Lady Danbury personality type: ENTJ

Lady Danbury does not attend society. She arranges it. Look at her track record. She hosts the ball that opens the season. She steps in when the old Duke of Hastings rejects his stammering son, and she coaches young Simon until he can speak with confidence. Years later she tells grown Simon to stop sulking and stay in London. In season two she sponsors the Sharma sisters, gives them a season, and then watches Kate and Anthony with the expression of a woman who saw the ending in episode one.

She is an ENTJ. Her first question about any event is who needs to be where, and what happens if they are not. She does not wait for things to happen, she makes a list of who needs to be where and moves them, cane first. Her long-range radar reads people’s futures from very small clues, and she is right with irritating regularity. The performance is part of the power: the gowns, the entrances, the perfectly timed tap of the cane on the floor that silences a room.

On the enneagram she is an 8 with a 7 wing. Eights protect, challenge and refuse to be controlled, and they pick their causes carefully. Lady Danbury protects underdogs she has chosen herself, from a rejected boy heir to two sisters arriving from India with uncertain prospects. She says exactly what she thinks, to a viscount or to the Queen. The 7 wing is her delight in mischief. She loves a good scandal and enjoys sparring with Charlotte like it is her favorite card game.

The private self is what she almost never shows. When her brother, Lord Marcus Anderson, arrives in season three and starts paying attention to Violet, her composure slips, and you glimpse a history and a set of feelings she has kept firmly locked behind that wit.

You could argue she is an ENTP, since her verbal fencing is so playful and quick. I see the appeal. Still, every joke she makes is aimed somewhere. She plays to win and to move people toward an outcome she has already decided, which is a thinking-first mind leading the dance.