Chapter Text
Posted to the Instagram account of @GStJames:
[The post features a screenshot of text in a classic black serif font, over a soft cream background]
Hey everyone! By now I’m sure most of you have heard the news that Ed and I are no longer together. Just want to take this moment to express my gratitude for everyone who’s reached out with well wishes, and to reassure you all that I’m okay and there are no hard feelings between us. We had two wonderful years together, but we’re both ready to move on to the next phase of our lives, and it’s become clear that we want different things for the future. Obviously, I know there’s going to be a lot of speculation about how things ended, given the other big news shared today, but that story is theirs to tell. All I can say is that I wish them every happiness, and I continue to have nothing but respect for Ed as a person, a friend, and an artist.
This will be the only statement I make on the subject, and I will not be responding to media inquiries, so please be aware that any other quotes or headlines attributed to me are false.
Thanks again for all the support — xoxo
GSJ
[As of July 21st, 2025 this post had received 1.2 million likes; comments were disabled]
Posted to the Instagram account of @Blackbeard:
[The post features a carousel of seventeen images of seemingly random objects and places, including: an extreme close up of the curling edges of a rose’s petals—all in sunset shades of pink and orange and coral; a violet-tinged sky with the silhouettes of three gulls flying by; a close up of two people’s temples pressed together—all that can be seen is a small section of their hair and forehead, a bit of eyebrow, but one has blonde curls and the other is clearly Blackbeard; a blurry shot of coins at the bottom of a fountain; the final shot is of a white person’s hand splayed out on the seat of what appears to be a porch swing, wearing Blackbeard’s iconic emerald ring on their left ring finger]
Hey crew, I’m engaged! To a totally different guy than the one you were expecting!
My publicist begged me to use the very carefully worded statement she wrote me but it sounded like total bullshit and I didn’t want to lie to you guys. Besides, this can’t be any crazier than the time I allegedly donated someone’s cars to charity*
The real story is pretty fucking nuts, and romantic as hell, but I won’t bore you with the details. All you need to know is I’m in love, and I’m happy, and his name is Stede. Can’t wait for you all to get to know him, too 💜🌹
*for legal purposes this is a joke. I know nothing about the whereabouts of Sam Bellamy’s car collection and I was out with friends at a bar in West Hollywood on the night of February 25th, 2015
[as of July 21st, 2025, this post had received 220 million likes and 153k comments in response; the following comprises a small selection]
@junejulyaugust6: THE RING????????
@violent-svnrise: EMERALD! RING!
@preethi.singh: I LITERALLY HAVE THE ZOOMIES RN LOOKING AT THIS IM RUNNING UP TO RANDOM PEOPLE ON THE STREET
@disco_lizard: captain holt VINDICATIONNNNNN.gif
@kendra.p.randall: not to armchair diagnose a celebrity but girl its giving manic episode
@slut4princesssadeyes: THE RING
@its_sami64: RING
@dannyroya-song: lol when I was 12 I was kicked out of a blackbeard fan club facebook group for bullying first musers. are you ACTUALLY telling me they were right all along??
@sweetlikesevensugars89: come to brazil!
@fallingstarsfallinghearts: ok but there are 3 birds in that one photo of the sky, 9 coins in the fountain, and 8 slats in the porch swing bench!! BB8 release date 3/9???
A selection of headlines from magazines and online publications:
BLACKBEARD ENGAGED! AND IT’S NOT GABE ST. JAMES!
GABE ST. JAMES HEARTBROKEN—BLACKBEARD PLAYED HIM!!
EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT BLACKBEARD’S SURPRISE FIANCÉ, STEDE BONNET
LOVE AFFAIRS & LEGAL DRAMA: HOW THE DISGRACED HEIR TO THE BONNET FORTUNE STOLE BLACKBEARD’S HEART
INTERNET SLEUTHS UNCOVER MYSTERIOUS PAST FOR BLACKBEARD’S BONNET
“OUR STORY IS OURS” — BLACKBEARD AND BONNET SAY THEY HAVE NO PLANS TO SHARE THE FULL TALE
BLACKBEARD’S SURPRISE ENGAGEMENT AND THE OTHER 23 MOST SHOCKING CELEBRITY SCANDALS OF ALL TIME
GABE ST. JAMES ON THE REBOUND! BLACKBEAR’S JILTED LOVER SPOTTED AT POPULAR GAY NIGHTCLUB
15 ICONIC SECRET WEDDINGS AND SURPRISE CELEBRITY ENGAGEMENTS
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT FIRST MUSE THEORY
DID BLACKBEARD AND BONNET ACTUALLY MEET WHILE SKY-DIVING OUT OF DIFFERENT PLANES? THE REAL STORY!
A selection of reactions from Bluesky:
@theferocity.bsky.social: blackbeard heard lana del rey was marrying that swamp tour guy and he was like hold my beer
@marryme-ayoedebiri.bsky.social: he couldn’t handle not being the biggest freak amongst the pop girlies!!
@hunteryharris.bsky.social: Since we are once again discussing Blackbeard’s problematic love life, going to take this opportunity to re-plug this evergreen piece I wrote in 2018 [link embed - Boys Don’t Cry Black Glitter Tears: Blackbeard and the Gender of Heartbreak, Vulture]
@lavendergayze.bsky.social: gaylors rn: [image embed: an old selfie of Taylor Swift making an exaggerated sad face, overlaid with white text that reads “I don’t really care if something good happened to you. It should have happened to me instead.”]
@kaylortruther.bsky.social: blackbeard crew how does it feel to be god's favorite?
@collarmekittyboy.bsky.social: I looked up a picture and THAT’S blackbeard’s fiance? god damn 🥵🫦🍆💦💦💦💦💦
@blackbeardsbride.bsky.social: THAT GUY??? like ok i know he’s not actually going to marry me. but THAT GUY??? [image embed: gif of Michael Bluth from Arrested Development looking perplexed and saying, “her?”]
@blackbeardsbride.bsky.social: can stede bonnet fight?
@blackbeardsbride.bsky.social: idc if they’re engaged until they say i do i still have a chance
@talia-ho.bsky.social: I’m on deadline for like three other assignments rn but instead I’m crafting a multi-bullet point email to my editor trying to convince him that the blackbeard news means my time is best spent re-ranking all 119 of his songs…
@m.alamby.bsky.social: [quote posting @heymancoolhat.bsky.social: “what’s a true fact about you that no one would believe?”] lol I almost married Blackbeard’s fiancé
A post from the r/FirstMuse subreddit, with a representative sampling of responses:
r/FirstMuse • 3w ago
u/pricklybear62
[image embed: post opens with a screenshot of an online article, the headline of which reads: BLACKBEARD AND STEDE BONNET MET WHILE HIKING EVEREST]
This has to be a bit they’re doing right? Like… they’re fucking with us, obviously. Right?? We already figured out who Stede Bonnet is, we know we were right all along, why else would they continue to play dumb?
⬆️31.6k ⬇️
u/runrabb1trun • 2w ago
once SB was identified I drove out to that town, Silkwater Shores, to scope out the bookstore. I’m not kidding every single business in town had put up a “gone fishin” sign
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u/hearteyesmfer2 • 2w ago
ok this is what’s convinced me. i thought you all were insane but there’s no way this isn’t a bit
⬆️1.1k ⬇️
u/mrdarcyssixpack • 2w ago
no one yell at me but can someone explain to me like I’m 5 what it is that we think know about the two of them?? I’ve been off the grid a few months I’m literally just finding out he’s engaged
⬆️1.8k ⬇️
geraldine556 • 2w ago
dude what fucking remote corner of nowhere have you been living in that you haven’t heard??
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u/mrdarcyssixpack • 2w ago
i’ve spent the last eight months embedded with houthi rebels in yemen, reporting on the conflict
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u/geraldine556 • 2w ago
well. yeah okay, mrdarcyssixpack, that makes sense then.
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fake-fan34 • 5d ago
it always blows my mind when i find out regular smart people with real jobs are hanging out in here with the rest of us clowns. like finding out my cardiologist is a brony
⬆️1.9k ⬇️
u/porchswings-and-coralroses • 2d ago
OKAY god if no one else is going to answer you, I will.
first of all, go look up @firstmuse-forevermuse on tiktok, they have like a twelve part series breaking it all down in way more details than I ever could. but the tl;dr is that in July Blackbeard announced that he was engaged to someone named Stede, and on the same day Gabe St. James posted that they had (obviously) broken up. Both of them have insisted that there was no cheating, they’re still good friends, etc etc but (again, obviously) it sent the entire fandom (and world) into a total tailspin trying to figure out what happened. People pretty quickly figured out the new fiancé’s full name (Stede Bonnet), which isn’t exactly a common name, so then the internet did its thing. Pretty soon, people had uncovered that he lived in some tiny town in Massachussetts, and from there people started uncovering like one weird thing after another. First there was an engagement announcement from decades ago to some woman, and that sent people looking through state marriage records. Almost immediately they found one from 2004, for the marriage of Stede Bonnet and EDWARD TEACH. Obviously a pretty big bombshell, but then someone else uncovered the court filing for their divorce, and the date for that was June 11th OF THIS YEAR. Like, a month before they made their announcement??? So now obviously everyone is combing through all BB’s old interviews, the song lyrics, and it just feels like really really clear that this Stede Bonnet guy WAS the first muse—they got married when they were really young (BB would have only been 21) and at some point Blackbeard left and went to Hollywood and they’ve been estranged all this time. Like. It’s really the only thing that makes sense.
sorry I thought I’d calmed down but as I sit here typing this all out I feel positively insane again
⬆️11.1k ⬇️
u/mrdarcyssixpack • 2d ago
wow you go undercover for 8 months and you truly never know what you’ll come back to
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u/dontcallme_bitch • 3w ago
have we considered that maybe they actually do just want their privacy? we’re not entitled to every bit of their private lives just bc he’s famous…
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u/pricklybear62 • OP • 3w ago
normally i’d agree with you but then why put all those obvious first muse easter eggs in the instagram announcement? it feels a message, one he knew that only the musers would get
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u/dontcallme_bitch • 3w ago
you think blackbeard is sending you coded messages? babe, that’s delulu. log off.
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u/pricklybear62 • OP• 3w ago
babe. you’re on r/firstmuse. don’t show up at the clown convention and act like you’re better than us
⬆️3k ⬇️
Transcript of a TikTok video posted by @firstmuse-forevermuse:
@firstmuse-forevermuse: Hi everyone! This is part 3 of my 12 part series, Unmasking the Muse, where we do a deep dive into everything we know about Blackbeard’s surprise fiancé, Stede Bonnet. So far, in parts 1 and 2, we’ve laid out the timeline of Blackbeard’s breakup with Gabe St. James and the announcement of the engagement, as well as some of the preliminary document discoveries that people have uncovered—namely, the record of their 2004 marriage, the subsequent divorce filing dated June of this year, and court documents detailing the legal drama over Stede Bonnet’s inheritance. If any of that sounds like nonsense to you, go back and watch parts 1 and 2.
So, okay: we know Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet were previously married. But what do we actually know about this guy? Obviously, when Blackbeard first got famous, a lot of people went digging to try and find out whatever they could about his past, but there wasn’t actually all that much to dig up. There is one image that goes semi-viral every now and again: it’s the front page of the school newspaper for Ocksworth-Carnegie Hall, a very fancy private school in Connecticut.
[@firstmuse-forevermuse has used TikTok’s green screen effect so that the newspaper front page in question appears as a background behind them; this issue is dated April 22nd, 1999, and the lead headline reads SAY WILLKOMMEN TO CABARET! above a grainy black and white photo of young Edward Teach on stage, performing as the MC in the musical Cabaret. Below it is a review of the production, naming Edward Teach as the star of the show and praising his performance]
@firstmuse-forevermuse: If you’re an old school member of the Crew, I’m sure you’ve seen this image before. We’ll come back to it in a sec. Anyway, so based on this I knew Edward Teach had grown up somewhere around Greenwich, Connecticut. People have tried to search local newspaper archives for mention of him without much success, but no one had ever done the same for Stede Bonnet, because obviously we didn’t know his name until now. But it turns out, the Bonnets were very much the type of family that got written about in the local paper.
[the green screen effect changes the background through a quick succession of digitized newspaper articles from Greenwich Time, the local daily newspaper, detailing various business dealings for Bonnet Corp., as well as a few selections from the society pages—weddings, debutantes making their entry into society, et cetera]
@firstmuse-forevermuse: As you can see, we’ve got a lot of our standard rich white people bullshit, including…this.
[a new Greenwich Time articles appears behind @firstmuse-forevermuse: an engagement announcement in the society pages, detailing the impending nuptials of Stede Bonnet to Mary Allamby, daughter of Archibald Allamby III and Alice “Bunny” Allamby of Westport. A photo accompanies the article, featuring a young Stede Bonnet, awkward and gangly in a drab suit, posed stiffly beside a young woman with dark hair in a tea length dress; neither of them are smiling. The article is dated February 6th, 2004.]
@firstmuse-forevermuse: (pointing behind themself to gesture at the newspaper photo on the green screen) This is Stede Bonnet of Greenwich, Connecticut, and his soon-to-be bride. Don’t they look happy? And did you notice the date? Now, look at this.
[Green screen now shows a marriage record from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, noting the marriage of Stede Bonnet and Edward Teach as performed by a justice of the peace at City Hall in Springfield, MA on March 9th, 2004]
@firstmuse-forevermuse: Just over a month after announcing his marriage to a nice young lady from the Connecticut uppercrust, Stede Bonnet—who would have been just twenty-one at the time, same as Edward Teach—moved to Massachussetts and married Edward Teach at City Hall. And I will remind you, for all my baby gays out there who don’t know their history, Massachussetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage; which went into effect on January 17th of that year. And remember how I told you we’d be swinging back around to that old photo of Blackbeard as the MC in his high school production of Cabaret?
[Green screen returns to the previous school newspaper article, with the photo of Edward Teach performing as the MC. A few other members of the cast are also visible in the photo; presumably background chorus members—they’re blurrier and less distinct than Teach, front and center]
@firstmuse-forevermuse: (pointing to a young white man behind Teach and to his left in the photo) Look familiar?
[On closer inspection, the person in the photo does bear a resemblance to the young Stede Bonnet seen in the engagement announcement photo]
@firstmuse-forevermuse: So, here is what we know. (counting facts off on their fingers) Edward Teach and Stede Bonnet attended the same private school, at least for high school. Stede Bonnet was engaged to be married to a woman, and then shortly thereafter is recorded as marrying Edward Teach, in the only state where gay marriage would have been legal at the time. According to later court documents regarding his father’s estate, Bonnet's family subsequently attempted to disinherit him. So keeping all that in mind, I want you to go listen to the song Run With Me again. Really listen to those lyrics. And then you come back and you tell me what you think might have happened here. We’ll talk about that some more tomorrow, when I’m back for Part 4.
Transcript from a YouTube clip of Blackbeard’s red carpet interview from the 2025 VMAs:
Red Carpet Correspondent 1: And this is so exciting of course because it’s Blackbeard’s first red carpet appearance with his mysterious new fiancé, Stede Bonnet! For those of you who don’t follow along with celebrity news as obsessively as the rest of us, Blackbeard surprised the entire world just a few months ago when he announced that he and Gabe St. James were no longer together, and he was engaged to someone no one had ever heard of! Let’s go to Mary Beth with the interview.
[Camera cuts to another host, standing next to Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet on the red carpet.]
Interviewer: Blackbeard! I hear congratulations are in order! (she holds the mic out to Blackbeard)
Blackbeard: Yup, we’re deliriously happy together. (He wraps his arm around Stede Bonnet’s shoulder, disgustingly smitten)
Stede Bonnet: (looks straight at the camera and waves, like he’s addressing the audience at home directly) Hello! I’m Stede!
I: I mean, I have to ask the question that’s on everyone’s mind: how did you two even meet?
[Blackbeard and Bonnet share a glance, both grinning]
BB: Well, it’s a funny story-
SB: You see, I’d been gut stabbed-
BB: Yeah, my tour bus broke down outside some biker bar in Texas-
SB: So there I am, bleeding out-
BB: Stopped in to get a drink-
SB: And whom do I see, but an angel clad all in black leather, standing over me?
BB: He looked like a piece of raw chicken someone had dropped in the dirt.
BB and SB, together: It was love at first sight.
I: (for a moment, she says nothing—looking entirely nonplussed; clearly no idea what to do with this obviously fake story) Well, okay then! And who are you both wearing?
Tumblr post from @blackbeards-mascara:
idk I know this isn’t the most popular take right now, we're all having a good time joking around about how they're just fucking with us, but I actually see what Blackbeard is doing as a love letter to us, the fans.
Let me explain.
There’s so much I could say about where Edward Teach ends and Blackbeard begins, but suffice to say this is a person who felt the need to create a whole separate persona for the sake of performance, because he didn’t feel comfortable offering up his full self for consumption. I don’t think it’s hard to imagine that same person might have felt an impulse to hold us—the fans, the public—at arms length. To not let us in at all. But I really think this is him winking at us, our community, and saying: you guys get it. I’ll play along.
He’s not giving us the full story, because he doesn’t want to, and that story isn’t *Blackbeard’s*—it’s his. But he also sees the community, the world we’ve built around speculating and improvising and yes-anding each other. Decoding all his art as a kind of group project. And he’s saying: regardless of what’s “true,” we should keep doing that. Keep playing together. He thinks that matters more than whatever the “real” story is.
I just think that’s neat.
[As of October 1st, 2025 this post had received 12 likes and 4 reblogs]
A thread posted to Bluesky:
@priscilla-ramos.bsky.social:
just had the craziest celeb encounter
I saw Blackbeard and his fiancé at an airport bar (1/thread)
@priscilla-ramos.bsky.social:
I swear I was going to be cool. I saw them there, a few seats down, I texted all the group chats about it, and I was planning to leave them alone 2/
@priscilla-ramos.bsky.social:
but then the two of them started talking REALLY animatedly about something, lot of gesticulating—at first I thought they were fighting but then they couldn’t stop laughing
and then the fiancé spots me staring. he turns to me and goes: can you settle an argument for us? 3/
@priscilla-ramos.bsky.social:
what were they arguing about? so glad you asked.
Blackbeard held his phone out to me. And on it is a picture of the dress. You know The Dress.
And he goes: is this blue and black or white and gold? 4/
@priscilla-ramos.bsky.social:
at first i thought they were fucking with me, but y’all they were so serious 5/
@priscilla-ramos.bsky.social:
And stg I wasn’t going to say anything. I wasn’t going to ask.
But after we discussed the dress for a while BB looks at me and he’s like: bet you want to know how we met
I don’t think I even responded. I must have had an insane look on my face. 6/
@priscilla-ramos.bsky.social:
And BB nudges Stede and goes: go on tell the story, I know you want to tell the story
so they took turns telling me this 100% fake story about how Stede Bonnet was actually a runaway prince from Genovia, and they had to hide their love all these years in case it interrupted the line of succession 7/
@priscilla-ramos.bsky.social:
YES, GENOVIA. BB PRINCESS DIARIES STAN CONFIRMED 8/
@priscilla-ramos.bsky.social:
anyway yeah if I didn’t think they were fucking with us before, I definitely do now
also they paid my entire bar tab and sent over a plate of hot wings /9