SPOILERS Rivals Season 2 🥳

[Blossombunnyy]

On Disney in May 15th 2026

Who's excited?

I can't wait the trailer looks so good.

Natasha Rannaldini was from his second marriage to Cecilia. She was also a singer. There was also Wolfgang or Wolfie, his eldest son.

*or a musician.

I still have a melamine Harvest butter dish...... beat that 🤣

Rannaldini had around 7 or 8 children I think, but only Wolfie, Natasha and Cosmo were ever named.

Ah, I don’t remember her at all! I remember Wolfie-he went out with someone else, I think? Tab?!

Im rereading Rivals and when Taggie is helping with the Venturer campaigning, she meets a headmaster who talks about his dyslexic son-is that supposed to be Hawkley/Lysander??

That link’s never explicitly made in the books but there’s no reason it couldn’t have been David Hawkley and maybe that’s where the TV show will go with it.

Natasha appears most in "The Man who Made Husbands Jealous" iirc.
She has a major crush on Lysander Hawkley but ends up with a friend of his.

I don't think the headmaster in "Rivals" (the book) is David Hawkley. I think he's quite a bit older and I thought his son had died (which was why he was initially so grumpy with Taggie).
I suppose they could combine the two eventually in the tv series.

Marigold Lockton in The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous is like Valerie, but a bit more sympathetic. As well as being a social climber Valerie also doesn't like booze or reading (and probably isn't keen on dogs either) so she's pretty much doomed to villainy. You do get the impression in the series that Valerie still loves Freddie in her own way, and probably considers them a blissfully happy couple, whereas James doesn't really give a shit about Lizzie and probably never did.

I'd be doomed as a Jilly Cooper character...
Father in Trade, scared of horses, don't like dogs, Red Brick university (her characters are either Oxbridge or nothing). Married "well"
and the worse thing of all....Regional accent!

i am not remembering Rupert Everett in this
nor Deidre with the pent up anger?

and who is Patrick?

oh i have seen who rupert everett was now

Declan and Maud’s son / Taggy and Caitlin’s older brother

Did anyone ever watch the 1993 adaptation of ‘Riders’ with Marcus Gilbert as RCB? I watched it on YouTube during the pandemic and found it deliciously escapist, but it’s crazy how different tonally it is from this ‘Rivals’ adaptation, and in particular such a very different portrayal of RCB. Marcus Gilbert plays him as a tongue in cheek villain pretty much.

I did. I remember it being quite weak, and Michael Praed being the stand out.

Helen annoyed me, I prefer Helen in this new one.

I seem to remember they changed the storyline as well so Jake didn’t cheat on Tory, it was some elaborate plot to get RCB to divorce her?

It was deliciously awful!

I loved Janey and Billy in this!

Hmmm. I’m trying to think if this might be Violet from Polo. She and Eddie get to stay at boarding school because Daisy’s appppaaaaallling ex MIL Biddy, says she’ll pay for them but not Perdita who has to go to the local comp and be called Turdita. And Violet gets rid of her braces and her puppy fat and gets a boyfriend and hogs the phone all the time so Daisy can’t get clandestine phone calls from toy boy Drew Benedict.

No - that headmaster’s son was killed in NI. Like poor old Malise’s son.

I’m going to have to read the bloody books again aren’t I.

are they on offer anywhere?

Perdita who has to go to the local comp and be called Turdita

As someone who went to the local comp, this is so accurate to what it’s like

Charity shops will definitely have them. I do a re-read of the early ones about every five years. They are so VERY “then”. I can really see how as a contemporary book in the 80s, they got read and dismissed as froth and bonking but age has shown how insanely accurately she depicted the time, things like the mood - she describes 1976 in Riders and it’s quite like now - and we can see how much we have moved away from that idea of a romantic hero or redemption or whatever else she pinpoints so accurately as being of exactly then.

Even the description of a plane journey brings it whooshing back. She’s captured the era and the neuroses of people and the class things and topped it off with frolics and lashings of champagne so you might as well enjoy!

Rivals is 99p on kindle at the moment.

NOVEMBER.

honestly. But good teaser.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=OYvaLbU34xQ&ra=m

It's not necessarily the author's view if some characters make fun of others though. And Mousie definitely isn't middle class.

Yes, I think she's very good and was underestimated for such a long time.

It’s definitely of its time though-with casual references to DV. When Maud and Declan are arguing before Patrick’s party on NYE, Maud is careful not to be too provocative as she doesn’t want her eye blacked before the party!