Just saw the last episode of Downton Abbey‘s second series, and it was excellent. If you haven’t seen this great show, it’s about the wealthy owners of an English manor house in the 1910s, as well as the servants who live in the “downstairs” world. If you liked the movie Gosford Park from a few years back, or are a fan of good English drama series like Pride and Prejudice or especially Brideshead Revisited, you owe it to yourself to check this show out. If you’re not into English historical drama, imagine if the attention to story detail and character development you see in something like The Wire was translated to a different time period and you’d be close to what Downton Abbey offers. Anyway, here’s the chart. Notes below may contain SPOILERS, so fair warning. Feel free to bitch about my choices in the comment section.
Notes:
- Bates (LAWFUL GOOD) is a total bro, willing to put everything he cares about at risk for his employer and the woman he loves. He could probably stand to let his boss in on what’s going on sometimes, though, for his own sake.
- While there were many, many, many excellent quotes for Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham (CHAOTIC NEUTRALLY played by the inimitable Maggie Smith, whom most of you’ll remember from Harry Potter), there’s relatively few out there for Lady Sybil (CHAOTIC GOOD) and Carson (LAWFUL NEUTRAL). I had to take what I could get, basically.
- Cora, Countess of Grantham being TRUE NEUTRAL might be the most controversial choice on this chart, but her absolute nonchalance with regards to dicking around in Downton heir Matthew Crawley’s love life made me edge her towards the middle. The woman can be very cold when it suits her purposes.
- As for the rest I couldn’t fit on there, most of the staff would probably hover around NEUTRAL GOOD with the obvious exception of O’Brien, who’d sit at NEUTRAL EVIL . Matthew Crawley would probably be LAWFUL GOOD, Lady Mary’d flit daintily between TRUE NEUTRAL and CHAOTIC NEUTRAL, and Anna’d be either NEUTRAL GOOD or CHAOTIC GOOD depending on how badly Bates has fucked himself over lately. It’s hard to pigeonhole some of the more rounded characters, but that is of course where all the entertaining debate on this subject comes from. Leave your diatribes, rants and screeds down in the comment section.
