Category: Regency

Naming Games

Updated on May 19, 2014 by diane

We’ve done a lot of talking about names at Risky Regencies over the years (see here, here, and here), but here I go again!

I have a few rules for myself when I’m naming characters. Guidelines, really.

1. The names have to have a pleasant rhythm. For example, Emily Galightly doesn’t do it for me, but Hugh Westleigh (hero of A Lady of Notoriety) has a nice sound to my ear.

2. The names need to be historically accurate, or at least seem historically accurate. No modern sorts of names like Savannah or Brooklyn, both of which make a Top 50 Girl Baby Name list for 2014.

3. Absolutely no female characters who have traditionally male names. This is one of my pettest peeves and I see it in contemporary romance too often for my taste. It’s just confusing!! So no names like Addison or Taylor for my heroines, even though those, too, made the list of Top 50 Girl Baby Names.

4. Vary the character names so that none are inadvertently similar. No Harry or Herbert if there is a Hal, for example. Same with surnames. No Goodman if there is a Jackman.

5. Try not to use the names of real people, especially real people who are in the news. My editors flagged a name I’d chosen that turned out to be the name of an English entertainer. Now I’ve learned to Google the name to see if I’ve chosen one that would be recognizable.

It seems like I use different websites with each book to help me select names. For first names, I google “girls names of the 1800s” or “boys names of the 1800s.”

Here are some websites to use for surnames or tital names or both:
http://www.thepeerage.com/surname_index_G.htm
http://surnames.behindthename.com/names/usage/english

The name of the lady in the portrait by Lawrence is Lady Selina Meade. Now that’s a great name!

Do you have any naming rules or pet peeves?

Posted in Regency, Risky Regencies, Writing | Tagged Names | 6 Replies

Regency Heroine Types

Updated on May 12, 2014 by diane

I have been doing a bit of thinking on this topic. I trolled the internet to see what others wrote, but didn’t find anything that delineated the types in the way I was thinking of them.

We see certain Regency heroines over and over and marvel at how authors can make them fresh and new.

Here’s what I came up with:

The Governess.
Tried and true from Jane Eyre to Megan’s upcoming The Duke’s Guide to Correct Behavior. The governess is often a genteel young woman who has fallen on hard times and has to accept employment that basically robs her of any social status at all. She is neither servant nor noble. It is the hero who comes to her rescue and frees her from her dismal fate. In a way she is a Cinderella figure. Just thought of that this moment.
My Born To Scandal is a governess story and my homage to Jane Eyre.

The Debutante.
The classic traditional Regency heroine. I used to love to read the Signets and Zebras about the young woman making her come-out and attending Almack’s for the first time. Her task, of course, was to make a good match and often it was not the man with the high title who ultimately won her heart.

The Bluestocking.
A bookish heroine who is more interested in her field of expertise than in the marriage mart. I have yet to write one of these heroines, because my imagination has yet to go in that direction.

The Fallen Woman.
I’d place courtesan heroines or heroines ruined by scandal in this category. She is a woman who, perhaps, once had a fine reputation but has lost it and this can either free her to take charge of her life or trap her in a worse situation. My The Mysterious Miss M fits this description, as does the heroine in Scandalizing the Ton. I’m returning to this type of heroine in A Lady of Notoriety, due out in paperback June 17.

The Feisty Heroine.
I think of this heroine as the one who defies all convention and protests to want things that, in my mind, only a modern woman would expect. You can tell this is not one of my favorites, but I do think that readers can love this heroine if she is done well. About the closest I’ve come, I think, is in Chivalrous Captain, Rebel Mistress.

The Hard Times Heroine.
This would be the heroine who needs to marry well in order to save her family or to escape something worse. My Wagering Widow was one, and looking through my books list I’ve written different versions of this heroine several times – . One of my favorite old Regencies had one of these heroines, The Last Frost Fair by Jo Freeman.

The Commoner.
This heroine is not a typical choice for a Regency Historical. She is not from the aristocracy. She is a commoner, like my French heroine in Valiant Soldier, Beautiful Enemy or Innocence and Impropriety.

You might also be interested in Mary Balogh’s discussion of Regency heroines.

And, for fun, here is a Regency Heroine Quiz to discover which type you are.

Do you have other Regency Heroine types to add? Let me know!

Posted in Reading, Regency, Writing | Tagged Joy Freeman The Last Frost Fair, Regency heroines | 3 Replies

Missing Monday

Updated on May 5, 2014 by diane

I fully intended to do a blog on Regency Heroines today, but, alas, I am deep in family visits and never had a chance to do the topic justice. But I want you all to put your thinking caps on and come up with types of Regency Heroines you like to see in books.

In the meantime, here are some images for inspiration:

See you all next week!

Posted in Regency | 1 Reply

Regency Heroes redux redux

Updated on April 28, 2014 by diane

Based on last weeks blog, here’s my new list of Regency heroes (in no particular order):

(from my list)
Soldiers
Dukes
Rakes
Corinthians
Impoverished Lords

(from my brilliant blog readers and Elena)
Thieves/Highwaymen
Professor (bookish hero)
Unexpected Heir
Beau (stylish, clever, witty)
Rogue (makes his own rules)
Carla Kelly’s Beta heroes (as katie called them, in a class all their own)
Wellington (courtesy of the Wellington-obsessed Kristine Hughes of Number One London)
Beastly Hero (wounded man, angry at the world)

Any additions?

When I craft a hero, I don’t always know what type he will be. For my upcoming A Lady of Notoriety (read an excerpt here), I had already come up with the hero, Hugh Westleigh, for book one in the Masquerade Club series, A Reputation for Notoriety. In that book Hugh was a hot-head younger brother tending toward seeing the world in black and white. I was not thinking of him as a hero of book three, because, at that time, I thought I was writing a two book series.

Then I had the idea of a book for the heroine, the “lady” of the title–Lady Faville, the sort-of villainess of A Marriage of Notoriety.

I’m writing another series, this time about three sisters whose situation is very similar to the Dashwood sisters in Sense and Sensibility, but their scandalous solutions are quite different than the Dashwoods. This time the story ideas start with the heroines and I simply must come up with heroes who match them. This hero of book one seems to be an unexpected heir/rogue/beastly hero.

Next week I’m going to tackle Regency Heroine archetypes. Put your thinking caps on!

Posted in Regency, Writing | Tagged archetypes, Regency heroes | 3 Replies

Prinny’s Physicians

Updated on April 26, 2014 by Myretta

This weeks selection from my library shelves is Royal Poxes & Potions by Raymond Lamont-Brown. It gives us an interesting picture of Royal doctors from medieval times to the present day. Let’s take a look at our period. HRH George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales was (as we well know) a tad pudgy in adulthood. In fact, we learn from this book, that an inclined plane was constructed on which Prinny was placed in a chair on rollers and moved to the platform which was then raised high enough to pass a horse under and let HRH gently down into the saddle.

220px-George_IV_van_het_Verenigd_Koninkrijk

George IV by Thomas Lawrence, 1816

During the period from 1787 to 1796, the Prince of Wales’s medical household included Sir Gilbert Blane, Richard Warren and Anthony Addington, later joined by Sir Walter Farquhar and John Latham. These doctors recorded not only the prince’s obesity and his craving for women and food, but the character traits of “vanity, extravagance, self-indulgence, and undependability.” Is anyone who has read a Regency Romance surprised by this? I think not. As the Prince Regent’s “physician-extraodinary,” Blane records treating Prinny for a sprained ankle, incurred while teaching his daughter Charlotte how to dance the Highland Fling. This could not have been an easy task for a man of Prinny’s girth and Blane recommended that he “curb his eating and keep more regular hours.” This advice was, naturally, ignored. Sir Astley Paston Cooper, who had studied medicine at London, Edinburgh, and Paris, was awarded a knighthood for successfully removing a sebaceous cyst from the Prince Regent’s scalp. Sir William Knighton appears to have been the physician most highly regarded by the prince and who became the King’s physician when Prinny became George IV. By 1822, he was also private secretary and keeper of the privy purse and one of the king’s closest confidantes. Those around the king attributed Knighton’s success largely to sycophancy. During a tour of Scotland, the king suffered from gout, the pain of which “no amount of cherry brandy succeeded in dulling.” Knighton treated him with a “mixture of flattery, laudanum (to which the king was addicted), bleeding and the potions of the day.”

Caricature of George IV as Prince of Wales by James Gilray, 1792

The king had been seriously ill since the beginning of 1830. The royal physicians diagnosed “ascites (abdominal dropsy) and logged his difficulty in breathing, hiccups and bilious attacks.” He died on June 26, 1830 in extremely poor shape despite the attendance of at least ten royal physicians during the course of his adult life. The post-mortem, conducted by Sir Astley Paston Cooper, revealed that “His Majesty’s disorder was an extensive diseased organisation of the heart; this was the primary disorder, although dropsical symptoms subsequently supervened, and in fact there was a general breaking up of his Majesty’s constitution.” The report goes into quite a bit of detail which I’ll not inflict on you here. But, if you’re interested, it’s all in the book along with much information about the doctors of George the IV and the monarchs who preceded and succeeded him.

Posted in History, Regency, Research | 4 Replies