This article considers the topic of writing royal lives from an interdisciplinary perspective which embraces questions of popular history and particularly historical fiction. Georgette Heyer (1902-1974) was a highly successful novelist of the twentieth century whose large oeuvre of historical fiction remains popular and in print to this day. While her name has become synonymous with lightweight historical romantic fiction, particularly set in Regency England, Heyer was a committed researcher with frustrated ambitions to be recognised as a more serious historical writer but desire for financial security as well as the commercial instinct of her publishers pressured her to focus her energies on regular productions of her popular romantic novels. However, it will be argued here that an abandoned project to write a biography of Princess Charlotte of Wales found an outlet in an almost paratextual biography between mentions in several of Heyer’s Regency Romances and especially in references, direct and indirect in her 1961 novel A Civil Contract. It will be argued that this case study should encourage more analysis of historical fictions in royal studies, but particularly that it could provide an inspirational framework for creative practice for scholars in the field seeking to write royal lives as novels in a format with potential for high impact and commercial appeal.
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it is worth noting that the “history” her readers encounter is one informed by historical research rather than merely details derived through imitation of inspirational historical literary texts such as the novels of Jane Austen. Although the main characters she created were fictional, the “world” they live in is not, with references to genuine commodities, experiences, places, and events of historical record. The characters also refer to, and even interact with, non-fictional historical figures. While many of these references are fleeting, they are often significant in conveying key plot points and, when pieced together from across the books, do render something of a miniature portrait of the character. Most especially there is in the background of Heyer’s Regency novels a recurring interest in the Prince Regent’s daughter, Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796-1817), which, when taken in conjunction with significant references to Charlotte’s life in her 1961 novel, A Civil Contract, amount to an indirect, almost paratextual biography of the Princess, even though she never directly features in the stories. (242)
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This article suggests that, consciously or not, Georgette Heyer used elements of the texts and subtexts of some of her Regency romances to convey the results of her research into the historical figure of the Prince Regent’s daughter, and that, taken together, and in combination with her full body of popular historical novels, these elements acted as paratexts to construct a substantial yet unwritten biography of the princess, indirectly relaying a story of Charlotte’s life to her readers, whether they recognise/d it or not. (242)
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it will be argued here that this writing of royal lives between the lines should be of greater interest to scholars in royal studies, offering source material for the analysis of the legacies of royal lives in popular culture and public understandings of the past, but also offering a possible inspirational framework for the creative communication of academic research to general audiences in a format with potential for high-impact and commercial success. (243)
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