Why I love Regency romances

It took me several attempts to get through Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, starting when I was in middle school.  Ten years later, I finally made it over the hump of the first chapters, with the endless sisters to keep track of and a very tedious ball, and arrived at the opposites attract (eventually) love story.  As I continued to the glorious ending



SPOILERS




where Elizabeth and Darcy admitted not only that they love each other but that they have listened to each other's criticisms and that doing so has changed each of them for the better  -- well, I was smitten.

Between my first attempt and my success at completing Pride and Prejudice I started reading Regency romances, all of which are descended in a direct line from Austen.  The "Regency" in Regency romances refers to England from 1811 to 1820, when George III was technically king but his son, George  IV, ruled as regent.  George  IV sometimes shows up as a character in Regency romances -- he is often called "Prinny" and is usually described as an obese womanizing alcoholic, but sometimes as clever, caring, and/or politically Machiavellian. 

Whatever role the regent plays in any of these novels is always much less important than the role of a group of aristocratic older women who run a fancy ballroom called Almacks.  Debutantes have to get their permission to waltz -- a fact (or "fact") which is mentioned in an unholy number of Regency romances.

All of the books take place within the "ton" (which is a French word pronounced sort of like "too"), a huge clique of upper class British people who spend "the season" in London every year. The prime pasttime of the season consists of mothers trying to snare impossibly handsome but emotionally distant dukes (or sometimes earls or other lesser but equally rich nobles) to marry their debutante daughters, and the attempts of the dukes to avoid being snared.  The members of the ton are always described as gossipy, boring, mean-spirited, and materialistic.  Naturally the dukes and the heroines are, however, kind, interesting, and charitable and care little for the trappings of wealth. In an alternative universe the main characters of the various novels would find and hang out with each other, but I suppose then all the conflict would be removed. 

I was initially drawn to Regency romances because when I started reading them there was almost always a power imbalance between the duke and the heroine, and I find power imbalance romances enthralling.  (That's why I write stories about naked sex slaves.)  The heroine was frequently a neglected or sometimes abused poor relation, or a "guttersnipe" (a word that appeared often) who turned out to be a long-lost daughter of another duke.  Or maybe she was a governess with a secret baby who would be fired and have to turn to prostitution if anyone found out, or a helpless runaway bride seeking refuge from a murderous fiance.  It's a good thing the duke was always there to save her. 

Those kind of imbalances fell out style and for a long time it seemed like the heroine of every Regency romance would get randomly kidnapped -- because the duke needed something to rescue her from.  I found those plots dull and stepped away from Regencies for a while.  I must not have been alone, because they became increasingly difficult to find.

And then Regency romances blossomed.  Suddenly the heroines were often older (never older than the duke, of course, but close to being "on the shelf" -- say, 25).  They were physicians, or at least the daughters of physicians who had been taught everything their fathers knew (which always included anachronisms such as an emphasis on washing hands and a disapproval of bloodletting).  Or they ran orphanages between going to balls -- always pleasant orphanages where the children were given an education and taught a trade and certainly not mistreated.  Or they paint with -- shocker! -- oils instead of watercolors and want to display their work publicly.

And now it is often the dukes who need rescuing.  With alarming regularity they have been raised in poverty, completely unaware that they have a second cousin twice removed who is nobility and whose title they suddenly inherit when the cousin dies after being predeceased by his sons.  Then the new duke needs to learn manners and how to dance, and somehow it is the physician/orphanage lady/painter who is the only person who can do that.

Some Regency romances are topical. One of my favorite series,  The Survivor's Club, by Mary Balogh, follows officers returning from the Napoleonic wars, all of whom suffer from some sort of physical disability as well as PTSD as a result of their service.  A few books deal with gay male love (although I have yet to encounter a Regency lesbian love story).  Right now I'm reading A Duke by Any Other Name, by Grace Burrowes, in which a duke has to hide from the world because he has epilepsy. 

The hotness level of Regency romances varies.  In some only a few chaste kisses are exchanged. In others, the duke teaches the heroine the joys of lovemaking and is thereby himself transformed.  All of his former sexual encounters were just something he did to get by while waiting for true love.  In that world good, or even fun, sex without love does not exist. 

The possibility of pregnancy never seems to be a concern commensurate with the potential consequences to an unmarried upper class woman of the time. The duke withdraws, or promises to marry the heroine if she gets pregnant, or sometimes discovers that he had impregnated her five  years earlier, before she disappeared without a trace.  Sometimes there is vague talk of an herbal tea that apparently prevents pregnancy more effectively than the pill.  There are no shotgun weddings, no deaths in childbirth, no harried, exhausted mothers who just want a fucking break. 

And therein lies the pleasure of reading a Regency romance.  The England of these books is its own fantasy world, as much as Narnia or Middle Earth, bound by its own rules and logic.  Unlike in a modern romances -- where I find myself yelling at the book, "No, that's not how lawsuits work!" or "She needs to go back to New York and get away from this stultifying backwoods town!" or "Don't make a move on the nanny; she's your employee and that's sexual harassment!" -- I don't know or care how upper class Londoners behaved in 1815.  I don't need to suspend my disbelief.  I can just enjoy the story.