Bryan, on the other hand, was very much ready: To plan a life with Rachel, geography (she lives in Dallas; he lives in Miami) be damned. To sit down with Neil Lane (yes! the man himself!) and pick out an approximately 5,000-carat ring. And then to use that ring as a sparkling prop when he, in Bachelorette parlance, “got down on one knee.”

So while Monday’s finale hewed to the contours that any such finale will—a high-stakes choice, edited for maximum drama—this one had a distinct spin to it, one that was largely about the collision between expectations and reality: Rachel wasn’t choosing, in the end, between two men who were planning to propose to her. She was instead (at least according to the editing that will make any season of The Bachelorette what it is) making a choice between getting engaged and not getting engaged. Rachel, from the beginning, had said that she wanted to be engaged by the show’s conclusion. Bryan could give her that. Peter could not.

She chose Bryan.

In one way, yes, it was a disappointment. Rachel, after all, is an especially great Bachelorette. She is especially smart. She is especially successful in her career. She is especially funny. She is especially charismatic. She is especially kind. And Bryan is … fine. He had received Rachel’s First Impression rose, certainly, and had chemistry with Rachel from the beginning that has only grown. But, again, the stakes here weren’t presented as matters of chemistry. They were presented, by the show itself, as matters of practicality. Many viewers, because of that, saw her choice as an especially sad kind of victory: the workings of the head over the hopings of the heart. The objection wasn’t just that Bryan had previously been on another reality show—a red flag, Right Reasons-wise. It was also that he, per The Bachelorette’s setup, was not so much the soul mate as the rebound guy. And it was also that Rachel, who has always seemed too good for this show, once again seemed to deserve better.

As one viewer put it: “Rachel was clearly in love with Peter. Bryan was runner-up. She chose him because he was willing to give her a ring … she should have chosen true love over a ring.”

You could also read Rachel’s choice, though, in the opposite way: as an outcome worth celebrating. And not just because it was Rachel’s choice, which should perhaps in itself be the end of the discussion. Rachel also, after all, stuck to her guns: She refused to compromise her desires. She refused to settle. She took a long history—women, being made to settle; women of color, in particular, being made to settle—and looked it in the eyes and said, “Not today.” She had wanted to be proposed to (The Bachelorette is a show that will give a woman her pick of men to date, but that cannot envision her being the one to pop the question)—and she got, in the end, exactly what she wanted.