Colin and Mary are cousins!

There's a movie called... Back to the Secret Garden I think and it's got Camilla Belle in it. In that one Mary ended up marrying Colin. I always imagined she ended up with Dickon tho.

"If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

first cousins marrying was a very common thing until the 20th century, and it happened in everyone's ancestry, even yours.

It was fairly common in that time period for cousins to marry. At the time, I had a huge thing for Dickons and always wanted him to end up with Mary. But as an adult and having watched the film again, I found myself more interested in Colin and his expressive eyes! There is something so sweet and endearing about him that now I would prefer him to end up with Mary. However, aren't Mary and Colin's mothers twin sisters? If so, that would make them more than 1st cousins, genetically, their relationship would be like half brother/sister as their mothers would've been clones of each other, therefore making only their fathers different.


Whenever I get the urge to exercise, I lie down until it passes.

The idea of Colin and Mary together really grosses me out but not just because they were cousins. I got the impression that the three of them (Lord Craven, Colin and Mary) would become a real family at the end of the story and that Mary and Colin would becomes like siblings. I can't see them ever getting together.
I like the idea of Dickon and Mary together but I understand that it would not be realistic for the setting. Here's what I think would be better for a movie epilogue: Not long after WWI, Mary and her adopted brother Colin return to their old home. They meet with Martha who is very happy to them but the mood turns grim when Dickon is mentioned. He was killed in the war, preferably in a heroic way. It's not explicitly said but we see from looks and gestures that Mary was in love with Dickon but they never got together because of the class difference. It ends with the three putting up a dedication to Dickon in the garden.
Speaking of the royal family being inbred, I think Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip are second cousins, or something. They're both descended from Queen Victoria at least. Interestingly enough, Princess Alice, Phillip's great-grandmother, was played by Kate Maberly in the tv movie Victoria and Albert.

It's not so much that they're cousins that bother me... it's that their mothers were identical twin sisters, making their DNA even more closely related, giving their children a much higher chance of having problem. It would be like mating with a sibling. This would also give the whole story a very creepy factor in that Mary looked exactly like Colin's mother... so it would be as if he married his mother.

This, of course, was the movie and not the book.

Back to the Secret Garden was not a sequel to this movie. This is important to know because in the book, Mary and Colin were not related through twin mothers, but through Colin's mother and Mary's father.

The book was about three young, innocent children and it was not implied that Marry would end up with one in particular. There were hints to both, but nothing concrete. Only the author herself knows for sure.

In this movie, it was made very clearly for us that Mary was meant to end up with Dickon, as they clearly liked each other.
The line Mary says to Colin, "but we're cousins!" is an anachronism, since a little girl in 1905 would not have thought it strange for two cousins to be married. I think that line was added for the screenwriter to further push her idea of Mary ending up with Dickon.

As far as Dickon going off to war... this is highly unlikely to have happened to a character like Dickon. A poor farmboy who likes to garden and talk to flowers would most likely not enlist in the army. Also, he was about 21 years old at the time, so it's most likely he was settled with a job and family by WWI and it would not have been expected of him to leave it all to fight. The draft wouldnt have applied to him.

Although Mary and Dickon came from very different walks of life, it was not unheard of to cross those lines. It wasn't as common as it is today, but it wasn't unheard of. As it was, Archibald's wife was very kind to the poorer families, Dickon's included. I think that despite Dickon being from a poor family, Archibald would have approved.


The idea of Colin and Mary ending up together came to mainstream light in the 1987 Hallmark made for tv version of the movie, which had Colin Firth appearing as Colin Craven in an epilogue that did not exist in the book. In this version, he and Mary ended up together and Dickon was killed in the war. Back to the Secret Garden, with Camilla Belle, was most likely written with this version in mind.

In those days, cousins often married each other. Dickon would not have been suitable for someone of Mary's class.

[deleted]

It was the early 1900s. That was totally normal and socially acceptable, if not encouraged among the "blue bloods". They didn't yet understand that inbreeding creates horribly sick or mentally challenged offspring.