Game

A Ball in Meryton

A public ball the book never wrote. Meryton prices every stranger by supper, first impressions stick, and who you dance with tells the whole room a story. Mind the first impression — everyone else is minding yours.

Step inside
—
Talk in your own words
Choose how you walk in
The story still happens
Listen to the podcast
About this game

Choose your way in

Step inside as one of 5 characters — each with its own goal for the night. You'll choose when you start.

🏡The New Neighbour🕊️The Matchmaker🧣The Chaperone💰The Fortune Hunter👑Ten Thousand a Year

Where you can wander

💃The Long Room🃏The Card-Room🫖The Tea-Room🧣The Vestibule👒The Matrons' Bench

Who you'll meet

  • 🌷Elizabeth Bennetthe sharpest mind nearby
  • 🕴️Mr. Darcycareful observer
  • 🕊️Jane Bennetwatchful guest
  • 🎩Mr. Bingleyyour host
  • 👒Mrs. Bennetgossip carrier
  • ⚖️Charlotte Lucascareful observer
  • 🎖️Mr. Wickhamgossip carrier
  • 🪞Caroline Bingleywatchful guest
  • 🙇Mr. Collinsthe suitor
  • 🎀Lydia Bennetgossip carrier

Some of these characters — and the author — have their own AI chat personas you can talk to outside the game.

💬Chat with the cast anytime

  • Elizabeth BennetQuick-witted, quick to judge - and dearly loves a laugh.Chat
  • Mr. DarcyThe proud, reserved master of Pemberley.Chat
  • Jane AustenThe author herself - wry, watchful, unsparingly witty.Chat

📖Go deeper on the blog

  • Pride and Prejudice on Screen: 1995, 2005, and the 2026 Netflix Series, ComparedTwo adaptations have been arguing for twenty years about which one understood the book, and this autumn Netflix adds a third. Six hours against two, and one deliberately muddy Longbourn.
  • Is Mr Darcy a Red Flag? What Pride and Prejudice Actually Says About HimThe internet has spent a decade deciding Darcy is a warning label. Every item on the charge sheet is in Austen's text, and so is the answer to it.
  • Was Charlotte Lucas Right to Marry Mr Collins?Charlotte gets one clear-eyed speech in the whole novel and uses it to explain why she is marrying a man she cannot respect. Two hundred years of readers keep agreeing with her.
  • Wickham and Lydia: Why It Wasn't the First Time, and What the Book Says About ItMost first readings treat Lydia's elopement as the plot's one disaster. The novel told you otherwise forty pages earlier, in the letter everybody remembers for a different reason.
  • Who's Who in Pride and Prejudice: a Character Guide to the Bennets, the Bingleys and Everyone ElseTwo rich single men arrive in the same neighbourhood in the same season, and only one of them owns land. The cast of Pride and Prejudice, with the numbers Austen actually gives.
  • Pride and Prejudice's Two Failed Proposals: What Darcy's and Mr Collins's Have in CommonElizabeth Bennet turns down two proposals between one November and the following April. One is the funniest scene in the novel and one is the most painful, and Austen paired them on purpose.
  • Pride and Prejudice is a comedy, not a romance — and Mr. Collins proves it (2026)Everyone sells Pride and Prejudice as a wet-shirt romance. Open it and you find the funniest book in English — a comedy about people misjudging each other, anchored by Mr. Collins, the patron saint of secondhand embarrassment. Austen even told you so: the first draft was called First Impressions.
  • Mrs. Bennet was right all along — the entailment everyone forgets (2026)For two hundred years readers have laughed at the loud, panicking mother of five. Then the internet did the math: the Bennet estate is entailed to a male heir, so one death leaves five daughters homeless — and Mrs. Bennet is the only adult in the house treating that as the emergency it is.
  • It's always 'wyd' — Pride and Prejudice is really about saying the thing (2026)Strip away the muslin and Pride and Prejudice is a 400-page panic attack about not being able to say what you mean. The most-tattooed line isn't even Austen's. The book's actual rule is simpler and more useful than the longing: nothing moves until someone finally writes the thing down.
  • The Pride and Prejudice hand flex isn't in the book — or the script (2026)The single most-replayed Pride and Prejudice moment is three seconds of Darcy flexing his hand — and it isn't in Austen's book or even the film's script. Two hundred years on, the novel's footprint is bigger than its text: it keeps manufacturing memes, tropes, and even a common noun.
  • Pride and Prejudice Ending Explained: Where Every Bennet Ends UpThe last chapter is a roll call. Austen tells you who ends up rich, who stays silly and who never learns a thing.