Five Times Jamie Fraser Was Everyone’s Favorite Boyfriend

How is everyone’s quarantine going? Mine’s been fine. I’ve played three video games straight through, read nine books, and watched at least 10 seasons of tv shows. So at least I’ve been kind of productive? If we call media consumption such. 

A lot of what I’ve mentally ingested these past couple of months has been comfort food, things I know I enjoy that don’t upset me. As many of you probably are, I’ve been feeling rather delicate while a pandemic sweeps through the world. So why I picked Outlander to be my next watch on Netflix is a question I can’t possibly begin to answer, as it is frequently disturbing and upsetting. But there’s just something about that show that keeps me coming back, and it pretty much begins and ends with Jamie Fraser and the love of his life, Claire.

If you’re not familiar with the story, Claire Randall and her husband Frank were reconnecting after years spent apart during World War II. Claire was a combat nurse and Frank did something with spies that isn’t really explained in the show. While on a second honeymoon in Scotland, Claire touches a stone in a standing circle and is transported back to 1743. She’s picked up by a band of highlanders and taken back to their clan seat at Castle Leoch. 

If this intrigues you enough to want to watch the show (if you haven’t already and don’t want to be spoiled) stop now and get yourself to either Netflix or Starz. 

This post isn’t a review of either the books or the television show. I thought about how to tell you that you should be watching this show, how amazing the acting in it is, how beautifully shot it is, how I’ve been humming the main theme for weeks now, how passionate the chemistry is between the two leads, and couldn’t come up with a better way to do it then to share a bunch of videos. 

So that’s what I’m going to do instead. Five times in the first season that James Fraser was everyone’s favorite boyfriend. These are in the order that they happen in the show because that made more sense to me than ranking them. 

Episode 1×02 – “Castle Leoch”

Claire is found by Dougal MacKenzie, War Chief and brother of the Laird of Clan MacKenzie, and his band of highland warriors shortly after stumbling through a little over 200 years of time. She’s dressed only in what they call a shift and we call a normal dress for 1948, she’s cold, she’s surrounded by a bunch of brutish men she doesn’t know, she’s been ripped from anything that possibly makes sense, and she’s almost been sexually assaulted by a man that wears her husband’s face. 

Because oh yeah, that’s a thing. She and Frank had gone to Inverness for their second honeymoon specifically because Frank wanted to do some research on Captain Jack Randall, an ancestor of his who had been killed at the Battle of Culloden. The first person Claire encounters in 1743 is Jack Randall, but he’s basically evil incarnate for reasons we will get into later on this list. For now, just know that he attempts to have his way with her before she’s rescued by Murtagh Fitzgibbons. 

The band travels for a while, gets involved in a skirmish with some British red coats, travels some more, and ends up back at Castle Leoch, the seat of Clan MacKenzie. Claire tends wounds incurred by young Jamie Fraser. They’d shared a horse (a kink I didn’t know I had) for the entire journey, but are still super awkward with each other in this scene. 

It’s lovely and you should watch it. 

But my favorite part didn’t make the cut here. Jamie stands up after Claire finishes tending his wounds. He stands in front of her, totally shirtless, covered only by the bandages she’d just finished tying around him, and he says, “You need not be scared of me. Nor anyone else here, so long as I’m with you.” 

First of all, swoon. Second of all, she then says “and when you’re not with me?” which, honestly, seems like a pretty reasonable question. He cautions her that she is English in a place where that’s not a pretty thing to be right now, and tells her to watch herself. But honestly, we all know his intention was basically that she wouldn’t be without him. At least not for long. 

Episode 1×05 – “Rent”

Colum MacKenzie sent his brother Dougal and his men on the rounds to collect the rent from the tenants on MacKenzie lands. Claire was ordered along to offer her healing services in the various towns. (Sadly, she is given her own horse on this journey.) On this particular day, they were met along the road by bodies on crosses with Ts carved into their bellies, hung there by the British soldiers for being traitors to the crown. 

Jamie takes it upon himself to protect her with his own body while she sleeps. Beds were certainly available, and if not there’s always a hay loft in the barn. But he chooses the cold hard floor outside her door because someone in the tavern below might try something. Because she’s British, she’s alone, and he loves her.

Episode 1×07 – “The Wedding”

Claire has an unexpected encounter with a British officer in one of the towns they visit to collect rent. This officer finds them again on their journey, this time with an entire troop of soldiers, and Claire and Dougal MacKenzie are taken to the nearby garrison to visit with the general. This meeting is interrupted by Jack Randall, who recognizes Claire and wants to know why she, a British woman, has come under the protection of the MacKenzies. 

Any story Claire tells him he doesn’t believe, but her biggest mistake comes when she mentions a highland boy he had whipped 200 times in the span of a week. See, Jack Randall is creepily obsessed with Jamie Fraser, and also an actual sadist. Jamie had escaped from custody and Randall hadn’t known his location. Giving him this information let Randall know that she had met Jamie. He tries to get information from her in various ways, resorting at the end to punching her in the stomach, hard enough to make her lose her breath. 

Dougal rescues her from that beating and takes her as Randall has no authority to keep her, but Randall demands that she be brought back for further “conversation” the next day. Legally, Dougal has to produce her as she is a British subject. But, if she’d been Scottish, he wouldn’t have to. So he decides to make her Scottish.

With a wedding. 

Jamie, you’ll learn later, is already in love with her at this point. Why wouldn’t he be? She’s beautiful, smart, and super handy to have around as a combat nurse, especially in an age where treating a patient sometimes involved exorcisms or blowing smoke up his ass. 

So he promises her his protection. That of his clan, his family, and his body as well. 

Again, I swoon. I swoon forever. 

Episode 1×09 – “The Reckoning”

Claire is briefly left alone on the road while Jamie and the rest go to meet with an unsavory character that may be able to help clear Jamie’s name. After realizing they’re in the vicinity of the standing stones, Claire makes a break for it and is within inches of touching the center stone again when she is seized by a British patrol and taken to nearby Fort William for her meeting with Jack Randall. 

Jamie and the other men infiltrate the fort and rescue Claire before anything too terribly awful happens, but Claire still has to face the fact that she put everyone at risk by running away. Given, of course, that no one knows why she did it and she doesn’t explain. She and Jamie have it out by the side of a river, but apologies to the rest of the men fall on deaf ears. It’s highland custom, apparently, for a husband to spank his wife when she disobeys his orders (he’d told her to stay put), and no one will speak to her until that’s taken care of. 

So Jamie spanks her with his belt, the men are appeased, and Claire spends the next several days angry at everyone. When they return to Castle Leoch, she won’t let Jamie sleep in her room. Jamie knows they can’t continue as they’ve been, and realizes that the way it’s always been for highlanders doesn’t necessarily have to be the way it is in his marriage. 

In a scene mirroring the pledge of fealty to their laird earlier in the show, Jamie pledges his fealty to Claire, that if he should break the vow to never raise his hand against her again, that knife should be the one that kills him. 

I could not resist such a vow, and this video cuts off before you are given the knowledge that Claire cannot resist either. They have some life affirming sex right after. 

This is also the scene where you find out that the ring Jamie insisted be made for Claire before he agreed to go through with the wedding was made from the silver key to Lallybroch, the home of the Fraser Clan.

Episode 1×11 – “The Devil’s Mark”

Jamie is forced to leave Claire at Castle Leoch after fighting some representatives of a rival clan without the MacKenzie’s permission (listen, he was provoked). While gone, a young miss in the castle who’d had her sights on him before Claire burst onto the scene gets Claire and her friend in the village, Geilis, arrested for witchcraft. 

Claire doesn’t go down quietly during this trial, and before burning at the stake is dragged into the center of the courtroom and beaten with a cane, just to add something to the awfulness, I guess. They get some good strokes in before Jamie bursts into the courtroom and draws swords on the entire lot of them. 

Literally rides in on a white stallion (it’s not white it’s black, but you know what I mean) to save her, and no court of law or god will stand in his way. 

This, by the way, is also the episode where she finally tells him she’s from the future, and like an excellent boyfriend he believes her. He takes her back to the stones and gives her the opportunity to go home (which, actually, we now know would not have worked because she didn’t have a precious stone to burn on the journey through). She doesn’t take it, of course, choosing to stay in this dangerous time, because she loves him.

Episode 1×15 – “Wentworth Prison”

I don’t have a video of this, and you probably wouldn’t really want to watch it if I did. When they were married, Jamie promised Claire the protection of his body. In this episode, he makes good on this promise. 

While forced to go on a raid with the Black Watch (basically a gang that offers local landowners their protection from the British patrols in exchange for money and goods), Jamie and the Watch are picked up by the British and sentenced to be hanged. Jack Randall arrives at the prison just in time to save Jamie’s neck. Claire and Murtagh (Jamie’s godfather) find out where he’s being held and make an attempt to rescue him. Claire gets as far as the cell when Randall discovers her. 

I honestly didn’t watch the entirety of this scene, as I’m incredibly squeamish and it involves Jack Randall nailing Jamie’s hand to a table. But, knowing that Randall would torture Claire to torture him, Jamie offers him something that Randall had previously asked for, his body, in exchange for Claire’s life. 

Randall accepts the deal. Claire, Murtagh, and some of Dougal’s band (but not Dougal himself) come up with a plan to rescue him, but not before a lot of truly gross and awful stuff happens to him. Seriously, I can’t even watch the whole thing, it’s really bad. And he knew it would be bad. And even after, when he’s so ashamed of everything that happened that he can’t look at her, he would do it again to keep her safe. 

In conclusion: I’m well aware that James Alexander Malcom MacKenzie Fraser is a fictional character meant to be some lofty ideal of a man. In some ways, sure. He is that. I mean, basically all the ways I’ve listed here. But if you’ve read the book or watched the show, you know that they aren’t afraid of showing his warts as well. He’s a whole flesh and blood person that I absolutely adore with my whole heart. 

Screencap from Period Drama