With all the holiday family-togetherness, and talking here about what a Regency Christmas might be like (no crowded malls! no animatronic Santas singing Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer!), I started considering romances which also feature relationships other than the main, h/h thing. Namely–family relationships.
We do see them a lot. You know, the ones where 30 siblings find their perfect loves in 30 books and have a big, happy reunion at the end of Book #30. My own family gatherings are seldom like this, and I imagine most family gatherings in the Regency weren’t, either. With my own family, someone is always not speaking to someone else. Someone gets drunk and cries and/or shrieks. The dog eats pizza and throws up on the carpet. My cousin’s kid takes his diaper off and runs around naked. You get the picture. It’s not so pretty. Hmm-now that I think about it, family reunions in the Regency probably weren’t like THAT, either. Georgian, maybe. 🙂
But there are books (even ones in mega-series!) that can capture the timeless best of families and friends. Their loyalty, their unconditional love, the way they might pick on you mercilessly but God help any outsider who dares to do the same. Family problems and stories never really get solved–they just go on and on, and we learn to live with them, and they become part of us. Some authors have captured these dynamics so well. Mary Balogh’s “Slightly” series. Mary Jo Putney’s Rogues. Gaelen Foley’s Knights. To name just a very few. (I’m sure I could find more if my shelves weren’t blocked by a Christmas tree and a heap of presents waiting to be wrapped). Jane Austen, of course, was ALL about family dynamics, and no one (with the probable exception of Shakespeare) had a greater grasp on the timeless give- and-take exasperation of relatives.
In my own books, I have lots of friends who have “made” families together, a few sisters, a couple of brothers, a mother or two. An aunt and uncle who are surrogate parents. Strangely, I find it harder to write about brothers than sisters, even though I have no sisters of my own. Families have made my characters who they are. They teach them how to love–or not to love!
What are some of your favorite “family” books or series? Why do you love them? Or hate them?
I am an only child, so am fascinated by reading about people with siblings. . . but I cannot stand reading about the picture-perfect family, all of whom find Love, and all of whom are Perfect in their own ways.
I like Balogh’s Slightly series because each of the siblings has idiosyncracies–yes, each finds love, but it’s their own special type of love, and they’re shown, warts and all.
Julia Ross has two brothers in–darn–Games of Pleasure and Night of Sin, I think? Their relationship seems realistic.
I can’t think of anymore, probably because I am dreading my own exposure to the in-laws’ family. Which is even worse than your own, because you haven’t had a lifetime to love them.
I do find romances with strong family connections particularly appealing. My own family is not huge, but we do try to get together from time to time and celebrate. My wife’s family, by contrast, contains one billion aunts, uncles and cousins, with assorted spouses, significant others, in-laws, and general hangers-on, all living in fairly close proximity, and a large fraction of them assemble to celebrate virtually any holiday you care to name. As a new boyfriend, to be tossed into this maelstrom was indeed a harrowing ordeal. Amazing that I remain so comparatively normal.
Of course, the books where the entire family is horrid, except for the hero or heroine, can also be fun to read from time to time. 😉
One romance I’ve read recently in which family plays an important role is MY LADY GAMESTER, by a possibly familiar author. Desire to protect one’s family is the primary motivation for both the hero and heroine.
Todd-who-is-still-a-bit-in-shock-from-Thanksgiving
My family is very comfortable on holidays. Okay, siblings and parents can have their problems, but the nice thing about my family is that the further relations all get on fine. We have family get-togethers of forty people, with no quarreling at all. (Of course, we never talk about politics, which helps.) 🙂
On the other hand, with forty-odd relations, one often feels one hardly knows any of them. Which may help promote family harmony, actually. 🙂
(Okay, throwing about the number “forty” made me curious to count my relations… So, top-down, not going into any second cousins or anything [who I never see anyway] I have, living, seven uncles-aunts-and-their-spouses, nineteen cousins-and-their-spouses-and-significant-others, seven siblings-and-half-siblings-and-their-spouses-and-significant-others, one parent, one niece, one nephew, and eleven children-of-cousins. So I count 47, not including me, my husband, and any in-laws of any of the above. )
So, okay, yes, it might be rather traumatic for someone’s new boyfriend to try to remember all those names on Thanksgiving. But heck, Todd’s had eleven years to learn them by now! 🙂
Cara
I don’t have the time to follow series very faithfully, even by favorite authors.
In my own family, I’ve experienced and seen sibling relationships that ranged from deeply love to barely-suppressed hostility. It seems to me that those of us who are capable of warm sibling relationships often seem to be the ones in happy marriages, too.
So while I can believe in a certain degree of happily-ever-after among a number of siblings, I have trouble believing in really large families all of whose members find the perfect happily-ever-after. But I try to suspend disbelief if the individual stories are well-written, as in Jo Beverley’s Malloren series.
I read Julia Ross’s NIGHT OF SIN and think all the family relationships portrayed in that book were interesting and realistically complex. I have GAMES OF PLEASURE and am planning to treat myself with it after the holiday rush.
One of my favorite romances that was also family-centered is Georgette Heyer’s FREDERICA. What a contrast between the distant and sometimes antagonistic relationship the hero has with his siblings, and the warm family life Frederica creates for herself and her younger siblings, which are all real and imperfect characters in their own right.
Elena, full of empathy but very little useful advice for Megan
Well, one of my favorite series is the Cynsters by Stephanie Laurens. And I love that it is a very large family.
At least a couple of other Heyers feature large families, though not always in a warm-and-fuzzy sense: ARABELLA, whose need for a rich husband is driven by the existence of innumerable younger siblings, and THE UNKNOWN AJAX, which includes considerable family tension over estranged relatives and a question of succession.
In LADY ELIZABETH’S COMET the heroine is the eldest of eight sisters (but no brothers–hence the arrival of a cousin as heir to the family title).
And Jane Austen came from a large and (apparently) very happy family, which also provides a good illustration of the difficulties in settling a large number of sons with a limited fortune. (One son-and-heir, one adopted by a wealthy childless couple, two in the Navy, one a bit of a ne’er-do-well.) A bit easier nowadays, when we can all just go and get a job. 🙂
Todd-who-can-certainly-remember-all-his-wife’s-relatives’-names-at-least-mostly