Jilly Cooper’s books beyond Rivals detail Rupert’s family tree, and how Perdita and Basil link

Rivals is back for the second part of season two! Unfortunately, we now have to recall what the plot was in the first half. In episodes seven, eight and nine of season two, several characters popped up who we hadn’t seen in ages, including Basil and Perdita. To help you make sense of it all, here’s an in-depth explanation of Rupert Campbell-Black’s family tree, according to Rivals and Jilly Cooper’s other Rutshire Chronicles books.

Wait, who are Rupert Campbell-Black’s parents?

They don’t feature in the Disney+ show Rivals. However, Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles go into Rupert Campbell-Black‘s backstory a lot more. The list of characters in the 2016 book Mount! describes Rupert’s dad Eddie Campbell-Black as “five times married and sexual buccaneer of the old school”. Makes sense.

No, Basil isn’t his brother

In the book series, Rupert does have a younger brother, called Adrian. He runs an art gallery in New York.

Basil appears so sporadically in the Disney+ show that it’s difficult to keep track. But he’s not Rupert’s brother. The Hon Basil Baddingham is actually Tony’s younger half-brother. Although Bas is legally the son of Tony’s father, it’s well known his biological father is an Argentine polo player his mother had a fling with.

Basil is about 33 in Rivals. He’s closer in age to Rupert than he is to Tony, and they’re way closer friends.

Yes, Perdita is Rupert’s long-lost daughter

In case you didn’t get the memo from season two of Rivals, yup, Perdita is Rupert’s daughter. Right now in the show, neither Rupert nor Perdita know this. Declan and Cameron do know, as he dug up this info for his TV interview with Rupert in season one (but he had a change of heart and chose not to drop this bombshell on them both in this way).

The timeline of Jilly Cooper books isn’t very coherent – based on everybody’s ages in Mount!, Rupert is only 14 years older than Perdita. That would make Perdita 23 or 24 years old in Rivals (which is older than Taggie). Although, Perdita is actually 14 at the start of the book Polo, which would make her 12 and 13 during Rivals. Maybe it’s best not to think about the maths too hard x 

Perdita’s mother is called Daisy. They live in a cottage in Rutshire on the estate of a polo player.

Daisy became pregnant when she was 17, and was still a student at Art College. Her parents threw her out. She married a lawyer called Hamish. To appease Hamish’s overly conservative parents, they all claimed Daisy had been married to Perdita’s father, but he died in a car crash before he knew she was pregnant. Daisy chose not to tell Perdita who her father really was once she grow up. The book Polo says Daisy was “terrified of the tantrums this would trigger off”.

In the book Polo, Perdita does cotton onto this. Rupert watches Perdita play polo, sees how terrifically talented she is, and accepts her as his daughter.

Rupert’s ex-wife is called Helen

Helen Macaulay (aka the Hayley Atwell character) is an American publisher. The first book in the series, Riders, showed her leaving Rupert for another polo player, Jake Lovell. That’s why these characters had such long cameos in the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals. 

In the book series, Helen goes on to marry a musician called Robert Rannaldini and a scholar called David Hawkley. Aw, maybe she was Rupert’s soulmate after all.

Helen and Rupert’s children are called Marcus and Tabitha. They barely feature in the Rivals TV show (although, once they grow up, their sexcapades are detailed in the later Rutshire Chronicles books).

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