Everybody in Romance Should Have a Job: Royalty

 Actually...

 I don't think royal jobs are a good idea with romance. 

Mostly because I think anyone who wants to marry a royal--and isn't Kate Middleton--is an idiot. 

But also because being royal is both more demanding and less demanding than a regular 9-5 job. That is, it imposes more demands in terms of continual "on-stage" performances before the public but...

It isn't exactly like operating on someone or answering the phone or stacking fruit or faxing updated reports. It isn't even like making financial decisions regarding the stock market and hoping they don't flop. Or putting forward an advertising campaign and hoping it doesn't sizzle.  

It involves both more nitpicky audience attention and less "yes, you will actually answer for this particular decision" demands. Royals do answer for things in the court of public opinion. That still isn't the same as the insurance adjuster who forgot to send an important document to the law firm so lost the law firm the case--and got fired. 

True story. 

In addition, the royal "job" entails accepting certain assumptions--such as, yes, you have to answer those dumb questions and look good on camera and pretend not to be tired and annoyed and not beg off because you really don't care about that particular cause. Yes, you have to listen to lectures about not making the crown look bad...

In other words, the characters have to accept a whole bunch of things that most romances fight AGAINST. 

Most romance royalty books, in my opinion, try to have their cake and eat it and hate it and extol it all at the same time. Royal life is demanding! But the people love me! And I will do whatever they need! Except I must do what is right for me! I do have to go to meetings! But I will always make time for you! 

Yeah, right. 

The best royal romances, I would argue, are indirectly about royals. Out of fantasy manga, the following stand out: 

• The Royal Tutor, which is about the royal tutor instilling discipline into the young princes
• Titan's Bride in which the prince's consort is from another planet
• Selfish Mr. Mermaid, in which the prince mostly lives in the human world and only goes home when he has to
• The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter, in which the noble's job is mostly to keep his accountant boyfriend from overworking
• Barbarities, in which the main characters' jobs are to stay alive during Renaissance-type infighting between royalty, the Church, and other parties
  

Generally, speaking, it's best if the royals actually have a specific problem to address.

Learning from Fan Fiction: Every World Needs Rules, even Heaven

My Emma Lathen fan fiction is based around Damien Smith (a new character) and John Thatcher (Lathen's detective). The fan fiction starts in heaven, where Damien's recent arrival requires that he and John give testimony about their relationship, namely why they should be together. 

Damien, John, and their advocate review each of the cases they worked together to explain how they came to fall in love and then live together, despite "lying" to a great many people (in the 1970s) about their relationship. (Neither of them cheated on anyone; Thatcher's wife died five years earlier.) 

That's Part I. 

Part II is Damien and John solving cases in heaven (or, rather, multiple heavens). The cases they solve have to do with people they met during the original cases. 

The premise here is based on my belief that death doesn't actually solve anything (which is one reason killing off a character is a writing cop-out). I get exceedingly tired of the idea that dead people get all noble and sweet-tempered the moment they die. 

Thatcher is younger in heaven.

The aura is the same.

I also don't buy into the idea that once a case is solved on Earth, the dead would be satisfied and whisk themselves off to strum harps on clouds. Why wouldn't they take revenge in heaven on people who forced them to "shuffle off the mortal coil" too early? ("I had so many plans! You ruined everything!")

But that position immediately raises the issue: Would heaven let that happen?

I realized that I needed to make up rules in order for Part II to work. 

The Rules

1. New arrivals end up in the heaven/town/region that fits their moral code. They can change heavens. But no matter what heaven they want to settle in, they must go through a "confession" for that heaven (become citizens).

2. The "confession" is not about admitting sin but rather about giving the council (of angels) and the human individual a chance to assess, "Am I in the right place?" 

3. If the confession remains incomplete, the new arrival is at the mercy of other members of that heaven/town/region. The angels cannot protect them.

4. Angels also have agency. Some of them believe in the Mike-Baxter-do-it-yourself-and-learn-the-hard-way approach to moral self-understanding. Some believe more in the social-work model. Some demand that humans earn money to take trains between heavens. Some give out free passes. Some, like Castiel, may even focus entirely on one human or set of humans.

5. The cases that Thatcher and Damien handle in multiple heavens (as consulting detectives) mostly deal with people switching heavens for a variety of reasons. Because these non-citizens have not yet completed their "confessions," they are open to assault by thugs and others. They can't be killed. But they can be kidnapped, stalked, attacked, stolen from, locked up, accused falsely, and otherwise inconvenienced.   

Continuing Story

So Thatcher's now-dead wife, who married him until "death we do part" and always saw herself as somewhat above the whole soulmates' cliche, has discovered that (a) the angels don't care how advanced/down-to-earth she is in her thinking, in part because she no longer is on Earth; (2) soulmates have cache in the heaven she has selected. 

In other words, the reputation that she had on Earth as a smart, practical, "sure I'm faithful but he is only a man, and marriage is about compromise, ladies" wife of a powerful banker--a reputation that was honestly acquired--no longer carries the same weight. 

She consequently detests Damien and doesn't understand Thatcher's consistent low-key refusal to go "back" to what worked on Earth. 

So she hires thugs to take Damien into a different heaven before he finishes his confession. 

Damien was rather sick of the heaven he was in anyway. He wants to be with Thatcher. But he is far happier in the Victorian Steampunk with Modern Attitudes heaven that he has ended up in. (His boarding house is run by a woman who doesn't mind him having a boyfriend but does insist on "no shenanigans before marriage!").

Thatcher tracks him down. Damien finally agrees to complete his "confession," after which he and Thatcher move into the heaven Damien prefers (Thatcher has the easygoing moral code of a guy who can basically end up anywhere). Steampunk heaven is their home base though they are often asked by angels to investigate disappearances and problems elsewhere. 

* * *

Why Rules Matter

Both Part I and Part II are a fun way to explore the books and various characterizations. In Lathen's first Thatcher book, Banking on Death, the victim is a completely self-absorbed man who is always looking for an angle. He doesn't bother to revenge himself on anyone when he gets to heaven--nobody ever mattered to him that much. (In fact, he keeps ending up in heavens that petition to have him thrown out. Eventually, he goes to work for the Borgias and wheedles his way into the good graces of each relative in turn.) 

But the original book includes his bitter, shrewd, selfish and hysterical mistress, who loathes the man's estranged wife for no very good reason. 

That mistress WOULD try to take out her grief on someone in heaven, such as the estranged wife. Thatcher and Damien would have to figure out who is, say, spreading false rumors about the estranged wife, then track down the culprit and get her removed to another heaven. 

But if everything was all sweetness & light--or if everything was "yeah, whatever, it's just anarchy with angels"--then, well, my detectives wouldn't have much to do. 

People have to be able to behave badly for my detectives to have something to investigate. And the problems have to be repairable for my detectives to have long-range goals.

Dysfunctional Relationships in Mysteries: Plan versus Reality

"Does anyone have a plan like ours?"

One of my favorite Diagnosis Murder episodes, "Till Death Do Us Part," starts with the murderers--a spoiled daughter and her clueless fiance--imagining the murder they have planned. They imagine themselves as slick operators who impress the wedding guests at their upcoming nuptials. They imagine the victim, the father, as a jerk. They imagine his wife, the woman they intend to frame, as snide. They imagine the murder going off without a hitch as the detectives find all the clues they planted.

The episode then switches to the actual day. The couple are vain, pompous, disorganized, and kind of stupid. The father is kindly. The stepmother smooths things over. The two murderers keep making mistakes. Items that were supposed to be in certain places get lost. The dog laps up part of the poison. The maid vacuums. And so on.

 

The murder still occurs, and Mark Sloan naturally finds out the truth. For the purposes of this blog, the great insight into the relationship is that the two bad guys are "made for each other." They have the same dysfunction, and their dysfunction is tied to their murderous impulse. 

 

Their dysfunction? They think they deserve more than they have earned or than makes any actual sense. The groom resents his father-in-law's rejection of his completely ridiculous business proposals. The bride asks her stepmother to fetch nail polish that is already sitting on her vanity. They don't see their own arrests coming because they believe so thoroughly in their self-made stories.

 

Very funny. Very chilling.

Review of Tsuta Suzuki's Barbarities IV

Barbarities is a manga series that takes place in a world based on late Renaissance Europe (Early Modern era).

The main characters are Joel, who doubles as his uncle, Lord Montague, an older, bearded chap--the assumed persona allows Joel to get important work done for the kingdom--and Adam Canning. Adam is a frank libertine (until he falls for Joel) from the same kingdom that supplied Joel's kingdom, Lorraine, with its queen. 

Joel is a kind of Enlightenment figure devoted to rationality and the separation of church and state. He has a tense but friendly relationship with the Cardinal of the "new" religion. Interestingly and correctly, Adam recognizes that Joel and the Cardinal--despite very different perspectives--are both humanists. In some ways, they have quite a lot  in common, rather like Renaissance Popes and their artists.

That new religion worships a goddess, which I found particularly satisfying. Patriarchy is not the issue. No matter what the religion, the same issues will arise. So, at one point when citizens attack the church, both parties accuse each other of paganism.

The story is complicated by an heir to another kingdom (Tance) visiting Joel's kingdom with his young brother, also an heir, ostensibly to protect his position but actually to do some spying with this servant, Gil. The main villain is Simon, the brother of the deceased king of Lorraine, who would like to take over the kingdom from his nephew.

That is, the series easily conveys quite complicated history. 

Book IV wraps up the arc of the nefarious king's brother. (Here's to hoping there's a Volume V!) I was curious to see how the matter would be resolved. One of the positives of complex political plots is the complexity. One of the downsides is that unraveling such complexity is never easy (see the Dune series).

For instance, one of the dumber statements I've heard in the past few years is the wish, coming from both sides of the political aisle, that some particular person would be assassinated. I find myself sighing at the whole human race. Does nobody study history any more aside from Neill Ferguson? Has nobody studied WWI?

In Blue Bloods, Frank Reagan says of suicides, "They are inherently chaotic, an act that throws all the orbits out of whack." 

The same is true of assassination--and politics. Pull on one thread...a million more unravel.

With Barbarities IV, the resolution to the current arc is a little too pat (several side stories, such as Gil's rescue of the younger prince from Tance, deserve their own volumes!) but every set-up related to that particular arc is resolved/addressed. In addition, the end of Volume IV leaves open a number of implied issues. Joel Montague's political life will never stop being a complicated one. 

At least, he now has Adam by his side!

And the ongoing appearance of different groups--insiders/outsiders/politicians/artists/military leaders/religious leaders/merchants/royalty--captures late Renaissance Europe very well!

A-Z Romance! Ashford

On Votaries, I have several A-Z Lists where I work my way through fiction and non-fiction books, usually in some type of alphabetical order (though non-fiction was by Dewey Decimal number).

I decided to approach new paperback romance authors in the same manner.

I started with Jane Ashford and was impressed enough to look up a second novel.

The book was A Gentleman Ought to Know, the fourth book in a series. Generally, the writing is solid though in a few places the point of view shifts unexpectedly--disconcerting though not enough to disconnect the reader.

The characters have substance. I was especially impressed by the family-feeling amongst the Deepings. Some contemporary historical novels feel a little too modern; some feel a little too "mannered." The family in this novel struck me as natural. They are gentry, rather than aristocrats, so the kind of people Darcy would know and they behave like Darcy at home (as opposed to Darcy in London or Netherfield).

Darcy at home.

The main characters also have distinct personalities. Charlotte is a very independent, outspoken woman etc. etc. (This character type will come up many times on this list.) However, Ashford does a decent job making the independence and outspoken prickliness part of the character's personality rather than some kind of laid-on set of character traits. Charlotte comes across as a full person.

And there's a mystery! It is more suspenseful than clue-laden--though the Sherlock-like character, Merlin, appears in a later book--but I'm a fan of romance novels resting on something other than the courtship. An actual "case" helps.

Unexpectedly good start to this list!

Ellis Peters' Romantic Couples

In Golden Age mysteries, it is customary to have a courting young couple--so much so in Ngaio Marsh's mysteries that her courting couples (with the exception of Peregrine and Emily) tend to blur together.

Agatha Christie was exceptional, in part because she had the capacity to imagine different types of relationships. Still, the custom is such a strong one that several mystery writers remark wryly on it.

 

The custom has continued into the present day. It is apparent in Ellis Peters' books. Nearly all of Ellis Peters' books have a courting couple, helped quite often by Cadfael. However, one major difference to other courting couples in mysteries is that the Peters couple is almost always directly connected to the problem: the young squire who wants to marry his lord's fiancée; the young woman who is courted by a possible sociopath; the young monk who realizes he doesn't really want to be a monk after all and stays in Wales.

 

The couples don't particularly stand out but they fulfill their purposes within the narrative arc. Excellent Mystery is an exception in that it directly tackles loyalty within a marriage. Hugh Beringer and his bride are also notable since for all her quiet supposed meekness, Aline is a dignified aristocrat who knows her rights. In fact, many of Peters' brides-to-be are more canny and tough-minded than their idealistic mates.

 

A non-consummated, non-young relationship is Cadfael & Sister Magdalen (formerly Avice of Thornbury) who meet in The Leper of Saint Giles. They both came to the religious life after a life in the world, and they tackled worldly pursuits with eyes wide open. They took on their religious avocations in much the same way. They are kindly, pragmatic, and natural leaders, though Cadfael sticks to a more independent style of leadership. 

 

The book and television series both do a good job implying a natural bond between the two.

 

Ellis Peters's "modern" mysteries (they take place from the 1950s to 1970s), give readers George and Bunty: the solid, mutually respectful relationship of two people with distinct personalities, interests, and experiences.

Frenemies Archetype: The Bully Who Fills a Need

Frenemies work as lovers--but only if they would get along in the first place. 

Or, if the relationship is offering something that the other wants. 

Generally, I avoid romances where one person has all the say. I'm not terribly fond of the "civilizing" or corrective relationship. 

However, I tolerate a great many frenemy relationships if I believe that the relationship is filling needs for both parties.

Selfish Mr. Mermaid is a great example. The male mermaid ("mermaid" is used as a general term for "merperson") moves into the protagonist's apartment, specifically his bathtub. And stays. He argues that he was kicked out of the undersea realm but he appears to mostly just be irritated by people's demands at home, especially since he grouchily takes his lover home for various state shindigs. 

He is demanding and somewhat rude--he yells a lot. 

The protagonist, however, doesn't come across as cowed so much as relieved. He hates his job, where he is bullied. The kind of bullying offered him at home is tonally different. He is rebuked, cossetted, commanded, indulged, and basically looked after. When the merman does yell, he comes across as mostly confused--"Why are you crying?!"--a far more confidant Rochester--rather than domineering or pushy. 

Part of why the manga works, of course, is that merpeople are already unpredictable chaotic figures who are, nevertheless, very, very cool. Of course, the protagonist isn't going to kick the guy out! 

However, the manga 2-volume series succeeds because the relationship actually seems to work. The protagonist doesn't wilt but thrives. He is very happy in the relationship.