The Buccaneers’ Best Love Story Is Between Sisters Nan and Jinny

There’s a lot to enjoy about Apple TV+ period drama The Buccaneers. Full of frothy costumes, swoony romances, a decidedly youthful vibe, and a banging soundtrack, this is a show with a firm grasp of its own identity. Based on Edith Wharton’s unfinished final novel of the same name, this Buccaneers honors the spirit of its source material, while determinedly charting its own path in terms of the stories it wants to tell. From crafting a central love triangle in which both sides are easy to care about and root for, featuring multiple characters of color, and centering an unabashedly joyful queer romance, this isn’t your mother’s traditional sort of period drama. But that’s what makes it such a delight to watch. 

Unlike many (most) series in this genre, The Buccaneers is primarily a story of female friendship. Sure, the premise of the series is about marriage, as a squad of wealthy American heiresses head to England in search of good marriages and maybe even a title or two. But the eight-part drama consistently treats the relationships between the young women at its center as though they’re every bit as important—often more so, actually—as any more traditional love story. Yes, the girls struggle, find themselves at odds, and even betray each other several times throughout the series’ first season. But The Buccaneers never lets us forget that, when the chips are down, they have each other’s backs.

And nowhere is that more apparent than in the relationship between sisters Nan (Kristine Froseth) and Jinny St. George (Imogen Waterhouse). Though the pair love each other deeply—and support each other through the whirlwind that is living with their overachieving striver of a mother—their bond is tested repeatedly during the series’ first season. 

“They’re brilliant together, aren’t they, Nan and Jinny?” The Buccaneers creator Katherine Jakeways tells Paste. “They are like all sisters—they fight and they get furious with each other and they know each other inside out and have all these sorts of shorthands with each other. But, when the chips are down, they’re going to choose each other over whoever else might come along. And that was the kind of intention from the start.” 

While Nan and Jinny clearly grew up thick as thieves, entering the marriage market has put something of a strain on their relationship. Nan, for her part, is not particularly interested in or worried about finding a husband, while Jinny seems desperate to wed, often criticizing or resenting her elder sibling for actions that she deems detrimental to her prospects. 

“Imogen [Waterhouse, who plays Jinny] had a real sort of challenge, I think, because Jinny is—she’s probably the least sort of immediately likable of the girls and she makes some [selfish] choices,” Jakeways says.”She’s so focused on finding a husband because she’s always been told that that’s her only role in life.”

Unlike Nan, the bulk of Jinny’s sense of self-worth is based on her appearance. She’s the pretty one, a girl who is so conventionally attractive that few people are even all that concerned with finding out if she has interests or a personality beyond simply being decorative. In her world, getting married is the one thing she’ll ever really accomplish and she’s afraid of missing her moment.

“Jinny is potentially a little less sympathetic from the start,” Jakeways explains. “Because she’s determined this is her one shot at meeting somebody and making her parents proud.”

Unfortunately, Jinny’s obsession with marrying well and, of late, with proving herself as a proper English lady, often puts her at odds with her more free-spirited older sister. Jealous and afraid, she’s often icy and rude, and much of the warmth that characterized the initial interactions of the St. George sisters turns sharp and bitter by the season’s mid-point. The two are frequently depicted as at odds with one another, asked to compete in ways that tend to position their relationship as something that’s less important than the marriages that either of them might make. 

“They struggle to communicate throughout the whole show,” Kristine Froseth, who plays Nan, says. “But that sisterhood, it’s [ultimately] a love story.” 

Froseth says she would have liked to see the series depict “more of the foundation” between the sisters “before they went to England,” if only because it would have provided a clearer contrast within their relationship once Jinny finds a husband.

“I do think they deserved more scenes of actual communication because I do think there are a lot of actions and choices that are being made that [seem] quite unforgiving [on both sides],” she says. “Jinny is in an incredibly abusive relationship, and my character, Nan, became very self-centered in her world, and they just split apart.”

The sisters spend a significant portion of the season estranged, particularly after Jinny reveals the truth about Nan’s true parentage–she’s illegitimate, and therefore only her half-sister—to her husband Lord Seadown in an attempt to convince him of her loyalty. It’s a horrible act of betrayal, and one that Nan is rightly furious about, but the most heartbreaking aspect of their estrangement isn’t Jinny’s treachery but the fact that Nan assumes her behavior stems from simple cruelty.  She has no idea about the abuse her sister is enduring at her husband Lord Seadown’s hands, or the gaslighting and controlling tendencies that appear to define their marriage, and Jinny doesn’t feel as though her experience is something she can tell her sister about. 

“The way her story goes, we end up with so much sympathy for Jinny in terms of everything that happens to her as her story pans out, that we’re really desperate by the end [of the season] for that relationship to be repaired,” Jakeways explains.

Though The Buccaneers’ final episode revolves around Nan’s impending wedding to handsome Duke Theo, the most heartfelt romantic moment of the season isn’t her vows or clandestine hook-up with Guy Thwarte. It’s the moment when Jinny shows up at her sister’s bedroom in the middle of the night to confess both her pregnancy and the abuse she has suffered at the hands of her husband, and is greeted with a tight hug and an immediate insistence that the horrors that have happened to her aren’t her fault.

“It’s a relief when Jinny finally goes to Nan for help. It’s a testament to their sisterhood and their love for each other that she just forgives all that betrayal immediately and decides, ‘I’m gonna help my sister get out of this.’ I think that’s really special and beautiful,” Waterhouse says. “I think Nan really understands Jinny, even though she’s done some bad things. And she loves her still.”

While many viewers may have been anxious about which of her handsome suitors Nan would ultimately choose, the reunion between the St. George sisters carries the most thematic and emotional weight. In the end, the pair choose one another: Jinny, who trusts that the sister she hurt so badly loves her enough to help her flee; Nan, who puts the safety of her family above her own personal happiness. A striking pair, who finally manage to find their way back to each other before being wrenched apart once again. 

“You see it at the end [of the season], Nan sacrifices a lot for her. Even after everything. Even after being paraded in a debutante ball, being [made to feel] disposable, like they have to be competitive against each other. Their strength is their love for each other at the end of it. That’s what really gives them strength, knowing that they are still loved and that they have each other no matter what happens.”

“I love you, and I will choose you every time,” Nan tells Jinny in the season’s final moments, and it’s hard to imagine a more earned grand gesture than that. 

The Buccaneers is now streaming on Apple TV+.

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB.

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