With all the excitement of Colin and Penelope’s engagement in this season of Bridgerton, it’s easy to forget that it was only in season one that he was literally engaged to a completely different woman, Marina Thompson. She was one of the key characters of season one and the introduction of her character really let Penelope get into her feelings about how she really felt towards Colin.

We all soon found out Marina wasn’t actually interested in Colin but wanted to get married before she gave birth to Phillip Crane’s child. Lady Whistledown then exposed Marina’s pregnancy in one of her gossip pamphlets, and she was forced to marry Phillip Crane. The last we saw of her was when Colin visited her last season and she told him how miserable she was. There has been no update on her character this season, but the books provide a morbid revelation about what happened to her character, and it’s so tragic.

In the Bridgerton books, Marina is deeply unhappy in her marriage with Sir Phillip Crane and after a failed suicide attempt she catches a nasty fever and passes away. Her death then allows the romance between Eloise and Sir Phillip to start developing as the two start writing to each other after Eloise reaches out to send him her condolences. He makes it clear in his letter that he was very unhappy in his marriage with Marina and neither of them loved each other. Brutal.

While Marina’s fate hasn’t been addressed in season three yet, once we get to Eloise’s storyline then it would make sense for the showrunners to address what happened to Marina, but we’ll just have to wait and see.