Fans ofperiod romances and dramasare having their day in the sun as far as television is concerned. WithBridgertonbeing a certified hit, bringing in eyes and bucks to Netflix, not only has the streamer raised the bet in the form ofQueen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, but other platforms have also been trying to surf this wave. The newest entry to the list of shows that appeal to fans of the ton — who are still waiting for Season 3, by the way! — is Apple TV+‘sThe Buccaneers, a Gilded Age story about a group of American friends looking for love in the London marriage season.
Created byKatherine Jakeways,The Buccaneershas all the ingredients to be a hit amongBridgertonfans, albeitwith a more dramatic streak. The show has a lot going on for it, including a fascinating history behind its plot. No,The Buccaneersis not based on a true story. It is an entirely fictional work based on the words ofEdith Wharton. However, that doesn’t mean that the series doesn’t have its roots in real historical events.
The Buccaneers
The Buccaneers are the daughters of America’s new rich — beautiful and untameable, despite the best efforts of England’s finest governesses, they are on their way to London to snare themselves an aristocrat, low in funds but high in class, to make a perfect match.
What Is ‘The Buccaneers’ About?
The Buccaneersfollows a group of five American friends looking for love and marriage in London in the 1870s.Dubbed the Gilded Age, in the US, and the Edwardian Era, in Britain, the period was a time of enrichment for American families dealing with industry and trade, and a time of decline for the English aristocracy that saw their wealth slipping from their hands and traveling to the recently independent former colonies in the Americas. In this scenario, sisters Nan (Kristine Froseth) and Jinny St. George (Imogen Waterhouse), and sisters Mabel (Josie Totah) and Lizzy Elmsworth (Aubri Ibrag) travel to the old continent to find suitable matches after having American old money doors slammed in their faces.
The plot starts with Conchita Closson’s (Alisha Boe) wedding to Lord Richard Marable (Josh Dylan), in New York. Noticing that his fiancée’s bridesmaids aren’t exactly welcomed into the high society of their homeland due to their new money status, Richard decides to invite them and their mothers to spend the upcoming marriage season in London. However, across the Atlantic Ocean, the young women find a world that still turns up its nose at them, albeit for different reasons: to the lords and ladies of Edwardian Britain, every American is deemed inferior. Nonetheless, the trip proves to be essential for Nan, Jinny, Mabel, and Lizzy, as it reveals to them parts of themselves that they weren’t aware of. And, in the end, love might be waiting right where they least expect it to be.
The show is based on the Edith Wharton novel of the same name, left unfinished after her death in 1937.The book was completed by author and criticMary Mainwaringin 1993, following an outline written by Wharton herself. But, despite Mainwaring’s additions, screenwriterMaggie Wadeyoffered a new version of the story for a 1995 BBC/PBS co-production. TitledThe Buccaneersmuch like the novel and its 2023 counterpart, the miniseries added many elements to the story’s universe, including asame-sex romanceand a traditional happy ending. StarringCarla GuginoandMira Sorvino, the 1995 adaptation ofThe Buccaneersis available to stream on BritBox.
Is ‘The Buccaneers’ Based on a True Story?
ThoughThe Buccaneersis not based on any one true story,the show is indeed inspired by a very real historical phenomenon: that of the “dollar princesses,” so-called new money American women that, scorned by the established elite, married into British aristocratic families.According to a 1915 edition ofThe Titled American, a periodic devoted to facilitating such matches, about 454 American heiresses married English aristocrats in between the end of the 19th century and the first couple of decades of the 20th. These unions injected an estimate of $25 billion into the bank accounts of British aristocrats and allowed for the preservation of many estates that, at the turn of the century, had seen better days.
The trend began for real in 1874, when Jennie Jerome, the daughter of a New York financier, married Lord Randolph Spencer-Churchill.Now best known as former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s mother, Jerome was a modern womanwho sported a tattoo of a snake on her left wrist, something extremely rare and disapproved of for women of her time. Still, Jerome was considered a professional beauty andher portrait was in high demand in the 1870s and 1880s. Her fellow dollar princess Consuelo Vanderbilt described her as having gray eyes that “sparkled with the joy of living and when, as was often the case, her anecdotes were risqué it was with her eyes as well as her words that one could read the implications.”
Married in 1895 to Jennie and Randolph’s nephew, Charles Richard John Spencer-Churchill, the 9th Duke of Marlborough, Vanderbilt is one of the most famous American heiresses who found their way into British high society at the turn of the 20th century. One of the two wealthiest women in the United States at the time of her marriage, she was accompanied by others such as Mary Leiter, who became Vicereine of India a few years after her 1895 marriage to Lord George Curzon, and Nancy Langhorne, a Virginia-born heiress who married William Waldorf Astor in 1879 and became the first woman voted to the English parliament to actually take office. Frances Work, later named the Honorable Mrs. Frances Burke-Roche, the great-grandmother of Princess Diana, was also a dollar princess, born as the daughter of a Wall Street tycoon.
The deal was simple:while these aristocratic British men needed money to keep their homes not just afloat, but wealthy, their American brides, as well as their fathers and mothers, coveted their prestigious titles of nobility. Out of this particular trade, a whole industry emerged, with matchmakers devoted to pairing eligible bachelors and bachelorettes on the two sides of the Atlantic, and even magazines that ran personal ads for British men looking for American wives. InThe Titled American, one could find blurbs such as “The Marquess of Winchester is 32 years of age, and a captain of the Coldstream Guards” or “Lord Devon, who is 48 years of age, was formerly a captain in the army and a Member of Parliament; has sown wild oats extensively.”
Dollar Princesses’ Marriages Were Often Unhappy as Depicted in ‘The Buccaneers’
While this scenario is perfect for aperiod romancesuch as Apple TV+‘sThe Buccaneers, the life of the average dollar princess wasn’t exactly a fairy tale, as the show itself makes clear through the story of Conchita and Richard. For starters, British aristocrats often gave these young women and their families the cold shoulder, and many modern amenities that were found in wealthy American households in the late 19th century were not yet present on English estates. We’re not talking about frivolous things, mind you, but about electricity, indoor plumbing, and central heating.
“After marriage, they found themselves chatelaines of houses where taking a bath involved a housemaid making five trips from the kitchen in the basement, carrying jugs of hot water to fill a hip bath,“writesThe American HeiressauthorDaisy Goodwinfor Newsweek. In the face of these adversities, many so-called princesses set off on a quest to renovate their new homes, with Mary Leiter spending part of her dowry on modernizing Lord Curzon’s estate at Kedleston.
But the lack of modern comforts isn’t the only thing that meant disaster for many of these couples.Many of the dollar princesses’ marriages were merely financial agreements, with not a single ounce of love or even affection involved.Jennie Jerome, for instance, is said to have been cheated on by her husband multiple times, enacting revenge by finding lovers of her own, including the Prince of Wales. After spending most of her marriage apart from her husband, Jerome became a widowwhen he died of syphilis in 1895.
However, the most tragic story is certainly that of Consuelo Vanderbilt. Much like Conchita, Consuelo married in the United States to the Duke of Marlborough and moved to England soon after. Unlike Conchie, though, Consuelo wasn’t the least bit in love with her husband. As a matter of fact, she had even been secretly engaged to someone else prior to the wedding, but the relationship ended because her mother was devoted to finding an aristocratic husband for her daughter.A cartoon that ran in newspapers at the timedepicted the heiress with her hands shackled behind her back, attached to a long chain held by her mother. To make matters worse, the Duke was known to be a snobbish and often cold man whose main interest was his own image. The couple split in 1906.
The dollar princess phenomenon began to die down around 1911, with the coronation of King George V. As the monarch did not look so kindly towards such unions, the British aristocracy began to close its doors to American heiresses. Still, this period of history served as inspiration for many writers, fromHenry JamestoAnthony Trollopeto, of course, Edith Wharton, who was a young girl when the first dollar princesses traveled to England and certainly got to meet her fair share of heiresses with aristocratic ambitions. Up to this day, the topic continues to entice the imagination, with showrunnerJulian Felloweseven including a dollar princess, Lady Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern), inDownton Abbey. Now, it’s time for this new version ofThe Buccaneersto honor this centuries-old tradition.
The first three episodes ofThe Buccaneersare available to stream on Apple TV+. New episodes come out every Wednesday.
