THANK YOU SO MUCH! I have been Mary/Lavinia rewatching lately (as one does!), and there are so many gorgeous hints-of-elements of this relationship that I just want to pick at introspectively with flowery prose for a thousand, thousand pages. The softening of Mary's soul was so, so Lavinia-induced. Like yeah okay there's that Matthew guy too, but Mary admiring Lavinia in her own right is like an actual true canon thing and WHY DIDN'T WE EVER GET TO SEE OUR ADVENTURING FOR LADIES ROAD TRIP. ... Ahem. (My soul will never entirely rest, and it's that picture's fault. What was that???)

Like, I had even totally spaced on the fact that finding out Lavinia made a deal with Sir Richard to save her father/family from ruin was what made Mary really like her because THAT IS WHAT MARY IS DOING WITH SIR RICHARD TOO.