When historical romance novels focus solely on white leads, it sends a message about whom the industry thinks is deserving of love
O ne month after its release, Bridgerton became Netflix’s highest viewed original series, with 82 million viewers. Set in Regency-era England and adapted from e, the show follows the eponymous Bridgerton family as its eight children encounter love and scandal about town. But the Shondaland-produced adaptation notably differs from its source material-as well as from the wider historical-romance genre in general-in one significant way: many of its characters are Black.
In Quinn’s entire eight-book series (and her collection of follow-up novellas), there is not a single racialized character-and only one who is queer. While many fans have celebrated the increased visibility, others have complained that such representation is “historically inaccurate,” criticizing the show for not conforming to the dominant image of Regency England as all white and all straight.
Like every other romance subgenre, historical romance has traditionally consisted of a white man and a white woman falling in love and overcoming obstacles to form a relationship and live happily ever after (or, in the case of most contemporary novels, happy for now). Though a historical romance can be set in any period prior to 1950, the most popular time by far is Regency England: the era covering 1811 to 1820 and immortalized by Jane Austen.
The version of Regency England that viewers are accustomed to, both onscreen and in books, is one that excludes BIPOC and queer characters. Piper Huguley, a Black English professor and author of both contemporary and historical romance that features Black characters, believes that the genre’s popularity and homogeneity come from an unhealthy relationship between publishers and readers. “If a publisher only prints out a certain kind of thing, then the readers are only going to want that,” she says.
This leads publishers to believe “that’s what readers want,” adds Cat Sebastian, a white bisexual author who writes queer historical romance. Publishers then acquire similar books-often not factoring in the success that many self-published authors are now finding with diverse historical romance.
Authors, publishers, and readers have long tried to justify historical romance’s lack of diversity by arguing that Black, Asian, or Middle Eastern characters interacting with white characters is impossible. It often seems like, in their minds, Black and brown people did not exist in old England. And, if they did, the argument goes, then they were treated with discrimination and thus would not have come into any contact with the aristocratic characters who dominate the genre-let alone be those aristocrats. But, aside from being exclusionary, this argument in favour of “historical truth” is inaccurate. According to Huguley, the typical excuses that promote historical accuracy above all else can easily be met with questions of her own: Whose accuracy, and whose history, is being represented by depicting the past as a racial monoculture? Who are the ones telling this story?
Adding Colour to the Romance Genre
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B ritain has never been the racially homogenous landscape that historical fiction would lead many to believe. After the country began colonizing India, in the seventeenth century, returning families often brought South Asian servants and ayahs with them; meanwhile, South Asian sailors, called lascars, settled in British port cities between or following voyages. Black people were in Britain during the Middle Ages and, by the late 1600s, began arriving in large numbers due to the transatlantic slave trade. The Gentleman’s Magazine estimated that there were nearly 20,000 Black servants in London in 1764. Others worked as tradespeople, sailors, and musicians. “In London, there were between 20,000 and 30,000 free Blacks living during the time of Jane Austen,” says Vanessa Riley, a Black historical fiction author whose works include diverse Regency romance. “The more I study, I find more families having mixed-race or Black son-in-laws, wives, and kids, [but] the history is written as if they are white.”