On the 13th day of Claire-mas, I take a look at one of the crazier storylines in the Outlander books. It’s all about Claire and Lord John Grey.
We go into storylines in An Echo in the Bone and Written In My Own Heart’s Blood in this post. If you haven’t read that far ahead, you’ll want to skip over this unless you want book spoilers. It’s not clear if this storyline will be used in the TV series, but it should be.
There are some crazy storylines throughout Outlander. Sometimes, it can feel like a little too much is going on, and in An Echo in the Bone, Claire is forced to go through with a marriage to save her life. Yes, again!
Claire-mas: Why Claire and Lord John Grey marry in Outlander
We’d already seen Claire do this once before. After falling through the stones, she had to marry Jamie. The only way to save her from Black Jack Randall was to turn her into a Scot, and marriage would do that. Jamie was single, and he had a lot to lose by marrying an Englishwoman, not that Jamie minded about that.
So, when Claire was in the Colonies, she never thought she would face a similar problem. Claire had just returned from Scotland to perform a surgery, and she learned that Jamie’s ship across the waters had sank. Of course, she feared the worse. She was sure that would mean Jamie was dead.
At this point, she could have been arrested. Lord John Grey protected her out of his love for Jamie—and arguably, his respect for Claire. He married Claire to protect her life. They even consummated their marriage for protection.
It turned out that Jamie wasn’t dead, though. He came back, so Claire’s marriage to Lord John Grey wasn’t legal. For a short time, though, they were married to each other.