As a result, I cover some hard ground in this story. Parts of it had to be raw because history is raw. But, you say, historical romance is fantasy. I mean…you aren’t wrong. There are nine million dukes, everyone has great hygiene and health, the aristocracy miraculously got their wealth in a non-oppressive way, and people had sex without care for pregnancy or protection. Suspension of disbelief is part of the canon of historical romance. That said, I felt it would be a disservice to my biracial heroine to be disingenuous about some of the ingrained behaviors of the period. Being a character of color would simply be window dressing if she acted and behaved like everyone else. While I could have taken a less problematic route, sanitizing history wasn’t my goal. That was a creative choice…to go a touch less fantasy for the sake of the story. I truly hope it made for a deeper reading experience.

In my research, one of the really cool things I discovered was how many women of color there actually were in British high society, even though it’s not very well known or documented. Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a displaced West African princess brought to England, was raised and educated at the queen’s decree, and praised by Victoria herself as being “sharp and intelligent.” In the 1860s, she was also said to be an accomplished member of Brighton society who was fluent in both English and French. Her first born daughter was named after Victoria (Victoria Davies) and was the queen’s goddaughter. Later on, in the 1880s, Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, a Sikh princess, was a court favorite of her godmother, Queen Victoria. After her father’s death, she was granted a residence by the queen at the Hampton Court Palace and presented to British society as a debutante, along with her two sisters. She was also popular on the aristocratic scene, and loved riding, cycling, dogs, and traveling. Faced with prejudice and bias on account of both her gender and race, she went on to become a women’s rights activist in the 1900s and fought against inequality both in England and India.