Great Expectations?

[kaitou]

I'm still on my romance reading kick, and ran across one that was a little different, and it made me think a bit. "Forbidden Magic" by Jo Beverly was interesting because it had a Manic Pixie Dream Guy. Usually it's the heroine in a Regency Romance who's like a Disney Princess on speed. She'll be the one who is overly familiar with servants, who of course adore her. She'll put up with the deaf butler and the elderly housekeeper because they're like family. She'll have the three legged dog and keep frogs in her reticule. (Srsly, I have read like 3 books now where the heroine keeps a frog in her purse, wtf?) And the hero will be very staid and proper, but he'll learn to love her joie de vie, yadda yadda yadda.

But in this book it's the hero that has the chaotic household. The maid has one eye, the dog has a perma-snarl, the footman has a limp... there's even an inappropriate parrot. He loves the heroine's little brothers and sisters and lets them eat ices for appetizers and plays with them. And of course the heroine who's had to have everything under tight control to keep her family out of serious trouble, learns to loosen up and enjoy life.

I was amused by the Manic Pixie Dream Guy, but what kind of surprised me is that making the Girl the uptight one made her almost unlikable. I'm so used to the heroine being immediately sweet and accepting that it's a little off putting when she balks at the ex-pickpocket working as a servant for her little siblings. Which is a bad reaction on my part. I would probably balk too. But it's interesting that it's an expectation that I didn't even realize I had.

Comments

[m_steelgrave]

One of my very favorite YA books was The Ordinary Princess, in which BOTH the heroine and the hero were fighteningly ordinary compared to their families. They met in disguise and fell in love as "commoners", and when they discovered they were both royalty they thought it was a grand joke to play on their families that they should return home so he could seek her hand in marriage in a royal capacity. Nobody in either of their families could believe that anyone would want to marry them because they were so ordinary. Her family had a portrait of her done (which glossed over much of her ordinary appearance) and sent to the prince, and she sent him a letter assuring him that she still had freckles and an ugly nose. He wrote back saying something along the lines of, "Where do I hang this portrait of this stranger in my house?!") I loved it.