S05.26: Dueling in Romance with Chels: Duels are Never Having to Say You're Sorry
Pistols at dawn, y’all! We’re talking about duels today — what they are, why they exist, who fights them, their rules and why they’re so darn sexy when they are really just silly. We’re taking our twenty paces alongside Chels_ebooks, one of our favorite BookTokkers, who has a longstanding love of old school romances and their covers, and a substack that you should subscribe to immediately. Of course, we’re talking TikTok, too. This one is long and fun and full of book recs, so strap in!
You can still get tickets to Fated Mates Live! Join us on March 24 in New York City with Tessa Bailey, Andie J. Christopher, Mila Finelli, Adriana Herrera, and Joanna Shupe! Amazing stories will be told, many laughs will be had, terrific books will be on sale, and there will be a bar! Get tickets now!
Our first read along of 2023 (soon! we promise!) is Tracy MacNish’s Stealing Midnight—we’ve heard the calls from our gothic romance readers and we’re delivering with this truly bananas story, in which the hero is dug out of a grave and delivered, barely alive, to the heroine. Get ready. You can find Stealing Midnight (for $1.99!) at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, or Apple Books.
Show Notes
We are thrilled to welcome Chels, the Reigning Monarch of Bodice Ripper TikTok, to the show today. You can also follow them on twitter and subscribe to their substack, The Loose Cravat. In concert with this episode, Chels wrote an essay called Duel, Interrupted: The Underlying Homoeroticism in historical romance's favorite pasttime.
Wondering about those TikTok hit pieces we mentioned? Read the ones from British GQ and London Review of Books. It’s a few years old, but this Wall Street Journal video is a great look at the mysterious TikTok algorithm and how quickly it will rabbit hole you, and a more recent piece from Vox about TikTok’s recent promises to become more transparent, and another one from The Verge about how TikTok suppresses content from disabled users.
The relationship between BookTok and bookselling is complex and difficult to parse because of the lack of transparency around book sales. Check out Where Is All the Book Data by Melanie Walsh, as well as how book-buying habits changed during the pandemic.
Deloping is bad, actually! So If you’d like to learn more about duels, Chels recommends Pistols at Dawn by Richard Hopton and The Duel: A History of Duelling by Robert Baldick. Jen recommends this article about dueling from JSTOR Daily, or this one about American dueling in the Smithsonian, which led her to the Code Duello as one example for the rules of dueling.
Speaking of moral panics, JSTOR Daily has a list of them! I told you it was a good site!
Deuling in pop culture: check out The Duelists by Ridley Scott, this famous scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and of course, Hamilton.
For some real historical duels, check out: The billiards balls duel, The topless lady duelers in Austria, additional ladies being badass, Humphrey Howarth the naked dueler, and Burr and Hamilton. Senator Brooks caning Senator Sumner on the Senate floor is another thing entirely.
Finally, check out this page from Loretta Chase’s website which describes and links to several videos about the Singing bird pistols from Lord Lovedon’s Duel.
Books With Dueling
Other Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Mila Finelli, author of Mafia Target
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Juniper Butterworth, author of Shipwrecked: Being a tale of true love, magic & goats
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S03.51: Mistresses, Courtesans, and Cheating in Romance with Adriana Herrera
Adriana Herrera, a FIVE-TIMER, joins us this week to talk about the third-rail of romance…infidelity! We’re talking about cheating, and about all the other bits related to it: mistresses, courtesans, illegitimate children, sex work…and get your pencils ready because (of course) we’re toppling TBRs with this one.
Don’t miss Fated Mates LIVE! to celebrate the release of Sarah’s next book, BOMBSHELL! Join us and some of our very favorite people on August 24th! Tickets are a copy of the book, and available at five participating romance friendly bookstores. Get them here!
Speaking of BOMBSHELL, it is our next read along! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org, or at one of the participating romance-friendly bookstores hosting the Fated Mates Live/Virtual Bombshell Launch! Orders will come with a Fated Mates Sticker!
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.
Show Notes
Welcome to five-timer Adriana Herrera, our very own Rizzo, and her Pink Lady jacket is on the way. PS. It was only in working on these show notes that Jen realized that Rizzo’s first name is Betty.
The phrase “safe romance” is used in online spaces to describe books without a single molecule of infidelity energy.
Infidelity in evangelical christianity (and everywhere, honestly) often places the blame on the wife if her husband strays and also on “the evil other woman” -- in this model, you know who’s not to blame? Men. And that’s pure patriarchy.
Lavender wasn’t invented because it’s a plant and its known history dates back 2500 years.
Courtesan culture was inextricably tied to colonialism in India, in China, and in the USA.
Summer Brennan’s patreon about The Book of Courtesans. Hallie Rubenhold's Covent Garden Ladies, which is the book that inspired the Hulu TV show Harlots, is about Harris's List of London "working girls."
The Spanish word for wife is esposa, which means handcuffs or manacles, while the word for mistress is amante, which means beloved.
We have had some deep dive episodes where there is infidelity: Waking Up with the Duke by Lorraine Heath and Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas
There are so many bastards in historical romance, partly because it’s an easy on-ramp for creating a character who is an outsider.
Ethical non-monogamy is the practice of talking to your partner(s) about the boundaries of your relationship. Polyamorous and Open relationships would fall into this category.
On Maryse’s Book Blog, there was a 2015 post about cheating in romance, and most of the titles are self-published and indie.
Sarah talked about Lorenzo Lamas and Dynasty and Jen and her brother Mike talked about Santa Barbara on Adriana’s Instagram Live conversations about telenovelas and soap operas.
We are having a live episode of Fated Mates to celebrate the launch of Bombshell on August 24th at 7 eastern, to get a ticket, you'll need to buy a copy from one of these indie bookstores. (If you already pre-ordered from WORD in Brooklyn, you'll get log in details in an email.)
