And to think, it all started in a cave. Rose Leslie, who graces the cover of Tatler’s July issue, fell in love with her husband, Kit Harington, while the pair were filming Game of Thrones. Amid the sex and slaughter of the Seven Kingdoms, the love story of Ygritte, a wild woman from ‘beyond the wall’ and moody hero Jon Snow was one of the only real romances in the famously cruel television series. Naturally, after three seasons of cavern-based coitus, their all-too-brief relationship ended with an arrow in Ygritte’s back. That was that for Rose and Kit’s characters, but fortunately enough, a real-life love had blossomed behind the camera, and over a decade (and two children) later, the pair are happily married.
Granted, they didn’t quite meet on set. ‘We had known each other before we started working together on Game of Thrones,’ Leslie once told PEOPLE, ‘It was always such a privilege to be working opposite him and such a blessing that we get on in real life because it made our characters more believable.’ How did the pair originally cross paths? Perhaps some meeting of the Scottish aristocracy. Rose Leslie claims heritage from two of the country’s most storied clans. Her father, Sebastian Arbuthnot-Leslie, is the chieftain of Clan Leslie’s Aberdeenshire branch, while her mother, Candida, can trace her family tree back to Simon Fraser, 13th Lord Lovat, and through him all the way back to King Charles II. As for Kit, he is the son of Sir David Harington, 15th Baronet, through whom he is related to King James I.