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\u201cThe girls\u2019 mothers are coming over to London in order to effectively sell their girls into the aristocracy,\u201d Katherine Jakeways, the series\u2019s creator, said in a video interview from her London home. \u201cAnd the aristocracy are welcoming them with open arms because they\u2019ve got roofs to mend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added Beth Willis, an executive producer, from her home in Scotland: \u201cHow lonely that would be for so many of them. In America they might speak up a bit more at the dining table. They sometimes had their own money. And to come over to England and find these freezing cold houses with roofs literally falling in and being treated like a cash point must have just been awful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here, too, there is historical precedent. In one example, the socialite Consuelo Vanderbilt, of the shipping-and-railroad Vanderbilt family, married the ninth Duke of Marlborough, becoming perhaps the best known of what were called the \u201cdollar princesses.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of these marriages were arranged and didn\u2019t end happily, but others did end happily,\u201d said Hannah Greig, a historical consultant for \u201cThe Buccaneers.\u201d \u201cSometimes the origins of the marriage were forgotten, and it became a love story. History offers lots of examples that you can draw on, for all of the different experiences that we see in \u2018The Buccaneers.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Both series include characters representative of people who existed in Gilded Age society, even if they were under-acknowledged at the time. In \u201cThe Buccaneers,\u201d Mabel (Josie Totah) is torn between a marriage of convenience, to a man, and a romance of passion, with her friend Conchita\u2019s new sister-in-law (Mia Threapleton). In \u201cThe Gilded Age,\u201d the old-money Oscar Van Rhijn (Blake Ritson) carries on a passionate affair with John Adams, a scion of the presidential dynasty, all the while plotting his own marriage of convenience (and wealth) with the Russells\u2019 debutante daughter, Gladys (Taissa Farmiga). (In a refreshing twist, the most avid gold diggers in both series are men.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n