[Fandom] Regency romances taught me too much

[jennaria]

Back in the day, I was huge into Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, and lots of their modern-day sisters. Which meant learning about nobility, because 95% of modern Regency romances involve titles for one or both of our protagonists. Is it correct to call our hero Lord Hadrian when he's only a Baron? (No, he'd be Lord Potter.*) Once Ginevra marries the Duke of Thingy, is she Lady Ginevra? (No again - she's Lady Thingy, "Your Grace" for formal.*)

...so basically, dear people who are writing Harry Potter wish fulfillment fic wherein he inherits All The Titles? Harry will not, in fact, wind up as Harry Potter Black Peverell Slytherin Gryffindor Extra, and no self-respecting goblin would call him that, even to wind him up. (Well, maybe just to wind him up.) He would be Harry Potter, Duke of Peverell, Marquess of Gryffindor, Count of Slytherin, Viscount of Black (to arbitrarily designate actual titles), and he'd be called Lord Peverell, with all the rest just sort of...elided underneath, no matter how rich and important they are.

(I enjoy a good wish fulfillment fic as much as the next person! But after the third or fourth or twentieth fic that thinks inheriting titles means piling on the last names, I just...yeah.)

*On the off chance that any of y'all are curious, I checked my memory here.

Comments

[fox]

Preach.

Now if Ginevra marries Richard Bloke, the Duke of Thingy, she is Lady Bloke, as you say, or the Duchess of Thingy; but her daughter Lilbit is Lady Lilbit Bloke. And her elder son is probably Thisguy Bloke, Marquess of Wotsit, though her younger son is just Lord Thatguy Bloke. (Then her younger son's wife is Lady Thatguy Bloke, which does tend to send people right around the bend.)

[jennaria]

True! There's all these gradations and shadings meant so everyone knows exactly where they are in the social scale, and it's a lot of fun if you're the kind of person who enjoys picking apart details. Which...is only sometimes true of fanfic authors. :wry:

[the_rck]

I remember a book meets wall moment with a paperback Regency romance from the library. In the first ten pages, it had a single woman (not a widow) referred to as a duchess because her (still living) father was a duke. I did not, for some reason, read farther.

[jennaria]

OH REGENCY AUTHOR NO.

[cimorene]

I feel this so hard. I have difficulty with a lot of historical universes, even without having ever deliberately studied history of anything, just from the trivia I've picked up over the years. But the few historical eras that I've become fannish about - the Regency, the 1920s-30s, and to a lesser extent, the Enlightenment and Victorian era - are the worst, because even when I can keep reading because they obviously tried, I spend the whole time thrown out of the story, which results in bookmarks like "This is really great except that's not how textiles worked in the middle ages and the whole plot falls apart as a result" and "This was fun, but that method of inheritance is just fundamentally incompatible with the economy as written".

[jennaria]

Yes! I've gotten better about suspending disbelief as I've gotten older and read more things, but there's still a qualitative difference between 'swept along by the story' and 'following the story, but can't forget how they got a Critical Point wrong.'

(Once of the Midsomer Murders episodes, I called the whole thing as being a modern-day HAMLET a good hour before the detective figured it out. It's only a 90-minute episode.)

[dine]

thank you! at this point, I just shake my head and move on, because life's too short and I need my (few) brain cells for other, more important matters

but I really wish that people did even minimal research when writing stuff they don't actually know about - and copying what some other fic writer did isn't research

[jennaria]

I suppose it comes down to whether they *know* that it's something they need to research. What do you mean, fanon isn't accurate?

(Or, hell, ignore the muggle rules of how nobility works, and engage in world-building! I would happily follow along with that! ...now I kinda want to write something where Harry finds out he's a lord, and goes to find Hermione, and they both engage in a bit of screaming about how the magical world handles nobility.)

doooooo it!

[dine]

man, that would be so awesome! *encourages you liek whoa*

[hitokage]

Yes, yes, yes (and I don't even think of myself as particularly researched about this sort of thing).
It's funny how sometimes the littlest things (no, a Crown Prince is not going to hire ONLY ONE page, that would be nonsense, even in a steampunk-level technical kingdom) can really throw you out of the enjoyment of a story.

[jennaria]

Sadly, yes. And even if you put yourself back in, there's still that niggling whisper in the back of your head.

[swingandswirl]

OMG yes.

My favourite instance of this sort of thing was a Check Please! royalty AU where one of the characters, Jack Zimmermann, kept being referred to as 'Prince Zimmermann'.

Me: That's not how this works. That's not how ANY of this works...

(Then again, considering I had to explain to an otherwise very intelligent and well-read American friend that British knights were Sir Firstname and not Mr Lastname or (shudder) Sir Lastname, I wish I could say I was surprised...)

[jennaria]

How do you even - there has been coverage! Lots of coverage! Both of the British princes got married recently enough that I'm not sure how it's possible to have avoided it entirely! :wince:

(It all depends on what you're well-read in, doesn't it? I grew up on Victorian fiction, which means that I absorbed certain knowledge without even thinking about it.)