Pet peeves in historical romance

Chris P

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I'm far from experienced when it comes to historical accuracy, but yeah, I notice these problems sometimes. I once reviewed a romance where an earl tells his wife, “Period. End of discussion.” Apparently no one involved in the production of this book was aware that in Britain, it’s called a full stop, not a period.

Hence the value of beta readers familiar with the slang. A very, very small thing like that can throw the reader. I read a British author writing American characters who had the child character ask if she could stay "off of" (not "home from") school that day. So small and no way the author would know this. This was fairly close to the largest sin the book committed, so not a big problem, but big enough that I remember it 10 years later as a cautionary tale.
 

Lil

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I'm far from experienced when it comes to historical accuracy, but yeah, I notice these problems sometimes. I once reviewed a romance where an earl tells his wife, “Period. End of discussion.” Apparently no one involved in the production of this book was aware that in Britain, it’s called a full stop, not a period.

From the OED:
1795 L. Murray Eng. Gram. 168 When a sentence is..complete and independent..it is marked with a Period.

I agree that "Period. End of discussion." sounds anachronistic, but I don't think it would have been improved by saying "Full stop. End of discussion."
 

Marian Perera

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From the OED:
1795 L. Murray Eng. Gram. 168 When a sentence is..complete and independent..it is marked with a Period.


That's interesting to know, Lil. I studied in the British school system and we always called it a full stop rather than a period, but I stand corrected.

The entire "Punctuation mark. End of discussion" way of expression sounds anachronistic to me. If this had been the only problem with the book, it wouldn't have mattered, but there were so many issues with it that I couldn't be sure the author was using historically accurate expressions either.
 

Lil

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I basically agree with you, Marian. I don't terribly mind anachronistic words because I frequently don't know precisely when a word came into general use. What I mind is anachronistic phrasing, as when contemporary idioms come out of 18th century mouths.
 

ULTRAGOTHA

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I think so, unless the property is entailed. But I'd love to hear from anyone with more experience on the topic.

>snip<

This makes more sense to me, but unfortunately for authors wanting to use the "must be married before 30 or you lose everything" plot, titles in titles sell. So you need the story to be called The Duke's Dilemma or The Marquess's Marriage Bargain. I've seen this happen when the character wasn't even a duke, or when he didn't become titled at all during the story because his father was still alive at the end.


There is no budging on how British titles are inherited. They pass down however the Patent that created them says they do. Mostly that's male primogeniture but occasionally it isn't. And in no case does it depend on anything the heir does. He (or sometimes she) just has to be legitimate issue (as in born in a legal marriage*) and breathing.

Everything else is open season on what the author wants (depending on time period. The laws in Britain solidified in the 16 and 1700s and changed during the Victorian age). Money and any non-real estate can be left however the owner wishes in their will. Real property, even in aristocratic families, does not have to be entailed. (Entails cannot be perpetual and must be renewed periodically. Courtney Milan has touched on the Rule Against Perpetuities in some of her books.) Trusts can be created that have penalties if X does or doesn't happen. So your hero(ine) can be faced with not inheriting property, including real property, if they don't meet the terms of the trust. But no one and nothing can prevent a proven legitimate heir to a title from inheriting and keeping that title**.

An author can, however, allow someone to inherit a title with absolutely no money or property to go with it (if there is no entail). His Grace could end up as a clerk or lawyer or curate in that case. But it would suspend my disbelief.


* See KJ Charles's Band Sinister where the bastard son of a Baronet inherits the title because his mother was married to the title holder at the time of his birth. Therefore he is not, legally, illegitimate.
**Also see her An Unsuitable Heir for one way someone CAN get out of inheriting a title.
 

ULTRAGOTHA

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7. The heroine is spirited and/or principled… until she meets the hero, at which point she’s willing to compromise her values and sacrifice her needs for his sake.

This one! "You will love me only if I change completely who I am." Fuck that noise.
 

Roxxsmom

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I basically agree with you, Marian. I don't terribly mind anachronistic words because I frequently don't know precisely when a word came into general use. What I mind is anachronistic phrasing, as when contemporary idioms come out of 18th century mouths.

For me, it depends on how obviously out of place a word is. I'm sure I miss things, and I agree that it's probably impossible to know when every word came into use in modern English, unless one is an expert in that sort of thing. But some are bigger and more obvious bloopers than others. A word like adrenaline jumps out, because it is so clearly a modern, medical/physiological term and concept. Calling hair knotted at the back of the head a "bun" not so much, even if that is a relatively recent concept too (it's not like someone couldn't have called that hair style a "bun" earlier).

I also know writers and editors have to make choices based on comprehensibility to the average modern reader. Some words were in use in earlier centuries, but they had a different meaning. Nice is one such word. As I understand it, it originally meant foolish or vapid, though the transition to a more modern concept of the word had occurred by the time most historical romances take place. But using a word very differently than it is used today could cause confusion for a reader of a historical novel.

I do find it interesting how many romance novels are set in the late 1700s through the Victorian era. There are a smattering of titles taking place earlier and later, but those time periods seem most common. Perhaps it's because they are remote enough to be escapist and encapsulate a time with a slower pace of life yet close enough to have some creature comforts and relatability to the characters? There is an issue with HEA's set in the early 1900s also, since the spectre of The Great War is looming, and as a reader I would know a couple in their 20s who is happily wed in the first decade of the 20th century will be faced with horrific privation and the likely death or maiming of the MMC in about a decade.

I have read period dramas that are not romances (but with romantic elements) set in that time, however, because there was a lot of fascinating things going on in the first 2-3 decades of the 20th century. But period dramas tend to take place over longer time scales than romances, and if the characters end up in a good place, it's usually after a lot of dark grittiness one doesn't normally see in romances. Gay Courtier's The Midwife and The Midwife's Advice come to mind--it included Russian Pogroms, experience as immigrants, the takeover of women's health care by MDs, Socialist worker uprisings, the Bolshevik Revolution, and WWI and the Great Influenza, plus women's suffrage. The couple was together at the end of the book, but they went through a lot of hell to get there, and the books focused on a lot issues, with the relationship between the protagonist and her spouse just an aspect of it.

There is also that thing that for romances set in the UK, the MMC is nearly always titled or heir to a title. I read one recently where the MMC was an Earl's or something's younger son (he was a Vicar) and he had to deal with the possibility of losing his stipend/allowance from his controlling father, which put him in a situation that conflicted with his growing feelings for the FMC (who was the daughter of a Duke and therefore not an easy marriage prospect). But in general there seems to be a great fondness for Dukes, Earls, Barons etc. as MMCs with just the occasional country squire or younger noble son tossed in.

It is interesting, because by the 1800s, there were commoners who owned properties and businesses that were easily as wealthy (or wealthier) than most Nobles (some of whom were land rich and cash poor). I guess if one's audience likes reading about self-made fortunes, or MMCs who are wealthy industrialists, one's stories tend to be set in the US?

Though Courtney Milan has a few shorter works (novelette length) where the characters are commoners struggling to be in the middle class.
 

Marian Perera

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There is an issue with HEA's set in the early 1900s also, since the spectre of The Great War is looming, and as a reader I would know a couple in their 20s who is happily wed in the first decade of the 20th century will be faced with horrific privation and the likely death or maiming of the MMC in about a decade.

This is one reason I stay in the late 1800s. There's enough technology and social change to be interesting, but I don't have to think about how World War I is going to affect the characters.

It is interesting, because by the 1800s, there were commoners who owned properties and businesses that were easily as wealthy (or wealthier) than most Nobles (some of whom were land rich and cash poor).

One great example of this is Sheri Cobb South's The Weaver Takes a Wife, where the hero is a weaver who has worked his way up from nothing to become a rich mill-owner (though unfortunately his accent and clothes still mark him as lower-class). He falls in love with the daughter of an impoverished duke, although initially she looks down on him for being completely unsuitable.

I guess if one's audience likes reading about self-made fortunes, or MMCs who are wealthy industrialists, one's stories tend to be set in the US?

From what I've heard, titles sell. I once queried a romance where, for plot purposes, the hero could not be titled. An agent suggested I make him the heir to a fortune.

It was necessary, for the story I wanted to tell, that the hero not have access to a lot of money or social clout, so I kept him as I'd originally intended to write him. He worked as an architect. But I'll probably end up self-publishing this one.
 

Marian Perera

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This one! "You will love me only if I change completely who I am." Fuck that noise.

I finally had enough of this when I read a historical romance published in 2012. The heroine wants to get married, settle down and have a family, but the hero is not only commitment-phobic, he's a ship's captain who wants only to sail the seven seas without all this family stuff cramping his style (though he's happy to have plenty of unprotected sex with her).

So this keeps them apart throughout the story, except for when they're having sex, because the heroine is determined not to settle for less. Finally, though, she realizes the hero can't give her the life she wants, so she accepts a marriage proposal from a decent man who cares about her. But at the last moment, just before the wedding can happen, she dashes off to find the hero and tells him she loves him, so she'll stay with him on his ship for however long he'll have her, and if he only wants her as his mistress, that's fine.

It was utterly repelling. Of course, the author instantly had the hero undergo a 180-degree change where he sacrificed his dream of playing the starring role in an Aubrey-Maturin novel. And the guy who was willing to marry her was the kind who knows he's not the hero of the novel, so he stepped aside for True Love. But I never want to read this sort of thing again.
 

Lil

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There is an issue with HEA's set in the early 1900s also, since the spectre of The Great War is looming, and as a reader I would know a couple in their 20s who is happily wed in the first decade of the 20th century will be faced with horrific privation and the likely death or maiming of the MMC in about a decade.

Once upon a time I had a professor who argued that war, not peace, was the natural state of mankind. We only think of peace as normal because there were no major wars in Europe between Waterloo and WWI. (Yes, he was assuming a Eurocentric view.) But that does make for a peaceful future for our characters.
 

Roxxsmom

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Once upon a time I had a professor who argued that war, not peace, was the natural state of mankind. We only think of peace as normal because there were no major wars in Europe between Waterloo and WWI. (Yes, he was assuming a Eurocentric view.) But that does make for a peaceful future for our characters.

Interesting. But many of the 19th century wars were also fought by professional soldiers, the various 19th century wars would be of less consequence to an English Duke or Earl (since younger sons were more likely to have careers in the military). But WWI was a different matter. It seems like every reasonably able bodied man from his late teens to his fifties, at least, served.

The Civil war was kind of like that for Americans too--a really all-consuming war where many served and died or were maimed. It is a popular backdrop for romances set in the US, though.
 

Chris P

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Once upon a time I had a professor who argued that war, not peace, was the natural state of mankind. We only think of peace as normal because there were no major wars in Europe between Waterloo and WWI. (Yes, he was assuming a Eurocentric view.) But that does make for a peaceful future for our characters.


In a separate thread, I debated bringing up how books written at the time of a historical event differ from those written afterward, as we as a society digest what the events meant and how they affected us. Compare the non-fic My Year of the Great War by Frederick Palmer, published in 1915 before WWI became what it was, with Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, published in 1929, with The Guns of August (again, non-fic) by Barbara Tuchman published in 1962 and with the hindsight of the WWII. It's hard to not say "Ooooh, Chamberlain's meeting with Hitler isn't going to quite go how he expects."


Interesting. But many of the 19th century wars were also fought by professional soldiers, the various 19th century wars would be of less consequence to an English Duke or Earl (since younger sons were more likely to have careers in the military). But WWI was a different matter. It seems like every reasonably able bodied man from his late teens to his fifties, at least, served.

The Civil war was kind of like that for Americans too--a really all-consuming war where many served and died or were maimed. It is a popular backdrop for romances set in the US, though.

One of my history profs (the course was "War, Peace, and Global Issues." Yay for liberal arts education curriculum!) explained that the American Civil War was the first "modern war," and could be considered the first "total war" because it touched all segments of society. The First World War he termed the "first mechanized war," and the Persian Gulf Conflict (just concluded at the time) the first "Post-Modern war." I wonder if he would now describe it as the Last Modern War, as it was fought similarly to WWI and WWII with front lines, capture of cities, etc., and because it was fought so differently than Iraq and Afghanistan.

If you want a fascinating (but thoroughly depressing) read, try Niall Ferguson's "The War of the World." In it, he posits that everything from the Japanese-Russian War in 1905 to the end of the Korean Conflict was one long war that never really ended.

Sorry for the derail!
 

Roxxsmom

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In a separate thread, I debated bringing up how books written at the time of a historical event differ from those written afterward, as we as a society digest what the events meant and how they affected us. Compare the non-fic My Year of the Great War by Frederick Palmer, published in 1915 before WWI became what it was, with Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, published in 1929, with The Guns of August (again, non-fic) by Barbara Tuchman published in 1962 and with the hindsight of the WWII. It's hard to not say "Ooooh, Chamberlain's meeting with Hitler isn't going to quite go how he expects."

Definitely true. Sometimes it takes a while to grasp the long-term implications of something. I suppose this means the characters we create for historical novels can never be truly true to life examples of their own times, but novels are always written for contemporary readers first and foremost. Only a handful continue to be widely read decades, let alone centuries, later.

I was thinking of this while reading that "do you incorporate Covid-19 into your contemporary novel?" thread.

But future literature scholars will likely study romance novels through the lens of the time they were written, not the time they portray. My husband took an odd lit class in college, or maybe it was his highschool (he went to a really progressive school) that examined genre romance and genre westerns as examples of archetypal masculinity and femininity in works created by and for women in one case and in works created by and for men in the second.

Interestingly, westerns as a genre are pretty much dead now, while romance is still going strong. Is this simply because women read fiction more than men do nowadays (but other genres that cater to men are still doing okay, like spy thrillers). Or is it because the archetypal masculinity and femininity, as filtered through romance tropes/motifs/plots etc. are more adaptable to female readers changing concepts of maleness and femaleness?
 
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