The romance genre has a single set-in-stone rule: The main characters of the story will end up happily in a relationship. The HEA (Happily Ever After) or the HFN (Happy for Now) is the expectation of every reader who picks up a romance novel in the same way a mystery reader waits for a big twisty reveal or a fantasy reader anticipates strange and arcane magic.
Yet as a historian of the romance novel, I have found that the expectation of a happy ending remains contentious, both inside and outside the genre. People who don't understand the importance of the romance's hopeful promise push back against it. Meanwhile, many dedicated romance readers are only able to imagine happy endings for some. In this particular moment, with hope in short supply and the value of diversity under attack, the expectation of a HEA for everyone is a powerful tool for the romance community to wield.
While love stories have existed since the birth of human storytelling, the romance novel as we know it began to emerge at the end of the 19th century. Nickel weeklies and pulp magazines focused on printing a consistent product over individual storytelling to keep subscribers paying. Women were voracious readers of these publications, making romance a natural genre for magazines to focus on. This translated to paperbacks as they became popular in the 1930s, where romance publishers like Mills and Boon in the UK and Harlequin in North America perfected what became the genre's format -- publishing books with similar covers, page counts, and romantic story structures. In the early 1980s, the Romance Writers of America codified the happy ending, making it part of its official definition of the romance novel.
Because the romance genre is often touted as a billion-dollar portion of today's publishing industry (a number regularly cited though rarely sourced), every once in a while, an outsider, typically a literary type, will try their hand at writing one in hopes of cashing in. Often, though, they'll ignore genre traditions, including dismissing the HEA convention. Living happily ever after is unrealistic, they say. Life is about pain and suffering, and so of course, lovers must be torn asunder. Doesn't that make for the ultimate love story?
When an outsider pushes back against the happy ending, the romance community tends to present a united front. Romancelandia, the nickname for the online romance community, will try to school the author and their supporters on why the book either isn't a romance or is in fact the type of romance that has been written many times before. If the author puts down the genre in response, readers will go as far as to put the author on "do not buy" lists as well as remind others of the author's attitude toward the genre. While this might seem like a bit much, it demonstrates just how important the HEA is for romance readers.
Yet it's these same readers, who are quick to come to HEA's defence in this context, that can be reluctant to expand their own ideas around what kinds of characters deserve a happy ending. For most of the 20th century, characters in romance novels were entirely heterosexual and almost entirely white. Romance gatekeepers -- mostly white publishers and editors -- told authors of colour that their characters were unrelatable.
One regrettable exception, which arose in the 1980s and early 1990s, was the "Indian Romance," a potent mix of racism and white saviour ideology created by white authors, which paired off Indigenous characters with white characters. The HEAs of these early interracial romance novels always involved the white character "taming" their Indigenous lover's "savage ways".
It took until 1994 for Kensington Books to launch its "Arabesque" line, featuring mostly newcomers who wrote contemporary black romances. "Arabesque" titles frequently went to multiple printings, turning authors like Donna Hill and Brenda Jackson into household names. Finally, the publishing industry started to acquire books for a black romance readership hungry for stories about people who looked like them. Still, these publishers struggled with fully embracing the idea of a black HEA. One of the rare exceptions to this was historical romance author Beverly Jenkins. Avon found a goldmine in Jenkins, whose steamy and deeply researched tales of black love set during and after the Civil War earned her a devoted fanbase. But to this day, she remains one of the only black authors in the historical romance space.
Meanwhile, many white historical romance authors, who often set their work in Regency England, continue to argue that their stories cannot feature black characters in love. These authors say they cannot imagine non-white characters finding happiness in a time that was hostile to them. Take author Julia Quinn who made comments along those lines in 2017, though she has since changed her tune as seen by the success of the multiracial Netflix adaptation of her Bridgerton books. Today, romance authors remain overwhelmingly white; the bookstore The Ripped Bodice, which conducts research on racial diversity in romance publishing, found in its most recent report that black, Indigenous, and people of colour (Bipoc) authors of any identity only represented 10% of authors published by mainstream publishers.
Queer stories also lack representation. LGBTQ protagonists only recently appeared in mainstream romance novels, with Suzanne Brockmann breaking through in the early 2000s with her fictitious gay Navy SEALs. Authors like Casey McQuiston, KJ Charles, and Cat Sebastian have seen success in the last decade, mostly by writing gay male characters. In the past few years, books with lesbian and bisexual characters have started to come from mainstream publishers, but these love stories are still rare. Despite an explosion in popularity in recent years, queer romance still only makes up roughly 4% of romances published annually.
To find Bipoc, LGBTQ, and non-traditional relationship stories, the best bet remains seeking out self-published and independent authors who use the freedom of working outside the romance gatekeepers. Some of them, like the Ice Planet Barbarians series, have gone on to become massive mainstream bestsellers. Whether or not they achieve the same financial success as their traditionally published peers, indie authors' work challenges the romance mainstream to be a more open and inclusive place. Because publishers respond to dollars and trends, though, the more vocal support these romance novels receive from readers, the more these marginalised stories may continue to break their way into the mainstream.
The HEA is one of the most basic human desires. In a world that constantly tries to beat any kind of hope out of us, reading about a happy ending helps us imagine something or someone worth fighting for. That's why the romance genre's "golden rule" matters so much -- and why it should apply to us all. Because everyone deserves to see themselves in a happy ending. © Zócalo Public Square
Steve Ammidown is a historian of the romance genre who was awarded the 2019 Cathie Linz Librarian of the Year Award from the Romance Writers of America. He and Bowling Green State University professor Nicole Jackson recently finished the first season of their podcast, 'Black Romance Has a History.' This was written for Zócalo Public Square.