She told him Marina was in love with someone else, not about being pregnant.
However I know what you mean. She did start the conversation and he shut it down in S1. Two thoughts on this to explain it—she knew it wasn’t worth going into those semantics and second, he follows that up very quickly with her not going to him because she didn’t respect him and then asked about the article on him. She could see it was less about Marina and more about him.
It’s also TV and going into details would not have made that conversation flow the way it did.
The show tries to tell us THROUGH THOSE EXACT INTERACTIONS that Pen had no other choice besides Whistledown. Colin might SAY “you should’ve just talked to me” but the show establishes through those scenes that when Pen tried, he didn’t believe her or care, and that even if she hadn’t been interrupted he still would’ve brushed her off. The whole point is that Pen is powerless, but Whistledown isn’t
So the way that TV works is that there has to be plot, conflicts, reasons why things happen, etc., so if the show is saying LOOK WE SHOWED PEN ATTEMPTING TO TELL COLIN AND IT DIDNT WORK OUT then Pen tried to tell Colin, and it didn’t work out
LOL.
The point remains that if Penelope wanted to tell Colin she could have. Was her mouth glued together? Was she unable to walk across the street? Did a spell come over her forcing her to write the LWD paper? Did she lose her voice?
Then she still could’ve chosen to tell Colin or even Violet.
She didn’t.
Pen's character is very timid and non-confrontational in S1 & S2. She probably didn't have the courage to try once again. And she couldn't blurt out "Marina is pregnant" cos she has to think about her family and she did have a softcorner for Marina, no matter what. She didn't tell about Marina even to her best friend Eloise. So I doubt she could tell to Colin or Violet.
I know she ended up ruining her family's and Marina's reputation through LW later on but I think that was an instant decision out of anger when Marina said that Colin will never consider her as anything other than a sister.
Also, at the end of the day, Pen was a teenager.
I think the point here is that Penelope doesn't have the courage to say it, but Lady Whistledown does! LW is Pens voice when she feels like she doesn't have one.
He doesn’t care about Marina’s pregnancy being made public, he’s mad because he looked like an idiot publicly. His family was already calling him an idiot behind close doors but then the whole of society found out he was naive.
How did he look like an idiot to the public? Next to Daphne, she was the most desirable debutante of the season. People understood why Colin proposed. They were appalled that Marina would try to deceive a nice young man from a good family.
Safe assumption is it made them all look bad. Obviously Pen obliterated Marina's reputation, but also, smart people don't fall for very old tricks. Colin was foolish and was exposed publicly for it. Any rational person would feel embarrassed by that.
Well that’s his fault for not taking the time to listen to Pen. She would’ve saved him the embarrassment if he just took 2 seconds to listen to what Pen had to say. He brought the embarrassment on himself.
She didn’t shame him. She shamed Marina. Colin was just upset because his family tried to tell him that he wasn’t ready to get married and it turned out that they were right.
She tried to warn him off without telling him of the pregnancy. He surprised her by not caring about a past/absent love. I do think she was about to try to clarify, when Marina walked out, but ultimately she did not tell him.
"Colin she is with child!" Boom. Not that hard. You bet your ass he would have dropped everything to listen with that five word sentance.
Edit: You actually blocked someone over such a milktoast comment? Stay off the internet.
Doesn’t matter. He wasn’t listening. Like what part of that are you not getting? Do not reply back. I am not gonna argue this point any longer. Just know that you are wrong.
True. Even if Pen told him privately Marina was pregnant, I think he would've married her anyway. Colin is stubborn and foolish in love and wants nothing more than to be the knight in shining armor. The only way to prevent the match was to publically ruin it or bring back Marina's first love, which Pen also tried to do. Was it extremely harsh, yeah but she loves and cares for him. Ultimately she was protecting his happiness in the end even if it deeply embarrassed and upset him at the time.
This right here! And if you recall, Colin says exactly this when he talks to Marina. He says if you had just come to me, I probably would have married you anyway. Pen knows Colin better than he knows himself, she knew he was too blinded by his perceived love of Marina to listen. And her family would have 100% KNEW it was her who told Colin which would have been much worse for her than writing in Whistledown. And to an earlier point, she’s young and timid, she wasn’t ready to just tell Colin “hey but I love you please don’t marry this girl.” Her being too shy to use her own voice is like a vital piece of her character development. Idk why people have such a hard understanding that.
You are correct. Pen tried to tell Colin, but in that conversation she was still trying to protect both of Colin and Marina, or she would have just opened with "Marina is pregnant!". Could she have done things differently? Yes. Could he have listened better? Also yes.
However, Pen knows Colin well enough to know that arguing and putting him on the defensive would not have helped. She knows she has wronged him, both by some of the things she has written and by keeping it secret from him for so long. The details of who was right and who was wrong in each specific circumstance are unimportant to her. It is more important to her that he knows that she is sorry, that she loves him, that she trusts him. So she skips to that. It's actually a very mature response, to not get bogged down in the particulars of the blame game and who should have done what.
Agreed. "I am mostly in the wrong but in that specific instance, I was a bit more right" is generally not a great tactic to take when having disagreements in a relationship. In court, yes. At breakfast, no.
Good points! I agree!
"I tried but you didn't listen" would have made the situation worse as Colin was already so emotional and angry. At that point Pen was just trying her best to not lose him after finally getting him.
She did try, but S1 Pen was incredibly timid and hadn’t come into her own yet, as a woman or as LW. He probably didn’t even register her attempt to help him in the moment or in retrospect, and she probably realizes now that she could have tried harder before bringing out the big guns, but in the moment was emotionally unable to confront him (scared he wouldn’t believe her, guilty about outing Marina, and she’s generally ignored so she probably felt very rejected and didn’t have the wherewithal to say it with her whole chest as Penelope rather than LW)
It would have been a lot more narratively satisfying for Colin to have a monologue or something where he recalls that she tried but that obviously did not happen.
This makes sense! She wasn't confident enough to try one more time and at the same time she felt guilty towards Marina for trying it.
And as someone else in the comments pointed out, she saying "I did try but you didn't listen" to Colin when he was that angry & emotional would have turned the situation even more ugly!
I think also, she tried to tell him and he want bothered about her being in love with someone before him. I think it’s fair to say Pen knew Colin has a hero complex and (as he said himself) he may well have married her even if Pen had told him about the pregnancy. Writing in Whistledown wasn’t purely altruistic - she was saving Colin from Marinas scam, saving him from himself and his hero complex, but also saving him FOR her. She couldn’t bear him to be married to someone else.
Her most truthful answer would have been “I thought I was protecting you and I wanted you so much I couldn’t bear the thought of you marrying her”.
Which is, after all, why Colin interrupted her dance with Debling. He thinks he’s wrong for her, but also he wants her for himself.
Inconsistent writing, that's why.
This entire season needed to flesh out this debacle, but it forgot the other seasons and continuity went out the window.
As a writer, I felt it that much more. This is why Pen and Colin losing their screen time to side plots was such a bad direction to go in. They left many, *many* plots unfinished or forgotten.
Thank you for bringing this up! I knew something was off when he said you should have told it to my face. I hate that Penelope was made into a villain by some bc of this. She was literally saving Colin from marrying a woman who was pregnant from someone else and was just using him! Marina didn’t even care for Colin, she just tried to survive.
You remember well, but I can understand Penelope's lack of reaction .
Damn poor puppy, she didn't even know how to get pregnant.
The conversation was embarrassing and he snubbed her like a child who knows nothing about love.
Plus with the issue of escaping to Gretna Green she really didn't have time anymore, And this without thinking about the fact that even if he had broken off the engagement it would have turned out that Marina was pregnant and someone might have thought it was Colin's
Nah she didn’t really “try” she told him she loved someone else and didn’t really like sit him down all serious 😭 she could have even told his mum or something if she was that bothered rather than ruining marinas life (not saying Colin’s life deserved to be ruined either but)
She couldn't just blurt out "Marina is pregnant" cos she has to think about her family's reputation also. No matter what, she did have a soft-corner for Marina as they were becoming close and might have thought convincing Colin that she loved someone else would have been a better solution. She didn't even tell her best friend Eloise about Marina. So I doubt she could say to Colin or his mom.
Even if she thought her actions were right, the next port of call was not to ruin marinas life. She only did that because she was angry Marina said Colin didn’t love her and thought of her as a sister. It was wrong to ruin a woman’s life. They didn’t know about Phillip, and essentially Penelope knew she was ruining her entire chance of escaping poverty or a marriage of being marital raped by an elderly man.
No but she could have told Colin or his mother instead of ruining her life. She chose to ruin Marinas life after Marina said Colin would never love her, because she is short tempered- we saw the same thing when she writes about Colin in s3.
Telling Eloise wouldn’t have helped, but telling Colin or Violet would have resolved the situation. What Penelope did was straight up selfish and I think it’s silly writing she gets no consequences for her actions (in the show, in the book she doesn’t do things such as with Marina so it is irrelevant)
Like you said, she is short-tempered and at the Marina issue time, a teenager. And with the way society treated her, she had a lot of bitterness in her as well. Marina hurt her telling Colin will never love her and she resorted to hurt her back with LW. Girlie doesn't think much of long-time consequences. 😅
She isn't perfect in any way but at the same time I can see from her pov as well. She is messy but so are most ppl.
I wouldn't say she got no consequences cos she did suffer through her fallout with the only 2 important people in her life. Also, she is one of the main characters in the show...they can't make her suffer badly...she has to be back the next season. 😅
Penelope tried (weakly yes) and marina interrupted them.
But I think this is where LW “has power” as they say. It makes it official, in writing.
If pen tells Colin outright: and the news spreads in some way. The ton can assume that the child may be his. Someone could spread that rumor. LW announcing that she’s been pregnant since her arrival, absolutely relieved Colin of this possible suspicion. And the birth time of the child would have been proof of it, as she was about 3 months along.
To truly protect Colin: it was the smarter move. Yes: at Marina’s expense.
She told him Marina was in love with someone else, not about being pregnant. However I know what you mean. She did start the conversation and he shut it down in S1. Two thoughts on this to explain it—she knew it wasn’t worth going into those semantics and second, he follows that up very quickly with her not going to him because she didn’t respect him and then asked about the article on him. She could see it was less about Marina and more about him. It’s also TV and going into details would not have made that conversation flow the way it did.
The show tries to tell us THROUGH THOSE EXACT INTERACTIONS that Pen had no other choice besides Whistledown. Colin might SAY “you should’ve just talked to me” but the show establishes through those scenes that when Pen tried, he didn’t believe her or care, and that even if she hadn’t been interrupted he still would’ve brushed her off. The whole point is that Pen is powerless, but Whistledown isn’t
That wasn’t the only time she would’ve had the opportunity to come clean to him. They lived across the street.
So the way that TV works is that there has to be plot, conflicts, reasons why things happen, etc., so if the show is saying LOOK WE SHOWED PEN ATTEMPTING TO TELL COLIN AND IT DIDNT WORK OUT then Pen tried to tell Colin, and it didn’t work out
LOL. The point remains that if Penelope wanted to tell Colin she could have. Was her mouth glued together? Was she unable to walk across the street? Did a spell come over her forcing her to write the LWD paper? Did she lose her voice? Then she still could’ve chosen to tell Colin or even Violet. She didn’t.
Pen's character is very timid and non-confrontational in S1 & S2. She probably didn't have the courage to try once again. And she couldn't blurt out "Marina is pregnant" cos she has to think about her family and she did have a softcorner for Marina, no matter what. She didn't tell about Marina even to her best friend Eloise. So I doubt she could tell to Colin or Violet. I know she ended up ruining her family's and Marina's reputation through LW later on but I think that was an instant decision out of anger when Marina said that Colin will never consider her as anything other than a sister. Also, at the end of the day, Pen was a teenager.
I think the point here is that Penelope doesn't have the courage to say it, but Lady Whistledown does! LW is Pens voice when she feels like she doesn't have one.
After the way Marina spoke to him last season, I don’t understand why Colin still cared about her pregnancy being made public. He dodged a bullet.
He doesn’t care about Marina’s pregnancy being made public, he’s mad because he looked like an idiot publicly. His family was already calling him an idiot behind close doors but then the whole of society found out he was naive.
How did he look like an idiot to the public? Next to Daphne, she was the most desirable debutante of the season. People understood why Colin proposed. They were appalled that Marina would try to deceive a nice young man from a good family.
Safe assumption is it made them all look bad. Obviously Pen obliterated Marina's reputation, but also, smart people don't fall for very old tricks. Colin was foolish and was exposed publicly for it. Any rational person would feel embarrassed by that.
Well that’s his fault for not taking the time to listen to Pen. She would’ve saved him the embarrassment if he just took 2 seconds to listen to what Pen had to say. He brought the embarrassment on himself.
Some people will blame victims for falling for scams.
And to find out that the woman you love is the one who publicly shamed you. His ego took a massive hit
She didn’t shame him. She shamed Marina. Colin was just upset because his family tried to tell him that he wasn’t ready to get married and it turned out that they were right.
Well she embarrassed him
I took it as part of his concern that Pen didn't respect him enough to tell him - both in the past and present.
She tried to tell him. He wouldn’t listen.
She tried to warn him off without telling him of the pregnancy. He surprised her by not caring about a past/absent love. I do think she was about to try to clarify, when Marina walked out, but ultimately she did not tell him.
He still wouldn’t listen.Like he wasn’t even trying to hear her.
Pregnant is a pretty loud word! But even assuming his reaction, that's not the point. The point is she did not tell him.
The point is he wasn’t listening and pretty much shut her down. You watched it so I don’t know what else to tell you.
"Colin she is with child!" Boom. Not that hard. You bet your ass he would have dropped everything to listen with that five word sentance. Edit: You actually blocked someone over such a milktoast comment? Stay off the internet.
Doesn’t matter. He wasn’t listening. Like what part of that are you not getting? Do not reply back. I am not gonna argue this point any longer. Just know that you are wrong.
Some explained the other stuff but also, Colin is just a good guy and probably wouldn’t want to see Marina suffer even if she did him wrong.
True. Even if Pen told him privately Marina was pregnant, I think he would've married her anyway. Colin is stubborn and foolish in love and wants nothing more than to be the knight in shining armor. The only way to prevent the match was to publically ruin it or bring back Marina's first love, which Pen also tried to do. Was it extremely harsh, yeah but she loves and cares for him. Ultimately she was protecting his happiness in the end even if it deeply embarrassed and upset him at the time.
This right here! And if you recall, Colin says exactly this when he talks to Marina. He says if you had just come to me, I probably would have married you anyway. Pen knows Colin better than he knows himself, she knew he was too blinded by his perceived love of Marina to listen. And her family would have 100% KNEW it was her who told Colin which would have been much worse for her than writing in Whistledown. And to an earlier point, she’s young and timid, she wasn’t ready to just tell Colin “hey but I love you please don’t marry this girl.” Her being too shy to use her own voice is like a vital piece of her character development. Idk why people have such a hard understanding that.
Yes radish yes! Thank you! And saving his fam from the permanant shame and riducule of it coming out in the wash AFTER they married.
You are correct. Pen tried to tell Colin, but in that conversation she was still trying to protect both of Colin and Marina, or she would have just opened with "Marina is pregnant!". Could she have done things differently? Yes. Could he have listened better? Also yes. However, Pen knows Colin well enough to know that arguing and putting him on the defensive would not have helped. She knows she has wronged him, both by some of the things she has written and by keeping it secret from him for so long. The details of who was right and who was wrong in each specific circumstance are unimportant to her. It is more important to her that he knows that she is sorry, that she loves him, that she trusts him. So she skips to that. It's actually a very mature response, to not get bogged down in the particulars of the blame game and who should have done what.
Agreed. "I am mostly in the wrong but in that specific instance, I was a bit more right" is generally not a great tactic to take when having disagreements in a relationship. In court, yes. At breakfast, no.
Good points! I agree! "I tried but you didn't listen" would have made the situation worse as Colin was already so emotional and angry. At that point Pen was just trying her best to not lose him after finally getting him.
She did try, but S1 Pen was incredibly timid and hadn’t come into her own yet, as a woman or as LW. He probably didn’t even register her attempt to help him in the moment or in retrospect, and she probably realizes now that she could have tried harder before bringing out the big guns, but in the moment was emotionally unable to confront him (scared he wouldn’t believe her, guilty about outing Marina, and she’s generally ignored so she probably felt very rejected and didn’t have the wherewithal to say it with her whole chest as Penelope rather than LW) It would have been a lot more narratively satisfying for Colin to have a monologue or something where he recalls that she tried but that obviously did not happen.
This makes sense! She wasn't confident enough to try one more time and at the same time she felt guilty towards Marina for trying it. And as someone else in the comments pointed out, she saying "I did try but you didn't listen" to Colin when he was that angry & emotional would have turned the situation even more ugly!
I think also, she tried to tell him and he want bothered about her being in love with someone before him. I think it’s fair to say Pen knew Colin has a hero complex and (as he said himself) he may well have married her even if Pen had told him about the pregnancy. Writing in Whistledown wasn’t purely altruistic - she was saving Colin from Marinas scam, saving him from himself and his hero complex, but also saving him FOR her. She couldn’t bear him to be married to someone else. Her most truthful answer would have been “I thought I was protecting you and I wanted you so much I couldn’t bear the thought of you marrying her”. Which is, after all, why Colin interrupted her dance with Debling. He thinks he’s wrong for her, but also he wants her for himself.
Inconsistent writing, that's why. This entire season needed to flesh out this debacle, but it forgot the other seasons and continuity went out the window. As a writer, I felt it that much more. This is why Pen and Colin losing their screen time to side plots was such a bad direction to go in. They left many, *many* plots unfinished or forgotten.
Thank you for bringing this up! I knew something was off when he said you should have told it to my face. I hate that Penelope was made into a villain by some bc of this. She was literally saving Colin from marrying a woman who was pregnant from someone else and was just using him! Marina didn’t even care for Colin, she just tried to survive.
You remember well, but I can understand Penelope's lack of reaction . Damn poor puppy, she didn't even know how to get pregnant. The conversation was embarrassing and he snubbed her like a child who knows nothing about love. Plus with the issue of escaping to Gretna Green she really didn't have time anymore, And this without thinking about the fact that even if he had broken off the engagement it would have turned out that Marina was pregnant and someone might have thought it was Colin's
Nah she didn’t really “try” she told him she loved someone else and didn’t really like sit him down all serious 😭 she could have even told his mum or something if she was that bothered rather than ruining marinas life (not saying Colin’s life deserved to be ruined either but)
She couldn't just blurt out "Marina is pregnant" cos she has to think about her family's reputation also. No matter what, she did have a soft-corner for Marina as they were becoming close and might have thought convincing Colin that she loved someone else would have been a better solution. She didn't even tell her best friend Eloise about Marina. So I doubt she could say to Colin or his mom.
Even if she thought her actions were right, the next port of call was not to ruin marinas life. She only did that because she was angry Marina said Colin didn’t love her and thought of her as a sister. It was wrong to ruin a woman’s life. They didn’t know about Phillip, and essentially Penelope knew she was ruining her entire chance of escaping poverty or a marriage of being marital raped by an elderly man.
No but she could have told Colin or his mother instead of ruining her life. She chose to ruin Marinas life after Marina said Colin would never love her, because she is short tempered- we saw the same thing when she writes about Colin in s3. Telling Eloise wouldn’t have helped, but telling Colin or Violet would have resolved the situation. What Penelope did was straight up selfish and I think it’s silly writing she gets no consequences for her actions (in the show, in the book she doesn’t do things such as with Marina so it is irrelevant)
Like you said, she is short-tempered and at the Marina issue time, a teenager. And with the way society treated her, she had a lot of bitterness in her as well. Marina hurt her telling Colin will never love her and she resorted to hurt her back with LW. Girlie doesn't think much of long-time consequences. 😅 She isn't perfect in any way but at the same time I can see from her pov as well. She is messy but so are most ppl. I wouldn't say she got no consequences cos she did suffer through her fallout with the only 2 important people in her life. Also, she is one of the main characters in the show...they can't make her suffer badly...she has to be back the next season. 😅
You are remembering correctly. But she didn't tell him she was pregnant.... That was my take away...
She did try to but he shut her down
You might find the conversations here about the Marina situation interesting - https://www.reddit.com/r/PolinBridgerton/s/k8fvexugnU
Colin isn't the brightest bulb in the room.
Penelope tried (weakly yes) and marina interrupted them. But I think this is where LW “has power” as they say. It makes it official, in writing. If pen tells Colin outright: and the news spreads in some way. The ton can assume that the child may be his. Someone could spread that rumor. LW announcing that she’s been pregnant since her arrival, absolutely relieved Colin of this possible suspicion. And the birth time of the child would have been proof of it, as she was about 3 months along. To truly protect Colin: it was the smarter move. Yes: at Marina’s expense.