S06.35: All About Dukes (in Romance)
This one is for our historical lovers! We’re talking about everyone’s favorite title — Dukes! We get to the bottom of many duke questions, including: Why so many? Why are they always dukes? What’s wrong with princes? How do these guys make their money anyway? What’s with all the normies inheriting dukedoms? What about duchesses? And more! Please remember that everything we are about to say is romance fact. Don’t @ us with real life fact. We don’t want it.
Happy anniversary to our founding Patreon members — it’s one year of our Patreon and our Discord today! We love you a whole lot. Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as we do at patreon.com/fatedmates.
Show Notes
The tree thing about pollen and allergens is called botanical sexism (god it’s everywhere) and this claim, like all things, is complicated.
Defining the title of duke. What are the corn laws or the laws about chimney sweeps? You don’t really care—it’s just fossils.
The Reformed Rakes podcast had a recent episode about pregnancy.
The Unites States Congress is comprised of incredibly wealthy people.
In 2009, Tatler got 10 of the 24 living non-royal dukes to sit down for lunch. There’s a photo. It’s exactly what you would expect. This 2021 article from Tatler lists the 4 living single dudes that either are or will be a duke. Shoot your shot, ladies.
Question: has Sarah really written more dukes than fewer?
A Duke: Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke’s Heart, No Good Duke Goes Unpunished, The Rogue Not Taken, A Scot in the Dark, The Day of the Duchess, Daring and the Duke, Heartbreaker, The Duke of Christmas Present, and A Duke Worth Falling For (9)
Not a Duke: Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake, Ten Ways to be Adored When Landing a Lord, A Rogue by Any Other Name, One Good Earl Deserves a Lover, Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover, Wicked and the Wallflower, Brazen and the Beast, Bombshell, and Knockout (9)
Books Mentioned this Episode
Sponsors
Louisa Darling, author of
The Matrimony Trap available in ebook from
Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble & Kobo
Faye Delacour, author of The Lady He Lost,
available in print or ebook from
Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble & Kobo
or wherever you get your audiobooks.
Beth Gelman, author of Always Falling Behind,
available in print or ebook, or with
your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Stephanie Rose, author of Second Time’s the Charm
available in print or ebook, or with
your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
S03.37: Widows in Romance
We’re toppling TBRs this week with widow romances! We’re talking widows of all shapes and sizes…from virgin widows who murder their husbands in old school historicals to modern-day widows who are looking for love because they know how good it can be. If widow romances are your thing, we’re about to make you very happy!
Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading Sarah’s favorite Sherry Thomas book —Ravishing the Heiress. Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.
We’re also going to announce our next read along now, because it’s out of print (but available in audio!), so you will have to do a bit of a used bookstore hunt to get it! Get Anne Stuart’s truly bananas Tangled Lies at a used bookseller near you. We recommend checking Amazon, eBay & Thrift Books.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Widow Books
Notes
Last week, we talked about Big Pharma, and if you want more of that, read Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. It’s about the Sackler family and how they made billions on Oxycontin which was a huge factor in the creation of the opioid epidemic.
Daisy Jones and the Six is a great novel, and the full-cast audiobook is supposed to be amazing. The Reese Witherspoon book club is the definition of the full glow-up.
Sarah made some Maple Oatmeal Muffins, and maybe you want the recipe. Why food bloggers include some pre-recipe chatter.
The question of freshman year dorm room decoration is of new significance to Jen since Lil Romance will be heading off to college in the fall. Might we recommend a Pulp Fiction movie poster or some Absolut Vodka ads?
If we’re talking skyscrapers, meaning buildings over 150M (about 500 feet) tall, when this was recorded in April of 2021, Cleveland has 4, Denver has 7, Chicago has 127, and New York has 284. According to wikipedia, only nine cities in the world have over 100 buildings 150M tall. The other seven are Hong Kong (355), Shenzhen (289), Dubai (201), Shanghai (163), Tokyo (158), Chongqing (127), and Guangzhou (118).
Check out the Sassy Podcast and the Babysitter’s Club. No, not that kind of babysitter.
We love the movie Widows.
The merry widow is an opera and a kind of sexy lingerie.
We did an episode on Prisoner of My Desire with Joanna Shupe way back in season one.
Primogeniture laws are all about who inherits titles and money and estates, and wasn't changed in England until 2013.
Apparently there are lots of misconceptions about Arabian horses.
More about Victorian era mourning requirements.
Historically you couldn’t marry your brother’s widow
All about gorillas and where the live, and actually it turns out a gorilla really could kill you in a fight. Sarah was on Learning the Tropes talking about The Earl Takes All, in case you need more of that.
Spoiler alert about The Power Broker in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
We have two read-along books in May. On the 12th, we’ll be reading Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas. On the 26th, we’ll be reading Tangled Lies by Anne Stuart. It’s out of print and not available as an eBook, so order a used copy from Amazon or ThriftBooks, or check out the audio.
Join the "Romance sticker of the month" club
Preorder Bombshell, which comes out August 24th.