Do I gather from tonight's episode that vampire Pam is descended from John of Gaunt and his third wife Katherine Swynford? Her last name is given for the first time in tonight's episode as Pamela Swynford de Beaufort, and Beaufort is the name given to Katherine and John's legitimized children after their marriage.

This fills me with glee, and makes me want reread one of my favorite historical romances, Anya Seton's Katherine, which tells the tale of how the middle class Katherine (who was Chaucer's sister-in-law, intriguingly) becomes the mistress and eventually the wife of the most powerful man in England, perhaps even more powerful than the king himself. If memory serves, it is totally enthralling - I am still struck by it vividly fifteen years after reading it.

But linking Pam to that tumultuous medieval romance - I wonder what Alan Ball and Co. are up to....