YMMV / The Duchess

• Award Snub: Keira Knightley, who was praised pretty much universally for her performance, only received a few measly nominations.
• Les Yay: Between Georgiana and Bess, like the scene in which Bess teaches Georgiana how to pleasure a man. By removing her dress, kissing her back and implicitly fingerbanging her.
• Moral Event Horizon: The Duke crossed it for a lot of viewers when he rapes Georgiana.
• Retroactive Recognition: Bess Foster and Charles Grey are Peggy Carter and Howard Stark of the MCU.
• Tear Jerker: Georgiana having to give up her illegitimate daughter.
  Georgiana: Her name is Eliza!
• The Woobie:
  • Georgiana. She lives in an unhappy Arranged Marriage with the Duke, who has has numerous affairs and eventually takes Georgiana's best friend Bess as his mistress. Georgiana then starts her own affair with Charles Grey, but the Duke in response rapes Georgiana, and is eventually forced to stop seeing Grey, but not before giving birth to Charles's daughter and being forced to give it to Charles's family and the Duke marries Bess upon her death.
  • Bess. She first meets Georgiana and is invited to live with the Cavendishes since Bess has nowhere to go after separating from her husband, and shows Georgiana that her former husband constantly beat her. A friendship blossoms between the two women, only for the Duke to then take Bess as a mistress. When Georgiana confronts her about it, Bess states that she accepted only because the Duke had the power to take her children back to her, implying that it was a Sexual Extortion on her part as she had no other choice.

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