On the flight back from France, where my family and I recently spent a week after visiting relatives in Belgium, I watched all three of the Downton Abbey movies. The gist of these, as of the long-running television show whose story they continue, is that the Grantham family are lovely people, deserving of their gargantuan Yorkshire estate. But (as the dialogue ceaselessly and unsubtly reminds), the times are changing.

The prospect of the noble family who owns the joint needing to sell up and sack the servants hangs forever in the background, sometimes in the foreground, and is something the show treats as a disastrous outcome. (It would, after all, end the franchise. No Downton Abbey if Downton Abbey’s converted to a retirement home or apartments!) The audience is encouraged to root for the kindly aristocrats and their occasionally grumpy but mainly proper and loyal servants. It is presented as heartwarming when a former commoner (and Irish Republican at that!) who’s married into the family changes his tune to the point that he winds up saving the life of King George.

Rather than falling asleep on the flight, as had been my hope when making this viewing selection, I found myself resenting what this franchise was asking me to feel. What’s it to me whether these Granthams keep their giant house? It’s not that I wanted it repossessed by the state and redistributed, but just, if the Granthams don’t have it together to run the place and someone else does, then let the market sort this out. But then again I would think that, being neither a communist nor an aristocrat.

Class warfare might seem a monolithic beast, but can be more nuanced than that. Different rich-people-haters will sometimes mean different things by the rich. Some despise the idle born-rich and respect self-made sorts. They denounce privilege, or unearned advantage, and find ways to signal that wherever they are in life, it’s via their own bootstraps. They emphasize (or exaggerate) the humbleness of their origins, so as to play up the impressiveness of their achievements.

Others have it in for new money, the nouveau riche. They’re fine with society having an aristocracy, but object to it being made up of meritocrats rather than noblesse oblige practitioners. They believe, politically and aesthetically—insofar as these can be separated—that old money sorts are the rightful enjoyers of luxe. They venerate stealth-wealth, quiet-luxury styles, and sneer at the new-money (or just, no-money) sorts who try to emulate it. Try, but fail. Requisite Seinfeld quote, from when Elaine Benes compared unfavourably to Jackie O: “You either have grace or you don’t.” Even though technically speaking Lady Grantham is of nouveau origins, by patrilineal as well as vibes-based standards, the Granthams have more grace than they know what to do with. At times it seems this is all they’ve got going for them.

We were staying in Nice, which is lovely, but which has rock beaches, such that you need to leave the town itself for beach-type activities. Thanks to some confusion about which public bus stop to get out for the beach, we found........

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