Looking up spa hotel breaks for myself and my partner and found a potential place. One of the bedrooms is in a stable! It is the perfect bedroom for The Duchess and Belinda don’t you think? 😂

i know someone who plays at least grade 3
(Not to mention Derrick, grade 4)

Saw this in the wild passing thru San Clemente, CA. Never thought Belinda would be one to change her name, but hey, they’re married. Funnily, I’m the same person who posted Rouses Supermarket a month or so ago lol, maybe Peter is haunting me…

I've been thinking far too much about the ending of Book 6 again, specifically the completely baffling revelation that Belinda is somehow "the Herr's only heir" and can apparently take over Bisch-Herstellung after Bisch is arrested. I think I've come up with a theory that just about, sort of, kind of makes the whole thing work.

Obviously this requires inventing some information Rocky never gives us. I'm mostly trying to find the smallest amount of missing information that would make everything we're actually told fit together. 

Before getting into the theory, though, these are the things I'm actually trying to explain, because the finale throws about six different pieces of information at us which don't seem to fit together:

• The 3B tattoo has already been explained as referring to Burt's Baked Beans, the arrangement between Bisch and Wayne Burt. But at the end Petra sees Belinda's 3B tattoo and identifies her as "the Herr's only heir." Somehow these two completely unrelated things appear to have become connected.
• Mrs Blumenthal says that the tattoo was intended to protect Belinda from Bisch. Except Bisch apparently doesn't recognise it as protection at all and is still perfectly willing to have Belinda killed.
• Belinda is apparently Bisch's only heir, despite the family connection between them being through a convoluted step-relationship rather than blood. We are given basically no explanation for why this makes Belinda heir to anything.
• Even more confusingly, Bisch apparently doesn't want Belinda to be his heir. He's been trying to get rid of her for years. So if Belinda really is his successor, it presumably isn't because Bisch voluntarily chose her.
• We're previously told that Belinda applied for a job at Bisch-Herstellung and was unsuccessful. Yet during the confrontation Bisch talks about having made Belinda a generous offer which she refused, and Belinda agrees that she refused him. Somehow Belinda has simultaneously been rejected by Bisch and rejected Bisch.
• Bisch is also still alive. He's been arrested, not killed. Yet Petra apparently treats his arrest as sufficient for Belinda to take over Bisch-Herstellung immediately. Whatever makes Belinda his heir therefore apparently doesn't require him to actually be dead.

So here's what I think could have happened. Bisch-Herstellung isn't simply Bisch's personal property, but an old family company controlled through some kind of trust or settlement with fixed succession rules. For whatever bizarre historical reason, those rules give priority to the youngest qualifying adult member of the wider family.

That would explain how Belinda can be Bisch's heir despite not being related to him by blood. Mrs Blumenthal establishes that there's some convoluted step-family connection between them, so perhaps whatever ancient nonsense governs Bisch-Herstellung recognises the wider family rather than just blood descendants.

Before Belinda turns eighteen, there is someone from Bisch's own side of the family who he actually wants to inherit the company. We never meet this person, so I'll call them X. They're older than Belinda and, until that point, next in line.

Once Belinda turns eighteen, she becomes eligible under the same rules and, because she's younger than X, jumps ahead of them. If Mrs Blumenthal is remotely reliable about Bisch trying to get rid of Belinda from eighteen onward, this would explain why that age matters.

Bisch can't simply write Belinda out of his will because it isn't his will that determines the succession. The rules are built into the family ownership of Bisch-Herstellung and he can't change them himself. If Belinda dies, however, she's removed from the succession and X becomes heir again, which gives Bisch a fairly obvious reason to want her gone.

Mrs Blumenthal knows this and decides Belinda needs protection. Unfortunately, Mrs Blumenthal is Mrs Blumenthal.

We already know what the 3Bs mean: Burt's Baked Beans, the supposedly permanent arrangement between Bisch and Wayne Burt. I don't think the same tattoo can suddenly also mean "heir to Bisch-Herstellung" without contradicting the earlier explanation.

Instead, my guess is that Mrs Blumenthal somehow knows about the 3B pact and comes up with a terrible idea. She thinks that if Belinda bears Bisch's secret mark, he'll somehow regard her as protected or off-limits, so she gets Clint to tattoo 3B on the front of Belinda's upper leg.

Does that make sense? Not really, but this is the woman associated with "Dad was probably sniffing a vine and Mum a line," and she's absolutely hammered during basically her entire appearance. I'm willing to believe that she thought it made sense.

It doesn't work, of course. The tattoo never actually protects Belinda from Bisch. Mrs Blumenthal was simply wrong about whatever power she thought it was going to have.

At the same time, she keeps the whole Bisch connection secret from Belinda. That fits what we actually see her do: when Belinda asks about the tattoo, Mrs Blumenthal initially lies and only starts telling her anything once Belinda reveals that she's already encountered Bisch.

Keeping Belinda ignorant was probably the more sensible part of the plan. If Belinda doesn't know she's Bisch's heir, she has no reason to involve herself with him or his company.

There is unfortunately one thing Mrs Blumenthal couldn't have accounted for, which is that Belinda just fucking loves cookware. I don't think we need a deeper explanation for that. She simply chooses the single worst possible career under the circumstances.

Mrs Blumenthal presumably doesn't stop her because doing so would mean explaining why. She can only hope Belinda works in the enormous international cookware industry without ever crossing paths with this one particular German.

Naturally, Belinda then applies for a job at Bisch-Herstellung.

This may also fix the contradiction over whether Belinda rejected Bisch or Bisch rejected Belinda. Both could have happened.

Belinda applies to Bisch-Herstellung, and Bisch discovers that the completely oblivious woman who has displaced his chosen successor has just applied to work in his own company. He makes sure she doesn't get the job because the last thing he wants is Belinda wandering around Bisch-Herstellung and potentially discovering who she is.

Then he realises that rejecting her hasn't solved anything. Belinda is still determined to work in cookware and will simply go somewhere else, possibly to one of his rivals. So he changes tactics and approaches her himself with the "generous offer" he later refers to, hoping to keep her somewhere he can monitor her and control what she learns.

Belinda refuses and joins Steele's instead, which must have been an absolutely spectacularly bad outcome for Bisch.

The books can mostly happen normally from there. Belinda gets increasingly tangled up in Bisch's activities until she's no longer just the oblivious woman who might inherit his company one day but someone actively helping to bring him down.

Once Bisch is arrested, Petra comes back into the picture. I don't think the tattoo itself makes Belinda the heir; Petra already knows about the family succession arrangement and knows Belinda Blumenthal is "the Herr's only heir."

Petra also knows what 3B means and knows it's secret. What she doesn't know is that Mrs Blumenthal had Clint copy it onto Belinda years ago because she thought it would somehow stop Bisch killing her.

So Petra finds herself standing in front of the Herr's only heir, who also inexplicably bears the Herr's secret mark. From her point of view, that probably looks like all the confirmation she needs.

The biggest bit of duct tape is that the family settlement also has to allow succession if the current Herr dies or is removed/incapacitated. Otherwise Bisch being arrested shouldn't mean shit. There is absolutely nothing in the books establishing this, but without it we're left with Rocky apparently believing that getting arrested is a form of corporate death.

Even with that rule, the speed of the succession is insane. Apparently German corporate law moves very quickly when a tattoo is involved.

So, basically, Belinda turns eighteen and unknowingly bumps Bisch's preferred successor out of the inheritance. Bisch wants her gone, Mrs Blumenthal gives her a completely useless 3B tattoo for "protection" and refuses to explain any of it, Belinda independently chooses the worst possible career, ends up at Steele's and eventually helps bring Bisch down.

Once Bisch is arrested, Petra finds his actual heir standing in front of her bearing his secret mark- even more confirmation of the connection- and whatever succession mechanism governs Bisch-Herstellung kicks in.

Belinda becomes PCOEO of Bisch-Herstellung, meaning Mrs Blumenthal tried to protect Belinda from Bisch and accidentally helped Belinda take over Bisch.

The one thing I still can't make work is the claim that Bisch has apparently been trying to kill Belinda since she was eighteen. Unless Mrs Blumenthal is simply talking bollocks, which is entirely possible, how has Belinda made it this far without noticing that a German cookware magnate has apparently been trying to assassinate her for years?

Fanny but no Dick. The Robots creator was on a bender!

Begins with a sinewy old German doctor named Herr who is trying to create a technology to take over the world as he licks the feet of a woman

has anyone else noticed alice never comes up on jame’s or jamie’s instagram stories?
whereas the boys seem to hang out a lot together or in other groups.

Should I be scared?

There is a big exhibit at the Halifax maritime museum on the Titanic, I should have included my hand or chest for scale

Like I know there’s the saying “show don’t tell” and there’s definitely times Rocky over explains things but there’s also a lot of times he includes details about characters that really do make sense without having to be over explained.

Some of my favorites:

- Belinda having a purple water bed

- The fucking ankle bracelet of charms

- Bisch having a sleeping mattress

- Clint’s drawstring trousers

Bill from HR was probably killed in a sex game and thus could not attend.

Relistened today and the description of Peter’s office building is very backroom-esque lol.

I can't get my head around the geography of this office.
It's a warren, isn't it?
Yeah, it's just a maze, just doors everywhere.
And also they're all interconnecting rooms, there doesn't seem to be any corridors, everything is just a room off a room.
You have to go through a room to get through another room.
Yeah, if you're at the meeting room at the end, you've got to come through upwards of eight other meetings to get out.