The new rules of society romance... according to Gillian, Peter and Jemima

Just as we finish binge-watching Bridgerton and head off in search of more flighty, upper-crust escapism, along comes a lockdown love-triangle drama worthy of Nancy Mitford. In fact, the principal leading man could have written the script himself.

For The Crown’s Peter Morgan, 57, has suddenly ditched society beauty, Jemima Goldsmith, 47, to rebound back to his former girlfriend, actress Gillian Anderson, 52, with whom he had a four-year relationship, prior to leaving her last December.

Jemima has now been similarly blindsided – she is said to be “shocked and confused” – now that Peter has boomeranged back to Gillian, joining her on set in the Czech Republic, where she is currently filming. Which is confusing enough, before we learn how Peter is said to have taken to referring to Jemima as “the one”, before seemingly performing a handbrake turn to get back with Gillian.

While we onlookers gawp slack-jawed at it all, in the new society – where aristocracy and celebrity seamlessly blend (and to be a member is to be gorgeous, glossy, rich and unbelievably well-connected) – relationships spin on a different axis. Furious fallings-out are infra dig; everything is always tempered, because this social set is so intertwined, an awkward froideur would be terribly non-U.

Chances are that, once lockdown ends, Jemima and Gillian, who are said to be old friends, will be back, side by side again, beaming for the flashbulbs. Last month, it was reported that Gillian was said to be merely “bemused” by how quickly Peter’s romance had progressed with Jemima, and maintained a dignified silence as friends remarked that Peter and Jemima had formed a “legitimate support bubble”.

Peter, with his solidly intellectual, middle-class background – the son of Polish and German refugees, he was educated at St Paul’s, then Downside, and grew up in Wimbledon – has form when it comes to dating aristocrats. His ex-wife, Princess Anna Carolina Schwarzenberg, known as Lila, is the daughter of the Czech politician and nobleman Prince Karl von Schwarzenberg. He and Lila, who have five children, separated in 2014. Lila and the family now live in Vienna.

Peter is a brilliant and gifted scriptwriter – his plaudits include awards for the films The Queen and Frost/Nixon – and most probably enjoys the finer things in life. While they were married, Lila documented their lives for a column in an Austrian magazine, once describing an incident in which he complained that she picked him up from the airport in a branded Smart car, so he booked himself a Mercedes instead. In another, she wrote of how she wound him up by serving him fish fingers for dinner, with him declaring: “I’m neither five years old nor a f-----g penguin.” She described her column as partly-fictional, with Peter appearing as a “character” within it.

Jemima Goldsmith, with her patrician good looks, extraordinary wealth (her father was politician and financier, Sir James Goldsmith, and her mother, Lady Annabel, of Annabel’s nightclub fame) and bright ambition, has had a hypnotic effect on men. Soon after meeting cricketer turned politician Imran Khan, when she was 20, she married him, spending nine years living in Pakistan with him and their two sons, and even converted to Islam. The couple divorced in 2004, but have remained close and committed parents.

Jemima then had relationships with equally high-profile celebrities, including Hugh Grant, Matthew Freud and Russell Brand, before dating Peter. Jemima is currently finishing her first feature film, What’s Love Got to Do with It?, starring Lily James and Emma Thompson, which she wrote and is producing.

Born in Chicago and brought up in London and Michigan, Gillian Anderson is no aristocrat – but she is beautiful, talented, successful… and famous. In the new society, her celebrity has as much currency as a countess in a castle. When she first stepped out with Peter Morgan, they were seen as a glittering power couple. When she joined the cast of The Crown, playing Margaret Thatcher, their ascendancy amid the Gods of Fame seemed inevitable.

When Peter left Gillian and got together with Jemima, there were no acid public comments or explosions of wrath, such is the emotional containment of this tribe. Their relationship and dating practices differ from ours because they worship at the altar of appearance. Always consider the optics.

While we may feel intense sexual jealousy at the thought of our exes dating other people, let alone our friends, bred into this posse is a well-practised gung-ho jollity. To admit to as pedestrian and visceral an emotion as jealousy would be to acknowledge insecurity, which is considered reprehensible. Instead, we see them steadfastly remaining friends with exes, having amicable divorces, being godparents to each other’s children and holidaying en masse. You will have spotted Prince Harry’s ex-girlfriends Chelsy Davy and Cressida Bonas at his wedding (certainly, it warranted a mention in The New York Times).

As F Scott Fitzgerald said, “the rich are different from you and me”, so too are their relationship mores. In the small, elite pool of the new society, it behoves members to always remain friendly and never to resort to anything as unbecoming as acrimony. By sweeping anything remotely negative under the giant Persian carpets, relations remain buoyant on the surface.

The Duchess of Rutland, Emma Manners, is a supreme example of how to manage an aristocratic break-up with aplomb. She may be separated from the Duke but continues to live in Belvoir Castle, the Leicestershire landmark, which they run together. Both the Duke and Duchess have new partners. Emma is in a long-term relationship with the estate manager and lives in a separate wing from her ex-husband. Their five children happily drift between their parents’ individual apartments.

Even more progressively, when the Queen’s cousin, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, fell in love with a man, it was his ex-wife of 17 years, Penny, who gave him away at his same-sex marriage to new husband, James Coyle. Now Penny, James and Ivar, along with the Mountbatten’s three children, “get on incredibly well”, according to Mountbatten. “When they first went to yoga together, the class assumed that he was Penny’s new man. She loved saying: ‘No, this is my ex-husband’s boyfriend…’ It’s fun to subvert expectations.”

Among the upper classes, with their bohemian attitudes, eyebrows are rarely raised at any unorthodox relationship dynamics. Hugely powerful and wealthy families have long interbred. Take Alice Goldsmith, Jemima’s brother Zac Goldsmith’s second wife. Alice is originally a Rothschild, which made it a tad awkward (but only briefly) when she fell for Zac, because he happens to be the brother of her older sister Kate’s ex-husband, Ben. Two Rothschild sisters fell for two Goldsmith brothers – it’s like something out of an Edith Wharton novel about upper-class banking dynasties. They married in 2013 and now have three children together, making Zac a father of six. True to their tribe, they are all on good terms.

While it remains to be seen if Peter and Gillian will get their happy ending, or if Jemima will find long-lasting love (if she wants it), what is certain in the elite world of new society dating, you never bleat about anything as banal as heartbreak or betrayal.

A brief history of Jemima Goldsmith’s love life

Imran Khan

In 1995, aged 21, Goldsmith married the Oxford-educated former Pakistan cricket star. She moved to Pakistan, converted to Islam and had two children with him. Their union was much talked about, partly because of the age gap – Khan was in his 40s – and because Goldsmith was Anglican, with Jewish roots.

In 2004 Khan, by then a high-profile politician, announced the marriage was over. “While Jemima tried her best to settle here, my political life made it difficult for her to adapt,” he said at the time. Goldsmith returned to London with their children, Suleiman and Qasim.

Hugh Grant

The same year Goldsmith and Khan divorced, Goldsmith began a relationship with British actor Hugh Grant which made them regular gossip column fodder. Their romance was said to be turbulent, and accompanied by many a whisper about break-ups, engagements and Grant’s ex, Elizabeth Hurley. In 2007, three years after getting together, they split amicably.

Russell Brand

Goldsmith was introduced to the comedian by Kate Moss in 2006. Seven years later, they got together after meeting again at a charity bash. Opening up about their relationship for the first time, on the Jonathan Ross Show in January 2014, Brand said: “I really love her.” However, the pair separated later that year.

Matthew Freud

In 2016, it was reported Goldsmith was dating PR guru Matthew Freud, following years of friendship as part of the so-called “Chipping Norton set”. The relationship began six years after an alleged altercation between Freud and Grant in Mayfair nightclub, Annabel’s, said to be sparked by Freud remarking on Goldsmith’s friendship with the film director Guy Ritchie. Freud was said to be “rather smug” when he started dating Goldsmith himself.

Rosa Silverman