My friend once told me I was a Charlotte. At the time, it felt like the ultimate insult. 

After all, for a long time, Sex And The City’s Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) was everyone’s least favourite character. A marriage-obsessed, prudish Park Avenue princess, Charlotte was always the boring, conservative one of the fabulous foursome. More often than not, she was the butt of the joke, with the other three consistently mocking her for her prissy ways and even leaving her out of some of their brunches. 

In fact, even the creator of Sex And The City, Candace Bushnell, wasn’t a Charlotte fan. “My friends and I always used to joke that, in real life, Carrie, Miranda and Samantha would be friends and Charlotte would not be friends with them,” she once told Bustle. “Charlotte was manufactured to provide that romantic [archetype] of, ‘Oh, I want to find a man.’ I didn’t know women who were like that.”

In other words, no one wanted to be a Charlotte.

When it was announced that the show’s reboot, And Just Like That, would not be featuring everyone’s favourite fiercely independent PR maven, Samantha Jones, we all wondered who could fill her shoes to become the show’s true icon. The consensus was: probably Miranda, possibly Carrie, and certainly not Charlotte.

However, as the reboot has fumbled onwards to its chaotic second season finale, somehow, Charlotte York has emerged as the show’s true hero. 

Throughout this season, Charlotte has consistently stood out as the only woman out of the original three who is acting even remotely like a grown-up. Miranda, once known as ‘the mature one’, has continued her bizarre trajectory of flailing around between her messy breakups. Carrie, on the other hand, is still the same old Carrie –  she’s back with Aidan and is, seemingly, very happy to be uprooting her carefully constructed life for the sake of a man, all while demanding too much from her friends. Even Samantha made a brief, bizarre return in the finale, only to chirp out a few London puns and say “ta ta”. 

And so, in the disjointed finale, Charlotte is the only one who really deserves any admiration at all. 

This season, Charlotte has returned to work, and her family aren’t too pleased about it. Last week, after being hounded by texts and calls from her husband and children who can’t seem to function without her constant presence, she went out for drinks with her colleagues. She did sell a painting to Sam Smith for at least $100,000, after all – she is “slaying”. Before long, though, she had ditched her phone into a pitcher of margaritas. 

When she returned home, a drunk Charlotte was sublimely unapologetic. “I had a life before you,” she slurs, before retreating into her room with her dog. Honestly? Iconic behaviour.

In this week’s finale, Charlotte continued to prove that she is the show’s uncontested best character when she managed to deliver a feminist monology that rivals even the America-Ferrera-in-Barbie speech – all while hungover.

Harry wakes her up, telling her that Anthony is downstairs waiting for her, before yelling in exasperation, “I can’t do it all, Charlotte!”

As a woman who has been hungover many times in the past, this would have sent me over the edge. Charlotte, however, remains calm. 

“I can’t talk loud so please just listen,” she says. “You are not doing it all. I know because you made a few breakfasts and you ran a few errands that it feels like you are, but in fact, you’re doing the bare minimum of what I and other women have been asked – no, expected – to do around the house for years and years and years. And now, I am asking – no, expecting – you to help me with part of it, not all of it, because I love my work and I am good at it. I want to keep doing what I am doing – minus the black-out drinking.” 

Internally, I cheered. 

Charlotte’s journey from Park Avenue princess to self-assured, empowered career woman has been a joy to watch. 

These days, Charlotte is a woman who sees the world and her place within it with rare clarity. In a chaotic, often nonsensical finale that saw Carrie seemingly giving up the next five years of her life for a man, Miranda only beginning to deal with her baggage and Samantha stuck parroting out decades-old gags, Charlotte has become a figure of real nuance and an unexpected voice of feminist reason. Finally, I am proud to be a Charlotte.

Images: Warner Bros.; Getty