loved Me, sisters Kate and Edwina Sheffield stepped into the spotlight for some Regency romance. However, on the show, they are Kate and Edwina Sharma, they come all the way from Bombay, and there are a ton of changes to both their past and present. However, Bridgerton Season 2’s explanation of the Sharmas’ backstory is a bit confusion — especially amid all the suppressed emotions and Regency lingo — so I’m here to help clear it all up.
Warning: Spoilers for Bridgerton Season 2 follow. When Bridgerton Season 2 opens, Kate and Edwina Sharma had recently arrived from Bombay with their mother, Lady Mary, to stay with the great Lady Danbury. Danbury goes way back with the family, having been close friends with Kate and Edwina’s mother since she was the unmarried Lady Mary Sheffield, frequenting the London ballrooms alongside Lady Violet and Queen Charlotte.
Since Lady Mary moved to Bombay with her husband, she’d lost touch with her old crowd. However, with her husband deceased and two daughters of marriageable age, Mary set off to London to stay with Danbury, with the plan to present her girls to society.
As viewers soon learn, Mary’s marriage was scandalous. She married a commoner against her parents’ wishes (the “Lady” of her title is via her parents, not her husband); hence the couple’s exit for Bombay straight after they wed, without saying goodbye to anyone.
Moreover, Kate isn’t Lady Mary’s daughter. Mary and her husband were married 25 years ago, but Kate’s age is 26. She’s not biologically a Sheffield, and her origins are murky. But Mary raised Kate as her own, and for that, Kate was eternally grateful. So, although Lady Danbury agreed to present both young Sharma ladies to society, Kate made it clear upon meeting her that Edwina is the one being presented on the marriage market to get all the good options, not her.
Lady Danbury eventually learned Kate had another secret, one that both Edwina and Lady Mary were unaware of: Mary’s parents promised a inheritance for Edwina, with one stipulation — she must come to London, be presented to society, and marry into a family from the English peerage.
Although Lady Danbury pushed Kate to tell her sister the truth, Kate was too afraid Edwina’s pride would get in the way of a fortune that could change their family’s circumstances, and that she’d marry out of duty instead of love. But Kate didn’t realize how much she was undermining her mother’s decision to cut her family out by doing this — nor did it occur to her she was letting these grandparents, who have never tried to meet them, dictate Edwina’s future because they couldn’t dictate their daughter’s.
As she learned the hard way, Kate’s desire to do the right thing caused her to ignore the question of whether this was the future Edwina wanted.
All episodes of Bridgerton Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on Netflix.
