I’m back with another BookTube video, and in this one, I discuss why I love historical romance so much. I’ve got the transcript below the video, so you can either watch it or just read the transcript. I’ll be posting part II as well.
Hi, I’m Jennie Goutet. I’m the author of clean historical romance. And just to say upfront that clean romance is an industry term, which is why we use it. It allows readers who want to read books that are free of excessive violence or swear words or sex scenes and authors who want to write those types of books to be able to find each other. So that’s why I’m using this term. In terms of historical romance, I write mostly Regency, but I’m starting to dip more into Georgian, and that’s one of the books that I want to talk about today that is going to be coming out in June of next year.
I started to think, well, why do I like historical romance so much? I think for me, I grew up reading a lot of books from past centuries. Even when I was younger, I loved Little House on the Prairie. I loved Anne of Green Gables, which went from the century before mine to the century after. It was like more in my century. And I would be curious to see what you think in the comments. I mean, I would love to know how you stumbled on historical romance, and why you like it.
As I got older, I drifted on to Jane Austen, of course, Elizabeth Gaskell, William Thackery, Charles Dickens, and I just found so much beauty in the historical books. I started to discern that some of the books are more positive – like I kept forgetting every time I would read a Thomas Hardy book, that, okay, you’ve got to stop reading these books. They’re so depressing. With some of them, like with Dickens when there was hardship I would see so much nobility of character and it inspired me to have a more noble character as well. I think that that is what inspires my writing; like I want to portray that life is not easy. As much as I have a great sense of humor, I am not a romcom writer. I wish I were that funny; I wish my humor transmitted to the page, but I’m not a romcom writer. So sometimes there are some hard things going on in life and in my books, but what I want to portray is that it’s the nobility of character that brings about the resolution and just inspires people to persevere.
But I think when I was researching for A Daring Proposal … so this is a series called Memorable Proposals and it’s published by Cedar Fort, and actually, I gained the audio rights. So these books are on my YouTube channel. If you look at the playlists, you can see all of my audiobooks that are available for you. And A Daring Proposal is a very battle-centric, history-centric book because it takes place during the Battle of Waterloo. So the defeat of Napoleon—I live in France. I love France. I love my country. I’m a French citizen now as well -a dual citizen. I love visiting Napoleon’s museum in Les Invalides where you have everything about Napoleon there. So all that I find super interesting. But of course, when I’m writing Regency, it’s from a British perspective. So, you know, my heart kind of swayed towards everything British.
In my research for this book, one of my French friends recommended a book by one of her ancestors, and I think it was her uncle that published it, published the memoir in the 1980s. And this book is called Le Grognard – baron de l’empire. Okay, so this book is fascinating. It does not have an English translation, but it is about a young servant tenant farmer. He serves the marquis and he was probably born around 1767 or something like that, which is about close to the time that my book is set. And so he grows up a tenant farmer. When they hear that there’s a revolt against the nobles, he and the others come together and they’re ready to defend him. They’re like, “nobody’s going to touch him.” Of course they did. And what ends up happening is this guy, what’s his name? Putigny. What ends up happening is that he goes and joins Napoleon’s fledgling army and he stays with him from 1792 all the way through 1815, including the disastrous foray into Russia.
And this book is not well known. I know about it because my friend gave it to me. It was published in the 80s. I think it’s out of print. Maybe I got an old copy or something. It’s not well known. And there’s even a picture of his writing if you can see this: six big notebooks that the grognard I’ll tell you about that in a minute—wrote laboriously with a hand that is “more accustomed to the saber than the pen.”
So “Le Grognard” is a term that they call Napoleon’s soldiers. He was so passionate about Napoleon. The reason he became a baron of the empire was because they lost one of the golden eagles, and he plunged into the pond to retrieve it and Napoleon heard about it and so he made him a baron. This guy did not know how to read or write. He was just a simple tenant farmer, and the way he learned was with his first early earnings; he bought pen and paper. I don’t know who taught him, but he learned to read and write. And he ended up obviously becoming nobility, but it was a different kind of nobility. It was not the monarchy; it was the empire. He ended up marrying the niece of Talleyrand. And I’m pretty sure I have this right. Talleyrand was the guy that negotiated peace in Vienna for France. There are some other things with him, but I think that I have that right.
What was so fascinating about reading this book was that I felt like this guy, Putigny, came out of the grave and was speaking to me. And it made 1792 feel like just today. You know, he had humor. He described when he was doing his first guard and was terrified because he heard a noise. He called out to them, “Present yourself,” There was no answer, and so he shot, and it ended up being a dog. He did not kill the dog, but the dog ran off, and then he laughed at himself like, “Okay, I was so afraid of a dog.”
There were these little moments that were so human, you know. When he talked about going into Russia, the Russian soldiers were brutal. When they came behind the French army, they were burning the buildings full of wounded men, including their own. And the only reason he survived—so few people survived—was because he was sick, and his servant like got a carriage for him, got a horse, you know, covered him up and everything. His servant died, but he survived and it was because of this. He was so, so passionate about protecting Napoleon and was disappointed because of their defeat at Waterloo. Then Napoleon was exiled. And he actually was one of the old soldiers that went to receive Napoleon’s body when he died and stand guard overnight one last time and accompany it to its final resting place in Les Invalides.
This was a real guy. And reading about his hopes—I mean, yeah, he was brutal. I mean, he was a soldier and he was he was brutal—reading about his personality, his hopes, it’s and it just this feeling that somebody came back from the dead and was talking to me. I realized that I think that’s why I love historical romance. I think that’s also why I loved writing A Daring Proposal so much because a lot of my characters and the battle was very researched. I had maps and everything. Some people were like, “Please, enough of the battle. I’m here for the romance!” And the romance was there.
But I wanted to get the battle scenes right. And so many of those details were from people who lived through it—it really happened like that. And so being able to pull in those details and bring them to life once again is rich. And I think that’s what it is about historical romance. I love to bring people back to life. Like, let their stories not be forgotten. Even if it’s my imagined stories.
That’s the case with this upcoming book that I have coming out with Haven. It is now available for pre-order and I’ll put links in the description. It’s called A Love Once Lost.
** After filming this video, I realized that it was a bit long for one video, so I’ve split it into two. This is officially the end of part one, and you can stay tuned for part two, which I will post soon, where I talk about my upcoming book with Haven which is set in 1770s spa. I’m excited about that. And if you like historical fiction, check out my playlist. You can listen to a lot of my audiobooks for free. If you’re interested in Waterloo specifically, make sure to listen to A Daring Proposal. That is the story of Frederick and Phoebe; what it was like to live through that particular battle. Now stay tuned for Part II.