MamasWriters are thrilled to have my friend and Regency romance author Vanessa Kelly with us today.

Please help us welcome her!

THE BEHAVIOR AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE REGENCY MALE

I want to thank Kris for having me here to talk about something near and dear to my heart:  men.  Yes, I know.  I’m that shallow.  I should be writing about the challenges that women face as both authors and mothers, but you probably deal with those challenges way better than I do.  When my family starts to bug me, my m.o. is more akin to that of a first grader—I lose my temper and stomp out of the room.  So, no advice here, ladies.  Just move along.

Unless, of course, you want to talk about guys.  Not just any guys, either, but the big, strapping Regency hero. I’m assuming that since you’re all moms here, at some point you liked men enough to make babies.

So what happened to those guys after that momentous event occurred?  Did they remain the same sexy but often obnoxious jerks they were when they were single?  Or did they morph into the kind of loving husband and father who will get up in the middle of the night with a colicky baby?

Let’s see how that works with the Regency Alpha male, shall we?

Some of the characteristics of the Regency Alpha Male:

• He is a crack shot from hours spent practicing at Manton’s, thus ensuring that he can respond to any attacks by nefarious evildoers.
• He boxes at Gentleman Jackson’s, thus ensuring that he can beat the crap out of anyone who tries to come between him and the heroine.
• He can drink and waltz the night away, and still meet the heroine for an assignation in Hyde Park at 9am the next morning.
• He never breaks a sweat playing cards, no matter how high the stakes—including the heroine’s virginity.
• He has shot far more birds than a village could eat in an entire year, and is a bruising rider in the local hunt.
• He has a long history of rakish behavior with women far more beautiful than the heroine.
• Although incredibly masculine, the Regency Alpha male can spend hours on his dress and grooming, thus ensuring that he is often better turned-out than his bookish, bluestocking heroine.
• Masculine codes of honor mean everything to him.

Some of the behavior of the Regency Alpha Male:

• He resists any attempt to force him into marriage, vowing that he will remain a bachelor forever.
• If for some reason he MUST get married (usually to save his estate from the vagaries of an obscure article in a long-lost relative’s will), he will vow never to fall in love.
• Despite the two points listed above, he can never keep his hands off the heroine, and has a marked predilection for trying to seduce her in semi-public places.  This invariably leads to discovery, thus ensuring that he will have to marry her (see code of honor).
• If the heroine resists marriage (usually a sensible decision, given his rakish past), the hero invariably decides to post the engagement notice in all the papers in order to force the heroine’s hand.  After all, the sweet, naïve girl really doesn’t know what’s good for her.
• He can be secretive, keeping information about things like murder plots or former mistresses (or engagement notices) to himself, thus ensuring that the heroine will be forced to take action to solve whatever problem is bedeviling her.  Which invariably leads to…
• Trouble, which then leads to a fight between the hero and heroine, which then leads to sex.
• Once there is sex, the hero’s masculine code of honor comes into play again, and he will do whatever it takes to make the heroine his and his alone.

It’s usually at this point that our Regency Alpha male begins his transformation from arrogant rake to devoted husband and loving father.  By the epilogue, we often don’t recognize him because he’s turned into such a marshmallow, wiping away manly tears on the birth of his first child or getting up in the middle of the night with the aforementioned colicky baby.

I suspect that the real Regency aristocrat didn’t spend much time with his own children and didn’t walk the floor night after night, bouncing junior on his shoulder. But as romance writers, we bring so many of our own hopes, dreams, and realities to our stories.  So it makes perfect sense that we take these arrogant, rakish, and handsome men and turn them into something we know is possible and which we all experience (I hope!) in our own lives—husbands who adore us, and fathers who will make any sacrifice for their children.

So, how about all you MamaWriters out there?  How realistic are the male characters you create in your books? Are they larger than life or just like the guy next door?  And when you’re not writing, what kind of male characters do you like to read about?  The Alpha, the Beta, or does the Gamma turn your crank?

MamaWriters: And be sure to stop by Vanessa’s site; she’s funny, has a newsletter, and is always having contests!