Eloisa James’s meteoric rise to romance writing fame over the past decade started with a simple goal: to help pay off her student loans so that she and her husband could afford to have a second child.

Her ability to start with a character or a plotline and turn it on its head has defined much of her very successful writing career. For example, it is a bona-fide Rule of Romance that heroines do not, ever, under any circumstances, commit adultery. That behavior is for villains and the occasional supporting character only. If it’s a female character who’s doing the deed with someone other than her husband, she generally winds up dead.

Eloisa is one of the very few writers who successfully writes about the romantic forbidden. To wit: adultery, marital separation, and even a child’s death.
In This Duchess of Mine, Jemma spent years living in Paris sans husband, during which she has two brief, unsatisfying, but widely discussed extramarital affairs. What sent her fleeing from her marriage? Her husband’s own extramarital affair, which tanks the relationship before it even has a chance to get started.

[Dare to forge ahead...]

Had enough of the Royal Wedding? Check out the history of an alternative plan—elopement to the famous Gretna Green.

Everyone has heard of Gretna Green, Scotland’s most famous contribution to wedding history. After the passage of The Marriage Act of 1753 (commonly known as Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act), enacted to curtail the growing problem of clandestine marriages, eloping couples came here to marry without the restrictions of English law.

In myriad examples, historical romances have glommed onto this marital loophole, having some actual couples take off for Gretna, while sometimes the villain attempts to lure the heroine there (requiring a heroic rescue), or they just threaten to go there if their parents don’t agree. For example, the would-be runaways, Stacy Calverly and Fanny, discuss running away to Gretna Green in Georgette Heyer's Black Sheep. More recently, Eloisa James's impetuous heroine Imogen elopes to Gretna Green after faking an injury to ensnare the object of her affections in Much Ado About You.

[Scotland's Vegas?...]

It’s wedding season at Buckingham Palace, an event that should set every devoted romance reader’s heart aflutter with anticipation.

Infrequent as they are, royal weddings have had an outsized effect on the way women marry for the better part of two centuries.

Here’s a shocking little secret: until that doyenne of 19th century England Victoria married her Prince Albert, white was hardly the preferred wedding dress fashion. Prior to Victoria’s ascension to the throne, in fact, British and American wedding dresses could be any color. If you could swing having a dress specially made for the occasion, you most likely chose blue, which symbolized fidelity and purity (think of the phrase “true blue”).

[Blue? Who knew?...]

What makes some romance writers so . . . delicious? One of the big reasons we keep picking up romances—and nearly 75 million readers do, according to industry research from Romance Writers of America—is their ability to deliver those wonderfully satisfying “ahhh” moments.

[All together . . . ahhh!]