Brianna has some pretty heavy issues with her parents, but she handles them so well

Brianna adores Frank, who brings her up as his own daughter despite knowing that Jamie is the biological father. It is Frank who piques her on-going interest in history, watches her graduate from high school and spends long nights in deep conversation with her. Ah yes, Frank is a good and loyal man (well, for the most part). But Bri starts to realise tensions between Frank and her mother Claire as she grows older. “Someday I promise, you’ll understand,” he tells her in a season four flashback. Frank finds a new lover, decides to divorce Claire and makes plans to move back to England. When he tells Brianna this news, asking her to join him, she understandably doesn’t react well. The pair argue and Bri storms off, ignoring Frank when he tells her he loves her. “If I’d have stayed with you in the car that night, you’d still be here,” she cries to Frank’s gravestone in the next scene. “But I’m going to soldier on, like you said. You were my hero, daddy.”

No you’re crying. But that’s only the start of Brianna’s family complications.

Claire only tells Brianna the truth about Jamie during a trip to Scotland, when Bri finds a newspaper clipping about her mother’s disappearance. “It’s complicated,” Claire tells her daughter, in one of the biggest understatements of the century. Bri then storms off, earning her an unfair reputation on the internet as being a ”brat”. Now, let’s just take a moment to imagine digesting the news that your mum once time travelled back to 18th century Scotland and France with a red-topped hot Scot who turns out to be your real dad. I mean, just how would you react to that little revelation? Of course, Brianna later realises that Claire has been telling the truth when she sees her about to travel through time at Craigh na Dun. But rather than staying angry at any of the three grown adults who have lied to her all her life, Bri makes amends with Claire, encourages her to go back and be with Jamie, then eventually makes her own time-travelling journey to join them both as a family.

Does that really sound like the behaviour of a “brat”?

Outlander season five: in praise of Brianna, the series’ most underrated character