Deconstructing the Duke
Between military men and cowboys, we seem to be on an alpha hero kick on Access Romance this week. In keeping with the theme (and because I intended to blog about this anyway), I bring you… the Duke.
Or marquess or earl or even, very occasionally, baron.
The number of titled heroes dashing about Regency romance novels probably equals that of the entire population of Britain by now. You can’t go to Almack’s without tripping over a rakish duke just waiting to be reformed into marriage. We will ignore the fact that the peerage was actually a very finite number. Why spoil a good fantasy with reality?
What is it about these titled heroes that makes them so irresistible to novelists? As someone very sensibly pointed out on my website the other day, there were certainly plenty of eligible gentlemen without titles—to wit, Mr. Darcy. A member of the upper strata of the landed gentry might well own as large an estate, possess as distinguished a lineage, and move in the same society as any of our imaginary members of the peerage. And yet lords (and particularly dukes) continue to sell. Why does that one word make such a difference?
Part of it is the fairy tale aspect. All of us grew up knowing that the goose girl is supposed to go for the Prince (and if she goes for that impecunious goat herder, he’d better turn out to be a prince in disguise). Part of it is the whiff of celebrity that comes with being a member of the rarified few. Before there was People magazine, there was Debrett’s Peerage. Then there’s the allure of cold, hard cash—the land and jewels we tend to assume come with the title (even if many of them would have been in debt from their shiny Hessian boots up to their diamond stickpins).
Last, but far from least, there’s the unmistakable attraction of pure power. A title, after all, didn’t begin as a mere status symbol in the modern sense. All those dukes and earls and barons were lords of somewhere; they ruled supreme in their own demesnes, controlling land, courts, men. Even though that had been extremely watered down by the nineteenth century, aspects of that absolute power still lingered. Power, as we all know, is very attractive. Otherwise, why would there be all those novels about sheiks and tycoons?
What fascinates me isn’t the social glamour of titles or even the exercise of power, but the ways in which the responsibilities and expectations attendant upon titles (or their lack) shape the creation of a character. In my first book, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, the hero was a younger son. He had a courtesy title, but that courtesy title brought with it no corresponding responsibility. As a result, that hero, Lord Richard, felt the need to go off and prove himself by essaying daring deeds against the French Revolutionary regime. In contrast, one of his closest friends, the hero of my third book, inherited his title very young and with the title the management of a vast quantity of land. Burdened very early with great responsibility, he grew into a much more serious-minded soul.
I will confess—although I feel rather sheepish about it—that I have added to the glut of imaginary dukes in Romance-Land with the hero of my next book, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine (but I’m making up for it by having the hero of the book after that be entirely unaristocratic, I promise). In his case, his entire life has been shaped by his feelings of inadequacy and illegitimacy in regards to the title he never expected to inherit. In fact, he ran half a world away to try to avoid it. As my hero grouses to himself in the second chapter, “If he had any sense, he would [] make his pretended return to Girdings a real one, settle the ducal mantle around his shoulders, and… what? He hadn’t the foggiest notion of what a duke was supposed to do. He wasn’t even sure if dukes wore mantles. He was a mistake, a fluke, a duke by accident, and when it came down to it, he’d rather face an oncoming Maharatta army. At least he would know what to do with the army.”
How do you feel about titled heroes in historical romance? Do they attract or annoy you?
On a related question, does having a title make a hero more or less alpha? This is one I’ve been wrestling with myself…. On the one hand, there’s the trope of the effete aristocrat; on the other, the exercise of power that comes of having land, money and connections. There are certainly titled beta heroes (like Georgette Heyer’s duke in The Foundling) as well as untitled alpha heroes (Lisa Kleypas’ Derek Craven comes to mind). Does “duke” make you think alpha?
Well, hopefully I’ll remember all the points from above. . . 
