Romance Characters: The Underappreciated Beta

Charlie Schlatter makes an excellent Stowe!

In a prior post, I discuss why alphas are so prevalent in romances: they are useful! 

That doesn't mean the low-key alphas or the betas shouldn't get more page time. 

When I was growing up, I was a big fan of the Mrs. Pollifax books (I was discovering mysteries!). The Mrs. Pollifax books led me to Dorothy Gilman's The Clairvoyant Countess. I had an enormous crush on Lieutenant Pruden when I was a teen; he and Sayers' Charles Parker, whom I discovered later, became prototypes for Charles Stowe in The Roesia Chronicles. 

Both characters are hard workers. Like Marcus Bell, they are less known for flashes of brilliance and better known for working all the sides of the problem, especially since they are inherently skeptical. They excel in their particular fields but have no inherent ambition to rule the world. They are more like Jamie and Danny and their dad from Blue Bloods, who are pushed up their respective ladders due to ability as opposed to a desire to be in charge, unlike the grandfather or the various mayors on the show. They aren't political. They end up in positions of authority (at least Jamie and Frank) and it stresses them out. They work well with subordinates, but they miss the independent lifestyle. 

One of the most appealing aspects of these characters is that they are NOT angsty. It isn't that their lives are necessarily easier than other people's. Rather, they are the kind of people who make it look easy because they pick their battles and don't make emotional mountains out of even emotional mountains. They get on with life.

In novels, they usually don't have the biggest problems; they don't own the narrative arc. Pruden's skepticism means he is initially uncertain whether to take the countess's help. Yet he is willing to listen. And Parker has deep feelings for Wimsey's sister and he eventually marries her. If he didn't, eh, he would survive and marry someone else.

Such characters can be the center of the narrative arc. It takes a slice-of-life approach--that is, the best place to find these characters is in police procedurals and Japanese manga. In the latter, characters can ponder--as we all do--the advisability of changing supermarkets or when to get new reading glasses or what foods to prepare for a picnic. Those decisions absolutely do matter in the moment! They can even expand to include jobs and relationships and family problems.  

Connie Willis uses this approach in many of her novels and short stories where the niggling, seemingly unimportant but vital and daily grind of, say, getting from one side of a hospital to another has enormous relevance. 

It takes a certain skill to pull off this approach!