“There’s a certain pleasure in making a person predetermined to dislike instead acknowledge one’s superiority,” she remarks to her fawning companion Mrs. Reginald is intelligent, attractive and wealthy, but for Lady Susan, perhaps the most important thing is that he’s a challenge. Upon arriving, she sets her sights on handsome young Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel), brother of Charles’ wife Catherine (Emma Greenwell). Lady Susan’s reputation as “the most accomplished flirt in all of England” precedes her as she takes up residence at Churchill, the country estate owned by her late husband’s brother Charles Vernon (Justin Edwards). As a widow, Lady Susan is financially dependent on the generosity of others, but she’s romantically free in a way that few women of her time period are, and she indulges in that freedom by engaging in dalliances with pretty much any man she chooses, regardless of his marital status. But Lady Susan is entirely selfish, interested in her own position and comfort, even at the expense of her timid daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark). As much of a busybody as Emma Woodhouse is in Austen’s Emma, at least her intentions are honorable. In Love & Friendship, Kate Beckinsale plays the delightfully passive-aggressive Lady Susan Vernon, a freeloading widow who revels in meddling in the lives of others, generally to secure the best outcome for herself.
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