Anyone who is following the series The Buccaneers on Apple TV+ and has not read Edith Wharton‘s book has already realized that the silent housekeeper, Laura Testvalley, is anything but a subservient woman. Actress Simone Kirby‘s character is both affectionate and suspicious and is obviously linked to the unhappiness and hopes of the young ‘buccaneers’ who lead the plot, especially Nan St. George (Kristine Frøseth). At the end of the fourth episode, we see her exchange meaningful glances with Colonel St. George (Adam James) and have an intimate moment with Lord Richard Marable (Josh Dylan). Is she a villain or a good girl?

To try to figure out who Laura Testvalley really is, let’s balance what we know in the book and what the series suggests, waiting for confirmation. We’re halfway through the story, and it’s still a mystery.

In 2023, my theory was that Laura was Nan’s real mother. Since then, as the show took a path completely removed from Edith Wharton’s original story, the revelation of the St. George family’s secret became even more sinister and unexpected (in the series, it was established that Patricia’s younger sister — Patricia being Nan’s adoptive mother — is actually Nan’s biological mother). Therefore, in a way, Mrs. Testvalley’s “disappearance” for an entire season — if the series does return — might only be temporary.

If everything changed in 2025, it’s because the twist really was abrupt. The theory that Laura Testvalley might be something more was a solid one, and she could still come back and have an impact on the story. It wasn’t so clear at first, but Mrs. Testvalley is the St. George girls’ governess because Mrs. Saint George (Christina Hendricks) wanted to make up for the fact that she couldn’t prepare her daughters to shine in society without a proper British governess to teach them how to become “ladies.”

We already met her at Conchita Clossom’s (Alisha Boe) wedding to Lord Richard, and she is the governess who suggests the bride’s friends travel to England and prepares them to ‘debut’ in British society. The suggestion seemed more like an order from Richard (now we know why), and in theory, it would help Conchita adapt to rigid British society and help her friends find husbands, too. Later, when Nan starts to give trouble and threatens to disrupt the plan, Mrs. Testvalley takes the young woman on a trip close to the palace of Theo (Guy Remmers), the Duke of Tintagel, leading Nan and Theo to meet and fall in love (?), something more than convenient. Now that we have seen that she and Lord Richard were or are lovers, her every initiative becomes suspicious.

In the book, even more so, in Edith Wharton‘s unfinished book, forty-year-old Laura Testvalley is a modern and mysterious character. Typically, in the author’s books, sexuality and scandalous extra-marital affairs are in the plot, revealing that social repression did not hold back women’s real fire, and also likes to explore the dichotomy of the female role. In The Buccaneers, the governess is a surrogate mother who educates and also covers, making Nan both a girl and a woman. In the literary version, she enters Nan St. George’s life when she is sixteen years old, at the height of her difficulty balancing a curious, rebellious, and creative nature when the opposite was expected of a woman.

Mrs. Testvalley knows how to give Nan emotional support without feeling trapped, described by the writer as “an adventurer, but with a big soul”, being precise about when to feed the protagonist’s desires as well as when to attract attention and keep her in line, without victimizing her, also in Wharton’s words, “although Miss Testvalley was often kind, she was rarely tender.” What is – and will be surprising – is that behind the slender figure, she is a woman who deals with sexuality with an unusual freedom for the time. She has lovers (young or older) and will still find overwhelming passion. So it is!

Laura Testvalley is sly and modern, an interesting combination. Just as Conchita is Brazilian in the book, Mrs. Testvalley has an Italian background, highlighting the sensuality and less restricted view of the culture, which is cliché, but also makes more sense than placing this brutal difference in Anglo-Saxon inhibitions on Americans. In the Apple series so far, the origins of the two – Conchita and Laura – are not highlighted and even apparently changed. But the prominence of the Brazilian quote in the original story is important because it reinforces the importance of the Latin imaginary, where contact with Brazil (whether by Conchita or Guy going to Rio), releases everyone’s repressed sexual instincts, and where Brazilian culture relaxes people.

Edith Wharton‘s view of Laura Testvalley is more important than Conchita’s. Of Italian origin, she had an affair with Lord Richard that she considered over. She was happy while it lasted, but it was in the past. Which didn’t stop her from using her influence on him to invite his girls to the most important ball in British society. Always supporting Nan, in the book, she is the one who somehow feeds the girl’s romantic fantasies, reading poetry and talking about passionate love. Importantly, in the book, she is not Nan’s biological mother; she just thinks that ‘she could have been my own daughter’, clearly being the governess’s favorite.

The bond between Laura and Nan could have been developed further in the series, since in the original story, it was Mrs. Testvalley’s sacrifice that saved the heroine from an unhappy fate. And yes — SPOILERS ahead.

In the 1995 series, The Buccaneers featured a secretly homosexual Theo as the reason his marriage to Nan failed. As far as we see in the 2023 series, their romance was too quick, but genuine. He kept the secret that he knew Guy Thwarte (Matthew Broome), his best friend, is in love with Nan, and as she doesn’t even know about this love, she is induced to choose the wrong husband. It is a fact of the original story that the personality differences between Nan and Theo, which at first seem to be ‘opposites attract,’ will be the great catalyst for extreme unhappiness between them. In the original story, there is no connection between the young woman and her mother-in-law; on the contrary, what we see on Conchita’s face is also Nan’s fate until Mrs. Testvalley intervenes again.

Another difference in the series is transforming Mrs. Saint George into a caring woman, keeping only her insecurity and hope that her daughters will “marry well”. In the book, because she is afraid of associating with the wrong people, she is always attracting her daughters’ attention in public, clearly falling short of the maternal role expected of her. This part is hinted at in the series when she seems to be trying too hard and taking away from the more traditional women, even in New York, but she is a loving mother.

The other mothers are also less fit for the mission than Mrs. Testvalley: Lizzie and Mabel Elmsworth’s mother lacks class, and Conchita’s mother (who does not appear) is a divorced Brazilian who married an American and prefers to stay in the room and smoke cigars. It is Laura who changes a calamitous scenario for the girls.

Coming from Europe, Laura Testvalley’s proposal to take the girls to England is also to take them away from their inconvenient mothers. Having the experience of educating the daughters of an English duchess, she is the ideal “nanny” and leads the invasion “like a general”, creating perfect strategies for the objective of the trip. Without sacrificing your own plans, of course.

The girls all marry into English society. Conchita weds Lord Richard, Laura’s former lover, but they never truly make peace and soon become mutually unfaithful. This was another change made by the series, which turned their marriage into a genuine relationship.

Lizzie Elmsworth (Aubri Ibrag) endures sexual and psychological abuse but marries a member of Parliament and, eventually, finds happiness (her character is inspired by Jennie Jerome, who married Lord Randolph Churchill and became the mother of Winston Churchill). From the second season on, however, she abandons that marriage to live an adventure with Theo.

Jinny (Imogen Waterhouse) adapts to British society but marries the cruel and abusive Lord James Seadown (Barney Fishwick). She later becomes a symbol of a strong woman, alongside Conchita, after James Richard’s brother kills him and is imprisoned. (Yes, pure melodrama!)

And, of course, Nan, who marries the Duke of Tintagel but suffers under the severity of her mother-in-law and the constant pressure to produce an heir (without success). Apple TV+’s adaptation kept this challenge present, though in very subtle lines.

Laura was meant to witness, from a distance, how Nan’s joy for life slowly faded, trapped in a rushed marriage that quickly grew cold. After her protégé became a duchess, the governess had to take work with another family, and thus could not help Nan as she wished — but she would respond immediately whenever called, especially when she saw the sadness in her former charge.

At this point, in the book, Laura is in love and having a romance with no one other than Guy’s father, and decides, boldly, to help the young woman get out of a loveless marriage. It’s just going to be expensive. She is about to become Mrs. Thwarte, in love and physically satisfied, with sparkle in her eyes and skin, and wearing her hair down instead of her hairstyle of buns and braids. At the time, to allude that a woman over 40 could be so clearly sexually satisfied, even implicitly, was bold. Conchita is also described as physically more relaxed and healthy when her extramarital affair begins. None of this actually appeared in the series.

As for Laura, we would also have seen her become a victim of ageism. Except for Nan, who defends her, the girls will joke about her “rejuvenation” when she is in love as if an ‘older’ woman lost the right to passion. The American Miss March, sixty and forgotten, will be the object of ridicule from girls who strive to imagine her younger, more adorable, and in love, especially since she was forgotten even by her former fiancé (Conchita and Jinny’s father-in-law).

With two clear examples that a woman could – and should – be complete and happy (her and Conchita), Laura sacrifices her opportunity to marry the man she loves to help Nan escape with her lover and his son. This is because Sir Helmsley Thwarte had political plans for Guy, and the fact that he ran away with the Duke’s wife disrupts everything.

Originally, Laura ends the story alone, sacrificing the rare chance to gain social elevation, financial security, and companionship in her declining years with a marriage that, even more so, would have been one of love. Laura Testvalley’s renunciation is as important, if not more, than Nan’s embrace of a life of passion because she determines that she will return “alone to old age and poverty,” with no chance of new love or sex, so that his “surrogate daughter” can have it all.

Before the second season aired, I suspected that the series — which removed the distance between Mrs. St. George and Nan — would actually go so far as to reveal that Laura Testvalley was the heroine’s real mother, making her final sacrifice all the more meaningful. But the changes, including Nan’s relationship with her mother-in-law, due to the implied sisterhood, are a contrast to the reality of the original story, where there was no expectation of female friendship in a world “competitive for the best husband”.

The escape and romance part between Nan and Guy was in an unfinished draft by Edith Wharton, whose stories are not traditionally known for “happy endings,” so purists question the conclusion of The Buccanneers, published decades after the (unfinished) original was the author’s last book. It looks like the series will follow this conclusion. It seemed as though the series was heading toward that conclusion, but it ended the second season very differently: Nan, pregnant with Theo’s child, ran away on her own.

Therefore, Nan may be the protagonist, but the true heroine of The Buccaneers is actually the housekeeper Laura Testvalley, the common point of all characters, mentor, lover, guide, and essential in the conclusion of everyone’s lives. Personally, I think the series lost many relevant themes when it chose to create new storylines. We’ll have to wait and see if there will be a third season.

*updated on September 27, 2025

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