Back with a very few musings on Primogeniture

So I was delayed longer than I thought I might be when I first moved.  Not that I have done a single productive thing with the last 4 months.

Yes, all right that isn't entirely true but it is mostly true.

In any case, during this hiatus I read the new Julia Quinn book The Lost Duke of Wyndham which was a very good book overall. I did have one quibble though and it was this: It seemed to me that Jack oughtn't to have become the Duke.  In the first place, he couldn't read which might work very well for say a duke circa 1034---by all accounts Charlemagne didn't read---but seems a very stong liability for a duke in the 18th century. Second of all, it didn't seem necessary to me for the happy ending and more importantly, it was rather disturbing to see such an adherence in a modern novel to the idea of primogeniture which has caused, among its many crimes, the Hapsburgs, Louis XVI (he wasn't a bad king exactly but he would have been a better watchmaker) and the Ottoman Empire. But most of all, Jack shouldn't have become the duke because he didn't want to be the duke and, unlike other reluctant dukes, he was not bound by primogeniture since as far as the world knew he didn't exist.

The course of romance narrative can, I think, be described as a spiral.  Even when it begins in the middle of the story, that is after a Fall from Grace, there is implicit in the beginning the idea that the heroine/hero once lived in a better world, much like in fairy tales where the heroine moves from the tranquility of a protected home through trials and tribulations and finally into a happy ending that is greater than the idyll she began with.  The happy ending of the romantic narrative re-establishes order but it is not the same order that previously existed; rather it is a better order, I would even say a redemptive order.  Where this is true for The Lost Duke of Wyndham to a certain extent, the curious thing about the story is that it doesn't spiral up to establish a new order but circles to establish the old order that never was, namely that of a primogeniture. The problem with primogeniture is that it posits the superiority of certain people despite inherent character deficiences or efficiencies and gives to them the right to rule solely predicated upon the principle of whether one is the eldest son of the eldest son.

It might seem funny to pick at the idea of primogeniture in a genre populated with Earls and Marquesses, but unlike say The Devi'l's Cub or My Lady Notorious, the central theme of the plot of The Lost Duke of Wyndham is who is truly the duke? Is it the man who was born to the position or is it the man who was raised to and lives the position? Who is the true king? Who should rule? Should it be based on blood, legitimacy, or innate ability?

More curious, one of the central motifs of romance novels as far as female characters are concerned is that whether or not they are born a lady matters less than that they have the character of a lady.  That is to say that more often than not the worth of a heroine and her winning of a better life and position is dependent upon the merit of her character not the quality of her birth. Therefore, I wonder why this same idea doesn't seem to hold true for heroes.  Why is the primacy of Jack's birth more important than his actual ability to run a dukedom? And why is the primacy of birth only a mark of competency if one has been born within the confines of marriage? I mean, an elder bastard never rules but they are technically the elder.  The whole idea of primogeniture is arbitrary and absurd, and though though this arbitrariness and absurdity is central to the plot in The Lost Duke of Wyndham it is never fully addressed.  Quinn skims over the idea instead, using it as an engine to move the plot along without ever popping the hood. It is never more than a passing issue. The more important conflict, as far as the characters in the book are concerned, is whether Jack Audley is a bastard.  But even here the curious lack of discussing of who really ought to be duke is troubling since Jack's main personal conflict is that while realizing that he is actually the duke by legitimate birth, he has no real desire to be duke.  In fact, he would rather be thought a bastard than be His Grace.  The two men vying for (or perhaps escaping from) this position never fully discuss with one another the very question at the heart of the book: who is the duke? and what makes a duke, birth or ability? When they finally are alone together over the marriage lines of Jack's parents, they still don't really discuss it. Jack says he doesn't want to be duke and Thomas replies honorably, but somewhat stupidly in my opinion, that it doesn't matter because the laws of primogeniture make him the true duke. Jack then tries to burn the record of his parents marriage lines but Thomas prevents him and when the rest of the cast shows up that seems to be that. If the questions of whether or not the dukedom would benefit more from Jack or Thomas, of who is better fit to be duke are ever asked then their answers are left hurriedly by the side of the road on the way to the epilogue in which Jack and Grace are ensconced in connubial and aristocratic bliss.

I suppose what seems particularly odd to me is that romance is so often criticized for its depiction of gender relations and rarely, if ever, called out on the strange love it has for the ancien regime.