Downton Abbey the TV series was many things: a romance, a mystery, a period piece that touched on real-life historical events like the sinking of the Titanic and World War I, to name just a few. But most of all, it was an exceedingly British high-class soap opera, and the feature film that served as a continuation of the long-running PBS show upped the anglophile ante by inviting the Royal Family to the Crawley family's estate. Now comes part two, Downton Abbey: A New Era, which creator Julian Fellowes promises is an "unashamedly feel-good movie." How will Fellowes possibly top the delightful pomp and circumstance of visiting monarchs? By whisking fans' favorite characters, above and below stairs, off to a villa in the south of France.
It's not just the change of scenery that'll lend some excitement to the Crawley family when the movie picks up with them sometime later. The reason for the trip across the channel will almost certainly serve as the sequel's main plot. In the just-released teaser trailer, the Dowager Countess Violet Crawley shocks and surprises everyone when she reveals that she met a man before her son, Robert (now the seventh Lord Grantham) was born. That man, whoever he was, seems to have bequeathed said French villa to Violet, presumably before his death. As Robert reacts slack-jawed to the news, the trailer cuts to a small painting of Violet as a young woman, so it seems this love affair did occur quite some time ago. The trailer also includes a wide shot of the villa in question, flanked by palm trees, so audiences can be assured the movie will at least take an extended detour to the Dowager's inherited property.
Rather than shy away from the truth, the Dowager seems to revel in the scandal of it all. Always one to exit on the note of a good one-liner, the trailer concludes with Violet saying she'll leave them all to discuss her mysterious past. Though the Dowager is often portrayed as someone who represents the old ways of doing things, throughout Downton Abbey's six seasons and a movie, Violet has proven that she's anything but a stick in the mud. Her sharp wit occasionally borders on the risqué, she's unexpectedly comfortable talking about the birds and the bees with her granddaughters, but even more to the point, this isn't even the first extramarital romance of Violet's of which the audience is aware.
In Season 5 of Downton Abbey, the family learns that Violet attended a ball in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the winter of 1874. There, she met Prince Igor Kuragin. The two fell madly in love and had plans to escape together on his yacht and elope, but there was a small wrench in the plan. Both Violet and Igor were already married, and his wife, who'd found them out, exposed them and prevented things from going any further. Violet went back to being the wife of the sixth Lord Grantham and mother to Robert and Rosamund, but she never forgot Prince Kuragin. The whole salacious story comes to light because Prince Kuragin and some other Russian refugees have fled to England for safety after the revolution, where they're living in poverty. Her old flame Igor is among them.
Violet and Igor's failed attempt to run away together was, in the grand scheme of things, little more than some context to Lady Mary's love triangle with Tony Gillingham and Charles Blake. But it also re-contextualized Violet as someone who breaks social norms more easily than previously thought, and as someone who has more of a heart than she likes to let on. The Prince Kuragin affair serves as precedent to show that the Dowager is a woman of passion, and so the plot of Downton Abbey: A New Era seems poised to be juicier than the first Downton film.
Just who Violet fell for all those years ago -- before her husband and her Russian prince -- remains a mystery for now. As the French monarchy ended with the deaths of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in the 1780s, it doesn't seem possible that there will be a royal connection this time around. According to the show's canon, Violet was born in 1842 and married around 1860, which means this chance meeting probably took place sometime in the late 1850s. The French gentleman, who's part of the landed gentry enough to have left an old girlfriend a vacation home on the Riviera, will probably be a wholly fictional character or a composite of well-known people of the time, like the Crawleys are themselves.
To find out more about Lady Violet's scandalous past, Downton Abbey: A New Era arrives in theaters on March 18, 2022.
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