In Part One of this series, I asked a question that has been bothering me for a while:
If historical romance is supposedly dying, why are readers still obsessed with so many of the things historical romance does best?
Marriage of convenience.
Enemies to lovers.
Forbidden romance.
Class differences.
Forced proximity.
Scandal.
Elaborate gowns.
Balls.
Powerful families.
Impossible relationships.
Men silently yearning for women they absolutely cannot have. Put those things in Regency England, and a newer romance reader might say:
“Historical? Eh. Not really my thing.” Put them in a fictional kingdom with a morally gray prince and a dragon circling overhead?
“YOU HAVE A SPECIAL EDITION?”
So I don’t think we can have a meaningful conversation about the decline of historical romance without talking about the readers who aren’t reading it. Particularly newer romance readers.
Because I keep hearing some variation of the same sentence:
“I love romance. I just don’t read historical romance.”
And my immediate response is:
WHY? Seriously. I want to know.
Because I suspect some readers who believe they don’t like historical romance might actually love what historical romance offers. They just don’t think the genre is for them. And somewhere along the way, publishing allowed that perception to stick.
What Do You Picture When I Say “Historical Romance”?
Don’t overthink it.
What’s the first image that pops into your head? A duke? A woman in a giant dress? Fabio? A shirtless man standing on a cliff while a woman’s hair blows horizontally despite there being absolutely no evidence of a hurricane?
Maybe you picture the paperbacks your mother or grandmother read.
Maybe you think “bodice ripper.”
Maybe you think helpless virgin heroine and aggressively experienced rake.
Maybe you think dubious consent.
Maybe you think every book takes place in Regency England and involves a woman who desperately needs to marry a duke.
And here’s the problem: Some of those perceptions didn’t come from nowhere. Historical romance has a history. Romance has a history. There are older books that contain gender dynamics, consent issues, and racial stereotypes that many modern readers aren’t comfortable with.
We shouldn’t pretend otherwise. But the genre evolved. The public perception of it didn’t always evolve alongside it.
That’s a serious problem when you’re trying to attract someone who wasn’t around to watch that evolution happen.
Your First Historical Romance Matters
Think about how many contemporary romances are published every year.
If someone picks up one contemporary romance and hates it, they’re probably not going to announce: “Well, contemporary romance clearly isn’t for me.”
They’ll try another author. Maybe another trope. Maybe another style. But historical romance often doesn’t get that same grace.
Someone reads one historical that doesn’t work for them and suddenly: “I don’t like historical romance.”
That’s an enormous amount of pressure to put on one book. And it means the books we recommend to new historical readers matter.
A LOT.
Because giving a modern romance reader a thirty-year-old historical romance simply because it’s considered a “classic” might not be the best introduction to what the genre looks like today.
I love romance history. I think understanding where the genre came from matters. But your first experience with a genre shouldn’t necessarily be an archaeological expedition.
Then There’s the Duke Problem
Historical romance has become almost synonymous with Regency England. And listen. I enjoy a duke. I’m not anti-duke. Some perfectly lovely fictional men have inherited enormous estates through deeply questionable systems of aristocratic privilege. I have loved several of them. But historical romance covers THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF HUMAN HISTORY.
And somehow we’ve convinced readers that historical romance means:
England. 1815-ish. Duke. Repeat.
Where are all the other stories?
Different countries.
Different cultures.
Different classes.
Different time periods.
Working-class romances.
American historicals.
Westerns.
Victorian romance.
Gilded Age romance.
Ancient worlds.
Medieval romance.
Renaissance romance.
20th-century historical romance.
Immigrant stories.
Queer historical romance.
Black historical romance.
Asian historical romance.
Indigenous historical romance.
There are authors writing beyond Regency England.
There always have been.
But if those books aren’t acquired, stocked, marketed, and pushed with the same enthusiasm, how is the average reader supposed to know they’re there?
A genre can be enormous while appearing incredibly narrow from the outside.
And eventually readers decide they’ve already seen what it has to offer.
The Past Was Bigger Than the Bookshelves Made It Look
And when I say I want historical romance to move beyond Regency England, I don’t just mean: Okay, fine. Move the duke to 1887 and give him a railroad.
I mean history is HUGE.
And the people who lived it were far more diverse than the historical romance shelf has sometimes suggested.
Beverly Jenkins has spent decades writing Black American history into romance. Her characters fall in love against the backdrop of Reconstruction, Black communities, the American West and periods of history that existed alongside all those fictional British ballrooms.
Joanna Shupe has taken readers into Gilded Age New York, where money, class, industry and enormous social change create an entirely different historical world.
Cat Sebastian writes queer historical romance that reminds us queer people didn’t suddenly materialize in 1970. They worked. They had families. They built communities. They desired each other. They fell desperately, inconveniently, beautifully in love.
Adriana Herrera has written historical romance that engages with immigration, race, identity, and the effects of colonialism while never forgetting something incredibly important: These are ROMANCES. That means we still get the yearning.
We still get desire. We still get flirting. We still get sex. We still get impossible choices. We still get people desperately wanting someone society tells them they cannot have. And we still get the HEA.
Because sometimes when we talk about diversifying historical romance, I think we accidentally frame these books as though they are the educational vegetables sitting beside the delicious Regency dessert.
Read this one because it’s important. Read this one because you’ll learn something. Read this one because it represents a part of history we don’t talk about enough. And sure. Those things can all be true.
But also: READ IT BECAUSE THE ROMANCE IS GOOD.
Read it because someone yearns so hard you want to shake them.
Read it because the sexual tension is ridiculous.
Read it because they absolutely should not kiss and you desperately need them to kiss.
Read it because you want to watch two people find each other in a world that has given them a thousand reasons why they shouldn’t.
That is historical romance.
These aren’t the “other” stories. They’re historical romance.
And maybe that distinction matters more than we realize.
Because if the average reader hears “historical romance” and automatically pictures white, heterosexual aristocrats in Regency England, we have created a genre identity that is significantly smaller than the genre itself.
History wasn’t exclusively white.
History wasn’t exclusively straight.
History wasn’t exclusively British.
History wasn’t exclusively wealthy.
History wasn’t exclusively Christian.
History wasn’t exclusively able-bodied.
History wasn’t exclusively about the people whose portraits ended up hanging in museums.
People immigrated.
People crossed borders.
People survived colonization.
People resisted it.
People built communities.
People opened businesses.
People worked.
People struggled.
People laughed.
People had sex.
People fell in love.
The past belonged to everyone. So maybe historical romance doesn’t need to become more diverse to appeal to modern readers. History was already diverse. Historical romance just needs to stop shrinking it.
“Historical Sounds Like Homework”
And this brings me to another barrier we don’t talk about enough.
For some readers, the word historical sounds educational. It sounds serious. It sounds like somebody is going to quiz you afterward. Fantasy doesn’t carry that baggage.
A fantasy author can introduce six kingdoms, twelve gods, seventeen political factions, and a magic system requiring its own glossary, and readers will happily create a color-coded spreadsheet.
Tell them a romance takes place during the Victorian era and suddenly: “I don’t know enough history for this.”
YOU DON’T NEED TO.
A good historical romance should bring you into its world. You shouldn’t need a degree in British history to understand why these two people desperately want to kiss each other. And the same thing applies when we move beyond British history.
You don’t need to walk into Beverly Jenkins knowing everything about Reconstruction. You don’t need a dissertation on the Gilded Age before reading Joanna Shupe. You don’t need to understand every political or social force surrounding a queer historical romance before opening Cat Sebastian.
The author brings you there. That’s part of storytelling. But again, perception matters. “Fantasy” promises escape. “Historical” can accidentally sound like education.
That’s a branding problem.
Modern Readers Shop Differently
This may be one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle.
Romance discovery has changed dramatically. Readers increasingly discover books through TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, podcasts, Goodreads, Kindle Unlimited, Discord communities, influencers, and friends. And those spaces don’t necessarily organize romance the way bookstores traditionally did.
Readers talk in tropes.
They talk in vibes.
They talk in emotional experiences.
He falls first.
Enemies to lovers.
Touch her and die.
Marriage of convenience.
Competent heroine.
Morally gray hero.
Found family.
Slow burn.
Who did this to you?
You can roll your eyes at trope marketing if you want, but it gave readers an incredibly efficient language for communicating what emotional experience they’re looking for. And historical romance has SO MUCH to sell in that language.
Instead, for years, a lot of historical romance marketing essentially said: He’s a duke. Okay. And?
Tell me why I’m going to care about this man. Tell me what hurts. Tell me why they can’t be together. Tell me why I’m going to be screaming at page 247 because he finally removed her glove. Tell me about the YEARNING.
Sell me the romance. Not the peerage. And that applies to historical romance beyond Regency England too.
Don’t sell me a diverse historical romance solely because it explores an important piece of history.
Tell me why these two people cannot stay away from each other.
Tell me she falls first but he falls harder.
Tell me they have to pretend to be married.
Tell me they’re enemies.
Tell me they’re forbidden.
Tell me there’s only one bed in 1887.
Historical romance has the tropes. Historical romance has the emotional hooks. Historical romance has the yearning. We just have to sell readers THAT.
We Also Need to Talk About Diversity
If we’re asking why newer readers don’t automatically see themselves as historical romance readers, representation has to be part of the conversation.
For decades, the most visible traditionally published historical romances centered overwhelmingly white, heterosexual, aristocratic characters in Britain.
Again, that doesn’t mean other historical romances didn’t exist.
They did. But visibility matters. What gets acquired matters. What gets stocked matters. What gets placed face-out on the table matters. What gets marketing money matters. What gets adapted matters. What gets recommended as the book someone should read if they want to “try historical romance” matters.
And historical romance has sometimes treated diversity as though historical settings somehow make it impossible.
Which is bizarre. Queer people existed. Black people existed. Disabled people existed. People of color existed. People traveled. People immigrated. People fell in love.
History was never as white, straight, able-bodied, and geographically isolated as some older romance shelves suggested. Historical accuracy shouldn’t mean erasing people who were actually there. But there is another complication here.
Fantasy has offered readers something historical romance sometimes struggles to provide: Distance from the ugliest parts of real history. And that’s important. Because telling readers that queer people existed in 1815 is true. Telling readers that Black people existed in Victorian England is true. Telling readers that immigrants built communities and families and businesses is true.
But historical romance also has to decide what to do with the systems surrounding those characters.
Racism existed.
Colonialism existed.
Homophobia existed.
Misogyny existed.
Those realities cannot always be hand-waved away. And fantasy can. Which brings us to something historical romance is competing against that I don’t think we talk about enough.
Because Fantasy Gets to Rewrite the Rules
Here’s where things get really interesting. A historical romance author writing a queer love story in 1815 has to decide how much historical danger those characters face.
A fantasy romance author? “This kingdom doesn’t care.” Done.
A historical heroine may be constrained by actual inheritance laws. A fantasy heroine? She’s the heir to the throne. A historical author writing characters of color has to navigate real systems of racism and colonialism. A fantasy author can build a completely different racial history.
That freedom matters to modern readers.
Fantasy can offer the romantic distance of history without requiring readers to confront every reality of history.
And that may be one reason romantasy feels more accessible. You still get the gowns. You still get the castles. You still get the arranged marriages. You still get the social rules. You still get the impossible love. You still get the class differences. You still get the political marriages. You still get people who cannot simply date because their relationship might destabilize an entire kingdom. You still get the yearning.
But the author gets to decide which historical limitations remain. That’s incredibly powerful. And I think historical romance has to understand that this is part of what it is competing with. Not because romantasy stole historical romance readers. But because romantasy learned how to sell many of the same emotional pleasures to a new generation of romance readers.
And we’re going to come back to that in Part Three.
But Historical Romance Can Do Something Fantasy Can’t
Real history creates its own emotional weight. There is something powerful about knowing these restrictions actually existed.
Knowing women really did have limited legal autonomy.
Knowing class could determine someone’s entire future.
Knowing marriage could be an economic necessity.
Knowing reputation carried real consequences.
Knowing queer people found ways to love each other even when society refused to recognize those relationships.
Knowing Black people built lives, communities, businesses and relationships despite systems designed against them.
Knowing immigrants arrived somewhere new and built lives while navigating language, culture, class and belonging.
Knowing people living under colonial systems still experienced joy, friendship, family, desire and love.
Because people are not only the terrible things that happened to them. And historical romance has a unique ability to tell those stories.
It can take the structures that constrained real people and ask: How did people find love anyway? How did they find joy? How did they build families? How did they create spaces where they could be themselves? How did they choose each other when the world made that choice difficult?
That’s beautiful. That’s not homework. That’s human. And I wish we sold it that way more often.
Maybe You Don’t Hate Historical Romance
Maybe you hate what you THINK historical romance is. Maybe you’ve never been handed the right historical romance.
Maybe you don’t want another duke. Fair.
Maybe you don’t want Regency England. Also fair.
Maybe you want queer historical romance.
Maybe you want cowboys.
Maybe you want working-class characters.
Maybe you want Black love stories.
Maybe you want immigrant stories.
Maybe you want Gilded Age, robber barons and heiresses.
Maybe you want murder with your kissing.
Maybe you want something funny.
Maybe you want something filthy.
Maybe you want angst.
Maybe you want older protagonists.
Maybe you want a heroine who isn’t interested in marriage.
Maybe you want two men figuring out how to build a life together in a world that doesn’t give them an easy roadmap for doing it.
Maybe you want characters whose histories look a little more like your own.
Maybe you want historical romance set somewhere you’ve never been before.
Maybe you want a book that acknowledges the realities of history without making suffering the entire point of the story.
Maybe you just want two people to yearn for 300 pages and finally get their HEA.
Historical romance can do all of those things. The genre is much bigger than the tiny box we’ve marketed it inside.
And This Is Why I Don’t Blame Readers
I don’t think newer romance readers failed historical romance. Readers don’t owe genres anything. It’s publishing’s job to make readers want books. It’s authors’ job to tell stories readers want to enter. It’s marketing’s job to communicate why those stories might matter to someone. If a whole generation of romance readers looked at historical romance and thought:
That’s not for me.
We should probably ask why. Not scold them for failing to recognize how wonderful the genre is. Because meanwhile, those same readers went looking for yearning.
They went looking for elaborate worlds.
They went looking for marriages with enormous consequences.
They went looking for political alliances.
They went looking for social barriers.
They went looking for dangerous men with titles.
They went looking for women fighting against the expectations placed on them.
They went looking for queer characters demanding a place in their own stories.
They went looking for found family.
They went looking for forbidden love.
They went looking for characters fighting systems bigger than themselves.
They went looking for impossible relationships.
And they found all of it.
Just maybe not where historical romance publishing expected them to.
Which brings us to Part Three.
Because if you want evidence that readers didn’t stop wanting the emotional machinery of historical romance... we need to talk about romantasy.
And I have a sword to pick with this one.
About This Series
This is Part Two of a three-part series exploring what happened to historical romance and why its decline doesn’t necessarily mean readers stopped wanting what the genre offers.
In Part One: Historical Romance Didn’t Die. Publishing Stopped Selling It to New Readers, I looked at the strange contradiction between historical romance’s shrinking traditional publishing presence and the enormous growth happening throughout romance more broadly.
Now we’ve looked at the reader side of that divide: perception, packaging, representation, discovery, and why “historical romance” may communicate something very different to newer readers than the books themselves actually deliver.
And in Part Three, we’re going straight at the dragon in the room: Romantasy.
Because readers didn’t stop wanting arranged marriages, forbidden relationships, rigid societies, political alliances, elaborate worlds, dangerous men, powerful women, and absolutely unbearable levels of yearning.
They may have simply started buying those things in a different section of the bookstore. And that tells us something important about what historical romance could become next.
This is an incredible analysis. Thank you!
Loved this!