skygiants | (no subject)

I reread Heyer's The Masqueraders recently -- this is the one in which a brother and sister, wanted for participation in the Jacobite rebellion, are instructed by their wacky mastermind father that the only way for them to be safe from the long arm of the law is to cunningly disguise themselves as ... A SISTER AND BROTHER!

No, see, it makes sense because Our Heroine is quite tall, and her brother is quite short, and the police will be looking for a notably short man and a notably tall woman, not a man and woman who are both of approximately ... ordinary....

.... OK it really doesn't make any sense, no sense at all, but it is a lot of fun to read as cross-dressing hijinks go. It is also notable to me because Patience, unlike most cross-dressing heroines, is not a teenaged ingenue with Something to Prove; she's twenty-eight, responsible, sensible, cool-headed, and admired by everyone for the fact that she has clearly inherited every bit of chill that the family possesses. Her love interest is the lofty Sir Anthony Fanshawe, who is huge and slow and sleepy and tremendously respectable until midway through the book when he suddenly gets caught up in all the wacky hijinks around him and starts really enthusiastically busting heads, and Patience is like 'well, on the one hand, I feel deeply embarrassed for getting such an admirable and respectable person caught up in all of this nonsense, but on the other hand, THIS IS HILARIOUS.'

(Her brother Robin, meanwhile -- who gets a dashing MYSTERY ROMANCE full of DRAMA in which he hangs out with his love interest as her beautiful BFF all day, then by night disguises himself as a HIGHWAYMAN and secretly flirts with her at MASKED BALLS -- has none of the chill at all.)

Anyway, as I was rereading, I started fan-casting in my head for the movie that I would love to see somebody make.

Obviously, Patience -- serene, gigantic, blonde -- should be played by Gwendolyn Christie.

Equally obviously, the only person who could really do justice to Sir Anthony Fanshawe -- the most dignified and respectable and HUGE AND WELL-MUSCLED Georgian gentleman around -- is Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. We've all been waiting to see the Rock in a period piece! HERE IS THE ROLE. MAKE IT HAPPEN.

I get stuck brainstorming on Robin, though, especially since I am fairly sure in a modern Masqueraders film I would not want to cast Robin as the straight cis dude that Georgette Heyer thinks he is. I can think of at least four ways to adapt the character, I just can't decide which I like best!

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/451569.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

rymenhild

I've definitely seen Robin M/M fanfic. I think grondfic@lj wrote a long one.

From:

skygiants

To be honest, "Robin as cis gay man" is about the only variant I don't care about! (I'm fine with Robin/Letty, I just think it works much better if Robin is not a cis dude.)

From:

rymenhild

Fair. (Cis gay wasn't exactly right for that story, though. There were 18th-century molly houses and old-school British drag culture involved.)

From:

skygiants

(Also fair! And an interesting potential take, in re: Robin, though I'm still not super interested in erasing Letty from the narrative.)

From:

the_rck

I read The Masqueraders in sixth grade (1978) and loved it. And promptly forgot the author's name (probably because that library didn't alphabetize romances, just threw them on a shelf all jumbled together). I didn't find it again for three or four years after we had moved. The library there had about a dozen Heyer books, and I devoured them all.

At any rate, The Masqueraders has a special place in my heart. It imprinted itself on my eleven year old brain and made me think that that was how books like that were supposed to work.

From:

skygiants

The Masqueraders was probably my second or third Heyer; at the time it was a little jarring because I wasn't as used to her Georgian style, but I was still charmed by it. And on a reread I like it even more!

From:

the_rck

My second Heyer was These Old Shades and then The Devil's Cub. I'd pulled those off the shelf at random without realizing they were connected because neither book had any sort of blurb. They were just oldish library bound hardcovers without dust jackets.

From:

skygiants

I've still not actually read These Old Shades! I'm saving it up along with a last few others.

From:

the_rck

These Old Shades is kind of huge on the blood will tell trope. Enough so that I noticed it at fourteen or fifteen when I read it for the first time. I'm still very fond of it, though.

From:

sovay

(Her brother Robin, meanwhile -- who gets a dashing MYSTERY ROMANCE full of DRAMA in which he hangs out with his love interest as her beautiful BFF all day, then by night disguises himself as a HIGHWAYMAN and secretly flirts with her at MASKED BALLS -- has none of the chill at all.)

I feel like Robin's subplot spawned an entire romance genre all on its own.

(I have not read The Masqueraders in years, but I remember really enjoying it. My favorite Heyers the last time I checked were Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle (Gothic meta-parody ahoy!), The Corinthian (a perfect screwball comedy that just happens to be taking place in a Regency setting, plus cross-dressing), and An Infamous Army (I genuinely care about the central romance and the Duke of Wellington steals all his scenes). I have good memories of Black Sheep as well. My mother has a near-complete set lurking around the house which I should re-read sometime. I did not imprint on Heyer, as I didn't read much of her until grad school and after, but I did get lucky in that I didn't hit the really anti-Semitic bit in The Grand Sophy until I'd had several pleasant experiences of her books already.)

From:

skygiants

My absolute favorites are probably The Talisman Ring (more Gothic parody! so good!) and Cotillion, with Sylvester coming in a close third. The Corinthian is also in the upper echelons somewhere. I've not read either An Infamous Army or Black Sheep, actually! I shall save them up for next time I go on a stressed-out Heyer binge.

From:

sovay

've not read either An Infamous Army or Black Sheep, actually! I shall save them up for next time I go on a stressed-out Heyer binge.

An Infamous Army (1937) is her Waterloo novel, for which she did a ton of research; she says somewhere that all of Wellington's dialogue was either adapted or taken straight from the historical record, which if so makes the scene-stealing really impressive. It's technically a stream-crossing sequel to Devil's Cub (1932), and Regency Buck (1935), although I read it for the first time without knowing and it's a completely functional standalone. The central couple have a complicated romance that requires real work, not just blissfully falling into one another's arms after the misunderstandings are cleared up; the ending is happy, but not gift-wrapped. There are some interestingly gendered reversals in their characterizations, which I enjoy, but I like even better that the text doesn't consider them among the problems the couple has to work through. The secondary couple are probably in trouble. The military history is supposed to be very good. Like, used to be assigned reading at military colleges. Go know.

I have vaguer memories of Black Sheep (1966), which is why it didn't get a parenthesis to itself, but what I remember suggests that most of the plot turns on imploding various romantic conventions, including some which Heyer had established herself, and I actively like the hero and the heroine and how they are together. There are also a couple of excellent supporting female characters. I appear to remember the finale of this novel way better than the setup.

From:

venetia_sassy

I adore Prue and her sleepy gentleman but my favourite Heyer caper novel has to be The Talisman Ring. It make no sense whatsoever! Sarah knows very well it makes no sense whatsoever but she is determined to enjoy her adventure! And drag Sir Tristam into enjoying it too! And Sir Hugh has put with a great deal at this inn but he will on account put up with bodies being littered about the premises! Brandy or no brandy!

From:

skygiants

THE TALISMAN RING IS ALSO MY FAVORITE. I want to be Sarah when I grow up. She enjoys everything SO MUCH!

From:

watersword

On the extremely offchance you or your readers have not seen

thefourthevine's review of The Masqueraders, I commend it to your attention.

From:

skygiants

I think I had read it aaaages ago but forgotten about it and was subsequently delighted by it all over again, so thank you!

From:

bookblather

Patience was definitely my favorite part of that entire book. She's like the proto-Sarah Thane, aka my favorite character in everything ever, in that she DOES care about people maybe NOT enthusiastically busting heads but also finds it hilarious and doesn't know whether to stop or encourage.

Although their father was also kind of awesome.

From:

skygiants

Patience is such a dang grown-up in a book which contains basically NO OTHER GROWN-UPS, including her father (...who OK is kind of great but IN NO WAY a grown-up) and I love her.

From:

lnhammer

her father (IN NO WAY a grown-up)

Er, no. In no way whatsoever. In excellent comic fiction manner.

From:

brownbetty

I honestly feel that the only who is quite ~straight~ in this story is Robin's love interest. The rest of them are at least a little queer on some axis.

From:

skygiants

Ha, see, reverse-wise, I feel that Robin's love interest is in no way straight (Lettie seems like she would be PERFECTLY HAPPY to run off with the lovely Kate.) Prudence, however, is bizarrely straight for a cross-dressing heroine -- like, she's perfectly competent at pulling off the dude stuff, she's just not actually all that into it and mostly seems mildly embarrassed by the whole situation.

Sir Tony, however, is queer as the day is long.

From:

brownbetty

Well, it's been a while since I read it. Maybe I have mentally ret-queered it.

From:

aamcnamara

I just reread this too and...yes. Yes. Cosigned, especially Gwendolyn Christie, but also The Rock.

(And yeah, Robin as Not Straight Cis Dude is ideal. Genderqueer? Genderfluid? Nonbinary? Trans woman maybe? There are many options.)

From:

skygiants

(SO MANY. I think maaaaaybe my favorite right now is Robin as afab trans man or genderqueer? Thinks it's kind of a fun joke to ham it up in skirts outrageously performing femininity for a while as long as flirting dashingly with Lettie at night is also an option, but starts getting VERY ANTSY when it drags out too long!)

From:

percysowner

I was reading through your past Heyer reviews and saw that you were going to read A Civil Contract at some point. Have you ever gotten to it? Just curious, it's a little different from her other books and I was wondering what you thought about it. Looking at reviews it's kind of a love it or hate it book, and I'm on the love it side, so I wanted your impression.

It's been forever since I read The Masqueraders. I should probably see if my library has it on Ebook and read it again. It never hit my top, top Heyers, but I like most of her work. I avoided The Spanish Bride and The Infamous Army (war is not my thing) and her mysteries are not my thing, but her romances delight me. My faves are Cotillion, Friday's Child, Frederica, Sylvester, Sprig Muslim and the aforementioned Civil Contract. Somehow I never hit The Talisman Ring,maybe my library didn't have it? So I'll have to track it down.

From:

jinian

Sprig Muslim

Not to pick at typos, but I now really want to read this?

From:

percysowner

ARGG! Now so do I.

From:

skygiants

I have not yet gotten to it! It's never been in at the library in convenient ebook format at a time that I was going through a Heyer binge, but it's on the docket for next time.

I HATED The Spanish Bride, to be honest, which is one of the reasons I haven't read An Infamous Army yet, but An Infamous Army seems significantly less ..... a romance about a fourteen-year-old girl ......... WHICH IS A PLUS. I would very strongly recommend Talisman Ring though!

From:

percysowner

Well on Georgette Heyer's birthday all the E-Book vendors had all her works on sale for $1.99. So picked up a copy of Talisman Ring as well as my other favs. I'm ready to dive in, although I will probably reread Cotillion first. If you want to own her on E-Book, look on her birthday. Pretty much every year she goes on sale for $1.99 and you can really expand your collection.

I hope you like A Civil Contract. In any case, I hope you tell us your thoughts.