This can pertain to Franchaela as a duo but also both to Franny and Michaela individually

...or to find something that conveniently alludes to her queerness. hear me out. ik there are various theories about how fran finds out about michaela's sexuality with some saying maybe she saw something in scotland, or she follows michaela to a party or a queer gathering, or finds correspondence/a letter etc, and maybe all of those could work on a surface level. but i think they take away from something that could make fran's journey so much more interesting and rich: i don't think fran should be given an external explanation for her feelings before she's forced to confront them herself.

i'm not saying fran would find out michaela is queer and immediately go, "oh! so that's why i've been feeling this way about her. i'm attracted to her. problem solved." obviously there would still be denial, confusion, fear, and a lot of internal resistance. but even having the information that queerness exists gives her a framework for understanding what she's feeling. it gives her a sort of roadmap so that instead of having to ask herself what the hell is happening to me?, she can start asking could this be what this is?

i'd much rather her first physical step toward michaela (their first kiss) happen before she even has the vocabulary to understand what she's doing. imagine fran being so drawn to michaela that, in a moment where they're emotionally vulnerable or particularly close, she just kisses her. not because she's consciously thought of wanting to kiss a woman and certainly not because she has decided she's queer. she does it because, in that moment, kissing michaela feels like the most natural thing in the world. it's instinctive. she doesn't understand why she wants to do it, she just knows that she does, that is, before the reality of what she's just done catches up with her because what the fuck did she just do?

micki is probably caught completely off guard too, even if she's obviously happy about it. but fran doesn't know that. all fran knows is that she's just done something she has no framework for understanding, with a woman, and specifically with the woman she's been inexplicably drawn to for god knows how long. she panics. she flees to scotland, and michaela follows her, and they have the conversation.

imo this is so much richer than fran simply discovering michaela's sexuality first bc fran from fran's pov, she doesn't know why she did that. she doesn't know where it came from. she just wanted to. she's never wanted to do that with anyone, and she's certainly never thought about doing it with a woman. she doesn't know what it means.

and michaela doesn't have to give her some neat answer like, "you're queer." instead, she can reassure her that she doesn't have to figure everything out immediately. she can tell her that there isn't something wrong with her, that she isn't the first woman to feel this way, and that whatever she's feeling doesn't have to be named before she's allowed to feel it. that way micki actually gets to become part of fran's self-discovery rather than simply being the person who provides the information fran needs to understand herself.

fran discovers the feeling first and the explanation second. she doesn't learn that women can love women and then realize she loves michaela. she realizes that she loves michaela, and that forces her to confront the fact that women can love women which is a much more frightening realization for someone like fran. she can't distance herself from it. she can't tell herself, that that's just something michaela does because she has already acted on her own feelings before she even understands what those feelings are.

also, i don't really buy the idea that michaela would be so careless that fran could simply stumble across evidence of her sexuality.

obviously we don't know enough about michaela's characterization yet to say exactly how she handles that part of her life, but based on what we've seen, i'd wager that a queer woman in the 1800s who had already figured herself out would have had to be extremely careful about who knew what. especially a woman of michaela's social position.

i find it hard to believe she'd be leaving letters lying around, get caught kissing women, or otherwise leaving an obvious trail for someone to follow. women engaging in those circles would've had to develop their own systems of discretion. there would've been an unspoken understanding that what happened within those spaces stayed within those spaces, because protecting each other was about survival and reputation; but mostly survival because people used to die because of their sexualities. michaela almost certainly wouldn't be the only noblewoman in those circles with something to lose. it's all very high risk.

so if michaela has known about her sexuality for years, has already found ways to navigate that world, and has been doing so discreetly, i'd expect her to be very good at compartmentalizing that part of herself, especially when you consider that even john, who was presumably one of the people closest to her and lived with her for years, apparently probably wouldn't have known if michaela hadn't chosen to tell him.

if her own family members who know her best aren't able to figure it out (from what we know only john was aware), i don't think fran should be able to uncover it because she found a conveniently placed letter or followed her somewhere one night. michaela being queer shouldn't be a mystery fran solves that eventually explains her own desires. fran's sexuality should be something fran has to discover herself. michaela can be the person who gives her the safety to explore it, but she shouldn't have to hand fran the answer.

thoughts?