Emmerdale spoilers: Tom King left seething by Belle Dingle’s innocent jibe over his surname
The path to the altar is not a smooth one for Belle Dingle (Eden Taylor-Draper) and Tom King (James Chase) on Emmerdale as Tom’s behaviour continues to give cause for concern as the wedding day approaches.
Viewers know that Tom has previously been violent towards Belle when he lashed out at her when she turned down his original proposal. Despite that and other instances where he acted in a controlling or aggressive way have been smoothed over between the pair, and Belle asked Tom to marry her in front of Torvill and Dean in a fairytale ice rink proposal.
Since then, Tom’s weirdly controlling behaviour has continued. He took big decisions such as booking the church and announcing the engagement on social media out of Belle’s hands, organised the reception for the Hide rather the the ‘family’ pub the Woolpack and made a jibe about her wedding dress that forced her to change her plans.
Despite all this, Belle is a strong-minded woman who knows what she wants and she pushes back when she feels strongly about something.
In Monday (February 12)’s episode, Liam Cavanagh (Jonny McPherson) greeted her as the future Mrs King.
Belle shocked Tom by announcing that she was planning to remain a Dingle. His reaction was awkward, as if he wanted to save face in front of Liam and there was similar awkwardness when he told the GP that he’d decided on the song for his and Belle’s first dance – managing to get a dig in at Belle about her musical tastes as he took yet another decision out of her hands.
Later, he revisited the discussion about Belle keeping her name, reasoning that the Dingles can ‘afford to lose one.’
Eden Taylor-Draper told us why it’s such a huge issue for her character.
‘I think she’s so passionate to keep her name as she is Dingle and proud to be so. The Dingle name means a lot to her. And I think especially with her mum not being there. I think that absence and their name is such a symbol for Belle.’
Belle also had another reason for not becoming Mrs King, which she shared with Tom. ‘Belle King’ sounded like a diagnosis, she pointed out. ‘Belle King. Belking. “I’m sorry to say, you’ve got a really bad case of Belle King.”’
‘If you say it like that, maybe,’ he said, looking quietly furious.
She insisted she’d still be his wife, Mrs Tom King. ‘But I’ll still be me – Belle Dingle. Who I am, who I’m always going to be.’
Ominously, James Chase told us that wanting Belle to take his surname was another way of Tom trying to assert his control.
‘It is probably another way of asserting himself by saying “you are a King now.” A chance to distance her from her family.’
This is one wedding that has us seriously worried.