Waterloo

Show Notes

In this episode, we’re specifically focused on Waterloo, Napoleon’s last stand and a favorite backdrop of historical romance. Waterloo took place June 18, 1815, when Napoleon’s Army of the North was met by the Seventh Coalition, an army composed of Wellington’s English troops, and various German and Dutch units at a small village just outside of Brussels. Around 50,000 soldiers died in the conflict. The battle led to the voluntary surrender of Napoleon to the British a month later, after a series of increasingly desperate military and political moves on his part, and his eventual final exile on St. Helena, a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean. The battle happens right in the middle of the Georgian and Regency periods, a favorite setting for historical romance. This, of course, means Waterloo has a huge presence in the genre, as a setting, as a disabling event for characters, as a fulcrum pushing England over the cliff into the modern age. We’re going to talk about the history and impact of the battle on real life and in fiction.

Books Referenced

An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer

The Lady’s Companion by Carla Kelly

Miss Truelove Beckons by Donna Simpson

A Gentleman Undone by Cecilia Grant

Shattered Rainbows by Mary Jo Putney

Her Gallant Captain at Waterloo by Diane Gaston

The Covert Captain: Or, A Marriage of Equals by Jeannelle M. Ferreira

The Black Hawk by Joanna Bourne

A Temporary Betrothal by Lily George

Stormfire by Christine Monson

Surrender the Night by Christine Monson

The Flesh and the Devil by Teresa Denys

Nightfire by Valerie Vayle

The Duchess Deal by Tessa Dare

Beyond the Sunrise by Mary Balogh

Think of England by K.J. Charles

The Substitute Bride by Diana Delmore

The Black Count by Tom Reiss

An Early Engagement by Barbara Metzger

Lame Captains and Left-Handed Admirals: Amputee Officers in Nelson’s Navy by Teresa Michals

After Waterloo by Paul O’Keefe

Works Cited

Mary Jo Putney in an interview promoting Once a Spy

NPR interviews some authors, including Loretta Chase

Non Romance List of Historical Fiction

Jane Austen and Napoleonic Wars

The Horrible Peace: British Veterans and the End of the Napoleonic Wars by Evan Wilson - We referenced chapter 10

“Medical aspects of the battle of Waterloo” by Michael Crumplin

“Army Pensioners and the Maintenance of Civil Order in Early Nineteenth-Century England” by F.C. Mather

Marital Masculinities by Julia Banister - We referenced chapter one

“Management of Nightmares in Patients with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Current Perspectives”

Further Napoleonic Reading Recommendations

Talleyrand by Duff Cooper

Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Robert

The Napoleonic Wars: A Global Perspective by Alexander Mikaberdize

Clisson et Eugenie by Napoleon Bonaparte, a melodramatic romance that Napoleon wrote as a young man. The hero is a self-insert character who everyone is jealous of because he is so good at being a soldier.

Transcript

Emma

Welcome to Reformed Rakes, a historical romance novel podcast that knows its fate is to be with you. I'm Emma, a law librarian writing about justice and romance at the substack Restorative Romance.

Chels

My name is Chels. I'm the writer of the romance sub stack, the Loose Cravat, a book collector and a booktoker under the username Chels_e. books.

Beth

I'm Beth. I'm a grad student and I'm on BookTok under the name bethhaymondreads.

Emma

And today I somehow convinced Beth and Chels to talk to me about Napoleon and Mary Balogh in this episode were specifically focused on Waterloo, Napoleons last stand and a favorite backdrop for historical romance. Waterloo took place June 18, 1815, when Napoleon's army of the North was met by the 7th Coalition, an army composed of Wellington's English troops, and various german and dutch units at a small village just outside of Brussels. Around 50,000 soldiers died in this conflict. The battle led to a voluntary surrender of Napoleon to the British a month later, after a series of increasingly desperate military and political moves on his part and his eventual final exile on St. Helena, a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean, the ending of the Napoleonic wars had a huge impact on English culture and Politics. And the nature of the battle of Waterloo, for a few reasons, puts into stark focus the brutality of war for an English public who, until this moment, had often maintained some distance from the Napoleonic machinations on the continent. The battle happens right in the middle of the Georgian and Regency periods, a favorite setting for historical romance. This, of course, means Waterloo has a huge presence in the genre as a setting, as a disabling event for the characters, as a fulcrum pushing England over a cliff into the modern age.

Emma

We're going to talk about the history and the impact of the battle on real life and in fiction. So just to start off, how much does everyone know about Napoleon? I know I know the most...

Beth

I don't think there's a contest.

Emma

Did you take a European history class in high school?

Beth

I feel like I learned a lot about the French revolution and, like, the ramifications and then, yes, of course you talk about Napoleon, but, yeah, that would have been when I was, like 16.

Chels

Yeah, I definitely don't know as much as you. I know some things about Napoleon. Like, I know he was a second son, like one of the most famous second sons.

Beth

That makes sense.

Chels

He's Corsican and he wasn't considered french. Kind of like for the first part of his life. I think.

Emma

I think for most of his life. He spoke French with a very heavy accent. He was basically Italian.

Beth

Oh, okay.

Chels

Yeah, that's what I. Very, very rapid rise to power. He was, like, very young, young when he was, like, doing all of these things that we're reading about a romantic. Oh, yes.

Beth

Famous letters to his wife as well.

Chels

Famous, famous letters to his wife.

Beth

Didn't someone, like, discover them and publish them to shame him? Am I misremembering that it was a.

Chels

Letter to one of his mistresses or a letter?

Emma

There's simply propaganda. People would intercept them. And people have also auctioned off his letters. His letters to Josephine are still around because they got stolen from her house while she or he destroyed her letters. So we don't have the corresponding correspondence. But her letters, I think, on her deathbed were not protected. And he was very upset by this. He wanted his letters to be destroyed. But they're very horny. That's the main thing. So, yes, Napoleon, larger than life figure. He's been my fixation for about the past year. I've read a lot of books about Napoleon, which led to this episode. So I'm really excited to talk about some history. So we're going to start with the history and focus on Napoleon's side, mostly because for the context, Napoleonic wars, we will talk about, like, Wellington and the English side in this episode. But this first part of the history is mostly gonna be from the French side. And just to sort of set the stakes for Waterloo, like, why is Waterloo even such a big deal?

Emma

Napoleon first becomes a political actor, really, in 1796 ish. He's on a campaign in Italy. He's a very young general. He's really like a wunderkin. This is where he makes his mark on European theater and stands out as a military leader. This is also the year he marries his first wife, Josephine. By 1800, he had led a coup d'etat, relying on his military backing to be one of three counsels in the government in Paris, which is basically the top executive branch of the government. And Napoleon had himself declared both the first counsel and counsel for life. There's a short lived peace in Europe. There have been wars going on before this time, but then when he's lead counsel, there's peace, and this helps him justify declaring himself emperor. December 1804. For the next decade, there's basically constant fighting in different parts of Europe, both with Napoleon or caused by Napoleon or sort of other sides fighting each other with lots of moving pieces on the continent, countries are ceasing to exist and alliances are shifting and changing. Britain famously has supremacy at sea, whereas Napoleon and France have a lot of luck and skill at land engagements. And this is especially true after the battle of Trafalgar, which happens in 1805, where Admiral Horatio Nelson basically destroys an already inferior french fleet.

Emma

And then in 1812, we're gonna jump ahead a little bit. Russia had been a sort of famous previous ally to France for the past few years, arranged a secret alliance with England, primarily motivated by disagreement over who should rule Poland, France or Russia. And Russia's refusal to embargo English manufactured goods. This is also the beginning of the industrial revolution. So England, like for most of the 19th century, is much better at producing sort of industrialized materials. And a lot of the continent, including Russia, really want those materials from England. And Napoleon's political strategy is to embargo all of English goods in areas that he controls. So then Napoleon invades Russia with an army of almost half a million men and famously experiences disaster. As the Russian army retreats further into the continent, they burn the lands behind them, making it very hard for the grand Armee to feed themselves and their horses. They finally meet at Borodino, which is featured spectacularly in War and Peace. This is the bloodiest single day of the Napoleonic wars, and the battle is inconclusive. But this is a way worse outcome for Napoleon. He can't replenish his troops and is ill outfitted for the Russian weather.

Emma

When the Russian army falls back even further, they burn Moscow, meaning the abandoned metropolis can't serve Napoleon as a base for the winter. So he and his army retreat through the Russian winter to great losses. But this is really big. Really his first big loss in the Napoleonic wars, other than the naval battles against England on land, he's just beaten everybody.

Chels

Isn't this in the Duelists?

Emma

So this is the Duelists, famously, which an incredible reformed rakes favorite Napoleonic movie and Chels icon in lots of social media is Harvey Keitel in that movie. So watch the Duelists. It's outstanding. But, yes, if you ever see Napoleonic art or anything where people are freezing, it's the French army in Russia, because they are ill prepared for Russian winter. People are always invading Russia in the winter. It's like, don't do that.

Chels

Come on, guys, stop it.

Emma

It seems intuitive. I don't know. So his defeat at Russia, Napoleon's defeat in Russia, really accelerates the erosion of trust in his command. And the coalition of armies that's against him starts being much bigger than his Grand Armee. He's basically, like, lost the ability to get people in his army. He's also like, run out of horses. There's a finite number of horses in France at any given moment, and Napoleon has used most of them.

Beth

I never would have thought of that.

Chels

Finite horses, but that makes sense is that they're like.

Beth

But you just don't think about everything that's going into feeding and housing and literally moving this army along.

Emma

I guess you can always conquer a new place and, like, get more people. Like, it's actually easier for him to get people into his army than it is for horses. After Russia, you just don't have to.

Beth

Train the horses too. Like, it's not just like any horse. It's like a horse that won't, like, throw you if a cannon goes off.

Emma

Right. A horse that's trained to ride and be, like, safe and you have to feed them. And that's a big part issue in Russia is that they just don't have enough feed for the horses. It's a very tragic event for the horses. So his old allies have started, has joined Russia against him. He's able to stave off total defeat until April 1814. This is when he abdicates in Paris after his marshals tell him they won't support him people are starting to invade Paris. He really thinks that he will still have the army behind him. But his marshals are sort of seeing the tea leaves and they say, we want to get out so we don't get executed by this coalition.

Beth

Fair.

Emma

So one of the conditions of the Treaty of Fontainebleau, which ends the War of the 6th coalition. So all the Napoleonic wars are named after the coalitions that form against Napoleon. So we have the war of the first coalition, which actually Napoleon is not in charge for. But second through the 7th, different coalitions are against Napoleon, and there are seven of them total. So at the end of the war of the 6th coalition, this is when he gets sent to Elba, which is an island off the coast of Italy. That's very, very small. It's close to his home island of Corsica. It's sort of like between Corsica and Italy. So the alliance allows Napoleon's sovereignty over the island, which is pretty much like a pretend title, to appease him. It feels like you got your kid a toy at target. And to keep them from having a temper tantrum,

Beth

here's a little island of.

Emma

So it's like a little principality. And he was supposedly planning on throwing himself into reforming the principality. He was like, great, I will rule from here. But then the promised funds for all the civic projects that he was planning didn't arrive.

Emma

And so he started hearing rumors about how unpopular Louis XVIII was. So the restored Bourbon king in Paris, because he's getting, like, different envoys and messages from France. And Napoleon begins to plan his return. And all the people around him, his guards are still loyal to him. He has, like, I think, a thousand of his imperial guard on Elba. He escapes Elba very easily, basically walks out, gets on a boat, and goes to France. Like, it's not daring-do at all. And he lands in mainland France on March 1, 1815, and begins the march north to Paris, gathering men as he goes. There are all these famous scenes where he walks up to people who've been sent to go get him from Paris, and he says, shoot me if you must or come with me. And people say, vive l'emperor. And he's embraced by the French people once more. He did strategically walk through certain areas that he knew he had loyal subjects. He did not go to certain areas where he thought people would shoot him.

Chels

Would shoot him if you must.

Emma

He was smart enough to avoid sort of certain areas. His foes basically immediately plan an intervention. Conveniently, they're almost all in Vienna, at the Congress of Vienna. This is where Wellington is. They are currently at the Congress of Vienna working out the sort of the mechanics of how do they fix Europe post Napoleon? So all these people are already together in Vienna. So once they get the news that Napoleon's back in France, they're like, okay, we have to deal with this. They don't know Napoleon's plan. So some people in this group assume that he's going to stay in Paris to try and shore up support. And some rightly suspect that he will try to engage early before an alliance can coalesce. Like, you think about, it's hard to move an army now. It's very hard to move an army in 1815. You have to get people to the same place. And so if he's able to attack someone before the whole army gets there, that might make it easier for him to win. So he gets to Paris on March 20. The king has already fled. Napoleon reinstates himself. He says, I'm emperor. He starts governing again, with the main plan being to raise an army to defeat whatever new coalition forms against him.

Emma

Napoleon's power has always come from people trusting his ability to win wars. He thinks if he has one decisive battle, that might be what it takes to get support from some areas of France that have been skeptical about his return and possibly break the new alliance that's formed against him. Because basically every country in Europe is working together to say, we want Napoleon gone. But if he has this one decisive battle, he thinks some of those weaker members of the alliance will say, actually Napoleon's back. Let's stay with him. So Waterloo, the stakes of it are a little different than a normal battle. He's not trying to gain land back. It's like a propaganda battle, basically. So he needs to win the battle and win the battle in a big way that gets people to change sides because he can't. But he can't have the army. He can't defeat this whole coalition with just his french army. He needs other countries to come with him. So he knows he should not just wait for the coalition to gather in Brussels. So by June he's moving northward towards Brussels with the goal of defeating Wellington's troops that have been there, that's sort of been Wellington's like European outpost since Napoleon got sent to Elba.

Emma

So before the Prussian troops arrive is the goal and well before Austrian and Russian troops arrive. And this is true that the mostly is fighting Wellington and the Prussian troops. Austrian and Russian troops don't get to Waterloo. A lot of the alliance leaders are in Vienna already and so they're basically trying to neutrally talk about what they need to do with the fallout from Napoleon. They want to rebalance power to avoid another large scale war. This is important for Waterloo because it's why Wellington is in Europe. So a lot of people in the British army are in the Americas for the war of 1812. But Wellington, some people asked him to go there and he was like, actually I want to stay in Europe and deal with Napoleon and deal with the fallout in sort of starting his political career. A lot of the sort of trained British soldiers are in the Americas because the War of 1812 doesn't end until February 1815. And so the agreement at the Congress of Vienna is signed nine days before Waterloo and then everybody leaves to try and do the battle. So just of the armies and like who's actually fighting generally, Napoleon soldiers are pretty experienced and extremely loyal to Napoleon.

Emma

Like, you're not in this battle at Waterloo for Napoleon, unless you really buy into Napoleon. His generals, however, are significantly less experienced than what he's used to working with. Mostly because he's gotten rid of a lot of the generals that betrayed him. Those marshals that said, like, we're not going to support you in Paris when he got sent to Elba. All of those guys have kept their loyalties away from Napoleon and they haven't asked to come back or he just has less experienced generals and that becomes important. Most of Wellington soldiers are Peninsular war veterans, but a lot of them are missing. So he has sort of a Hodgepodge army. And so he ends up calling his army an infamous army because he's supervising both his soldiers but also the inexperienced Dutch and Belgian troops. And some of those soldiers had been soldiers for Napoleon at different points. When Napoleon had conquered different areas, there were so just. It's like a hodgepodge on Wellington's side. And then there's also the Prussians that are led by General Blucher, who's like 72 and like a legend in napoleonic wars, but he's. He's kind of a kooky individual, but he's 72.

Beth

What side are the Prussians?

Emma

So the Prussians are with the English.

Chels

Don't they like, “Riders of Rohan” at the end? The Prussians?

Emma

Yes, they come at the end.

Beth

The most military history I know comes from Lord of the Rings.

Beth

Like, what move is this?

Emma

Yes, the Prussians are the riders of Rohan in the Waterloo setting. So pre Waterloo, there are sort of two mini battles that to vey for location. So Quartrebras and Ligny, which both happen on June 16. And these are effectively a draw because Wellington wins the location at Quartrebras and Napoleon at Ligny. So, like, the two best generals win their decisive battles. But importantly, these battles confuse Napoleon's battle plan. He wanted to go up in the middle of the generals between Wellington and Blucher to avoid fighting them at the same time. He's like, I'll attack Wellington while Blucher has to come over to me. And once they defeat Wellington, we'll turn around and defeat Blucher and to keep their lines of communication broken so these two allies can't talk to each other if Napoleon's in the middle of them. So Wellington, just some context, is a British hero at this point. He's already very famous. He's been made a duke because of his contributions to the peninsular war and he and Napoleon have never actually fought each other because Napoleon has left the peninsular war, he leaves his brother Joseph in charge to work on the sort of eastern part of Europe.

Emma

So the Russian invasion and all of that. So Wellington and Napoleon have never actually faced each other. Wellesley is his name. Arthur Wellesley becomes Duke of Wellington after the Peninsular war and he's never lost a battle. Blucher, career soldier. He's 72, like I said, but he had been really instrumental for the Russians in different wars. So after these sort of two mini battles, Wellington wisely gives up his better position from Quatrebras. And rather than keeping the line forward, he retreats back to Waterloo so that he can maintain communications with Blucher. They both fall back to Waterloo. And the battle happens on June 18 because June 17, it rains so much that nobody could do anything. The mud is too heavy. So timing is really important for the battle. And because Napoleon basically has to fight two battles at once, because his lines of communication are now so far apart, Wellington and Blucher have chosen positions that Napoleon has to stretch himself out really far. And so he has different generals. He has Marshal Ney and Marshal Grouchy, which looks like Grouchy, which is funny, but it's french, so it's grouchy. So he has two marshals with him that have to be really spread out.

Emma

And those are the two really inexperienced generals who sort of screw him over. But instead of coming up in the middle of the two armies that he's fighting, Napoleon brackets them and makes the communications from his side difficult because now he's spread out so far. He also delays starting the battle until the 18th because the mud. And also delays really late in the day because he's waiting for the land dry. And this helps Wellington and Blucher be able to talk to each other and, like, plan more.

Beth

I have a question. Yeah. Like, you're literally planning a battle. Like, do you send a letter to Wellington and be like, seventeenth's not going to work for us. Can we, can we do the 18th instead?

Emma

Well, I think it's. There's lots of, like, subterfuge. And so people are like, they're sending out. It's not unlike, I guess the metaphor I have is, like, sports teams, trades, like, sometimes they're like intentional leaks of, like, what we're doing. So it's like you. You don't want to, like, if you don't want to attack them when you're not prepared, but also, like, you will kind of want to attack them before they're prepared. And so you leak information and you have to decide, do I have the right information? And also, like, what information do I leak? That's like, kind of right but also kind of wrong for strategy. And so they're all these people on horses who are running back and forth between all the armies. And I think Wellington is in a position where he's not really going to attack until Napoleon attacks. Yeah, he's just waiting. That also has to do with. He's, like, in a very defensive position because he has a forest behind him, which it's like he, Napoleon sort of makes fun of him and he's like, Wellington picked a terrible position objectively, but it works out for Wellington's battle plan.

Emma

But, yeah, they're all these, all these people moving back and forth between the army on horses, but they're pretty far apart. It's on a field. But I think the scale of the communications is three to five hours between things. And so there are times when Napoleon asks people to come help him, and then another general will say, like, actually, no, come help me. And then this happens. At Quatrebras, there's one sort of battalion that doesn't end up participating at all because they get one set of orders and then they get other sets of orders that override them. And so if you don't have a battle plan and you also have generals who are inexperienced and can't make decisions on the fly, it hurts you more. And so Blucher and Wellington, both very experienced, and they're a little bit better at dealing with improvisation than Napoleon's marshals.

Beth

Right. But they're all newbies at this point.

Emma

Yeah. So the way that battle actually works is that Napoleon or Wellington has troops have blocked the main road into Brussels, and Napoleon faces them head on, while Blucher is to the east and General Napoleon, General Grouchy, takes them on. And so they're kind of far away, like three to 5 hours away, depending on who's riding the horse. But on the day of the battle, Napoleon sees the Prussian troops advancing towards him. But Grouchy is too far away to get a message that would aid in his positioning. But what's happened with the Prussian troops is that Blucher has said most of you go towards Waterloo because they were actually at a very small sort of village called Wavre. And so Grouchy, Napoleon's Marshall, has a huge success at his little battle, but he hasn't realized that most of the prussian people have left, and they're riders of rohaning to surround Napoleon at Waterloo. And because Grouchy is so far away, Napoleon can't successfully send him a message. So he sees the Prussian troops advancing, but knows his message won't beat them to him. So he fights the small skirmish without realizing that he needs to change positions.

Emma

So getting into the individual battle mechanics is kind of outside the scope of this podcast. But I'll have some links in the show notes of like some great. If you are interested in battle mechanics, there's lots of Napoleon content in the world, but basically Napoleon has to fight the British army and the Prussian army at a right angle to each other. So they're like catty-corner to each other and he's in the center, and his army is overwhelmed. In order to avoid being totally encircled, the French army then has to retreat. So it could have ended up where there was just a total bloodbath by having them surrounded. So they retreat. The Prussian army, with fewer casualties, continues on and follows Napoleon's army and pursues the French army back to Paris, while the English mostly stay up to clean up the mess and recover because they had the most injuries, because they were the ones that were fighting Napoleon head on. Though the duke does go to Paris with Blucher. This is where Napoleon flees to the coastal town of Rochefort. Rochefort. And. But he couldn't escape by sea because famously, the British blockade. The navy ships are so good, they're not gonna let him go.

Emma

So he surrenders after a month on July 18, 1815, and was taken to St. Helena, a very remote island in the Atlantic Ocean. It's like, I think it's like weeks journey on a boat from both Africa and Europe. And he lived there until he died in 1821. So that's overview of Napoleon.

Beth

 How was he when he died?

Emma

He was, I think, in his early fifties.

Chels

55.

Beth

That's so young. Because I was looking at the dates, I'm like, if he was young when he started this, he could not have been very old when he died.

Chels

I only know that because people were, like, talking about Joaquin Phoenix and they're like, he's the age that Napoleon was when he was died through the whole movie. Because they cast like, yeah, that's only six years. 55 year old Joaquin Phoenix doing like, 20 year old.

Emma

He has family history of stomach cancer. His father died also pretty young, like, right around the same age. And his brother, I think at least one of his brothers also died of stomach cancer. And so it's, like, hard to diagnose post after the fact. But his family had stomach issues, sort of hereditary and which is also crazy. He had, like, stomach issues even in his early twenties. Like, there. There are letters that he writes about, like, not being able to ride a horse because his stomach's in so much pain in his twenties. So I don't know if that's indicative of cancer or, like, just general, like, sort of stomach distress, but he also had a tummy ache at Waterloo. Like, this is his stomach was in pain. And you think about, like, all the.

Chels

Forget the Prussians, it was the tummy ache that did him in.

Emma

So, yeah, he died very young. Did they? There's also a theory that his wallpaper poisoned him, that he had arsenic wallpaper. There was stuff in the wallpaper that made him sick and

Chels

He was exiled instead of killed because they didn't want to make a martyr out of him.

Emma

Yes, they didn't want to make a martyr out of him. He was hoping to go live in England and they were like, fuck, no, you're not allowed to come here. He was like, I could be a political prisoner in London. And they're like, no, that's never happening. But the part of the Congress of Vienna is that they. It was like they had some. Everyone was like, what do we do with Napoleon? We can't kill him because he'll become a martyr. And so England is basically put in charge of, like, finding a place to put him and that's how they land on St Helena, because it's so remote that he just like, there's no chance. Even if he stole a boat, he doesn't have enough. They don't like, don't let him have his guard there. I think there's like, maybe like a dozen people sort of in his household and he just like, hangs out there and he reads a lot and, like, writes his memoirs and sort of laments. Laments life. So his brother Joseph, who was in charge of the Peninsular War or I like this as someone who lives in Philadelphia, moved to New Jersey after all of this and there's a house in New Jersey that's like Joseph Bonaparte's house and you're like, that's so weird.

Emma

So a lot of his relatives moved to America because I imagine Europe was pretty inhospitable to a Bonaparte for a while after this.

Beth

That's cool. So there's just descendants in America from.

Emma

Napoleon's family and his, his whole thing was like he wanted to have like a legacy, like a dynasty, but his, his one son, I don't think, had children, Josephine, who he divorces her children because she appoints. He appoints her son. So his stepson as like a. On a throne of one of the sort of cadet kingdoms, he gets put in charge of things. So his descendants are like royals in Europe. And then his first fiance, Desiree, she marries the king of Sweden and so their family is still kings and queens of Sweden. So Napoleon's direct descendants are not. I don't actually. Don't know if he has direct descendants, but two of his, like, love interests do have direct descendants on that are royalty. So he's like, he had a dynasty in like, a weird way that's interesting.

Chels

Well, isn't also like Bonapartism a thing? Like, there's like a.

Emma

Yes. I mean, his reputation in France definitely improved. So his. And his nephew. So Napoleon II, if you've ever heard Napoleon II is technically his son, who was like, he like, leaves when he. Every time he abdicates, he's like, put my son in charge and they're like, he's like six. We're not doing that. Also, you're like, you're leaving a disgrace. We're not putting your son in charge. But. So Napoleon II is a son, but Napoleon III. After the Bourbons again fall, Napoleon III becomes king of France. And that there's a. There's a period of Napoleon III that's like the 1840s, I think Bonaparte's come and go, but that's his nephew Bonaparte. And also his reputation in France, I think, has improved since immediately after Waterloo, though. Improved with like, pretty conservative circles. It's, I guess, a sign of conservatism in France. When you praise Napoleon sort of out loud. He did do a lot of good for France during the revolutionary period. He was greatly loved implementing a bureaucracy and a lot of his bureaucracy sort of still stand every time he conquered anywhere. Conquering, not good. But the first thing he would do was set up a post office and a lot of post offices still exist because Napoleon set them up.

Beth

Wasn't he good for education, too?

Emma

Yeah, he set up a lot of schools that still exist and like, schools that were like, less oppressive because he went. He went to military academy and he made fun of a lot because of his Corsican accent. So he's like, we're going to do more. Less oppressive schooling in the country. And like the napoleonic code, that was one of the things at the Congress of Vienna, they were like, we're going to keep that because it's good and we like it. And that's the basis for a lot of civil law across Europe. So he affected a lot. And I guess the big theme of the episode is that you can't write about this period and get away from Napoleon and Waterloo because it touches everything, because he was in charge for so long and also conquered so many places. So to get to specifically talking about Waterloo in romance. So Waterloo, the very end of Napoleon's reign and his power in Europe. But I do think it's like the napoleonic war, maybe that comes up the most. We do have Peninsular war heroes, but as far as events go, I don't know

Emma

if there's a peninsular war battle that comes up as often, maybe Badajoz.I think I'm just thinking of the soldier scoundrel by Cat Sebastian all of those.

Beth

Oh, yeah, that really bad one.

Chels

Yeah, yeah.

Emma

So the peninsular war is like the other one that you hear from. I don't think we ever get people who went to. Because England is mostly in the peninsular war and because peninsular were very naval focused. And so if you hear sort of any sort of naval heroes, they're probably going to be in the peninsular war. But I just. I found a few different authors who have written Napoleon or Waterloo romances talking about books that they read as young readers. And this is a huge genre and sort of genre fiction of these, like, adventure stories that are set during the napoleonic war. So there's like the Patrick O'Brien Aubrey Maturun series, which became master and Commander, a wonderful movie. The Horatio Hornblower series by CS Forster, which is also a great adaptation, with Ian Gruffudd, the welsh actor, and then Bernard Cornwell's Sharp series, which has a Sean Bean adaptation. I've seen the sentiment before with early romance authors talking about their reading history, where they talk about growing up on adventure novels and how they get to writing historical romance books, is that they wanted these books basically to have female characters in them.

Emma

I think even, like Woodiwiss talks about this not Napoleonic stuff, but the adventure novels is what they liked reading. I just wanted to talk about sort of the relationship with the setting of Waterloo, because when we. We almost always talk about setting when we talk about books on the podcast, but we also. We don't often group books by setting. I was thinking about our Newgate episode. Even Newgate in so many of those books becomes like a fictionalized place because there's so much license that authors use to create, like, a fictional Newgate to serve their narrative needs. But I thought we could read a few quotes from historical authors about Waterloo and setting in general and just discuss how, like, the specific setting is happening, because I just don't know if this happens in another iteration as often. So, Chels, I'm gonna have you read the Loretta Chase quote.

Chels

Waterloo is probably the one single historical event that gave me a visceral understanding of heroism. The men forming their squares and filling in the gaps as their fellows were cut down, the men defending Hougoumont. Images form in my mind's eye of men falling in battle and of the ugly aftermath, which has been described time and again, and of the Duke of Wellington's grief. I think these images are a work somewhere in the back of my mind whenever I'm thinking about bravery and heroic behavior of men and women and that remarkable british.

Emma

Sang froid.

Chels

Yeah, sang foi.

Emma

I want to choose. You think of french word and that.

Chels

Remarkable british sang froid.

Beth

I feel like that's cold, cold blood.

Emma

Pressure, coolness under pressure. So a few contexts before I have Beth read a quote, but so the squares that she's talking about are the infantry squares, which is like a way of combating, like cavalry, is that you. You set up in a square, because the horses don't like going near the bayonets. So you put the bayonets around and, like, the horses, like, circle, and you can't. You can't get, because you can't shoot a gun off of horse. You, like, are trying to sword people down and so you're. You're shooting the horses and then Hougoumont. This is a distraction that Napoleon tries to do. He tries to send people into this farmhouse at Hougoumont. And Wellington does not, like, take the distraction, but that means that the british men at Hougoumont are basically, like, left without reinforcements. And so it's like a symbol of, like, bravery. British bravery during Waterloo is that they hold the farmhouse without reinforcements. That would have helped him hold it better or stronger, but also, like, hurt. Wellington's, like, central battle plan. And then, Beth, if you'll read the Sabrina Jeffries quote.

Beth

Everything I know about the personal cost of Waterloo, I learned from regency set historical romances. Tales of wounded heroes finding love in the bleak aftermath of that battle, were always more compelling to me than a dry history book describing the strategies of the campaign. And in reality, there were lots of wounded to go around 10,000 from that battle alone. Regency historicals are filled with heroes, disabled both physically and psychologically, by the horrors of that battle, of heroines who lost brothers, husbands, fathers and cousins, coping with a very different landscape than the one they were taught to navigate in.

Emma

And then I'm going to read a quote from Mary Jo Putney, which is just fun. So she said. I've always seen parallels between the Napoleonic wars and World War Two. In both cases, for a long time, Britain stood along against a continental monster. And for authors, the napoleonic period offers a wealth of drama. Disrupted lives, heroic men and women. Yum. Very handy for plotting material.

Beth

I don't like that last line. That's so weird.

Chels

Mary Jo Putney.

Emma

I was like, why yum. That.

Chels

Honestly, she has the distinction of being the first person to ever think of Waterloo and say, yum, yum.

Beth

Sure, yeah, it's interesting. She draws a parallel. Well, not interesting, I guess I'm not surprised that she draws a parallel to World War Two, where it's like easy to make out. Like, I've got this monster, so we got, like, Hitler or we got Napoleon. So we're the good guys, actually, or.

Emma

The English are the good guys quote, because that is a very common sort of historical thing. I think, in, like, Napoleonic studies. People have moved away from that, that it's like, very, it's, it's kind of oversimplification. And honestly, it makes, like, Hitler look better in a way because it's like Napoleon is, like, competent in a way that Hitler isn't always. And also, like, makes Napoleon look worse in some way. Like, Napoleon was not great. He was a dictator, he was an autocrat. He was very racist. He colonized a lot of people. He was not a good person. But he also had some of these revolutionary ideals and had, like, a longer sort of commitment to human rights in a way, but then abandons them. So they're just different things. And I think who benefits from putting them together is British....

Chels

Nazis

Emma

or sort of the stories Britain tells about their roles in both of these wars. It inflates sort of the British presence in the military in both of these wars and then also downgrade some of the Russian component for both of these wars. This is sort of the narrative that Britain tells is that Britain saved the day rather than Russia or Britain or America in World War two.

Emma

And so it's also kind of an anti communist sentiment, especially in the fifties and sixties, when this narrative is being told. So it just is a common thing. And I think when we look at the Heyer book that comes out in 1937, it's like you can see maybe this interest in Waterloo is coming. There's also this continental threat coming from Hitler at that time. But I also thought we could talk about the Chase and Jeffries quotes, the sort of idea of getting history from romance. Yeah, I have lots of feelings about this.

Beth

Well, we've talked about it before, and I feel like it points you to an interest. But I'm not looking at my romance novels and being like, this is accurate history, or I should be learning.

Emma

Yeah. The quote from Jeffries where she says, everything I know about the personal cost of Waterloo, I learned from regents. These historical romances.

Chels

That's bleak. I don't know.

Emma

That reaction was like, well, there's lots of stories about Waterloo that don't get told in Regency said historical romances, and they are very sanitized in a lot of ways compared to the actual battle.

Chels

Well, and then also kind of too, like the thing, like, I get what she's saying kind of about, like, how you're maybe a little bit more interested or invested when you're connecting to a character and learning events through, like, the character's eyes. And that kind of, like, makes them a more emotional connection that you might not have just reading a history. Like, I kind of see what she's saying there. But I guess also too, like, what you said, Emma, about, like, especially, particularly Regency romance, it's just like, it is a very specific point of view that you're getting consistently. And then also anytime somebody characterizes war through the lens of heroism is immediately suspect to me. And there are romance authors that we will talk about in this episode who do write war and don't, like, frame it as heroism or even if a hero might be a veteran. It's not really framed that way, but I'm suspicious of someone who is kind of coming from that lens.

Emma

Yeah, I think all these quotes, it's more complicated than any of these blurbs. The Chase and Jeffries blurbs were pulled from basically interviews that were done during the anniversary of Waterloo for NPR. So I think there was, like, a very specific context in which they're talking about Waterloo and they are just little blurbs. They're not from interviews with the whole, like, the authors not being interviewed extensively. But yeah, I think if you look at the swath of actual Waterloo romances, it is more complicated than this because I think the setting can be used in so many different ways, in part because the history is so grounding that you, like, if you Waterloo happens, I think this may be because of hair and her interest in Waterloo or just because of, like, I feel like this is something I do think people try to be more accurate about than some other historical events. And so I think you have that, like, restraint. But I think sometimes that restraint allows people to do more interesting things. Like, we have to have this battle that has happens in a certain way. So how do we work around that?

Emma

So I think we're going to start talking about some books and some talking about some things that happen around Waterloo because it's mostly background military stuff. I think now we're going to talk about, like, fun, more romantic, romantic things. So, like, what do people actually include when they're writing about Waterloo? Like, what are the sort of Waterloo tropes in this, like, a little mini genre? I think a useful place to start with romance in Waterloo is Lady Richmond's ball. So Lady Richmond was Charlotte Lennox, wife of Charles Lennox, the fourth Duke of Richmond, who was in charge of the british troops protecting Brussels. So he's like, left in Brussels during the battle and sort of keeping the british troops, like, some of them are sick and, like, when they get sent back. So he's in Brussels. But she famously asked the Duke of Wellington a month earlier before her ball, if she could go ahead with the plan to hold a ball. And he assured her it would not be interrupted by Napoleon. It was. Spoiler. Lady Richmond's ball is one of the most famous parties in history, basically, and has this, like, long literary legacy.

Emma

I think it's. Whether it's famous because it's in these books or famous because of what happened, I think, kind of unclear. So even outside of romance, it's included in books. The setting of what's happening in pre the battle on the society side is that there are all these parties happening in Brussels. Continental travel had been basically stopped during the Napoleonic wars and so nobody'd been able to go to Europe for a long time. So once Napoleon gets sent to Elba on his first exile, all these British people say, I want to go on vacation, and so they go to Brussels. It sort of makes this, like, expat community in Brussels and, like, the Wellingtons there, and it just sort of becomes. And they also don't go to Paris. Like, Paris makes sense for England to go to, but they are not going to Paris because of Napoleon and so they're going to Brussels, their ally. So there's all these parties going on and every day new people are arriving. And so it's just like a very happening social scene in the books that I've read that address this pre Waterloo period. So the so called hundred days, which is where it's between Napoleon's return to power and before Waterloo.

Emma

So the 100 days when Napoleon, after he lands in Paris or lands in France and before Waterloo happens, there seems to be even, like, more parties going on. There's this, like, contradictory sense of, like, let's ignore this threat and take advantage of the satellite social scene where things, the mores are a little bit looser than they are in England and also like, the world as we might know, it might end if Wellington doesn't defeat Napoleon. So it's sort of like live fast, die young, both historically and then also in some of the books that we read. So I'm going to have Beth read a quote from Vanity Fair which is like the most famous, I think, depiction of Lady Richmond's Ball. And this sort of shows it's like, literary legacy.

Beth

There never was since the days of Darius, such a brilliant train of camp followers as hung around the Duke of Wellington's army and the Low Countries in 1815, and led it to dancing and feasting, as it were, up to the very brink of battle. A certain ball, which a noble duchess gave at Brussels on the 15 June in the above named year, is historical. All Brussels had been in a state of excitement about it. And I have heard from ladies who were in that town at the period that the talk and interest of persons of their own sex regarding the ball was much greater even than in respect of the enemy in their front. The struggles, intrigues and prayers to get tickets were such as only english ladies will employ in order to gain admission to the society of the great of their own nation.

Emma

So, in the context of Vanity Fair, at this ball, one of the male main characters takes an action that will later reveal him to be a rake at the very end of the book, and he dies at Waterloo. So everyone thinks that he's a great guy, but the mechanics of him being revealed as a cad sort of happen at the ball. And I think this sort of emotional like space where things are going to be revealed or something dramatic is going to happen at the ball in Vanity Fair, speaks to how it's used in romance. It's often on the precipice moment of something terrible about to happen. But that will bring the couple together either at the beginning of the book or the scene of the breakup. And so at the end of the book, it sort of depends on whether Waterloo is happening at the beginning or the end. And it feels like something really out of a romance novel anyway, like a ball, with all the esthetic trappings of a normal regency ball that people really want to get tickets to, being interrupted by the threat of war. Like, it's very high drama. They think they're going to this party.

Emma

And then Wellington comes in and says, everybody go home. We're going to be fighting a battle in two days. So it just lends itself to, like, romance drama. We also have a quote from Childe Harold's pilgrimage by Lord Byron that I'm gonna have Chels read.

Chels

A thousand hearts beat happily and when music arose with its voluptuous swell soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again and all went merry as a marriage bell but hush, hark. A deep sound strikes like a rising knell did ye not hear it? No twas but the wind or the car rattling o'er the stony street on with the dance let joy be unconfined no sleep till morn and when youth and pleasure meet to chase the glowing hours with flying feet but hark. That heavy sound breaks in once more as if the clouds, its echo would repeat and nearer, clearer, deadlier than before. Arm. Arm. It is, it is. It's the cannon's opening roar.

Emma

Yeah. So we have this, like, juxtaposition of the ball and then also, like, literally like hearing military sounds happening, like, very quickly after. So Wellington is a guest at this ball, and there are different tellings about how prepared Wellington was for Napoleon interrupting him. So I've seen people say, like, Wellington was totally taken by surprise. And then I've seen other people say, like, he was just pretending to be taken by surprise because that's kind of a part of his bit, is that he plays up sort of like, I'm just a solider aspect of his sort of thoughts. It's like, well, how much. How much did his spies know? A little up in the air. So some historians act like Wellington was in the know the whole time and put on an act. But either way, he's at the ball and he gets in a route, he sort of gets a message and says, like, everybody go home. The ball is just, like, really well documented because you had to get tickets. It's really aristocratic compared to other balls, even in Brussels. And so we have a list of invitees, and because so many of them were aristocrats and officers, we can trace their Waterloo history really easily of the attendees at the ball, half of the officers who were there would die or be injured at Waterloo.

Emma

So I think that just also shows the really, like, the end of the world feeling of this ball. Like when you get interrupted, like you're going off to battle, like you were dancing with someone 1 minute and like, you know, they were going to be in battle the next day. That doesn't really happen to England at any other point in napoleonic wards. You don't have this, like, society being, like, right next to a battle. Any other thoughts about Lady Richmond's ball? Before I talk about an infamous army.

Beth

I think I'll talk more with my book because I kind of downplayed the ball. But it's like that feeling is at that ball and that's where they reconnect, which I think is something you're going to talk about.

Emma

So I think a good place to start when we're actually talking about books and also in the context of Lady Richmond's ball is An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer, which was published in 1937. Like a lot of Heyers, this is the earliest romance that sort of has this element to it, like Waterloo element. She did a lot of things first. And she also wrote quite a few different military heroes, at least for three or four that touch Waterloo in some way. But this is the one that's most famous and has the most detailed battle scenes in it. I was kind of surprised to see how this party scene before Waterloo was used in the book. I had not read a full Heyer book before and I sort of expected her heroines to be sort of like the Cartland mode of impossibly beautiful whimpering virgins. But I actually love the heroine in An Infamous Army. I was familiar with the term Mark One and Mark Two as it applied to her heroes, basically corresponding to, like, alpha heroes and beta heroes. But she also has Mark I and Mark II heroines. And Bab, the heroine of an infamous army, is pure Mark 1.

Emma

She's often described as being desirable because of how mannish she is. She's a huge flirt. And maybe surprisingly for her, the conflict of the book isn't really her learning not to be this way. I just really assumed that Heyer would have her reverse sandy from Greece is the plot that I was expecting.

Beth

Like, tone it down. Be more fair.

Emma

Tone it down. Stop this. But the arc was much more about how she doesn't have to act out this way for attention from men. When she's coupled with a man who just dotes on her anyway. And she realizes that she's motivated to get attention and he doesn't really try to keep her from doing this. He's like, you can do it if you want, but I'm gonna give you attention whether you act like a flirt or not. But she can. Yeah.

Chels

Sorry. Can you explain Mark one and Mark two to me? Because I don't know what that means.

Emma

So I guess this is a term she came up with. I don't know if Mark is a name, but she's like, I write two types of guys and one of them is, like, strong. It's like her difference is, like, I guess, like, the strong heroes versus, like, the dandies, like the Beau Brummel types. And she saw them both as, like, types of heroes, but they had to have different plots. And she wanted the heroes to like the. She would do different max, like, sort of like Mark one hero, mark one heroine, mark one hero, mark two heroine. And she would mix and match them.

Beth

Mark one is the more alpha one, though, right? That's what we're talking about.

Emma

And she would. Yeah. And so Mark one, I guess the heroes is where I'd heard it before. But then I realized once I. I guess I was expecting the heroine to be, like, the sort of simpering virgin, which she does write, because part of the conflict in this book is that the heroine from the last book, who I think is the hero's sister in law, hates this heroine because she's like, why is she acting like this? She should be more demure, like me. And that's really where a lot of the conflict comes from. And she's much more like. She's like the quiet wallflower who hates and resents Bab, but they work together, and Waterloo brings them together because we have to work together to help our men. So Bab is a widow whose husband was, like, vaguely bad news. Unclear exactly why, but she's stunning and flirtatious, and she's in Brussels with her brother, who's in the army, and she's just eating up the social scene. She's really thriving in Brussels, but she gets engaged very quickly to Colonel Charles Audley, I guess. Unclear why they fall in love, but it does feel like it's sort of like insta love.

Emma

And she's also like, what's more acting out like, what's more surprising than getting married? He's very staid. He's kind of like the mark two hero, even though he's in the army, so he's a little bit more masculine. He insists he doesn't want Bab to temper herself, but she has a vision of what her life will be like for him, with him, and for most of the book, views marriage as ending of her world. She's like, this is my life's gonna change so dramatically when I get married, which I want to do, but it's gonna change. Like, everything's gonna change. And Hera does a really good job of paralleling Bab's last hurrah before marriage with society's last hurrah before Napoleon. So all these parties and Bab's flirting sort of go together. Bab, and Audley also have this sort of gentleman warfare type of chess game in their flirtations. So it really parallels all the history that Hare is doing for Wellington's moves that we see a lot of. She really includes a lot of Wellington scenes in this book. I'm not sure if I would recommend this book to anyone who doesn't deeply care about the Napoleonic wars.

Emma

There's so many Easter eggs for napoleonic history that it's somewhat to the detriment of the romance. Like, there are multiple chapters at a time where we never see the main couple. But I did have a good time. But in connection with the Richmond ball. The big emotional reckoning almost happens at the ball between the male and female main characters, but ultimately Charles is absent from the ball because of his duties to the army. Bab is as close to like a rakess I can imagine Heyer writing. And she's been leaning into her bad reputation as a way to push her fiance away. She's trying to get him to break up with her, basically. They had had a previous confrontation at another party and in the rhythm of the romance, the ball is where they would make up, but it's interrupted by Napoleon. She's looking for Charles to apologize to him and he's not there because he's been sent away to help Wellington. And I think this is a common occurrence of how the ball is used. We're so used to parties and balls being at times when society is mixing and being these tentpole moments where people can interact in a way that move the plot forward.

Emma

But Duchess of Richmond's balls cannot be the conclusion to anyone's love story because Waterloo happens right after. Like you, you don't know if they're gonna be alive in a few days. This also happens in slightly tempted, a Mary Balogh book. So Morgan Bedywn finds herself almost engaged to a man that she does not love because he's getting wrapped up in the excitement of the looming battle and he asks her to wait for him. So he doesn't quite propose, but he's like, when I get back, I will propose to you. And the male main character, who is not that guy, whose name is Gervais Ashford. The Lord Rostern is a British earl with Belgian connections and is attempting to exact revenge on the Bedwyns by seducing Morgan. They had previously kissed and Gervais is becoming increasingly charmed with her. So in a non Waterloo book, the ball might be where he reveals his intentions or admits his feelings or flirts too much with her. But again, Waterloo interrupts that sort of emotional arc that they're on and we have to wait for those moments after everyone comes back from the battle.

Beth

I feel like the very similar plot beats in the book I read, which is Her Gallant Captain at Waterloo by Diane Gaston. It's a harlequin. I did not. This is not related to my next comment. I did not have a good time with this book. I don't think it's a good book. I'm also suspicious of anyone who, like in the author's note, before she writes, she talks about how she was an army kid, but she was like, I was the daughter of a general. And I feel like anyone who throws in their, like, their military member's title, I just always feel, like, a little.

Emma

Like, what did you do to get that?

Beth

Yeah, you're not a general.

Chels

I was the uncle of a dragoon. I don't know.

Beth

So, yeah, just, it's. Anyway, that's unrelated. So, the book is, Lady Helene travels to Brussels to chase after her 18 year old brother, who's determined to chase the glory of battle instead of buying an army commission like a normal earl. Helene's former fiance, Rhys, is a captain in the army. So this is kind of like they were childhood friends, and then they fall in love, and he's the son of a vicar, and Helene is the daughter of an earl. So Helene's father chases Rhys away, and he buys him a commission. So, Rhys has been away at, like, war for the past decade. It feels like. So, this is a second chance romance that takes place days before the battle of Waterloo. So we do get the scenes at Lady Richmond's ball. It's funny that you were mentioning that this was, like, highly sought after invitation, because Helene could, like, not care. Like, she does not care at all about going to this ball.

Emma

Like, people were, like, turned away at the doors. They were like, yeah.

Beth

I feel like this is trying to, like, make her seem like. Like a cool girl. Like, oh, I guess I'll go to this ball if you guys really want me to. But it is where Helene and Rhys reconnect. They're kind of circling each other. Helene wants to leave Brussels immediately. She just wants to get her brother and go. But then her servant gets sick, and he's not really movable, and she doesn't want to leave her servant at this ball. We never see Wellington. Does he doesn't show? Does he show up, or does he just send a message?

Emma

He's at the ball.

Beth

He's at the ball. Okay. Yeah. Talked about David, the younger brother. He really looks up to Dukes, even though he, like, hates his own title. Like, he won't use, say that he's an earl. This was, like, a really unexplored.

Emma

I hate the aristocracy, but not dukes.

Beth

Or just in relation to him. It's like an underexplored plot point that feels like dead dad related. So, yeah. Throughout the ball, the threat of Napoleon is, like, hanging over them. And Rhys multiple times is, like, begging Helene to leave because he's, like, it's inevitable that. That Napoleon is coming. Is that, like, was it?

Emma

So, this is. This is something that I have a hard time wrapping my mind around. Based on, like, the history books, because I think in romance, they play it differently, but as far as I can tell, nobody in Brussels was that worried about Napoleon coming. I think mostly they thought, and I think this is borne out in Napoleonic warfare, that once he got there, he would not try to hurt anybody. It's like, he doesn't want to hurt, like, the women, the British women. He would either send them home or, like, send them to Paris. Like, he. Nobody is really worried about Brussels. And I think maybe the easiest way to understand this is, like, think about the British reaction to, like, this. The revolutionary war in America or the War of 1812. They were really surprised by the level of, like, what they considered, like, ungentlemanly warfare. Like, burning of Washington is like. They were like, this is.

Beth

Yeah.

Emma

This is so different than the European warfare, but it is hard to imagine people being, like, just okay being in Brussels. Like, if a battle, you could hear a battle going on, but it seems historical to not be worried about yourself.

Beth

Yes. So Rhys, I guess, just kind of has some foresight or because he is a soldier. I don't know. Anyway, just a thought I had while reading this book is, like, how do you integrate such a well documented historical battle or even ball? When do characters know things? And I don't think Gaston pulls this off well, and it doesn't feel so much as a battle. Like, so we actually see the battle. Helene gets, like, swept up into it. She dresses as a boy so she can go see Rhys one last time and whatever. And then she ends up helping a surgeon again. Like, whatever. There are some action sequences, but that Helene would know about the contribution of women at Waterloo seems, like, really premature. This is a huge battle with, like, is it 70,000? I don't know. There's just, like, so many people here. And also that she could find her brother on the battlefield out of, like, tens of thousands of people. Like, it's fine. Like, I can suspend narrative disbelief for that. Cause I think about, like, Eomer finding Eowyn on the battlefield and, like, the emotional payoff of that scream that just, like, haunts you.

Beth

Also, my brothers better scream like that if they ever fight me on a battlefield. So it's like, I can suspend disbelief, but I am. I also want characters to be in the dark, and it to feel like a battle and to be, like, death to be looming, even though it is a romance novel. I kind of wondered if the brother might die. Like, that could have been more emotionally fraught than it was. He just kind of gets injured, you know, what? I mean, like, there was, like, ingredients here that could have worked. And I kind of wonder if some of the other duds we read that we might find similar things.

Emma

I did DNF a book because in, like, the first ten pages on June 19, a woman says, like, the threat is over. Like, Napoleon is gone. I was like, well, you don't know that he's, like, halfway to Paris right now. You don't know that he's not coming back. No one told you anything. And I was like, this. She has too much information about Napoleon in this moment. Like, she doesn't know anything.

Beth

Yeah. I feel like, as an author, it's a chance to, like, play up, like, certain elements. Like, I don't know. I feel like I would read from, like, material from, like, that specific time. Like, it's hard because I know letters were a lot more performative. So even then, it's not like you're getting real people's feelings. Like, people know that their letters are going to be read out loud to, like, family members and stuff, so you aren't going to be like, hey, I'm really afraid I might die. Like, you're gonna say something heroic or whatever, but I don't know. It just feels like a missed opportunity to me that they don't. Yeah.

Emma

I think it's important that the. I mean, Waterloo, I think my understanding, based on, like, all the Napoleonic stuff I've read, is that Waterloo, we have more documentation of, like, the injuries and, like, because. Part because of the battle plan, because, like, the Prussians follow. And so England does not immediately, like, the England stays around. The army stays around in Waterloo, but also because of all the people in Brussels. Like, basically, after the battle is over, everyone leaves Brussels to go to the battlefield to help people. And so this is. This is one of the reasons why we have so many amputees, is because people are found. People who would have died normally are able to have amputations or get medical care. So it's like they're more amputees from Waterloo because they're being taken to a metropolis like, Brussels instead of, like, a biouvac, sort of like. Like a medical camp or something. Right. And so we have more documentation of, like, women and civilians, like, going to the battle and, like, seeing the battlefield. So I think it's important that the water see, Waterloo scenes themselves are, like. They need to be harrowing in ways that I think it's important.

Emma

I think definitely the heroines  are, and definitely the Mary Jo Putney book. I read that battle scene is very stressful.

Beth

Well, you should talk about that one. The shattered rainbows.

Emma

Shattered rainbows? Yeah. Chels, did you read this one?

Chels

I did read that one.

Emma

Okay. It's weird.

Chels

Yeah. It's got a very. So Waterloo, it's nothing. Quite the middle. It's around about the middle. Like, it's like it's building up. The heroine is there because she's married to a captain, I think, at the time. Yeah. But he's not the love interest. Like, she's in love with someone else. It's kind of almost like a love at first sight type of thing. Like a forbidden love. The Duchess of Richmond's ball does happen at the book. I actually wrote a quote from that because I was kind of comparing this book, that ball, to another book that I didn't like. It was Barely a Lady by Eileen Dreyer. And this one is kind of like. It's almost. It reminded me a little bit like, of the Joanna Bourne's, like, Napoleonic wars spy series. Except I don't like Dreyer's books, or at least I didn't like this book. So the Eileen Dreyer book is like a second chance romance, also like a spy plot type of thing. But I think, like, why it doesn't work is that the information is distributed in a very confusing way that, like, robs you of the anguish. So it just wasn't my bag.

Chels

But, like, that one has, like, a very, like, kind of, like, a tense lead up in the ball. Like, the ball is like, everybody's kind of going a little bit nutso, like, at the ball. Whereas in shattered rainbows by Mary Jo Putney, the heroine is friends with Wellington. And so the heroine is, like, looking at Wellington and, like, taking stock of what he's doing. The hero is doing that at the same time. They're like, oh, he's calm. He's chill. He's just quietly talking to everyone. So it's kind of like a quietly rising tension where everybody knows something is happening, but people don't really quite know exactly what's happening. And so it was just kind of interesting the way that the two framed that same scenario. Yeah. Shattered Rainbows had a lot of information about the ball, about Waterloo, as a battle about what people like. What you were saying earlier, Emma, about people not being scared to be around that. Yeah, they. They were not scared. They were.

Emma

And they just stay. And I like that book that it has the heroine, she basically hold, like, she doesn't own a hotel, but she, like billets men. Like, she's that's how they meet, is that the hero comes and is like, I think you have a place for a soldier. And she's like, yeah, like, come in. And she. So he. There's like, this forced intimacy that works really well in a romance novel where it's like they're living at the same house, which wouldn't happen in a lot of other scenarios. And it's also, like, in a great emotional affair. Like, I really liked the first third of the book. The second. I like to do the Waterloo stuff. The last two thirds of the other plot gets kind of kooky. It becomes like a gothic romance where she's, like, inherited a castle that they need to defend.

Chels

And everyone from the island has blue eyes, right?

Beth

Okay.

Emma

Like, a very specific pale blue. It's like, those are Skoll eyes.

Chels

It's like a very Victoria holt thing where, like, you can tell someone's ancestry by their eye color.  

Emma

Really did read like a. Like a Mistress of Mellyn. Sort of like. Like, what's going on with the castle? Who's. Who owns it? Like, what are. There's, like, secret passages. It does. It's a bizarre. It's a bizarre book because it's two books put together. But the Waterloo stuff I thought was great. I did like the relationship in it. But I think the. Based on the sort of history, I think the Shattered Rainbows is more like, what happens over, like, Waterloo or Wellington is sort of telling people what's happening. It's a party. And, like, people want to dance and they goes up a party they were really looking forward to. It's like someone interrupting your prom and saying, like, Napoleon is here. They're like, but I. It's prom. What am I supposed to do about Napoleon? I want to keep dancing. So this is like a really specific historical event. And so I thought we could talk about how your relationship to a book changes when there's, like, this specific level of history. I think the discussion around historical accuracy nowadays is about what tolerance we have for things feeling right. Is it the right aesthetics? Like, is she wearing stays or is she wearing a corset?

Emma

Like, stuff like this very aesthetic level. But this is where we know a sequence of events. We know what day of the week Waterloo happened. And this is where historical romance directly intersects with real facts. What changes about your relationship when it's event based rather than just trappings based? I don't know if this happens that often outside of Waterloo books because even in romances that I would call really grounded, non wallpapers. How often does something happen where it's like, we know that all the events happening, all these real characters here. I think this setting is much more likely to have a historical figure come in and talk to characters than any other setting in most historical romance.

Chels

Yeah, I do think that's true. And kind of what's interesting to me is that I know that we're talking about Waterloo, but it's actually not really what I typically think of when I think of this level of historical grounding. Specific events, the big nameable ones that our characters have to grapple through, is actually something that I associate with bodice rippers. I think of Christine Monson in particular. She's fascinated with political conflict, and there will be specific dates, specific events, specific characters. Like Stormfire is set amidst the irish rebellion of 1798. Surrender. The night is during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. They're, like, actual namable historical characters in that book. A flame run wild has a lot of crusades history and callback to it. You could even talk about Teresa Denys. The flesh and the devil is a backstory built from the Spanish Inquisition. Has, like, nameable characters from the Spanish Inquisition. Nightfire by Valerie Vale, which is old school, but not a bodice ripper, is said during the terror. Marie Antoinette is a character. Also has. Part of it is in Russia where you've got Catherine the Great's court. So I actually think of this level of historical specificity as something that happens in bodice rippers.

Chels

Bertrice Small has people fucking Henry VIII. Her main characters will be fucking Henry VIII. So that's kind of what I tempted they think of. But I think because, like, the regency is its own category of historical romance. Like, literally its own category. Like, it will have, like, there's awards will be split off regency and historical.

Beth

Oh, I didn't know that.

Chels

Yeah, it was, like, in the RWA. And I think also even maybe, like, romantic times too. Like, they would have, like, separate categories for regency and historical romance. Like, regency is like, what, you know is regency. And then historical romance could be, like, it could be a medieval, it could be a viking, it could be anything.

Emma

And I think regency used to be closer, like, code for, like, cleaner, because Mary Balogh's talked about this, where she was like, I put sex in Regency. Like, not that Mary Balogh's books are, like, that spicy, but they do have, like, sex scenes in them. And so. But she was, like, writing categories and sort of, like, pushed the categories towards, like, sex. And so I think that was. That was sort of part of my understanding of, like, the distinction is that if you're writing a regency, there was an implied level of cleanliness, I think, from the inheritance of Heyer.

Chels

Yeah. And I think we kind of, like, are moving away from saying clean as to refer to the sex levels and that. But you're totally right, especially Whitney, my love. Part of what's famous about Whitney by love, it's like 1985 Judith McNaught, is that it's a Regency bodice ripper, where a lot of the bodice rippers at the time were not regencies at all. Think they were, but they weren't.

Emma

You can't. A regency gown cannot sweep in the wind. Like, imagine a bodice ripper waist dress. It doesn't do that. It doesn't do the thing that you need a bodice ripper cover to do.

Chels

No, no, no. It's Georgian people, georgian

Emma

We need volume!

Chels

But, yeah, I think because we have, like, this whole thing where we, like, have this mental association with regency. Like, it separates regency from violence and anguish and angst, which is why Whitney, my Love, is so popular and so famous is because Judith McNaught was like, oh, actually, no, regency can be all of these things. But if the napoleonic wars are invoked, in my experience, maybe seven times out of ten, it's kind of like past tense. And we have this sort of memory of trauma, which can be poignant or oblique, depending on the skill of the authorization. So there are so many regencies that even with that breakdown, you get authors like Carla Kelly, who are extraordinarily interested in how people live during and post war, but you also get, like, a lot of wallpapers that don't want to engage with the politics of the time, like, for whatever reason, outside of an esthetic dressing. So I like historical romance for the obvious reasons. I like history a lot, and I like thinking about people. And so I kind of think about, like, in the where the heart roams documentary, they're interfering on this.

Chels

Historical romance. Author Rebecca Brandywine, she was very popular in the seventies and eighties, and she was talking about writing historical and what the appeal of it is. And she said people's emotions have not changed since the beginning of time. And what she's basically saying is that, like, you're looking at people who feel fundamentally different from you because of all of these external factors, but that emotional connection to the characters, and this is true of historical fiction as well as historical romance, kind of, like, glues you to a place that seems more abstract out of fiction. So I kind of combine that with your events of knowledge, and then you bring in the emotion of characters. And I think that creates a whole new separate thing than being put into a place that you maybe don't have any knowledge of at all.

Emma

Something you said about the wallpaper ness of it, and how you associate historical accuracy and sort of grounding with non Waterloo stuff and these bodice rippers made me think it's like, maybe what's happening with Waterloo and why it feels so weird and unique is because we've talked before about how Regency is much more likely to be a wallpaper. Like, wallpaper has to have iterations. Like, you can't write a wallpaper for a time period that nobody's written a book for. You have to have a thing to be copying the aesthetic of in order to write a wallpaper. I think maybe what happens with Regency is that we're getting these wallpaper books, but then there's this weirdly grounded one thing that happens to. It's like, we'll have this book that's like all wallpaper ballrooms, all the sort of. It reads like a wallpaper. And then they'll go to Waterloo and you're like, okay, like, this has to happen in a certain way. We know exactly the events of these things. And so it's like, there's this weird contrast in some of these books where Waterloo happens, and it doesn't fit the rest of the book. And so it just feels like it stands out like a sore thumb in the genre opposed to these ones where they're more integrated, like historical romance, like a Stormfire.

Emma

Like, Napoleon's also a character in Stormfire. And it's like those sort of, like, where it's like Stormfire from the beginning to the end. We have this, like. Like, unified theory of history of, like, how she's integrating it. I don't think. I think a lot of Waterloo books, the Waterloo battle will, like, be the thing that happens that's very historical. And then all of a sudden, we'll have a heroine who's, Eowyn-ing on the battlefield. Wellington's doing his stuff correctly, but then she's doing something really ahistorical, like, next to the. I don't know if you would do that with another battle. Send someone sort of ahistorically in.

Beth

Yeah, I feel like if you're gonna do a wallpaper, just go follow wallpaper. Like, it's too weird, I think, to try and, like what you're saying, like, pull in this, like, one event to try and, like, connect your novel like, just dive into character and your book's gonna be better for it.

Chels

I think if you're gonna do a wallpaper, you should put Wellington in it, but entirely change his personality, or. No, change the outcome of Waterloo entirely.

Beth

Just go back.

Chels

Just be like, this is not. It's a fan historical romance. It's a fantasy.

Emma

I can't find it you guys.

Emma

You're looking for.It's SM LeViollette, right? Or Minerva Spencer, the iron dude one.

Emma

Yes. I'm so excited for this book. It's a time traveler, Wellington romance, alternate history. He gets, like, sent to the future and has to defeat, like, another Napoleon. Like, this is the only book I'm excited for this year. I'm so. I'm so ready.

Chels

So what about Puck and prejudice?

Emma

Puck and prejudice, obviously. So in the connection of history, I've been thinking of Bridgerton. Like, Bridgerton speak, I wrote at length about when I read War and Peace, and then in the days after the post Bridgerton release. I've been thinking about the connection of how these two histories work together. And both of these have, or one of them has a Napoleon connection, one of them should have a Waterloo connection, but doesn't. But I wrote about this and I made tiktoks about it, but I got all these responses that I should care less about that. Bridgerton doesn't address Waterloo at all, despite seemingly taking place in 1815. And I just sort of felt like. Like, what is the point of any of this if we don't care about Waterloo? Waterloo isn't mentioned in Emma, for example, which is published in 1815, but in Emma, there are all these jokes in the novel that are at the expense of French people and people who seem French. Like, this is a recurring way these characters talk to each other. So, like, Jane Austen doesn't have to mention Waterloo, but it's like, this is part of the culture of 1815.

Emma

So it's a little odd when, like, Penelope is like, give me the dresses from Paris. It's like she would be made fun of in 1815. And I get. I understand what people are saying when they say I should care less about the Bridgerton historical accuracy, but to me, it's more exciting to read a historical romance when there's some sort of connection to the setting. Like, why did you choose this year? I think the standard for including history in a contemporary novel is much different than including the history in a historical novel. Jane Austen setting something in the regency period. She's living during that time. She doesn't have another option. But anyone writing historical romance chooses the year. So I actually think you have more of a burden to include some history. And the connection to War and Peace with this is that Tolstoy is writing basically a historical novel when he writes War and Peace. And he does a lot of metacognition throughout the book about what it means to think about history. Like, there are all these, like, sort of philosophical chapters, or Tolstoy's, like, sort of pontificating to you about this, and what does it mean to set fiction in that history?

Emma

So I think having read that book and having that book have this Napoleon connection made me think about this a lot. And he. He chooses really specific times for things to happen to certain characters. And so there are all these parallels that are happening. And I think the idea is, like, Natasha is the main heroine of War and Peace, and the whole point is that we don't. We care about Natasha, and, like, who's she gonna marry? And Natasha cares about what's happening with Napoleon. Like, these things are not. You cannot separate them when you're, like, living through history, is that she cares deeply about who she's gonna end up with, but also what Napoleon's doing is going to deeply affect her life and also affects who she ends up with. And, like, you can't silo the two. That, to me, is just, like, is gonna be more interesting because you get to deal with, like, all these intersecting data points.

Beth

Right. I'm glad you asked this specifically, because I began thinking about the historical part of historical romance a lot while reading books and talking about this episode. And I like what you said with Jane Austen, her very world is woven into it. She's not gonna have a character traveling to the continent, because no one would be doing that at that time. Right. But having a historical. If you're writing into history. Yeah. I think you have a higher burden to also. You just gotta teach your audience, like, this is some things that happened, and Rebecca Brandywine will literally just have paragraphs and be like, by the way, the corn laws explain things to the readers, which actually kind of works because it's first person, and it's kind of like this. They're telling you a story like, they're telling someone a story. So it works much better than just random info dumping. And, like, if you compare it to now, it'd be like, if I made, like, weird references to COVID, like, explaining what COVID is, instead of just maybe vaguely referencing, like, those weird commercials we were getting at the beginning of COVID where it was, like, in times like these, you know, like, we would all get it.

Beth

Like, I don't have to explain it, but, yeah, I wish. And just like a general thought or feeling or desire is, I wish the Regency would integrate history more. Cause there is, like, a lot of interesting things that are happening that would be affecting characters. I do think a lot about in 1816, that year is known as the year without a summer because the volcano the previous year had erupted in Indonesia. And so, like, all this ash and stuff that was, like, spewing into the atmosphere, like, affected the climate. And, like, there was crop failures like, this had, like, lots of repercussions. There was an economic slump after Waterloo and increased unemployment. Like, there's just a lot of things happening that I think authors could be engaging with, but they just kind of are stuck with balls, I guess, which is fine.

Emma

I do like a good. The corn laws. Like, the corn laws come up so often, and this is one of those things that, like, characters will sort of signal very hollowy. Like, they be like, I'm against the corn laws. And you're like, oh, he's a good guy. Because, like, the corn laws are bad. But, like, what do the corn laws mean? It's like, they mean something very, like. Like, concrete and, like, affected people's lives a lot. The corn laws are basically laws about, like, import exports in England. Like, you're trying. They're prior. Trying to prioritize english grow crops is like, what the court laws are, their taxes. But it's really important in 1816 that all these crops fail. And so there are all these things that, like, are affecting these characters lives. It's just odd to have these, like, virtues that going.

Beth

And I feel like the things that are affecting, like, day to day lives that you don't have to do, like, a big reference to. Or be like, here's this big event that's gonna take up, like, chapters and chapters of my novel. It's just, like, more seamlessly integrated because it is like a thing that if you're struggling to get food, that would be a consistent challenge a character is having throughout a novel.

Emma

So thinking about the process of writing a waterloo romance and reading it, I think there's sort of, I guess, three different ways that an author can write it, is that the book can end with Waterloo, which quite a few of these do. Waterloo happens in the middle, which I think often makes for a disjointed book. I though I have enjoyed some of those. Or Waterloo is the opening scene or happens off page. And so the rest of the book is dealing with the fallout and I think all three of these structures work really differently. Waterloo at the end seems to be the most unique of this setting. I don't think we get a lot of these time ticking down plots. I think this goes to what I was talking about before, where it's like, Waterloo has these weird edges. That doesn't happen in other regency. Honestly, the time taking down thing, what it reminded me the most of when I read books that this worked for, was like a bodice ripper, where you're waiting for the other shoe to drop like that. That feeling I associate with bodice rippers. Maybe that goes to Chels' point of bodice rippers and history going together.

Emma

But if you open in the winter months of 1815, I'm going to wonder, like, how and when are we going to Brussels? If someone has a captaincy and it's February 1815, I know Waterloo is coming. I think maybe. I sometimes prefer books that deal with the fallout. I do like seeing all the historical stuff that lead up to the battle. But when Waterloo is at the end, it basically functions like a third act breakup. It's the thing that separates a couple from each other and we're set up for a big reunion, usually over an injury. This is what happens in An Infamous Army. An early engagement by Barbara Metzger, The Substitute Bride by Diana Delmore. And this format's pretty tried and true, where it's like, the way that Waterloo is used in the book ultimately feels like a plot that we deal with a lot in romance. It's like, yes, it's Waterloo, but it's also a third act breakup. I know the pacing of this connection, but it's like watching Titanic, where you're just, like, waiting for something to happen. But I think an example of a book that did this really well was an early engagement.

Emma

This book was really just a really cute category. So Emily Arcot and Everett Stockton are childhood sweethearts who they enter a marriage of convenience to avoid a forced marriage by Emily's uncle, who's the trustee of her estate. So she can't really deal with her money until she gets married or turns 25, so she gets married. So they're very young when they get married, and Emily does not have access to her money yet, but then she gets the money when she gets married, so she can use it to help. Everett's, like, estate. He's an earl, I think, and he basically goes immediately off to the peninsular war as an aid to Wellington and has a really tough time during the war, so he's, like, dealing with, like, sort of all the trauma of the war. But he gets back. He has all these reports that his wife is in London. Sort of like taking the town by storm. And being a married lady means that Emily Anne gets to play hostess and flirt and, like, she's kind of a Hoyden growing up. And so he. He really thinks that all these, like, characteristics that are making her a Hoyden is gonna make it really hard for her to be in the society.

Emma

So he's always writing her these letters. Temper it down. You need to control yourself. But actually, when you're a married woman and you have more freedom, all of her Hoyden tendencies actually make her really charming. So because it's a marriage of convenience, Everett does not rush back when Napoleon abdicates, but stays on the continent, helping Wellington. But when he hears what a good time she's having in England, he gets kind of jealous and goes to her. And then he basically falls in love with her. During their time off, he realizes that she's matured because he been gone for so long, she's become. She's not a teenager anymore. But then their love story is interrupted by Napoleon returning. So we get the arc of their romance interrupted by a call to arms. Emily Anne follows to Brussels, basically, as the battle is happening. She's like, I have to go to Ev. He's injured. She finds him in a medical farmhouse, which is, I think, a pretty common sort of like, people are evacuated to these farmhouses. His leg is injured and he has this anger about his difficulty walking, causing like a late in book conflict between the couple.

Emma

Emily Ann's just happy that he's alive and resents the difficulty he has moving around. But then they work through it and the whole thing is very cute. But I think the pacing of having the couple separated for so long makes for that third act breakup is a little bit more interesting than the standard. We're just separated by Waterloo plot, so I thought this one was very cute.

Beth

It does sound cute.

Emma

So we're going to talk about the books that start with Waterloo in the fallout when we talk about the history of what comes after Waterloo. But any other thoughts about, like, structure? I know I just basically talked about one book here, but I don't think.

Chels

I don't think I've read a book that ends at Waterloo.

Emma

Yeah. Yeah, it's.

Chels

I mean, that would be weird, right? Because it's like.

Beth

Well, there's still after.

Chels

Yeah, like an epilogue

Beth

It's not like exactly the end of it.

Emma

Yeah, it's like we're some of them, it's like. It feels like they end, even though.

Beth

You just mean it's in the third act.

Emma

It's a third act. Like. Yeah, it's like that he's. It's like that they're. They're reunited, like right after the battle. Usually it's like, what. When are we seeing a Waterloo? Third act or first act?

Beth

I feel like there has to be another conflict because if it's just separation, then it just feels like you're adding pages to keep your couple apart. Does that make sense? I feel like it should be a big fight and then he goes to Waterloo or something. So it's a lot more complicated. So it's like maybe you're happy to see him because he's survived, but maybe you're still angry with each other.

Emma

I can't remember what it is where. It's like. It felt like the only conflict was like, he's in Waterloo and it's like she's worried and it's like. It was very, like, conflict low.

Beth

Yeah, like, stressful in real life, but as, like a fiction. That's like, I want more interpersonal conflicts going on.

Emma

So next we're going to talk about, like, I guess, the way that, like, the story of Waterloo. Like, how. How is it told? Who's. Who's sort of telling the story of Waterloo and what. What's going on there. And so in my opinion, I think Waterloo in some ways is kind of like a. Have your cake and eat it, too when it comes to writing about the british military, because the british military for most of the time, like, in, like we have, like, an english setting, is not necessarily doing the greatest things. We've talked about this in some of our episodes that have been set in, like, India, like, we're dealing with. You're dealing with colonization. It's hard to write a hero without it being complicated. Waterloo, you could. You can write a military hero without a lot of complications. And you also get to have Wellington and Napoleon as characters. But it's easy to lionize England in this battle as, like, the good guys and Napoleon is the bad guys. We talked a little bit about this in our think of England episode with Mel about the Boer war and the looming threat of world War one.

Emma

But I wonder if Waterloo has appealed to authors because you can write about the Napoleonic wars with this idea that, like, Britain is good and France is bad, the alliance at large, including, like, Prussia and Austria, it's really easy to cast as wholly good Napoleon as wholly evil. Napoleon is like a really convenient baddie when you need to romanticize being a member of an imperial army. And I don't want to sound like I'm arguing that Napoleon is good and we're going to talk about some of the problems with Napoleon. But I do think this simplicity helps allied thinking about political issues that could be interesting to think about with this history. So I thought we could talk about times when Wellington and Napoleon actually appear in books that we read. To me, Napoleon generally appears as monomaniacal, intelligent, but singularly focused. While Wellington is sort of this, like, down to earth uncle type that disarms people with this charm. He's always, like, charming the maiden aunts at balls.

Beth

I haven't read a book yet where Wellington appears as a character, although there's references to Wellington or what Wellington has said. But I trust your characterization of what's happening here because you read a lot of these books. But I do find the Wellington characterization kind of strange. And I think maybe it's just because he's the guy who's against a dictator, so he kind of shines by comparison. Kind of what we were saying, like. Like, it's easy to cast France as the bad guy and England as the good guy if you're just looking at, like, Waterloo.

Chels

Yeah, I do have a Wellington shout out. Goodreads shelf. Yeah, I got a lot more on from this episode, but I started it after rereading Flowers from the Storm. Wellington actually shows up at the ball at the end. That, like, really tense ball. He's like, Wellington is there for, like, no reason why? Nothing.

Beth

Sure.

Chels

Yeah. So that's why it's called. That's why I called it. Shout out originally and not appearance because, like, he's kind of, like, a lot of times, like, really randomly invoked and more than he, like, actually physically appears. But now that I've. For this episode. Yeah, he was in a lot of them, so, like, yeah, we talked earlier about Shattered Rainbows by Mary Jo Putney. He's in it quite a bit. He's sort of this, like, capable, fatherly, doting figure that has a great affection and respect for the heroine who kind of has, like, a nursing role.

Beth

Do you know what this reminds me of? When you read that book where the heroine meets Byron and

Beth

You are so cool and pretty.

Beth

This is what this feels like.

Chels

Yeah. It's like. It's like, you know, if you have Wellington's endorsement. Yeah. You must be extremely capable. Yeah, that's kind of like, I think, like, I. I had a weird time with Shattered Rainbows because, like, I couldn't quite. I couldn't really quite get. Figure out the heroine. Like, I think I made part of this.

Emma

I made Chels read this because I was confused by it. I was I don't know how to feel!

Chels

She was just like, super, super good and super like.

Emma

They call her angel of the battlefield. She's like an amazing nurse.

Chels

Yeah. And she's super hot.

Emma

Everyone loves her and she has shitty husband.

Chels

Yeah. When she has a shitty husband, it gets to her credit. Mary Jo Putney complicates it a lot more, but it's like in the third act, so you have to buy into her not knowing these complicating factors before you get to the complicating factors. So kind of like an interesting choice by Mary Jo Putney. But he's also. He's. Sorry. This book makes me laugh. He's in Beyond the Sunrise by Mary Balogh, which is not Waterloo, but it's set during the peninsular war. So the hero Robert, he gets sent on a spy mission and his former love Joanna is in, is enlisted by Wellington to assist him on the spy mission. But then Wellington tells Joanna, like, robert's not a very good actor, so just don't tell him that you are also a spy. So the whole time Robert is thinking that Joanna is, like, working against him and so he's, like, mistrusting her and he's getting angry with her, but in reality, Joanna as helping him the whole time. But I'm just like, Wellington. Why are you making Robert be a spy if you don't think he's a good actor? Wellington? And so I have a lot of frustration with Wellington from this book, which I'm sure he wasn't, like, hiring women named Joanna.

Chels

Well, maybe. I don't know, maybe you would.

Emma

I don't think, like, women were, like, this idea of, like, women being, like, secretly in the army, like. Or, like. I think it was like, very civilian roles. I think that is a romance invention.

Chels

Yeah, yeah. Well, I feel like maybe like, spy, maybe, but I feel like if there was spy work, I don't think it would be, like Wellington doing it. Like, I think he's got other things, maybe.

Beth

Is there, like, a spy guy in the military who's like. He's got a spy network? Wellington is somebody with.

Chels

Yeah, somebody. And like, a Joanna Bourne would know. Yes, she will, but I don't know if hers. I don't know if her. She has like a. She has like, a whole, like, british intelligence thing, but I don't know if. How much of that she made up and how much is real, because I didn't. I should have googled it. But I guess kind of like on the Napoleon side. Napoleon is in Stormfire. We mentioned that earlier by Christine Monson. He tries to make Catherine, the heroine, his mistress and it becomes like this huge ordeal and it kind of ends up with Sean having to duel, like, half of the french army. Bodice rippers are kind of amazing. Oh, don't read Bodice Ripper if you just. That's the only thing you know. Or don't read Stormfire if that's the only thing you know about it.

Chels

I cannot stress that enough

Emma

It takes so much to get to Napoleon.

Chels

I was just heard myself say that and I was just like, it's not a. It's not a whimsical book. Yeah. He's also in the Black Hawk by Joanna Bourne. She writes spy novels with, like, both english and french characters set during the terror and napoleonic wars. And in the Black Hawk, the french heroine is trying to stop, like, an assassination plot against Napoleon. Napoleon is like, very chill about it. That was so that's the kind of the two time, the two different. Is it weird that Nelson never comes up? Because I was thinking about this, because Nelson is like this huge hero, but is it because people don't care about Trafalgar or because he dies in battle?

Emma

Well, I think for these. I mean, for these books, I guess because he's dead.

Chels

Yeah.

Emma

But I wonder if he comes up more in Peninsular War books. I do want to read more Peninsular war books. I avoided them for this episode because I was trying to focus on Waterloo, but I wonder if he comes up more there also. Like, Nelson. Like, he's like a lot sexier than Wellington, I think,

Chels

so much!

Emma

He's having affairs and like, I think Wellington just is like, stiff upper lip, like Uncle Guy. Like, I think Nelson is like. He has more sex appeal. We should include Nelson moore.

Chels

I feel like Wellington. There's like a lot of, like. Yeah, like a heroism projection thing. Like a very. Like, he does the right thing at the right time is kind of like the vibe that I get. You can. Yeah, but I don't know.

Emma

Yeah, I think that sounds right in the. I read a book, the Mary Joe Putney, once a spy, which is her, like, second Waterloo book. It doesn't deal directly with the battle, it deals with, like, this intelligence. And it seems like it has basically the same plot as that Mary Balogh book, except it's set during Waterloo. And so there's like, Wellington is directing the couple basically both to be spies and so but they both also have french connections. I think this is the book where, like, very little conflict happened, because I think I thought, oh, both of them are french. One of them will, like, mistrust the other one, but they never really did. The conflict ended up being more about, like, the heroine needing to, like, learn how to have sex. So it was, like, not really spy related, but she gets captured by Napoleon. And this was, like, I think, typical of, like, the most extreme depictions of Napoleon in these books is that Napoleon instructs her to be put into prison in a room that has two doors and only one of them is locked. And so then she escapes. Like, this is very basic, like, capturing people's stuff.

Emma

Like, don't put someone in a room with two doors if you don't lock both doors. So it was like, oh, Napoleon is, like, a buffoon who, like, isn't as good at his job.

Chels

He doesn't know how locks work.

Emma

Okay. So I think, yeah, again, it's easy to cast, like, Wellington is, like, hyper competent, and Napoleon is like, all these, like, little things are gonna send him wrong. It was like Napoleon lost the battle because he had idiots working with him. Like, they couldn't follow instructions. I mean, Napoleon, I think Wellington both very capable of their jobs as military heroes. And I think this is one of the things that maybe makes it easier to make Napoleon see, make Napoleon be worse than Wellington is because, like, as corresponding figures, they're both military figures. But politically, the comparison would be to, like, the Prince regent, who doesn't look good in a lot of romance novels, or William Pitt the Younger, who fails to get slavery abolished in the UK, or Alexander the Tsar of Russia. So all these monomaniacal sort of dictator autocrats or ineffectual politicians that I think it would be easier to write a flat, positive portrayal of compared to Wellington, who, again, has also been lionized in England. And I think Chels lives somewhere where there's a statue of Wellington.

Chels

He's got a. Well, in Glasgow, you put cones on your statues. So our Wellington has a cone on his head

Emma

at all times?

Chels

At all times, yes, but we put the cones on other statues as well. It's not just the cones off.

Beth

Like, is this a thing that I.

Chels

Feel like if you put. If you took it off, someone would put it back on?

Beth

Well, I'm thinking, is this like a fight between the city and the people where it's like, the city, I gotta get these cones off, and people are like, we're putting the cones back on?

Chels

No, it's. It's a. The cones are a very big part of Glasgow culture. I was once on Reddit and they were like. I saw a tourist post. Like, they were like, what is there to do in Glasgow? And some. The top answer was find a statue and put a cone on it. Like, that's just. It's just a thing here.

Emma

So that's a part of, like, I guess, the personalities. Wellington with his cone on his head, Napoleon with his hat. We can also zoom out a little bit for the political conflict of where these countries fit in and then also talk about England's place in geopolitics after the battle. So I think you say England is the good guy in this conflict. And I think England benefits a lot from being the thing that stopped Napoleon from coming back. But there's so much of European history and English history that doesn't appear in these books that it is accurate and is there. So, for example, I could not find historical romance about a black man during the napoleonic wars. If you know of one, listeners, please let me know. I would love to read one because I think it could be really interesting. Something we hear a lot, and I think I've mentioned even these numbers before in different places, is that, like, the number of black people in England during the 19th century, we see ranges of, like, 10,000 to 30,000. But a huge factor of that population was service in the army and navy in England.

Emma

Soldiers in the West Indies and Africa could use service in the army as a means of enfranchisement. So, for example, one soldier who served at Waterloo was named George Rose, who was born a slave in Jamaica and was injured at Waterloo and then returned to Jamaica to die in 1873. He didn't return to Jamaica to die. He returned to Jamaica, lived a life, and then died in 1873. So black men all over the British colonies were employed as soldiers, often as musicians, which is one of the most dangerous positions in the army, because, like, you didn't have a weapon. The army could be a refuge for an escaped slave or a means to emancipation. So what are the. It's weird that these sort of places of history don't intersect for this genre. And also, I think, part of that maybe because if you wrote this thing where someone is a slave and becomes part of Wellington's army, it's harder to have this, like, codified depiction of England that we're so used to in Waterloo romances, because England is enslaving people still, and still has these people that have to find ways to emancipate themselves in sort of in these ways that put their lives on the line.

Emma

So it's something I want to talk about on the french side. Chels and I both read the book The Black Count by Tom Reis, which is a biography of the really notorious historical figure who sort of fell by the wayside until Tom Reis wrote this biography, Thomas Alexandre Dumas, who was a general in the french army. So this is the father of the author, Alexandre Dumas. They're two different Alexandre Dumas, but this is the one who wrote the count of Monte Cristo. And his heroes are often based on Thomas Dumas or Thomas Alexander Dumas sort of adventures. And he was in the army. He was an outstanding hero. Everyone said this, that he was like the best soldier in the french army. He is sort of peers to Napoleon. They're often on the same campaigns. Napoleon, I think, is slightly higher ranked than him at some times, but he rose to be a general in the french army as a black man. He was the son of a slave and a sort of ne'er do well son who goes to Haiti and tries, basically lives off his brother, who is a plantation owner there. And he has a relationship with a black woman, has children, sells the black woman and her children back into slavery, except for one son, who he takes to France with him, who is Thomas Alexander.

Emma

And he severs his relationship with his father, joins the army and goes through this period in the army where he just rises through the ranks and becomes a general. But this is really important in the France because of his sort of personal relationship with Napoleon. And Charles. You can jump in at any point if you have other things to add, because I know you also read this, but Napoleon and he are on the Egyptian tour together. This is one of the places that Napoleon is sort of making his mark in the french army. And Dumas has a fight with Napoleon about different strategies. Napoleon is really cruel in Egypt. This is one of the moments, basically the moment that you lose any sympathy with Napoleon based on how he treats people in the Egyptian campaign, both his soldiers and also the people that they're conquering. And Dumas disagrees with him and bad mouths him to other marshals. And Napoleon basically never forgives him and takes it really personally and, like, remembers this for a long time. And they have the split. But pretty much right after that, Dumas is imprisoned on his boat back to France from Egypt.

Emma

His boat starts sinking, and he gets imprisoned in Naples. So when he's in Naples, Napoleon does his rise to power, becomes a consul, and basically all of France changes very quickly during his imprisonment. He had been living as a black man. The revolutionary ideals of the French Revolution had allowed him to have sort of basically equal rights when he was in France as a black man. But then those rights sort of get taken away under Napoleon to the point where civil rights are taken away. And Napoleon reinstates slavery as a reaction to the slave revolution in Haiti, he reinstates slavery in all of the french empire. And both sort of on the french side of things, we have this character who's, like, very much like a romance novel hero. Like, he's swashbuckling. Everyone talks about how handsome he is. He's tall. He, like, looks good on a horse.

Chels

And one thing, too, is, like, something that happens in romance novels all the time is that, like, someone enlists in the army and they're like, I'm gonna go. I'm not going to become an officer. I'm not going to use my rank to be an officer. That's something that, like, Alexander Dumas actually did. Like, he enlisted as a dragoon. Like, he started from, like, the very bottom up. Like, because he wanted to sever, like, Antoine, his father. He kind of reminds me a little bit of. You remember when we read A Caribbean Heiress in Paris? Like, Ethan's father?

Emma

Yes.

Chels

Like, he was like, Etan's father. He's like, he's, like, a shitty guy who, like, is. Has aristocratic connections, is just kind of, like, in this case, he's, like, fucking around in, like, saint Domingue at the time, which is Haiti. And then. But, like. But, yeah, and then also selling his family. Literally selling his family. Except. And so, yeah, that there's kind of, like, the split anyways. But, yeah, he doesn't really end up using those, like, aristocratic connections that had served him up until his, like, twenties at the time, which is a very romance novel hero thing. Also extremely handsome. That's, like, another thing that comes up with, like, him versus Napoleon. Like, when they're both in Egypt, everyone's like, wow, this guy's extremely handsome. And then they're like, Napoleon. We thought he would look different, right?

Emma

We thought he'd be more commanding.

Chels

Yeah.

Emma

So, yeah, I mean, I wanted to bring this up partially because the. I think when you have this, like, cartoonishly good England and this cartoonishly bad France, that's, like, vaguely evil. And it's vaguely evil because Napoleon is just bad. And we don't actually talk about, like, why we're worried about Napoleon. And also, like, England is not worried about Napoleon because Napoleon has, like, reinstated slavery in the french empire. That's not what they're trying to prevent from spreading, what they're trying to prevent from spreading is like, revolutionary ideals that Napoleon is associated with, and like the napoleonic code and like his interest in inciting revolutions in countries to get them to rearrange and be loyal to Napoleon. The suppression of Napoleon, in some ways, is a very conservative, aristocratic movement because, again, we want a Bourbon on the throne. We don't want Napoleon. He's an upstart. And so I don't think there's a one to one. It's just hard to say anyone is good or anyone is bad. I think there's bad stuff on both sides of this. And I think just the way that authors write about this a lot, and even the stories were told about Waterloo, is this narrative that really serves England looking really good.

Emma

But basically, what happens immediately after Waterloo is this period like Pax Britannica, where England, they take their supremacy at sea and they just take their colonial enterprise and just times it by a thousand. They are able to take over a lot of colonies. During the Congress of Vienna, they take over a lot of European colonies. This is why a lot of colonies have different origins to begin with and then become British colonies. And this is pretty much Victoria's project during the 19th century. The reason this didn't happen earlier is because Napoleon is distracting England for 20 years. And so this narrative of England saving Europe, it becomes complicated pretty immediately afterwards because they use that power and that supremacy to then colonize the entire world, which, again, we've talked a lot about in different episodes, about how that project is often on the back burner of romance interest. So I just wanted to mention sort of both people of color who were in the armies, because I'm just surprised that I. When I did the research on this, I was surprised that nobody had written a book that took up either of these stories, because I just.

Emma

It's both the. The men of color in Wellington's army. I think there are some things that, like, rang true to romance in those stories. And then also Dumas, who just is a hero and also has literary precedents in his son's book, I think the Count of Monte Cristo and the Three Musketeers. Like all of these things, he's inspired by his father. And it's like, this would make a great romance novel. Also, he loved his wife a lot. Wife. Total wife guy.

Chels

Oh, that book is so good.

Emma

Oh, I do have some other things to share about Wellington that I think are just fun. So let's see, just for Wellington's characterization that sort of true to life history of him. He's, I think, a little bit more likely to appear as a character in these books, but. But he was the second son. So Wellington, probably one of the most famous second sons of all time, because he becomes duke in his own right. This is like the dream of a second son, right? Is your son, your older brother's an earl, and then you get to be made a duke. Like. That's just the dream. He was in a notoriously loveless marriage to, like, a very sickly introverted woman who he did not have a lot of respect for. And he was a notorious flirt. He had an affair with Caroline Lamb, one of Lord Byron's mistresses, and he was in a duel while he was prime minister, which is just interesting, but he was a very conservative, anti reform prime minister, except for Catholics, because of the irish connection, and his reputation improved when he retired and he died. But the thing that I thought was the most interesting when I was reading about Wellington for this episode is that the nickname that he use it in a couple books that I read, the Iron Duke, Heyer uses it as a compliment.

Emma

I think Putney uses it as a compliment, at least in at least one of the books. This nickname, if you see it in a Regency romance novel, they are using it incorrectly. One, because it didn't exist until the 1830s, when he was prime minister. Two, it's an insult. And I had no idea until I read some biographical information about him, because I thought it meant, like, Iron Duke, as, like, he's steely, he's like fighting Napoleon. Actually, it comes from when he was at his house, Apsley House in London, which he refused to live at the prime minister's residence. He wanted to stay in his ducal house. It was attacked by a mob, and so he put up iron grates outside of his window so that they couldn't attack his house. And so then he became the Iron Duke. And it's like, this is. It blew my mind after reading all these books that he. This was actually an insult the whole time. So this is another. I try to check hair for her historical inaccuracies, because people often tout her as totally historically accurate. So when I notice when that's wrong, I try to catch her.

Chels

Yeah, they're making it sound like he's magneto or something.

Emma

Right? Like, it sounds like a good thing.

Chels

We know magneto isn't metal, he just contracts. I'm thinking Wolverine.

Emma

Like made of Iron

Chels

Yeah, I'm thinking of Wolverine.

Emma

All right, so we're gonna talk. So one of our last big topics is gonna be about disability in Waterloo. I've called Waterloo like a disabling event. I know Beth read some things about disabilities, just sort of generally in the napoleonic era and the regency period. So I'm gonna have Beth talk about these things.

Beth

Yeah, I think there are lots of books that have, like, a character disabled at Waterloo, like Ashley, the Duchess Steele. Although in my reading, I was reading more disabled characters from the Napoleonic wars at large. Yes. I just wanted to take a step back a bit and just talk about how the napoleonic wars kind of forced British society to reckon with disability in a new way. So these are not cohesive points. These are just list points. So my first point, the army and the Navy handle disability and pensions differently. I bring this up because I find it interesting that these military bodies operate independently of each other and are often incentivized to outdo the other organization rather than working towards a mutual goal. It makes sense that I say this as a Canadian who came to America, and you see the military as one united front, but there is a lot of infighting and different organizations. I see that when I look back in history, how these bodies are operating independently of each other. And you see that with the pensions, the army had a different pension from the sailors. For example, many sailors, they didn't have a pension because they simply just didn't sign up for one.

Beth

Sailors had to have proof of service and prove the service had worn the sailor out. So that would apply to fewer people. When I say pension, I mean a disability pension. You need money because you got disabled while you were in service, and they didn't join for life the way soldiers did. Where sailors moved, they would move between merchant and naval ships based on the conditions, pay and press gangs. They found sailors also had more marketable skills. After the wars ended, you could just go join a merchant boat. You had a specific set of skills, I think, that would be more financially rewarded. Soldiers typically stayed in service, and after at least 14 years, they would qualify for a pension. So I bring this up because I think this is like, the military is often part of disability infrastructure. We have all these people now who are disabled because of the thing we put them through. So you have to do something for those people. The government, the state is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart. I think one quote I read talked about how they have pensions because they want more people to eventually join the military.

Beth

You want to treat the people who are in the military well enough that more people are incentivized to keep joining. And I think there's also this distinction between veterans who are considered the deserving poor. At this time, we have the parish poor laws, and who deserves help is kind of a big idea, which, honestly, is still a pervasive idea. And my second point is disability as a social marker is not a cohesive identity. So a disabled captain who's part of the aristocracy isn't going to think of himself as part of a larger disabled group. He wouldn't look at a disabled person on the street and think like, oh, yeah, we have something in common. We're both amputees. He would identify way more strongly with his class or even his military career. So in the book Lame Captains and Left handed Admirals by Teresa Michaels, she says studying the careers of these Napoleonic era amputee officers suggests the additional complexity of extending the model of a shared identity among impaired people across time. For example, we have no evidence that Nelson, we talked about him before. Horatio Nelson felt a sense of solidarity with contemporaries who experienced a wide range of physical and mental impairments, or who belonged to a wide range of social classes.

Beth

In this regard, the amputee officers this book studies, and I should take a step back and say, this book studies like 20 or 25 amputees who go back into, like, the Navy after they have lost a limb. In this regard, the amputee officers in this book studies do not appear to have a shared common identity that the modern disability rights movement advocates for people living with impairments. She notes that based on 18th century courtroom cases, common people also didn't have, like, a shared disabled identity. However, even though there wasn't, like, this full disabled identity or like a politicized one, I think if you chose the label of being like a glame or a cripple, like words that would have been used back then was not simply a statement of physical fact. It also placed the person described in a mental landscape of shared meanings, attitudes, and values. And we've been talking about, like, heroism and like, how this war is marked by heroism. But I think that's very much how they talk, talked about it at the time and how it's like these, especially in the Navy. If you were an amputee, that was a mark of heroism, and you could maybe leverage that to get a promotion or something.

Beth

And also the idea of being able bodied. An able bodied soldier or able bodied sailor is someone who can still do all the complicated actions required on the ship to make the ship run. And but with. So it's like even that term able bodied like someone who's, like, a brand new sailor who has, like, no skills. They are not able bodied the way that, like, an amputee who's like, an expert is, if that makes sense. And I want to include that because I think disability is a much more nebulous term than we give it credit for. And I don't know, I was gonna maybe loop you in on this one, Emma. So I got this. This quote from the article that Chels got for us, the Michael Crumplin one, where it talks about the medical, like, what was happening medically at Waterloo. And I kind of wonder if in our books, there's, like, an over representation of certain battle trauma that you would be stabbed or shot. When I think the biggest killer, at least according to this book, is, like, disease, that you would be killed by disease is much more likely.

Emma

So I read a book called After Waterloo by Paul O'Keefe, and he talks about this, where it's almost like, if you had, like, a really traumatic injury, like, you lost an arm or a leg, because you would be moved to the hospital faster and also be dealt with faster and maybe get sent home faster. Sometimes that was better than being grazed. Like, there are. There are stories of people who got, like, grazed and then they weren't dealt with quickly, and so they were staying in the hospital. So they get sepsis or gangrene and all these things where it's, like, hospital time is the problem. And, like, an amputation, while it's a very traumatic thing to go through, is, like, a fairly straightforward procedure. Like, it happens and then it's over, and there's nothing more that can be done in the hospital to help you. So then you get sent away. So it's like, sometimes, like a bullet being in your arm that, like, you don't lose the arm, but the bullet needs to be extracted from the arm sometimes is worse and, like, creates more and, yeah, the disease. I mean, nobody in these books. Books is dying of disease.

Emma

That's the other thing. It's like we. We have these, like, battle battlefield reunions, and then it's like, well, does he get sepsis? Maybe? Like, we don't know. He hasn't left the battlefield yet. Yeah, I think that's accurate, that the. These sort of dramatic. Also, like, facial scarring or, like, losing a limb is going to be the injury that is depicted in a book.

Beth

Well, I feel like, also as, like, a disability marker, you can just, like, mention that, and then it would, like, signal to the reader that this person has likely been through war versus maybe someone who did get a disease and maybe they did recover, but maybe they have some lingering effects from that, like, maybe chronic fatigue or maybe some, like, just something that affects them long term is much harder to convey to the reader than, like, they've lost a leg at Waterloo.

Emma

I think Crumplin also mentions the venereal disease, which I think we've. I've only read one book where someone has VD, and it's. It's in Wyckerley.

Beth

Oh, yeah.

Emma

It's like, people. People had VD that. This is true.

Chels

And he was a soldier.

Emma

Yeah, yeah.

Beth

But he went to Crimea.

Chels

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he wasn't at Waterloo.

Emma

Yeah.

Beth

But, yeah. So I just. I think this is pretty common with, like, disability. Like, disabled characters in stories is. There's gonna be, like, an over representation of, like, one kind of disability versus others, but, yeah, interesting stuff.

Chels

Yeah. Anecdotally, I think the ones that I see the most often are, like, for a hero is facial scar, and not like, an amputation, but, like, something that causes a limp. I think multiple of the characters that I have in this episode specifically have that, which I guess the one I wrote here is. And this one, I think of this one as, like, particularly as a disabling event, because that's kind of, like, the focus of the entire book. It's like a. I guess, like a hurt comfort type. Like. And I guess it'll make maybe more sense when I talk about it. It's Miss Truelove Beckons by Donna Lee Simpson. So, like, the viscount is injured at Waterloo. He has both, like, a facial scar and a leg injury that causes him to limp. He's also suffering from PTSD with extreme nightmares, and he has this kind of, like, drastic personality change. And his parents are wanting a return to form, and they think that, like, by inviting Arabella, who's, like, a woman that they hoped that he would marry before the war, by inviting her to the house, he's gonna, like, snap out of it.

Chels

So Arabella is joined by her companion, who's, like, this poor relation named True Love Beckett. And then Arabella's mother is like, yeah, that's her real name. Like, the joke is, like, at the beginning, he mishears her name, and he thinks she says, true love beckons. And everyone's like, wow, you idiot. That's not her name. And I'm like, why was that so crazy? It sounds like her name.

Emma

It sounds exactly like her name.

Chels

I know.

Emma

Good. Just tell, like, the person who's disabled and cranky, like, you're an idiot.

Chels

I know, right? They're so mean to him. Anyways, Arabella, not the heroine. Arabella's mother is angling for her to make this, like, grand match with the viscount. And he, like. And she kind of, like, encourages her to play up her femininity and play down her intelligence. And this part of the book is quite annoying. So the viscount is not interested in Arabella. He's drawn to true love, a woman who listens to his war stories and doesn't, like, balk at his mood swings. His relationship with true love is actually not that interesting. True feels like a composite, gentle healer character. And the viscount's reasons for loving her are almost all related to how she comes him, rather than her own traits or personality. But what is interesting is that the viscount has PTSD from Waterloo and dreams about dying. But more frequently, he thinks about this moment during the peninsular war when he was very young and he encountered a stray french soldier outside of battle. So the viscount panicked and shot the man immediately before realizing that the words the man yelled in French were, don't shoot. So after he shoots him, he finds a picture on his person of the man's young family.

Chels

And he's, like, kind of haunted by the man that he killed that day, whose family will likely never know what happened to him. So another point of it is, like, the viscount's limp that he got from Waterloo does affect him, but he's an aristocrat and he has this world of doctors and opportunities within his grasp. But shortly after the war, he notices a man with only one leg walking down the street. And as he watches from afar, a group of young men push this man over into the mudd. And so the viscount can kind of tell that this man is also a veteran. And he's, like, really angry that a man was asked to sacrifice so much and he ends up getting treated like dirt when he returns. So he does end up helping the veteran find a job, but he's kind of keenly aware that the only reason that he isn't left to his own devices after such a traumatic war experience is because he has that cushion of his title and of his life. And I think that's kind of like what we're getting at in this section is that we are mostly talking about disability for extremely rich people when we talk about disability in Waterloo books, and then I guess kind of like a one, because we all.

Chels

And we're gonna talk about this more later, but I don't think we're gonna talk about the side characters later. And the ladies.

Emma

We should talk about him now.

Chels

Yeah, yeah. The lady's Companion actually has, like, does really interesting thing with disabilities. So the ladies companion by Carla Kelly. There's a side character. Two side characters are, I believe, missing limbs Joel, who runs the employment agency. And Joel is, like, extremely likable, and he's.

Beth

I thought he was gonna be the hero when we first met him. I was like, okay, Joel, this is. And then later when we met David, I was like, oh, this is the guy. Because she's here now, obviously. So this probably is him.

Emma

Joel is so charming. But, yeah, he, like, is missing a hand, but his mother, like, helps him, like, put his tie on and stuff, and it's like. It's very sweet.

Chels

Yeah. And he's just, like, a regular guy, regular job. Like, he's not. He doesn't really have, like. But he's just kind of, like, doing his thing and, like, one of the really charming things too. Is that so David, he's, like, the bailiff, and he has someone working for him.

Emma

Oh, I forgot this part also.

Chels

Yeah, he has someone working for him who's also missing a hand, but he's missing the opposite hand as Joel. So Joel was Joel.

Beth

Whenever.

Chels

He'll send David, like, the glove that he doesn't need to give to this other character. And this is something that this other character. I wish I could remember his name, but this other character, like, did not take being disabled like, he. Well, I mean, like, who blame you? But, like, he was. He was very. More clearly traumatized by it than Joel was. And this gesture that Joel is doing is kind of, like, bringing humor to him and helping him. And so it's like. It's like, him and David, like, propping this guy up, like, trying to help him out, trying to, like, they're just like, you gotta have a sense of humor about it, man. Like, it was extremely charming, and it also was just kind of, like, this concern that David's employee has about, like, his livelihood and his life and, like, what he's. Is he gonna do now? It, like, felt so much more visceral than, like, a viscount who might be missing a limb or has, who limps. But more annoyingly to his family, when.

Beth

You'Re rich, you've got servants. So it's like you mentioned, like, Joel's mom helps him. It's like, I think that is also the disconnect on why you don't have, like, this solidarity across classes, because you just wouldn't think about it. You'd just be like, oh, it doesn't affect my life too much. You know, everyone just probably has a servant who helps them with putting on their boots or whatever is needed. You know what I mean? Like, it's just not the same level of money buys so much Waterloo.

Emma

I mean, historically there definitely were like noble people who lost limbs. Like Lord Uxbridge. There's this moment, he's like on his horse. This is depicted in the 1970 movie with Christopher Plummer as Wellington, which is a very sexy Wellington. But Lord Uxbridge is like, it's near the end of the battle and he's like talking with Wellington, he's like, I think we've won. And he turns to Wellington, he's like, I think I've lost my leg. And then Wellington looks down and is like, you have. And Lord Uxbridge has lost his leg. And it's like, yeah, like, there were definitely aristocratic people who suffered like loss of limb, but yeah, obviously when they come back, different, different stakes. I read a book that I think deal. It almost felt like a reaction to some of these other books that we're not going to talk about as directly because I think we all hate when this happens, when someone comes back and they've lost a limb or they have facial scarring and their fiance or their partner or whoever they're supposed to marry reacts in a way that is so over the top. It like, reaches like cruelty.

Emma

This happens in The Duchess Deal where the heroine, not the heroine, the first fiance vomits at the sight of the Waterloo veteran's face because he has scarring even though he's a duke. It's just like a very cruel thing that doesn't like, get. They know it's cruel in the book, but it's so over the top that it almost becomes like a comic reaction or like it just. It's bizarre. But this book, a temporary betrothal by Lily George, which I was a little hesitant about reading because it's a christian romance and I've never read a book that was like explicitly religious before. I just don't avoid sort of christian romances in general. But the whole series is about women who marry veterans of Waterloo. So I was like, I'll try it. And I ended up being really delighted by it. But the book follows Sophie Hanley, who's a gentry flirt whose family lost their fortune. And she's now working, working as a private seamstress. So she's also had sort of this like fall from. From privilege. And she's hopes of opening her own medist shop in the first series. In the book, she breaks an engagement to her fiance, who returns to Waterloo missing a leg, and her fiance ends up with her older sister.

Emma

So it's this plot again, like someone's upset with the injury that's happened to someone else. And the hero, the lieutenant, Charles Cantrell, has also had his fiance leave him after he's returned with his hand missing. So he's initially skeptical Sophie, he's best friends with her old fiance, but she's in bath and she wants to help Charles with charity work that he does with veterans. So they start hanging out. What worked for me most with this book about Waterloo was that both Sophie and Charles have to forgive and ask for forgiveness after their behavior dealing with the emotional fallout of this battle. So Sophie's really embarrassed that she left her fiance after his injury. She was like, that was very shallow of me. But she also knows that he is now happy with her sister. But his personality changed really radically, which I think is a fair thing to happen after someone experiences a trauma. And so she's like, I just didn't. I didn't love him anymore. Like, he was just so different and I couldn't. I couldn't understand who my fiance had become. Charles, on the other hand, holds a lot of resentment towards his fiance, who left him and thus judges Sophie very harshly.

Emma

Though she's trying to make amends with her work with Waterloo veterans. He speaks really cruelly about his fiance and this is where I thought the book was going to lose me. Like he was. It's kind of over the top how cruel he is to this woman who's now in bath and, like, flirting. He almost, like, slut shames her. But then by the end of the book, he apologizes to her for how his behavior changed when he returned to Waterloo. He treated her really coldly and brusquely also changed by the battle and his amputation. And so he sees that she didn't leave him because of his amputation, she left him because his personality had changed and also he was rude and mean to her. So I like that this sort of complicated the dynamic that we see where a female character abandons her war hero fiance and that the heroine, and it's like virtuous and swoops in and good because she, like, looks past disability or injury, like in the Duchess deal, I think only enchanting. Mary Balogh also deals with this. This is a peninsular war book that also has, like, a cruel fiance in it.

Emma

But I think Mary Bollock, like, she often does, like, leaves the door open for that hair that other woman to sort of have, like, a redeeming character characteristics. Well, this one, the Lily George book, did it, like, a little bit more explicitly. And I just thought it was, like, an interesting dynamic that I think it felt, like, almost reactionary to some others, like, typical plots of, like, waterloo veterans.

Chels

That thing about the duchess, Dale, really kills it for me. That one part, I think. And it's not just Tessa dare who does this, I think, as you mentioned. And it's like a big. I think it's a big thing in beauty and the beast historicals, where it's like the overly dramatic response to. And not to say that people aren't shitty like that, but it just. Especially for that book, I was just like, you want us to believe that this person who's engaged to a duke is gonna throw all of that away? Like, it just. It just. It just felt like. It felt mean and thoughtless. Like, I don't know, it wasn't. It wasn't thoughtless.

Emma

Yeah, there's a difference between, like, being thoughtless, like, vomiting at the sight of someone's face. Like, that is like a. It's like a very.

Chels

That's extreme.

Emma

There's an extreme reaction. There's.

Chels

Yeah, yeah, so that's.

Emma

Yeah, that's the end of, like, Waterloo stuff. And I think we're now gonna sort of focus on books that have to deal with, like, the fallout. I talked a little bit about the history with the Congress of Vienna and also the fallout with the Pax Britannica and England, sort of colonial project that kicks up after this. The Congress of Vienna does prevent another widespread war for 100 years. So there are conflicts like the crimean war, but basically the Congress of Vienna is considered, like, a success until World War one. So that's another reason why world War one is such a big deal, because they've been able to prevent, like, widespread european conflict. But the. So right immediately after Waterloo, we mentioned this both in Newgate and the Bow Street Runners episode. But the repeated wars during this period really helped keep crime at bay, because property crime goes down when people are employed. When they're getting paid by the army, they're less likely to steal things, so they come back from the war without jobs. And so there's civil unrest, and this sort of, is the beginning of the victorian period and sort of social reform.

Emma

But also the Congress of Vienna, in a lot of ways, is ultimately a conservative project trying to tamp down sort of the Enlightenment era revolutions that seemingly led to prolonged periods of war. It's basically like the failure of the revolutionary period is that we're going to reinstate king's reform period. And so it just sort of a move to conservatism is generally what's happening immediately after Waterloo. So, yeah, and it's this in between period. This is what transitions the regency georgian periods, really, into the victorian period. Like, Victoria doesn't come into power for another 15 years, but this really is like, sort of at least the politics that are actually happening. This is really pushing us towards, like, away from the regency period and sort of that idle period of Jane Austen that we see where people. It's moving towards modernity, in a way. And this is why I think, I gravitate towards books that acknowledge what's going on in history with Napoleon here, because this is the transition point between these two most popular periods of historical romance. A major difference between these two periods is that the regency period is dealing with the Napoleon question and then the Victoria period is dealing with England's and sort of like the colonial project.

Emma

And that just is the difference between them. And Waterloo is the moment that it switches. Because I think we're going to talk about some books that deal with fallout in general. And I think.

Chels

Yeah, and I guess so some kind of, like, we've kind of been talking a lot about the way that historical romance can frame, like, the events of the napoleonic wars, kind of feeling, like, a little bit reductive because a lot of it is focused on british characters. And then we've also kind of talked in other episodes about something we wish publishers and authors would try to break out more often. Is kind of like the continually focusing on british characters. But, yeah, France is like the unambiguous baddie. You do miss a few key details. I think something I've learned about one of the effects of the peninsular war is that Spain starts to lose their grasp on a bunch of latin american countries. And so there's this almost 20 year period where countries that Spain has colonized, like, gained their independence. Back in the France doing bad things category, we talked earlier about Napoleon invading Egypt, but correct me if I'm wrong, Emma, but he's kind of partially motivated to do this, to kind of keep up with the Joneses, with the British are doing in India.

Emma

Yeah. Because they don't have boats. They have to get somewhere that's easier to get to by land or by boats that can go shorter distances.

Chels

Yeah. So I. So I've just been kind of, like, keeping this in the back of my mind, kind of like when we're talking the whole episode. But, yeah, I also mentioned earlier, I kind of balk at the framing of any war or battle is heroic. So when I look at how books use an event like we know, like Waterloo, the memorable ones to me are using the battle to do something, like, completely different. So we've talked about a gentleman undone by Cecilia Grant, like, many, many times, but it has one of the most heartbreaking Waterloo scenes I can think of. So Will Blackshear has PTSD from the battle, and he feels this responsibility to take care of the widow and child of a soldier he knew. So Grant isn't interested in the heroics of Waterloo, like, at all. Instead, she has this character, Will, who we love and are charmed by, reveal that he hates himself because this soldier was gravely injured. And Will, with all his hubris, thought to carry him to safety and save his life. Instead, he puts the soldier through unbearable agony and his death is slow and painful and something that Will has to live with for the rest of his life.

Chels

So Grant doesn't focus on carnage caused by other soldiers or even Will's guilt for, like, shooting an enemy. It's this choice, this heroic choice that ends up being a mistake and haunting will and being the main source of his anguish in the book. And that is doing something like. Like, completely different, like not lionizing the war. In fact, it's like that. That kind of heroism, that sense of that. That thing like that. Because, you know, you think that you would do something good, you deserve reward.

Emma

Like, universe rewards you for, like, being heroic.

Chels

Yeah. And this isn't how it worked out for Will. And I just. I loved that about this book because I love Will as a character and it's not. There's not really a need ending for those feelings for him. I mean, it's hea, of course, but, like, it is something that he has to live with. Kind of another one that uses Waterloo. Interesting. Is a lady for a Duke by Alexis hall. Both main characters are Waterloo veterans. So Viola and Gracewood, the Duke, were childhood friends and they both ended up being injured at Waterloo. So Viola is a trans woman, and instead of returning to her former life, she uses her presumed death to, like, fully transition as herself a woman going forward. The thing is, though, this has a consequence. Like Gracewood, in the years since Waterloo, has been deteriorating, distraught over the loss of his friend and feeling culpable. But of course, Viola is actually alive. They do reconnect and begin a romance. This is a more emotional book from hall than I'm used to reading him do. And I think that the way he wrote Viola and Gracewood together was very, very sweet.

Chels

Most people say this book is too long, and I'll tell you why. Alexis hall loves side characters and giving them quippy dialog that can go on for pages and pages, and hall, like, really willingly lets go of the tension in order to do that. So it's not a perfect book, but it is something new for him, and I did enjoy a lot of it.

Beth

I just want Alexis Hall in a tv writers room. I think he would do well there.

Chels

Totally. I see it. Like, I feel like I didn't really get hall as much until I listened to boyfriend material on audio. That's a fun book on audio.

Beth

I actually like that book.

Chels

I like it, too, but I loved it on audio.

Beth

Yeah, no, I think that's the correct way to do that. Okay, so I read the Covert Captain by Janelle M. Ferreira to start. I think there's a good book in here somewhere, but it's so underwritten, it's hard to follow. But the story follows Nora, who goes by Nathaniel Fleming, a name she took on after brother of the same name died. Nora was a captain in Waterloo. Nora declines a promotion to be a major so she can stay with her friend. His name is Shel Sherborne, so she can stay in his company. I don't think that was, like, a bad narrative choice, but I just personally was, like, you turned down so much money. I don't know. I don't agree with those choice. But she falls for Sherburne. Sherborne. She falls for Sherborne's sister Harriet. And this is, like, a really random side note. On the surface, yes. I think people might assume that Nora is trans. Her character struck me more as someone accessing the male identity for the convenience rather than connecting with a gender identity. Interestingly, though, I kind of got the vibe that Harriet, her love interest, could be trans. She doesn't seem to identify with being a woman.

Beth

And it kind of has, like, several comments throughout the book that makes me question, like, if she doesn't identify with this gender identity, and she goes by the nickname Harry, just, like, a bunch of little things. So I was truly bummed this book didn't do that, because I think it would have been interesting to have the character who's kind of doing, like, girl and breeches dressing up as a man thing, not like her partner is the one who is maybe questioning her identity.

Emma

That would be a great girl in breeches book. That sounds really interesting. I wish this book also was that.

Beth

I feel like I had so many good ideas while I was reading this book and what the author could be doing. Yeah, I feel like it could have subverted my expectations in an interesting way, not like I'm trying to get you or surprise you way. For this book, Nora, we've talked a bit about PTSD. She also has violent nightmares. There are flashbacks to Waterloo throughout the novel, which shows Nora getting injured first time she spends the night with her love interest Harriet. Nora asks her after they wake up. She's like, did I accidentally hit you? After Harriet brings up the nightmares, that's the kind of nightmare she's having. She's violently hurting people. Nora's nightmares go away when Harriet's in bed with her, though. And I kind of hate this as a general trope because the underlying idea is bad. Like, your PTSD will disappear if you find your true love and share a bed with them. And like, my cursory googling shows that nightmares are kind of a hallmark, or they can be a hallmark of PTSD, and even if your other PTSD symptoms abate, the nightmares can still persist for your whole life. I don't know, I just.

Beth

It feels sometimes authors try and, like, solve disability, or if you, like, do the correct thing, then your disability is actually goes away. And I think that's actually a really bad approach to disability or disabled characters. This also. So we're talking about books that are like, after Waterloo. And I think disability is probably one of those things that will crop up in a lot of these books as like, a chronic thing that a character is dealing with for the rest of their life. But, yeah, I hope for better things for that author in the future.

Emma

Yeah, I think it's hard to write. I think that, like the. If you're to stick Waterloo in, I just feel like an advanced move because you have to deal with so many things. I think it. A lot of. There are a lot of books that I started for this episode that I did not finish because I thought this book is just gonna be scattered. I think it can be tough to write about. I either loved all the books I read for this episode or I dnf'd them. Like, there was no in between. There was no books that I was like, this is okay. But one book that I loved that I think all. I think all of us have read because I made shells and I beth read this because I loved it so much. It's only at the end because it's the latest set book that I think is in the episode is The Lady's Companion by Carla Kelly. This is actually the book that made me want to do this episode because I loved it so much. Finally getting into Carly Kelly was, like, a huge upside of this episode. I'm so excited that I started reading her.

Emma

So the heroine of this book, Susan, is the daughter of a gentleman who has a gambling problem. So rather than become dependent on rich family members, she takes a job as ladies companion at an estate where she's working. David Wiggins is the bailiff. We talked about him a little bit before, talking about disability and Joel, the disabled character. He was a peninsular war and Waterloo veteran. He has a really strong code of ethics that he developed during his fighting days. He doesn't have a family and there's a suggestion that he join the army to get away from some criminal charges in his native Wales. So it's like his ethics come from his identity as a soldier. He's experienced a lot of loss. Not only was he at Waterloo, but he also lost a wife and son during childbirth. He had a wife in Portugal when he was in the peninsular war and she died in childbirth. On the estate that he works at, he's trying to cultivate wheat from some grains that he took from a farmhouse at La Haye Sainte, which is a scene of one of the most violent bits of the Waterloo battle.

Emma

And I thought that was, like a really interesting, like, historical connection. That was just smart of Kelly to do. It's like, oh, yeah, there would have been grains there for him to take. And it just is very cute. This book is really delightful, like all the Kelly books are. I liked that it wasn't an immediate aftermath of book. It wasn't. I liked that it wasn't an immediate aftermath book because it actually said in 1820, so David has some distance, but all the effects of the war really shape his personality and motivation. So I think it's getting to that aspect of Waterloo where it's like, how do you come back from this? The economy, the characters. Once you're at Waterloo, it doesn't end just because the regency period is ending all those feelings. The lady of the estate is also an interesting Waterloo character. She's a widow whose family was all in the military and she followed the drum, which is an idiom that comes up a lot in these books, where women and families went on, went with their soldiering husbands. David is keeping a secret from her about the circumstances of her son's death.

Emma

And the whole book really deals directly with themes of honesty and stories we tell about ourselves. It's also really important for David to create things like the wheat or his relationship with Susan in contrast to his years of loss in the wars so I thought this was just like a really smart delightful book and that's why I made Bethantels both read it because it just is so. It's so charming. It's definitely my favorite book that I.

Beth

Read for the episode it is very charming. I don't know what's to add. Delightful book.

Chels

I loved it. Yeah I was on like a four book Carla Kelly spree I didn't start with this one. I think I did the Admiral's Penniless Bride which he wasn't at Waterloo but.

Emma

Everyone also should read that one. He was. He was a navy guy.

Chels

Yeah that one super cute oh my God. I. I read misses drew plays her hand which he was a Waterloo veteran but it's not as interesting in that book as it is in this one unless marrying the Royal Marine which was peninsular that one was very dark I was surprised but yeah I was kind of thinking about that I was just like I don't think I knew this about Carla Kelly. That Carla Kelly. If she's gonna set something in a year you're gonna know why. Like that's.

Emma

I love. I mean I love the 1820 aspect of it. Like I just feel like so many of these books ended within the year of Waterloo where it's like either it ends at Waterloo or it's like Waterloo happens at the beginning and we're going to be dealing with the immediate fallout but this is a part of David's life forever and I think Susan maybe doesn't she has no connection to Waterloo until she meets David so she kind of has to learn about it from him which I think is very typical it's like she didn't go to Brussels which it's like yeah lots of people were in Brussels but also lots of people did not travel to Brussels and when a Waterloo veteran came home they had to learn to like talk about this thing that happened to them and this is one of the only books I feel like that happens in where like the other characters are so far removed from the characters who are at Waterloo like Susan has to learn to talk to her I can't remember the woman's name, her lady that she's working for she has to learn to like talk about the army with.

Emma

With her boss and Susan just. She's kind of like an Emma Woodhouse experience as a consequence months character where she like had a lot of privilege and then her father gambles it away and so she. She goes to get a job it's just, it's very sweet. So everyone should read. Carla Kelly, that's a wholehearted endorsement.

Emma

Thank you so much for listening to reformed rakes. If you like bonus content, you can subscribe to our patreon@patreon.com reformed rakes. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram for show updates. The username for both isformed rakes or email us@reformedrakesmail.com we love to hear from our listeners. Listeners, please rate and review us on Apple and Spotify. It helps a lot. Thank you again, and we'll see you next time.