To date, her plot has mirrored many key moments in the life of a real historical figure in New York’s Gilded Age history: Alva Vanderbilt.

In the show, Bertha has befriended Ward McAllister (who was a real contemporary of Alva); thrown a grand ball in her Fifth Avenue mansion to signal to Mrs Caroline Astor and the Four Hundred that she means business (as Alva did in 1883); and she has triumphed in the War of the Operas (as Alva claimed victory too). For Bertha, life is perfect, right?

Far from it. When we left the Russells in season two, Bertha had successfully courted the Duke of Buckingham, a British aristocrat visiting New York, and welcomed him publicly as her guest to the opera, evidence that she had finally been accepted by the highest echelons of society. But beneath the surface, all is not well, with others speculating over the lengths to which she had gone in securing the Duke’s alliance. Meanwhile, she and George were at loggerheads over the marital prospects of their daughter Gladys.

If show creator Julian Fellowes means to trace real history further in The Gilded Age drama, here’s what that means for Bertha, George, and the rest of the Russell family…

Who was Alva Vanderbilt, the inspiration for Bertha Russell?

Alva Vanderbilt (née Alva Erskine Smith) was born in January 1853, in Mobile, Alabama, into a wealthy Southern family. Their fortune came from cotton – and as such, their riches were inextricably tied to the trade of enslaved people.

When victory for the Union in the American Civil War in 1865 brought about the end of slavery as an economic institution, the Smith family relocated permanently to New York City. Here, Alva soon realised that admittance into the entrenched social circles of Manhattan’s elite would be more difficult than anticipated. She had spent much of her early life in Paris and New York, receiving an education that emphasised language, arts and European manners, but even such a prestigious background would not be enough.

Ambitious and socially strategic, Alva sought to change that.

In 1875, at 22 years old, she married William Kissam Vanderbilt, grandson of railroad magnate Cornelius ‘Commodore’ Vanderbilt. As evidence of the family’s vast wealth, when Cornelius died in 1877, William Henry – William K’s father – became the richest American. Though William K (or ‘Willie’ as he was known) is described in many sources as personally shy and somewhat passive, particularly in contrast to the manoeuvrings of Alva, he was immensely wealthy – in 1885, he in turn inherited $55m from his father.

Willie and Alva’s union was seen as mutually advantageous: Alva brought charm, social intelligence, and aspirations to elevate the Vanderbilt name into the old-money elite, while William offered vast fortune and access to society’s upper echelons.

Amid Alva’s ruthless mission to engineer the Vanderbilts’ social ascent, the legendary 1883 costume ball at the newly completed Vanderbilt mansion on Fifth Avenue is regarded by many as her crowning achievement. The ball, attended by over 1,000 guests, effectively forced Mrs Caroline Astor, gatekeeper of New York’s elite, to formally acknowledge the Vanderbilts as ‘society’.

By the 1880s, despite her Southern roots, Alva had positioned herself as a major figure in the social scene of the Gilded Age.

Today, physical evidence of her social triumph survives in the form of the Marble House, an opulent mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, gifted by Willie to his wife on her 39th birthday. The Vanderbilt couple commissioned society architect Richard Morris Hunt (who had also designed their Fifth Avenue mansion) to create a ‘summer cottage’ on the coast.

Though the name evoked the modest wooden houses that had edged the Rhode Island clifftops years before, the new stretch of mansions on Bellevue Avenue that included the Marble House were modelled more closely on the Palace of Versailles. The Vanderbilts’ summer retreat featured rooms gilded with 22 carat gold, with marble balconies, electric interior lights and hand-carved detail throughout. It survives amid other palaces on the coast, including The Breakers (owned by William K’s brother Cornelius Vanderbilt II) and Beechwood (which belonged to the Astors).

When and why did the Vanderbilts divorce?

“I always do everything first,” Alva reportedly once boasted. “I blaze the trail for the rest to walk in.”

Blaze a new trail Alva did. At a time when divorce among the American elite was still rare and highly stigmatised, Alva, increasingly frustrated with Willie’s infidelity and detachment, sought a legal separation from her husband in 1895.

“I was the first girl of my ‘set’ to marry a Vanderbilt,” Alva proclaimed. “Then I was the first society woman to ask for a divorce, and within a year ever so many others had followed my example. They had been wanting divorce all the time, but they had not dared to do it until I showed them the way.”

Alva’s case was that Willie had reportedly spent increasing amounts of time away from her, often travelling in Europe and maintaining romantic liaisons with other women.

Alva tolerated his behaviour for years, in part because divorce was considered socially damaging, particularly for women. However, by the early 1890s, their marriage had grown cold and emotionally estranged. Alva is reported to have said that she was unwilling to continue living with a man who flaunted his disinterest and infidelity so openly.

The couple formally divorced in March 1895, with Alva citing adultery, which was at the time one of the few legally permissible grounds for divorce in New York.

Watch | The Gilded Age: Everything you wanted to know

The proceedings were handled discreetly, but the implications were significant. Alva retained custody of their three children, including their daughter, Consuelo, and received a settlement reportedly worth $10m (equivalent to around $380m, today).

Concerning such high-profile individuals, their divorce was a prominent example of the shifting norms of the Gilded Age, especially regarding women’s agency within marriage. Alva’s radical decision to pursue divorce, despite the potential social backlash, is evidence of both the changing social mores of the time, and Alva’s own indomitable pride and ambition.

Consuelo Vanderbilt: the real Gladys Russell?

If The Gilded Age’s Bertha and George are inspired by Alva and Willie, the latter couple’s daughter Consuelo Vanderbilt is surely the real historical parallel for the character Gladys Russell (played by Taissa Farmiga).

Throughout The Gilded Age so far, Gladys has suffered the strict attentions of her mother, in turn restrained or deployed as society currency to assist Bertha’s ambitions.

But while Bertha is portrayed as domineering though ultimately acting out of love in the series, the real treatment of Alva’s own daughter is much more severe, to say the least.

Born to Alva and Willie in 1877, Consuelo was named after Alva’s close friend, Consuelo Yznaga (a Cuban-American heiress who later became the Duchess of Manchester), which many have interpreted as a signal of Alva’s aim from the beginning: that nothing but the highest status, security and power would do for the Vanderbilt daughter.

Consuelo Vanderbilt’s early life was ruled by her mother’s aspirations. There are reports of Alva forcing her young daughter to sit with iron rods inside her corset while she was studying, to encourage good posture, and she was drilled by multiple governesses in etiquette lessons, French and German from an early age. Some sources even have Alva whipping Consuelo with a riding crop when she was disobedient.

As Consuelo grew up, she was forced to abide by Alva’s every rule. She was reportedly once told by her mother: “I don’t ask you to think, I do the thinking, you do as you are told.” To Consuelo, summers in Alva’s opulent Marble House felt like a prison.

Meanwhile, in Gilded Age society a curious pattern was emerging: that of the ‘Dollar Princess’. The somewhat cruel nickname was given to daughters of nouveau riche American families who had wealth and were schooled in social graces – but crucially, had no titles. Many such women were targeted and courted by British aristocrats who needed money to shore up their vast but crumbling estates.

Amid this phenomenon, Consuelo was the ultimate prize.

By the time she was of an age to marry, the Vanderbilt daughter was one of the most sought-after heiresses of the time. Regarded as delicately pretty and famed for her long, swan-like neck, she also promised access to a vast Vanderbilt fortune (and was worth an estimated $4bn in today’s currency).

Consuelo Vanderbilt was one of the most sought-after heiresses of the time

Alva matched her daughter to Charles Richard John Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough (cousin of Winston Churchill) – but Consuleo’s affections were already engaged elsewhere. She was in love with an American called Winthrop Rutherfurd.

Alva shut down the relationship, resorting to emotional blackmail of her daughter – she claimed Consuelo’s defiance had caused her to suffer a near-fatal heart attack – and she even reportedly threatened to shoot Rutherfurd if Consuelo married him.

Consuelo later recorded one of her mother’s attempts at diplomacy: “Of course, I’m not forcing you to marry the Duke of Marlborough. You have alternatives, you can marry his cousin, the Duke of Roxburghe instead.”

Consuelo Vanderbilt’s wedding: an unhappy match

The 18-year-old Consuelo was married to the 9th Duke of Marlborough on 6 November 1895, in St Thomas’s Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue, Manhattan.

The wedding was a spectacle that attracted thousands who gathered to witness the prestigious match. But contemporary accounts of the wedding commented not on what the bride was wearing – a cream satin gown with a five-foot long train trimmed with lace, and a wreath of orange blossoms – but her red-rimmed eyes beneath her veil.

By some accounts, the duke told Consuelo shortly after the ceremony that he was in love with another woman, and that he “despised anything that was not British”. He had also negotiated $2.5m in railroad stock from the Vanderbilts, plus an annual allowance of $100,000. Alva had secured a socially successful match for her daughter – at a price.

Despite the poor match, Consuelo went on to have great success in her British life, acquitting herself well enough in social circles across the Atlantic that she was chosen in 1902 as one of four duchesses to bear the canopy of Queen Alexandra at the coronation of Edward VII. Blenheim Palace, the duke’s country estate in Oxfordshire, was also transformed by both Consuelo’s dowry and sense of style, undergoing a combination of modernisation and renovation at the turn of the 20th century that is often credited with securing its survival into the present day.

Consuelo and her family – she and the duke had two sons – were also painted by famed artist John Singer Sargent in 1905, further enshrining their status among the pantheon of 1900s fashionable society.

But the couple continued to live largely separate lives, with extramarital affairs on both sides, and by 1906, when Consuelo was 29 years old, the Marlboroughs had separated. They formally divorced in 1921, and later the same year Consuelo married French aviator Jacques Balsan (whom she had first met more than 25 years earlier at her debutante ball).

Though she found happiness in her later years, Consuelo wrote poignantly in her 1952 memoir The Glitter and the Gold of the long shadows cast by her earliest years. “It is a melancholy fact that childhood, so short when compared with the average span of life, should exert such a strong and permanent influence on character that no amount of self-training afterwards can ever completely counter it.”

What will happen in The Gilded Age season three?

While the real Alva and Willie K were separated by March 1895, half a year before their daughter Consuelo’s marriage to the Duke of Marlborough, in The Gilded Age on screen, George and Bertha have yet to mirror their historical counterparts in ending their marriage. Meanwhile, as per the cliffhanger of season two, it seems that Gladys has been unknowingly promised by her mother to the Duke of Buckingham – and viewers will find out in season 3 if she is forced to go through with the union.

In real history, Willie remarried in 1903 to heiress Anne Harriman, and established a base in France from where he bred racehorses. He was frequently seen at French race days accompanied by his daughter Consuelo. He died in Paris in 1920.

Alva too married quickly after her divorce, to family friend Oliver Belmont in 1896. Belmont died in 1908, and it was around that time that Alva forged a more political path.

She became a prominent figure in the fight for women’s suffrage in the USA, gifting both money and prestige to the movement. Turning her indomitable nature towards the political fight, she opened the Marble House for symposiums and charitable events, and in 1912, she led the Political Equality division of the Women’s Vote Parade in New York City.

Alva relocated to France from the early 1920s onwards to be closer to Consuelo, and offered some small recompense when the Duke of Marlborough later sought a Catholic annulment from Consuelo, in order to convert to Catholicism.

Alva gave testimony in 1926 accepting some culpability (if not regret) for her daughter’s unhappy marriage: “I forced my daughter to marry the Duke. I have always had absolute power over my daughter. When I issued an order nobody discussed it. I therefore did not beg, but ordered her to marry the Duke.”

Alva’s funeral in 1933 took place in St Thomas’s Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue, Manhattan (the same church where her daughter had begun her unhappy union nearly 40 years earlier) and the occasion was a rallying moment for the women’s suffrage cause.

Female pallbearers carried her casket, and a banner featuring an embroidered quote from women’s rights activist Susan B Anthony – “Failure is Impossible” – was draped on it. Despite no shortage of wounds inflicted and grudges spawned along the way, Alva had certainly proved anything but a failure in all the goals she had set for herself.

Alva is buried with Oliver Belmont at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx.

Who knows where Julian Fellowes’ drama will take Bertha, George, and the wider Russell family tree next. But one thing’s for sure, if their story continues to trace the same tracks as the real Vanderbilts, it’s a rocky road ahead…