Outlander Author Diana Gabaldon Sees Claire's New Ring as the Show's Way of "Apologizing" to Readers
If you aren't caught up on Outlander's fourth season, proceed with caution, spoilers ahead!
Outlander's fourth season begins with a circle: "For centuries humans have held an endless fascination with circles, attributing meaning where they are found, from the eternal rotation of the planets around the sun, to the movement of clock hands, to a simple wedding band," Claire says in a voice over. "And I, more than most, know full well just how a circle can affect one's life... or death."
As the camera pans to a noose, it's clear that the shape will continue to serve as a motif throughout this arc of episodes. Just a few scenes later, when Claire and Jamie aid Stephen Bonnet's escape, the smuggler shares his thoughts on Claire's dual wedding rings, one from her marriage to Frank, and the other from her commitment to Jamie. "I've never been married," Bonnet says. "But I've always been partial to rings... There's something about the notion to an infinite circle that fascinates me."
At the end of the episode, Bonnet makes good on that compulsion, stealing Claire's wedding band from Jamie as he ransacks the Frasers' camp with his posse of thieves.
But some fans of the books were never keen on that ring to begin with, as it represented a major departure from Diana Gabaldon's novels. In the text, Claire's ring is described as featuring a "Highland interlace pattern, the links engraved with tiny, stylized thistle blooms."
And it is that ring, crafted by Murtagh out of silver from Jamie's mother's candle stick, that we see Claire receive in tonight's episode, as a replacement for the one Bonnet stole.
Gabaldon was a fan of the show's solution.
"Oh I thought it was very clever how they did it. It worked in extremely well with the plot that they had going, how they had worked that particular bit," Gabaldon told T&C during a conversation earlier this year.
"I assumed it to be kind of their way of apologizing to the readers who were upset about the first ring, by giving them a ring that more closely resembled what they might have had in mind."
Hopefully that apology is accepted.
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