Gender-Reversed Regency Romance Wanted

[redbrunja]

I have been binge-reading regency romance, and besides coming across an actual ‘90% of the conflict centers around two characters not talking to each other’ plot (I had forgotten these existed except as theoretical examples of what NOT to do), I have read about a lot of wealthy, powerful men and the in-financial-straights women who love them stories. Don’t get me wrong, I totally get the appeal of ‘now you have regularly have hot sex with a guy who loves you and now all your money worries are over and you’re LOADED’ as a fantasy, but it has left me DEEPLY craving a story about a duchess who decides to take, I dunno, some hot, broke, strapping young man into her bed. He teaches her about the wonders of life she’s been missing, she teaches him the joy of love-making and in the end, marries him to take him away from his life of toil and strife.

Comments

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

True... although the interesting thing about both of those examples, is that the high-born lady ends up moving DOWN in class (or, in the case of Anastasia, staying with the class she'd been in) whereas in the romances I've been reading, the heroine ends up moving up a class and then staying there.

[qualapec.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't even think about that! Yeah, I'm not sure there are any stories I can think of that handle that well, then. Or when they do, it's because someone is after the heroine for her money and she's being forced to marry him.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I realized after I posted this that I do have an example from a (good) regency romance that I read recently (A Lady By Midnight) in which the hero (who originally turned down a captaincy and planned to travel to America and live on the frontier) ends up taking the captaincy so he can marry the heroine (who is of a higher social class than he is).

And I think that Han/Leia kind of has implied elements of this? In that Han's moving up in the world as the films go on - Leia certainly isn't running off to be a smuggler with him.