4 Reasons You Should Never Put A Love Triangle In A Regency Romance Novel

Love triangles have their time and place in fictional novels like the Twilight and Hunger Games series. However, a love triangle should be kept entirely out of the picture in regency romance. In fact, you should never put a love triangle in a regency romance novel. It goes against the fundamental factors that make up books in the regency romance genre. 

1. Regency Romance Is For A Mature Audience

Love triangles create a very angsty romance novel filled with lawyers of tension because most of the time, the reader does not know which lover someone will choose in the end. While there is a whole subcategory of angsty regency romance novels, it typically is angsty in teasing with the main characters not getting together, not another person breaking up the relationship. Regency romance novels must always have a very standard happy ending. That ending is with the couple getting married and either getting pregnant or having a baby. There is no room for tragedies because it is not what they are looking for when a reader comes to this genre. Trying to shake the status quo with this will only get bad reviews for your book. Furthermore, regency romance novels are for a mature audience. One study even shows that most people reading the regency genre are over 30.

It seems like these women have already had their children, married their husbands, and are just looking for some light entertainment that doesn’t show them that the grass is greener on the other side. Married women don’t want to read about cheating and lovers. No one needs that kind of toxic temptations. But, love triangles are prevalent in young adult novels like the Hunger Game and Twilight that go light on the intimacy and are loosely about exploring the type of people who like in the book. It could possibly be because the young adult and people in their teens and twenties are the ones that are dating and thus involved with more partners.

2. Regency Romance Centers Around A Hero And A Heroine

Regency romance novels have two main characters. The hero and the heroine. Or the lady and the lord if you want to use the more genre-specific jargon. While these characters typically have either close friends, family, or a beloved pet, it is mainly for moral support within the book. For example, the lady lead does not typically have a best friend who is a male unless that is the man she is going to marry.

Furthermore, the male lead typically isn’t surrounded by women unless they are his mom, sister, stepmother, or sisters-in-law. There are some rare exceptions to this rule, such as within friend groups where the men have been friends for a long time and get along well with each other’s wives. You can read about an example of this dynamic in the Dukes Done Wrong Series by Alexa Aston. 

3. Involves Lots Of Passion

Regency romance is all about the passion that builds between one man and one woman and leads to the final marriage and baby. It is a classical formula for romance. While many other romance novels thrive on the love triangle theme, the regency genre does not. The closest thing that the regency genre has to a love triangle is two men fighting over one woman with one very apparent loser right from the start and one very favored winner. These love stories are happy ending love stories, so the hero and the heroine are identified to the reader within the book’s first two chapters. 

Typically, if not within the first two chapters, because one character has a more extended backstory leading up to their “present era selves,” then at least both characters are identified in the first 1/4th of the book. The characters should have their first interaction by then as well. Throughout the storyline, the two main characters experience varying levels of passion depending on how steamy the romance novel will be. A touch here, a kiss there, and sometimes more is incorporated nicely into the various chapters. This kind of intimate romance could not be built with a layer of infidelity and mistrust from a love triangle approach.

4. Steer Clear Of Infidelity

Regency romance does not steer clear of all infidelity. It is mentioned in the relationships of acquaintances, but the hero and heroine of a regency romance novel never cheat on one another. For, you see, these romance novels always have happy endings in every sense of the word. They always end with the couple getting married and either getting pregnant or having a baby with the epilogue. A love triangle leads to kissing other people, or even more, which has no place in the arms of a perfect world that is the regency romance genre.

Do You Want To Witness This Phenomenon For Yourself?

You don’t have to take my word for it. You can read more into the regency romance genre and find out how few love triangles there are for yourself with a Kindle Unlimited subscription. If you are a new Kind Unlimited user, you can have fun reading the Kindle unlimited library books and enjoy huge savings. 

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Now go forth and read the wonder that is the regency romance genre fo yourself.

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