My Education as a Romance Reader

The Coolest Quote of the Week award goes to KarenS in a thread about Linda Howard's Sarah's Child at All About Romance's Reader-to-Reader message board, :

"With Howard's men, the bigger they are, the bigger they fall! And when Rome fell, it was forever."

What I learnt from reading British-setting historical romances:

• Everyone addresses each other by their first names
  
• Parents are a) dead, b) bitter and twisted, or c) eternally widowed
  
• Parents have no qualms in naming their daughter Mackenzie or their son Devon
  
• Five things heroines are obsessed with: a) a desire to lose their virginity, b) a need to protect their virginity, c) shagging heroes blind, d) saving the working poor, and e) getting the hero to say, "I love you".
  
• There are five career options for heroes: spy, adventurer, war hero, Highland warrior and rake
  
• There are four British time periods: Regency, Victorian, "Medieval" and Elizabethan
  
• Everyone in the Highlands speaks in Scots
  
• Everyone in the Highlands hates the English
  
• The Highlands is Scotland and Scotland is the Highlands
  
• A Highland-born hero automatically takes over his late father's place as a chieftain
  
• A 'laird' is a Scottish nobleman
  
• All men in Scotland wear short kilts
  
• The English & Welsh law system covers Scotland
  
• Everyone in working-class London speaks Cockney
  
• It takes only three servants and a butler to keep a large mansion in order
  
• Only towns that exists in England are London, York, Bath, and Brighton
  
• Only towns that exist in Scotland are Edinburgh and Glasgow
  
• Only towns that exist in Wales are ... I don't think Wales exists
  
• No one goes to church on Sundays
  
• It takes only a couple of hours to travel in a horse-driven carriage from London to York
  
• There is no difference between the working class and the poor class
  
• The gentry is no different from the aristocracy
  
• Only weather conditions exist in England are sunny, raining or icy cold
  
• During the Medieval period, heroines are a) psychic, b) healer, c) saviour of the poor, and d) easily shocked when told that they have to marry a complete stranger
  
• During the Medieval period, heroes are a) knight, b) lord, c) spy, or d) all three
  
• During the Medieval period, everyone says, "Nay" and "Aye"
  
• During the Georgian period, heroes never wear wigs, coiffures or curls, not even for lavish fancy dress balls
  
• Heroes have nicknames, ranging from Hawk to Ram and from Satan to Devil
  
• It's rarely cold in English mansions
  
• English and Welsh bastard heroes can inherit their fathers' titles
  
• It's easy for the noble-born hero and heroine to have sex anywhere in a servant-run mansion or townhouse
  
• People of ethnic minorities don't exist in the UK; when they do, they are usually lady's maids or servants
  
• Anyone can marry into the aristocracy
  
• The majority of heroes attended Eton college and the rest went to Rugby
  
• A title is a privilege, not a duty
  
• A British nobleman can marry a non-noble woman without suffering any consequences of how it'd affect the rest of his family that are part of the lineage
  
• Everyone measures walks with blocks
  
• Regency-era heroines can be forced to marry against their will and without their parents' knowledge

ADDITION: Mrs. Giggles has a fantastic list of romance novels with characters as secret agents: Why Do Secret Agent Stories Have These Stupid Things? We need more lists like this! Anyone? Futuristic romances, Regency historicals, Americana romances, contemporary romances?

Be good, be bad & be safe.