3. Drake And Bella's Courtship
There were murmurings of approval from the fandom at the end of last series about the budding relationship between Sgt Drake and Bella, Rose's colleague at the Tenter Street brothel. Yet still there's a danger in story telling of giving people what they want too quickly can you imagine if, after reading six increasingly brick-shaped Harry Potter books, Voldermort died from a heart attack in the first chapter of the seventh and the rest of the book was spent playing Quidditch and studying for the end of year exams? Surely you'd feel cheated out of a big final battle? Rose may have been an unpopular character but at least she had clear motivations for her actions. Her driving factor was her ambition to be an actress and this impacted the decisions she made she was attracted to Drake because he believed she was capable of this, and she refused his proposal because it would have made her dream impossible. With Bella, a relatively minor character, the writers had a blank slate to work with and frustratingly that slate has so far remained blank. We don't know what her dreams are, if she married Sergeant Drake for love or practicality nor how she became a prostitute and how she felt about being one. So far the relationship between the couple seems loving, if shadowed by the elephant in the room. But with so little revealed about their courtship a cynical viewer could be forgiven for thinking that, still hurting from his rejection by Rose, Sgt Drake immediately imprinted on the closest woman to her at the time (both in terms of similarity and actual geography) leading to an unhealthy marriage that could potentially hurt all three of them.