Regency Era Duels: Romance Novel Research

The focal point in For the Love of a Courtesan is the duel. It is the part of the book that really uproots everything and changes how the main characters (North and Kitty) interact with one another. For this scene, I did some research on dueling in the Regency era to pull together a little bit of historical accuracy mixed with my own touch of writing flair.

Title: For the Love of a Courtesan

Series: Lords of Seductive Language, Book 3

Page Count: 194

Publication Date: November 27, 2024

Author: Lyrica Lovell

Why fight a duel?

By the Regency Era, dueling was outlawed. But, the Regency era was still a world where reputation mattered, unlike today, where you can be canceled in an instant for something you’ve said online, and then it is quickly washed away by the next bit of news or scandal. In this era, men were willing to die to preserve their reputations. It wasn’t only their reputations that they fought duels over. There were times when men fought duels over a lady’s reputation. One famous example from Regency romance fiction is the duel that Anthony get’s into with the Duke of Hastings in The Duke and I by Julia Quinn.

Whether dueling was a logical ideal or not, if a man’s honor was brought into question or one man offended another, if they were of the same class (or of similar social standing), they could call one another out. The entire aspect of social standing was essential. While a peer could call out another peer, someone from the ton would not call out a commoner.

Logistics of a Regency Era Duel

There were two ways to call someone out for a duel. The first one was to just say, “Name your seconds.” That’s the one I chose for North in For the Love of a Courtesan because it was known to be the “classiest” method. However, the other method to call someone out for a duel was to take off your glove and slap them with it.

North’s character is this larger-than-life sort of man. He holds a lot of power in society since he’s a duke and puts on this public facade of being fun, a total foodie, a kind of devil-may-care character. But in reality, this is a carefully put-together facade for him to hide some darker stuff in his life. He is the kind of man that all the men wanted to be, and all the women wanted to be with. In fact, he was the most eligible bachelor of the season. So, I could never have a character like this leveling himself to the dishonor and showiness of slapping someone with a glove. But why duel in the first place? Well, the reason for the duel was so that the men of the peerage didn’t just descend into chaos by fighting one another.

Now, once a duel in the regency era was issued, the entire concept of cooler heads prevail was fundamental. They typically waited a day, and then the man who issued the duel would send his seconds to discuss it with the other man’s seconds. This time gave the offending man time to apologize, and the man who issued the duel time to decide if it was really worth it. I changed this in my book For the Love of a Courtesan because I wanted the duel to be a rushed affair. I didn’t want there to be time for cooler heads to prevail. Basically, the night North issues the duel, he sends for his seconds around midnight, and then they start arranging things for a dawn meeting. I wanted this rushed execution of the duel to show some of the chinks in North’s facade, so to speak. I also wanted a character who had not slept through the night. While the reader has a clear view that North had issues before the incident, Kitty does not. The duel comes just after Kitty’s betrothal to North is announced, and the banns are read for the first time. Given Kitty’s position, it wasn’t really like she could call off the wedding. However, she decides she doesn’t want to, even in light of the aftermath of the duel.

The Offender Gets a Choice

The person being challenged usually got to pick the dueling weapon. They usually also got to choose the time and the place. I wanted to show a little bit of North’s high-handedness and power in this aspect. So in this scene, North chooses the time and the place, and the man he is dueling, Lord Trist, chooses pistols. Typically, dueling was done with either swords or pistols. North also wanted pistols, so he had his seconds push for this. However, it would prove to be to his detriment.

It’s Time to Duel

When the time for a duel arrived, the men, the seconds, and sometimes a doctor would meet at the designated area. There was typically a time when an apology could be issued and either accepted or declined. The parameters of the duel were set up, and the weapons were inspected by the seconds. With pistols, there were not a lot of parameters, and typically, each man got one bullet. The seconds would set the pace for the men to walk, and many times the men would shoot at the same time. This is the way I set it up in my story. However, if swords were chosen for the duel, then there was an agreed-upon dueling end, such as first blood, one man being down, or even to death. On the other hand, for pistols, it was considered an affront to one’s honor to shoot wide. However, in many Regency romance novel duels, the main character doing the dueling shoots wide.

The Aftermath of a Duel

So, I already addressed that by the time of the Regency era, dueling had been outlawed. It was illegal to be involved in a duel; that’s why these were affairs that happened out of the public eye and away from everyone. Dawn and somewhere that was empty were the most logical choices. Places like Hyde Park (where the duel in For the Love of a Courtesan takes place), Chalk Farm, or Wimbledon Common.

Now, if no one was injured or killed in the duel, most of society could be none the wiser to it even occurring. However, if someone was injured or killed, that was an entirely different story. In the case that one of the men was killed, it was legally murder. But was he charged with murder? Well, he was judged in a court that was made up of his fellow members of the ton. As far as affairs of honor went, other members of the ton were hesitant to put one of their peers into prison or have them hanged for it. Many of them were of the mind that the man who was killed had it coming. In my book, no one is charged with the duel, but both parties are injured.

It wasn’t just the two men fighting the duel who could be injured. Sometimes, the men would be hotheads, and the seconds would start fighting, too. Perhaps it was out of loyalty, or perhaps it was something else. So, the seconds could get injured. Past that, they could also get hurt if there was a misfiring of the pistols and a stray bullet got one of them. In some cases, if a man was incapacitated and could not fight, his second would step up and take his place. So, just because a man was a second didn’t mean they were safe on the dueling field. In For the Love of a Courtesan, Montenegro (from book one) and Silverblade (from book two) are North’s seconds.