Who is your favourite Darcy?

[Varenne Rodin]

My favorite Darcy is the Darcy from our very own forum! The Darcy from the book is quite a nice character as well.

[Zaza]

Another one is Darsie Latimer from 'Redgauntlet'. A cutie worthy of the name.

[qimissung]

I have nothing against MacFayden (he looked good in Little Dorrit), but despite the ages I thought his face is too introverted to be mistaken for proud. With his long and pretty open face, he just doesn't look hard enough to be a Darcy. Darcy looks the confident and naturally aloof person in the corner, where he is in fact a bit shy. MacFayden, to me, looked the shy and gentle man in the corner who doesn't dare to speak to anyone.

I thought Ehle was actually about 21, but Firth was 35 at the time. Reasonably unknown.

Although I don't think we should compare a 21-year-old now with one back then. Your life was about a fifth to a third of the way through, if you didn't account for 20% of deaths in childbirth and other accidents.
Similarly, Darcy when he is 28 and a mere 6 years older than his friend Bingley, there is a great big difference in stature. Not only because Bingley only has 5,000 and Darcy double, but also because Darcy has bene his own man for a bit longer. I don't think 35 was too far off for a modern man, actually. 30 is when men more or less start to grow up.

Actually, life expectancy then was not as bad as is often reported:

http://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2009/06...d-as-reported/

Anyway, who we like is all subjective, and fortunately for us the thread is titled who is your "favorite" Darcy. So far I like both Colin Firth and Matthew McFayden, mainly because I just happen to like both those movies (yes, I know, one is a mini-series).

As to why we in generaly mention Darcy more often, Lokasenna, he was young, handsome, wealthy, and originally quite aloof, and I think we all enjoy watching him him as well as Elizabeth fall in love.

[Zaza]

No takers for Laurence Olivier, then? He did proud and arrogant very well.

[*Classic*Charm*]

Laurence Olivier was pure arrogance. No "real man" quality about him.

Matthew MacFadyen for the win.

[Adolescent09]

Laurence Olivier was pure arrogance. No "real man" quality about him.

This...this is a joke, right?

[Zaza]

Of course Laurence Olivier had 'real man' quality. Plus the best cheekbones ever. He had the face of Darcy before he even opened his mouth.

[*Classic*Charm*]

This...this is a joke, right?

Sadly, no. I don't mean Laurence in general, but in this particular film. He's dull. Greer Garson makes him look like a piece of the scenery. Sorry!

[kiki1982]

Actually, life expectancy then was not as bad as is often reported:

http://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2009/06...d-as-reported/

Thanks for the link. I had always presumed life expectancy statistics were skewed because of infant death rates. I couldn't imagine that a man would marry at 30 in order to die 8 years later and (at best) leave his wife with a score of children if not his children orphans altogether. I had one sad case like that in my husband's family tree though. Must have been awful for them.

Indeed, if you look at FreeBMD.org.uk - a website for looking up births, marriages and deaths in England originally for genealogy, but we can use it here too -, you can see deaths from about 1860, when ages were started to be recorded too and that indeed has mainly babies/small children on one end and people of mature age (50s and 60s with some 70s and rare 80s and 90s) on the other. A few in the middle, but not the vast majority.