The #HEU ton: Horizon Europe and Bridgerton

I will neither deny nor admit to reading and/or watching Bridgerton, the umpteenth series celebrating Jane Austen’s endearing romance formula (he’s prideful, she’s prejudiced, and they’re made for each other) sans any of the social cynicism for which Ms. Austen was so well-known.

Unlike Ms. Austen, most of the Regency writers of the modern era choose to disregard from whence the money of the British nobility came (slavery, drastic socioeconomic inequality, white European imperialism that demonized and demolished anything incongruent with its own version of peacocking, over-taxing the overworked labor…wait, when was this?)

I was born like this. #ladygagaslays

Instead, current Regency romances play like Reality TV (Real Housewives meets The Bachelor) or read like those vampire-werewolf novels that the tweens and the thirty/forty-somethings love so much (ahem, allegedly).

And who can blame the tweens? In our own times of radical inequality and inherited wealth largely possessed by white dudes who wear their entitlement on their sleeves, shacking up with a nepo baby is the most secure route to financial security.

Cuz he will wuv you 4eva ‘n eva till #endtimes (which may be ‘round the corner…)