Of course there's a tiny Bridgerton reference in The Sims Royalty & Legacy expansion because it's basically a Lady Whistledown simulation

The next Sims 4 expansion, Royalty & Legacy, launches next week and the details we've seen so far are all to do with family legacy and scandals. Coincidentally (or likely not) it's landing right in the middle of season 4 of Bridgerton, the regency era romance TV show that is also all about the scandals of capital 'S' Society. The new expansion essentially puts you in the role of chief gossip columnist Lady Whistledown, uncovering and spreading secrets about the nobility.

Gameplay screenshots are from the preview build of Royalty & Legacy which not final and is subject to change.

We're all Whistledown now

The new life aspiration for Royalty & Legacy is "Social Puppeteer" with goals like discovering secrets of other sims, extorting them with those secrets, and exposing them to ignite a scandal that damages reputations. Eventually I'm meant to work my way up to finding out secrets about the Robin Hood-like "Royal Robber" character and becoming friends with the shady information broker.

Secrets and scandals are all tracked in my sim's notebook with details about each secret's severity and how long before it "fades into obscurity" and ceases being useful, which is usually a matter of a few days or a week for "major" secrets. Any secrets of their own are also logged in the notebook.

It's all so very Whistledown-like that I went digging to see if there was a reference to the show anywhere in the expansion the way The Sims often adds easter eggs in the descriptions for in-game items. The cheeky Bridgerton reference is tucked away on a new rug item, of all things. The two pieces of the "This Rug Is Made For Walking Rug by Regalissimo" have little nods to the opening greeting of each of Lady Whistledown's publications, saying "Nothing can end your dynasty, dear reader" and "The land that you see in front of you, dear reader?"

Quite good timing on that, after an early episode of the latest Bridgerton season that premiered just two weeks ago really hangs a lantern on it when Queen Charlotte asks Penelope "Lady Whistledown" Bridgerton to recite her upcoming publication aloud, specifically demanding she begin with "Dear reader."

Sims of Society

It's only a tiny nod, but the comparisons are only going to pile up higher when Royalty & Legacy launches just a couple weeks ahead of Bridgerton season 4 part 2. There are already dozens of player-made Bridgerton families waiting to be downloaded from the gallery including several based on the season's romantic lead Sophie Baek.

Royalty & Legacy's new features around family trees and hidden family connections play into this season of Bridgerton pretty darn well too. In the expansion, family trees can have "secret connections" and "forged connections", meaning you can play out some extra realism of Sophie's story as a nobleman's illegitimate daughter. All the eager Live Mode players are going to have a lot of new dramatic storyline possibilities when they dig into the web of family connections you can create.

From just a few hours with the preview build of Royalty & Legacy I did see a lot of potential for dramatic storylines but I did feel, again, that life sims should be strategy games. Asking a sim for a secret about a mutual acquaintance gives a popup where I can accept or reject the secret as true and I wish that digging for secrets would just result in one being generated whether I like it or not, adding risk to my choice to go looking for them.

That's likely to be a monkey's paw request though, because my secret digging so far has resulted in multiple instances of the same secrets for several different sims—a love affair with the base game burglar Robin Banks or some illicit use of voodoo dolls. There are definitely more fun kinds of secrets to uncover (secret relationships, secret children, etc) but it feels like I might have to play both sides of the chess board to make them happen.

We'll have more to say about Royalty & Legacy after playing the launch version of the expansion on February 12, but here are some other little bits and features I picked up after a few hours with the pre-release build:

• Noble Decrees can be enacted by reaching level 5 or higher in the Noble career
• Noble Decrees are a bit like lot effects that apply to the entire kingdom, things like increased skill gains, higher cooked food quality, or increased rates of twins
• The reward trait for completing the Social Puppeteer aspiration is an "Ironclad Reputation" that makes a sim immune to extortion via secrets
• Non-noble and base game sims can also have secrets
• You can use the Family Tree Tapestry item to forge a family connection to another sim
• The Royal Robber can sometimes leave a gift of simoleons outside your door
• There are 10 ranks of nobility for a kingdom and you can change the title names (masculine, feminine, and neutral) for all of them in the kingdom editing menu from neighborhood view
• You can extort a dynasty head to forgive or name outcasts, change heirs, receive "favor", make rivalries or alliances, abdicate their position, or just for money