Sins of the father: on immigration, inheritance, and writing Indian dukes in Regency romance
It's hard out here for fictional Desi dukes. And for those who write them.
Occasionally, I have many meandering musings that don’t fit neatly into my newsletter updates, or are lengthier than I want for my newsletter updates, so I’ll organize them into their own special issue to shine. This is a great way for me to fully explore these more intricate thoughts and for people to read at their leisure.
So, without further ado, enjoy this special issue of the Savitastack.
I’ve been reading The Siren of Sussex in February, but it has been difficult for me to read a lot of it at any one time because the way Ahmad is treated by Lady Heatherton, Crebbs, and Mrs. Pritchard fills me with so much rage.
I have no doubt their perception of him as equally too docile, passive, meek and otherwise not prototypically masculine coexisted with their desire to exploit him as a “bit of the rough.”
Of course he’s right not to engage with the nasty remarks, and even if he wanted to, he can’t fight back or mouth off because they’ll drag him to the magistrate. Again. But it still made me want to fight anyone who wanted to come for Ahmad, and that’s a testament to Mimi Matthews’s writing.
I also appreciate that Matthews did not fall into the Hollywood-staple stereotype of making Indian men, like Ahmad, less swoon-worthy than other leading men. Ahmad is written as a romance hero that both Evelyn and the reader easily fall in love with. I loved the uniqueness of him being so precise in the way he creates riding habits and his ambition to continue creating beautiful dresses and fashion for women exclusively. Ahmad has no interest in tailoring suits, and so his care for women, and attention to details about them, shines through in everything he does.
I’ve written about how I loved the way that vampire Devraj Kumar in Don’t Hex and Drive by Juliette Cross is depicted similarly well—as sexy and alpha as any other paranormal romance hero that we love to love.
One section that stuck with me in particular was when Ahmad was discussing how English women would often bring back Indian people as “souvenirs.”
Evelyn is appalled by this and says: “You can’t simply pluck someone out of their life and bring them to another country.”
To which Ahmad replies: “No? How do you suppose I came to be here.”
How indeed. And that, dear reader, is what I’m writing about today.
If you’ve been part of the Savitastack family for any amount of time, then you already know that my mission as a romance author is to center and celebrate Indian characters. This means that in my historical romance, I’m often highlighting the kinds of stories that do not exist in history books, because they were not deemed important enough to document, or were intentionally wiped away.
After the Sharmas were introduced on the Netflix adaptation of Bridgerton the internet was abuzz with think-pieces asking if Indians were in Regency England, if they could have had an elevated social status and wealth, and if they could plausibly marry into nobility, or be nobility themselves.
They were. They could. They did. Yes, and yes again.
Also, I’ve said some of this before, here:
The reason we today might not know about these stories is because, like the stories of many immigrants the world over, names were often changed for one reason or another—seeking safety perhaps on the part of the individual, or the negligence of bad records and translation if the name change was involuntary—which erased the truth inherent in many of these stories.
For example, recently I saw a character on All Creatures Great & Small played by Paul Bazely who went by Joe Coney, when his real name was Jothi Chelvanayakam.
I’m not here today to write about the very real erasure of the cultural background of immigrants coming to the United States, or people like Kitty Kirkpatrick and other Anglo-Indians, a term that has sometimes been applied to refer to Indians living in England, Indians with English ancestry, or even Englishmen living in India. This already indicates how the British handled such matters—egregiously. But then, these were the same people who partitioned countries with nary a clue about the people who lived there. I’m not even here to write about the baronetcies that were given to Indian people in English history.
These things have already been written about at great length, and I encourage you to read about them.
On truth in fiction
I’m here to write about why I’m writing Indian dukes. Yes, that’s plural. Like many authors writing dukes in historical romance, I am not stopping at writing only one—even though I personally don’t endorse billionaires. A pause here to note that I, like many indie/self-pub authors, are currently deeply conflicted about having our books primarily sold on Amazon and in KU. I’ve chosen this route because it’s a lower risk for me as an author working on an established platform and a lower barrier to entry for readers who might be more willing to risk reading a Regency romance with Indian characters, by a debut Indian author, if they already have the book available through their KU subscription. It also makes it more likely that I can capture some of an already existing readership for historical romance.
Here’s a great IG post by Andie James with more on this important conversation:
In the future, I hope I can diversify, divest, and even offer more accessible fiction formats on different platforms that can highlight other Indian creators too. For starters, I’m an audiobook girlie to the depths of my soul, and would love to have my books recorded in audio with dual POV narration. Soneela Nankani and Vikas Adam, for example, are amazing at what they do to bring Indian-authored stories to life.
But I’ve published one book so far (though I’ve been creatively and academically writing, well, forever, really). I’m at the very beginning. And these things take time, patience, and hard work. The first two are not always the easiest for me to accept. As for the third, I have no problem rolling my sleeves up like a romance hero trying to show off his fantastic forearms ought. For that reason, and many more, I hope you’ll stick with me for the ride. I have lots of stories I’m currently writing (8!) and will write in the future (at least a dozen series ideas).
I love writing Indian people finding themselves, finding each other, and falling in love.
And it’s taken a long time to even have the courage to do that.
On that note, let’s continue.
Incoming very long sentence here. You’ve been forewarned:
One of the challenges of crafting fictional Indian dukes in Regency romance is that not only do I have to contend with the complicated dynamics of a father and son to navigate, or the late duke and heir with some other complex connection, but, in addition to untangling the—oft conflicted, and inevitably burdened by grief—path to inheritance, because of the peerage’s rule for primogeniture, I also have to add to the hero’s backstory by creating the family lore of how he, and his ancestors, ended up on England’s shores to begin with.
And the reasons why—as you might have guessed—are not always voluntary or pleasant. Best case scenario: I have to address immigration. Worst case scenario: I have to address slavery or servitude. But, to date, I haven’t written characters with either of the latter two as a reason for why they ended up in England—intentionally. Because I can’t do that to myself or my characters.
And I don’t want to. I’m carving out a space in historical romance where Indian characters, both aristocratic and not, are normalized in Regency England. A fact that history supports. So, as with my own parents who immigrated to the US—the characters in my books uprooted from India and planted themselves in Regency England. The earlier generations in my fictional dukes’ family lines grasped for a foothold on the side of a metaphorically steep hill. They worked to create a deeply rooted foundation for their families. All they’ve wanted was for the fruits of their efforts to thrive so their children would see the bounty of their own aspirations blossom more quickly—especially when they were planted on stable, higher, safer ground. With each generation the climb to success would hopefully be a faster and flatter one.
It’s not only for the ducal lines either. I have to think about this to inform every one of my heroes and heroines, even if all of that family history doesn’t make it to the page. This means that all my characters have an added layer of angst for readers to enjoy. Did the character come over to work, as in the case of my former governess heroine, Camelia Parikh, in The Deed with the Duke? Were they involved in trade, or smuggling, tea, spices, silk, and other imports, (as in the case of another heroine I have in a manuscript that is fully drafted but resting before revision)?
Did they leave, or were they left behind?
Mimi Matthews speaks of this liminal lostness in The Siren of Sussex too:
Among them, Ahmad saw the occasional Indian face. Lascars—Bengali and Yemeni sailors—on leave from British ships. Either that or discharged completely. Left to fend for themselves in a strange land, far away from home.
When Englishmen in India with The East India Company married Indian women and had children (something like 1/3 of them did this according to a chat I had with Renée Dahlia, so there is way more room for characters with Indian ancestry in Regency romance), they often didn’t bring these children, and even more rarely, these wives, back home with them when they returned. It was assumed the man would take a more suitable (read: white) wife in England. A woman of the same class, and gentle breeding. A lady of quality. It was time to settle down and get serious about life. He had to leave the “exotic” adventures of his travels behind—but of course, he would take the lessons of the Kamasutra with him. That “uncivilized” and “untamed” edge would be an advantage in the bedroom to bestow upon his new wife and/or mistress. It didn’t matter if the “adventure” he partook in was having a whole entire family and life on the other side of the globe. Of course, boys would be boys, spreading their—however deeply undesired—wild oats. And a man could never be expected to be celibate for any length of time, it wasn’t within his—otherwise conveniently unlimited—power.
No surprise, I have strong feelings on all this, and it’s made writing and reading Regency, and Victorian, romance difficult. Especially when the argument for historical accuracy is brandished to normalize grievous actions and attitudes in characters/society for “the period.”
I think many people believe any representation is something we’re lucky to have, so we should take what we get, and consider it all good representation.
That is not true for me. I often don’t enjoy what few depictions there are of Indian characters in the stories within any genre I like to read and write, but especially historical romance. Sometimes it doesn’t work for me, and of course, the author cannot be expected to know every Indian person’s perspective and experience. That’s why I set out to write my own books, after waiting thirty-some years for someone else’s story to speak to me.
One of the best things I can hope for with this special issue is that it will remind people to read representation carefully and listen to the people who are supposedly being represented—instead of accepting every version of said representation as progress.
Yes, it might be fiction, but I am a real person reading it—and I live the reality of being brown in spaces that have a majority of white people, every single day. I’ve already heard the micro (and sometimes macro) aggressions. I’ve already seen the way that anyone near and dear to me who speaks with an accent that doesn’t match the accent of the majority is treated. I won’t trod down that cruel path to the past too much here, because my very point is that I shouldn’t have to bleed my trauma onto the page to tell a worthy story in historical romance, or any genre of fiction. But despite the privileges I do have, I am sometimes taken aback when I have an experience that shows it’s still the same for anyone visibly diverse in the US. For example, on the first day of my doctoral program, I was asked by a graduate school professor (a white man, naturally) if the reason I “speak so articulately” is because my parents are professors too. My parents are not professors, but this is not the assumption that is the most critical part of that question.
It’s the othering.
Time and time again—based on how we look and how we speak, our customs and culture—we are asked where we are really from. As if it is not enough for this land to be our home. As if nothing will ever be enough to prove it. As if we are not enough. And perhaps that is the part that rankles others the most—the fact that, same as them, we have the right to be here, too.
People are determined to see us, as Mimi Matthews has Ahmad say in The Siren of Sussex, as “different—foreign, and thereby inferior.”
It’s as true for our current society as it is in history. The topic of this special issue is no mere coincidence.
So yes, perhaps I want a bit more fantasy in my fiction.
But is what I’m asking for truly unrealistic? No. It is not.
Rebels and reformers existed in all eras—there is historical evidence for this fact. And I don’t want to rely on inflicting racial trauma on my characters, and on the page for my readers, to create internal conflict. I want to see Indian people in the highest stratum of the society I place them in—a society for which there is historical basis not only for Indians to be part of, but belong in, with acceptance, too. I want them not to need to feel burdened and conflicted about this status or title all the time—they can thrive. They can have, feel, and express joy—without guilt. They can find love for who they are, and not in spite of it. Not because someone was kind enough to take pity on them as an outsider, or look past the color of their skin. They can find someone who they share something in common with. Someone who celebrates the color of their skin, because they are not white, too.
On media representation, or rather, lack thereof
Tell me how often you’ve read, or seen the joy and love of two Indian people represented in the media in other ways? Not counting the movies made in the Indian film industry, I can count the number of instances on one hand. The number of instances with good, positive representation? Even fewer. Wedding Season is one of the films in recent memory that shows us a modern Indian couple. I loved the movie, however, the conflict still plays to stereotypes about Indian families and what they expect of their children.
Mr. Malcolm’s List is a film that offers us an interracial couple as the lead with an Indian heroine and a hero who is not white—something that Hollywood rarely wants to do when representing interracial couples in romance.
So, that’s two films in over two decades of watching movies where I’ve felt like the representation is done somewhat well, or at least, better than most.
This isn’t exactly an encouraging assessment on the state of media representation for Indian people.
On what’s in a name
In The Siren of Sussex, Crebbs intentionally butchers the pronunciation of Ahmad’s name to assert dominance. It’s something that has happened so often for him—a fact that is hurtful and numbing in itself—that he describes it as “tedious and wholly unoriginal.”
I’m not as strong as Ahmad was forced to be by his circumstances.
Or perhaps I’m more stubborn and prideful.
But then, I don’t believe we ask for a lot.
If people can manage my first name, that’s often enough. Three letters is all it takes. It shouldn’t have to be made manageable at all. It shouldn’t have to be made palatable for Western ears/audiences in the first place. People should be able to rise to meet it, not expect, much less enjoy, us stooping and contorting to fit our names to their expectations.
And yet, my name is butchered all the time. Even when I provide phonetic pronunciation. The ineptitude has been laughed off in numerous ways over the years. As if I’m expecting too much or making too big a deal out of it—the basic human dignity of having my name said correctly. Some of these dismissals are cruelly obvious. Others are insidiously deceitful—lingering in the way a microaggression often does, where you don’t realize what was done until it’s too late, and you’ve lost the moment to say something in the situation. For example, the pseudo-humble-folksy charm of, “Oh, I’m from the whitest part of the Midwest, I couldn’t possibly say that.”
You can certainly try though.
But no. Instead, I have to wait for the silent pause when someone gets to my name, and infer that’s meant for me to intervene.
The fact that silence is often the only acknowledgement that Asians and the APIDA diaspora get in the US is an indication of how much of an invisible minority they are considered. This was, and still is, especially true with the rise of hate crimes at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and through the current political climate in the US. In fact, the inclusion of “Desi American” to the acronym to include South Asians is fairly recent, and not without its issues. Demographic data all too frequently aggregates across this vastly diverse group of people, and is often using a term that only people of the group would use to refer to themselves. Thus, even here, there’s little attempt at understanding the power of a name. In this newsletter, I use Desi, because I am Indian. That is a personal choice for this post, and not one that is a uniform choice for every Indian person, or indeed, even within one person, true in every situation.
“Exotic” names and other cultural indicators only seem to be appreciated—to say nothing of how they are appropriated—when they’re convenient or evoke some affected air of sophistication and class—fetishizing that is also wrong in a multitude of ways. By now, I think people have seen when Hasan Minhaj refers to how if people can pronounce Timothée Chalamet’s name, then they can also learn to say his name correctly. Accents and challenging names are appreciated when they’re European, but not otherwise. We have colonization to thank for that.
I also lived in the Midwest for a long time (as if that was even a remotely viable excuse). I have lived elsewhere in the US too, and have managed to learn the difference between two pronunciations of Anna, even if they are spelled the same way, for example. I’ve also had to pronounce names that are difficult for me and I have tried, more than once, until I get it right. For example, Jocelyn, is a name that was difficult for me at first, because the pronunciation wasn’t obvious from the way it was spelled.
Psycholinguistic research on reading shows that we use phonetic/auditory information to identify words when silently reading, a skill that develops as we learn to read from spoken language—for example, how parents read books aloud to children and children sound out words as they begin to read on their own. Auditory information is still important, or at least observed, in word identification as adults too.
Many years ago, when this happened, I had never seen, heard, or read the name before. To me, Jocelyn seemed like it might be said as Joyce-Lynn.
I got it wrong. I asked again. I took the correction. And I tried again.
Some phonemes that exist in other languages, don’t exist in yours, and so you may apply the wrong phonemic inventory to how you pronounce a word from a different language.
Yes, it can be embarrassing. That doesn’t mean you get to stop trying.
It’s a similar argument that people make for those who won’t recognize their correct pronouns. People are not asking for much, only for others to try. To listen. And to keep trying.
We’ve talked about mispronunciation, but I also see Indian characters’ names misspelled—consistently and repeatedly—throughout an entire post, newsletter, or review every day. I saw two instances today (at the time of this writing) in fact. Sometimes the misspelling is actually an entirely separate name.
For example, Shree and Sri are not the same name, but I’ll often hear the pronunciation of the first applied to the second. There’s no h in my name though.
As far as character names go, it would only take a minute to look up a blurb and confirm. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and always take the time to look up the characters’ names and make sure I have them right. I am not saying I am above the human error of typos, I’m saying it only takes a minute to try your best to be thorough. Take that minute. If you sincerely care about inclusion.
I see conversations every day among romance readers and authors about whether “unusual” names pull people out of the story, too. About how names that are obviously Indian can’t possibly be “sexy” to moan in bed. Some of these conversations are even among Indian readers. I’ve refrained from mentioning specific books here, or discussing this further, because I refuse to contribute to these, frankly, asinine, conversations beyond what I’ve already said here.
Mimi Matthews has Ahmad discuss internalized racism in The Siren of Sussex, so I’ll leave that here.
It was yet another affectation of Englishness. A product of their being half-white—this constant desire to behave as the British did. To be British. As if denying the Indian part of them would somehow make them more palatable to the sahibs and memsahibs who ruled their country.
It never had. Not in Ahmad’s experience.
Apparently, names that rhyme are a problem, or ones that start with similar letters, too. I can understand the increased cognitive load on your memory, perhaps, but let’s not forget that fantasy has been doing this forever. As one example, in Game of Thrones, you have a character named Varys and a character named Viserys. No one has had a problem eventually learning those names and keeping those characters distinct in their minds.
I love Holly Black’s fae books and the richly complex family dynamics she creates. When I encouraged my mother to read The Folk of the Air series, do you know what she did to keep the characters organized? She sketched out a family tree and took notes while reading to keep beside her e-reader for reference. My mother, who is older, and whose first language is not English, could make this effort.
So, no, I will never believe that anyone else who has the privilege and/or ability to make this minimum effort has any excuse.
Not when I know so many immigrants work hard to learn the language of a land they call their home—a language that is not even the only, much less the official language spoken there, at least in the case of the US—which is what I wrote when I was drafting this newsletter in February. Now, however, that is not true. And that is concerning.
I recently chatted with a couple of my close friends who are always the earliest readers of my work about how they would pronounce a certain character’s name, and whether I should change it so that people would be less likely to butcher it. We agreed that I should make the name as many letters as it takes to be the name I want it to be, and not worry about keeping any of my names to simpler four or five letter names for the sake of people who can’t take a single second of their time to look up a pronunciation in an age where we have the internet at our fingertips.
I also have a character name that I worry people might make fun of because it’s close to another word in English. I won’t mention the specific name, or the word I think it could be intentionally confused for here, because I don’t want to prime anyone with a fear that may never materialize. I love the name. Both characters are meant to have names that hint at the loose inspiration for their story that comes from classic literature. If someone is immature enough to blatantly demean the name, then they can stay away from my books.
Another fact is that Indian names for heroines will almost always end with an i or an a. Case in point, my name, where you can see both of these in action: Sri Savita.
So, if you do share any of the aforementioned opinions on specific names, then I ask that you honestly, deeply, think about why you feel this way. Question it, at the very least, and, even better, identify where it came from. Is it your thought? Or one that took root in your brain from others around you in society? Even if it wasn’t planted there by you, it’s still your responsibility to challenge and address that though.
We can always do better than the ones who came before us.
On Indian dukes and inheritance in Regency romance
“A hint of Indian blood is just as bad as a surfeit of it,” is what Evelyn’s uncle says to her in The Siren of Sussex.
There’s more after that, but I can’t even read or type those words without feeling sick. Evelyn does push back, though not as strongly as I wanted. But I suppose a white Victorian heroine wouldn’t have cursed out her uncle for using an ethnic slur as easily as I would’ve. The words don’t actually affect her.
Writing creates enough challenges already. I won’t inflict this kind of pain on myself when I write my own books, something I’m fighting for time to do in the margins of my day—in the late nights that turn into early mornings. Something I’m doing after not having the kind of representation I want, and waiting, for over three decades. Just because it was a reality, does not mean I have to make it my reality in my fiction, and be the one to write it in my Regency, (and other historical, fantasy, paranormal, or contemporary), romances. As an Indian American author, I don’t want to be expected to simultaneously hurt myself as I hurt my characters. I’m literally taking the time to write stories that don’t exist for people like me, I want that to be a joyful experience while writing and reading these stories for me.
It’s one major reason why I won’t move into writing Victorian romance until I’m good and ready (despite how much I love the gritty, foggy London vibes, and fashion of the era). I’ve written short stories set in the Victorian period for Rosy, because the form necessitates less backstory. But, I know publishing would likely prefer that any of my Victorian novels focus on The British Raj.
And I simply won’t be doing that.
Plenty of other authors, both Indian and not, have written stories with racism against Indian people. If you’re expecting that I will do the same, then you will be sorely disappointed.
Now, it might be stated in a line or two of description in my books—a character reflecting on a past experience of their own or someone else in their family perhaps—but it will never be the main focus of how my characters are treated in society. You will never see them verbally, or otherwise, attacked in real time directly on the page.
I’m writing characters who might be rooted to England as third or fourth generation offspring, and it is their home. That plausibly allows me to have racial conflict/immigrant trauma be less of a near, direct impact.
If people crave more, well, then look to our modern society. Racism is still alive and well. They can find what they want aplenty there.
Leave me, my characters, and my stories alone. I won’t fuel someone’s desire for trauma-filled fiction about Indian people. Because the purpose of my writing then, would be to make them feel good. Not me.
And I write for me, and those like me, first and foremost.
Just take a look at the dedication from The Deed with the Duke.
Thien-Kim Lam says this wonderfully here.
Authors of color are held at a higher standard by both their community and those outside of it. Traditional publishers prioritize stories of immigrant trauma and racial conflict. Those are the books that receive more marketing and publicity because it makes white readers feel good.
And, yes, I’ve elevated some of my characters to dukes (and marquesses, earls, viscounts etc.). So now they can deal with the same trials of difficult fathers, money, estates, power, privilege, duty, and the burden of a title that any other duke wants to bemoan—with the added layer of their race and ethnicity only coming through in the way I want it to, and not as the main wound.
I have to detail my characters’ families and lineage not just for the beginning of a single story or to introduce a series and the key players, but to set the expectation from the start, that yes, in my Regency world an Indian man can be a duke.
In the Regency England most historical romance readers know, or more critically, expect, characters like mine won’t exist at all in canonical works.
We have publishing to thank for that. If Indian people are present, then they are relegated to side characters, at best, with hopefully a single line of dialogue on the page if we’re lucky. Or, instead, if Indian people are in the story, then they appear only through passing mentions. They are people never seen, sentenced to remain in the shadows of slums and the shackles of servitude—often with no other purpose or character development than to propel the narrative and character growth of a charitable and virtuous white woman or man.
To put it mildly, this is not my cup of masala chai. To read or to write.
Evelyn also points out in The Siren of Sussex that many of the accounts of life in India are written by white Englishmen. History has always been a narrative.
But, readers may open my book already skeptical that it’s plausible for my characters to be here, in Europe, and in the genre. And so, I, very literally (or as literal as it can be for fiction), have to ground my characters to the land they call home.
If it wasn’t already abundantly clear, it’s no surprise that in the current geopolitical climate, immigration and inheritance that provides both financial security and societal status is what I’ve chosen to write about for this Savitastack special issue.
As Adriana Herrera said recently, we create stories to center our people, “to place us in times and places we rarely get to shine.”
With that in mind, in my stories, there are a few different ways I write how an Indian man becomes duke. In the past couple years, I’ve been pulling on excellent discussions I had with Renée Dahlia about horses, she’s a fount of information on the subject and I recommend you check out her resources. This post details some of my discussion with her.
I’ve used my copious notes to anchor my characters to England through early ancestors that were involved with the horse trade: raising, training, taming, breaking, or breeding. How much of the details about these ancestral connections are on the page varies for different books/series. But, it lets you know the historical grounding for how my characters’ ancestors originally arrived in England from India. Everyone needed horses, at every socioeconomic level, so there are many characters I can create that could have been connected to that critical facet of Regency era life.
Thanks to KJ Charles’s post on inheritance, or rather disinheritance, these are some mechanisms I’ve employed, in stories already published, or soon forthcoming.
I’ll focus mostly on the Panchal line, and discuss Raaz from The Deed with the Duke, and his father, Tarun, for the forthcoming parents’ prequel, Diwali with Her Duke. (Surprise! A spontaneous title drop here). I’ll also mention Raaz’s younger sister, Thanya, and her love interest, Kairav Kumar, the Duke of Ramsgate, who were both introduced to readers in the epilogue of The Deed with the Duke.
Once I get closer to dispatching my other dukes out into the world (go forth and find love, my darling heroes!), then I’ll delve more into each of their lines, too:
The duke in question has a white English aristocratic father, and an Indian mother. This is perhaps the most obvious, or at least most straightforward, way.
Affairs: The duke in question married an Indian woman, but the duchess had an affair. Perhaps because the duke was terrible (as a husband, father, lover, or some combination thereof), there was no love, desire, or want of their marriage, or it was a platonic marriage. One of the reasons I like this mechanism is that it puts agency back in the hands of the Indian woman to choose her next partner—someone she wants.
Confirmed affair: the duke knows the child is not his, but since the spouses were married and sharing a home/bed, society will say the boy is his. He doesn’t have to like that, but then, bad, neglectful fathers are far from the norm in the genre, and still, it beats admitting you’ve been cuckolded.
I’m currently writing the 2nd of my Panchal siblings’ books. This book is about Raaz’s younger sister Thanya Panchal and Kairav Kumar, the Duke of Ramsgate. As I’ve currently written it, Kairav is the son that resulted from an affair his mother had with an Indian man because the late Duke of Ramsgate was believed to be impotent.
Kairav does learn early in life that his father doesn’t like him, and when he asks his mother why, she says, well, he was bad in bed and I gave him the choice of either claiming you as his heir or granting me a divorce. He didn’t want to admit he’d been cuckolded, and he did need an heir, which he wasn’t quick to create for himself, so he claimed Kairav.
This is obviously a very strange thing for a mother to tell her son, and talk about quite candidly when he was in his teens. So, what Kairav learns from the oversharing in this conversation, and subconsciously decides then and there, is that the only way he can make a woman love him and keep her love is to be good in bed, which makes him a rake…until he and Thanya coerce each other into a marriage of convenience to make an heir. I love this intense, angsty book so much already. I’m more than 1/3 of the way through writing it, with the full story plotted out. Thanya is my ASD heroine and Kairav is my anxious hero (a lot of my heroes have anxiety tbh). Together, this allows me to get all my insecurities onto the page in one place lol.
Kairav also has three younger sisters that will form the basis of my third Indian Regency romance series. Haven’t yet decided if they are children from the same father as Kairav, another affair his mother had, or if his father eventually was able to have children with Kairav’s mother, just not a son. I’m thinking it’ll likely be one of the first two options as I can’t see Kairav’s mother and the late Duke of Ramsgate reconciling enough to try to have kids, but the duke did love Kairav’s mother and that kind of resulted in her pushing boundaries and doing whatever she wanted, so it’s possible he wanted to try with her and she figured it would be an advantage if her eventual children were descendants of a duke.
Unconfirmed affair: KJ Charles’s post covers this one. As long as the couple is married, the eldest son is the heir, even if he doesn’t look quite as much like his father, or rather he does, but it’s not the duke who is his father.
This is the direction I’m leaning in for Tarun’s father, Mihir, (Raaz’s grandfather) in Diwali with Her Duke. As of now, my thought is that it’s strongly suspected Mihir is not the late Duke of Wednesbury’s son (perhaps, it’s something the reader will have confirmed, but not the characters). But Mihir never addresses rumors to avoid dignifying them, and why would society listen to, much less believe, the very subject of those rumors, an Indian man, defending himself? So, Tarun learns not to ask his father about such things, out of respect for him, which leads to Tarun not speaking about them, and Rachika taking his lead on that with their children. Tarun and Rachika encode early on in their marriage that it’s best not to communicate about difficult matters, which leads to the marriage-in-crisis they’re in for their book because they can’t discuss what they both want and need from each other. They don’t tell their children much about this, and so Raaz doesn’t speak much about it in his book either.
Encouraged affair: Perhaps the duke believes himself to be, or knows that he is, infertile or impotent, and needs an heir fast. Maybe the duke is much older than his duchess. Or the marriage is platonic, and he encourages, or at least doesn’t forbid/admonish his wife from having an affair that could lead to a child/heir if they don’t have any other children.
I have a story I’m working on for a different “Indian matchmaking meets Regency matchmaking” series that the Panchals will lead into as my second Indian Regency romance series. Raaz’s youngest sister, Pravi, marries Ivaan Mehta. Ivaan’s younger sister, (the eldest of somewhere between 4-7 younger sisters he has, still deciding on that), is the heroine of this story for the start of the next series.
Eila Mehta is paired with Dhanesh Mian Vanhope, the “Dragon” (Eila’s loving moniker, not mine) Duke of Whitby. Dhanesh is the eldest son of the late Duke of Whitby, but is the child of an affair his Indian mother was encouraged to have with another man of her choice to provide the duke with an heir. She and the duke had a more platonic marriage because her husband was much older when she married him. (Still fleshing out the details of Dhanesh’s parents’ marriage and whether she was a second wife, why they married, why he was cool with this arrangement etc. I’m thinking she was a wealthy heiress, he desperately needed her money and an heir by this point, and in exchange he said I’ll give you security/a title but you can choose the man you make the child with).
For Dhanesh, this creates a lot of internal turmoil. The late duke was a kind father to him, so kind, in fact, that he claimed him as the heir, even when the late duke and Dhanesh’s mother eventually have a son—Dhanesh’s much younger half-brother, Parth, Dhanesh’s claim is honored. When the late duke passed, Dhanesh went into isolated “beast” mode (this story will have some Beauty and the Beast vibes, including, of course, a romantic interlude in a library, naturally) and pushed away his betrothed, Trisha Tagore, and his younger brother as he descended into grief, guilt, self-loathing, and bitterness over inheriting a title he doesn’t he doesn’t believe he deserves and should be Parth’s.
Parth, for his part, is pretty happy being a second son, having seen how all this duke business has twisted his elder brother into someone wholly miserable, unrecognizable, and unpleasant to be around. Trisha and Parth tried to help Dhanesh, since the three of them had grown up as friends, but they also find comfort in each other’s arms as Parth is left alone by his elder brother to deal with his own grief over his father’s passing, and his brother’s self-destruction. Parth proposes to Trisha, and she wants to marry him, so she breaks her betrothal with Dhanesh, an agreement that was not so ironclad to begin with, as it was something decided between Dhanesh and Trisha’s fathers, (who are both gone by this point of the story), and not by their children.
The book begins at the Duke of Whitby’s country seat with Dhanesh wanting to do right by his younger brother, (even if his betrothed did leave him for Parth), and make sure Trisha and Parth make it to the altar, despite the snafus that keep cropping up at the house party before the wedding. This is a great way for me to meld the multi-day festivities of Indian weddings with Regency era house party elements.
Guess who’s going to help Dhanesh keep the wedding house party on track, make sure the couple isn’t aware of any issues, much less the gossipy guests, and that Parth and Trisha don’t squabble before the big day? Yes, of course, it’s Trisha’s friend, Eila Mehta, a woman who has been abandoned by her betrothed who cheated on her with a mistress she didn’t even know he had. Her ex told Eila this, and then added that wasn’t he kind enough to extend Eila the courtesy of announcing that she broke their engagement before they were to be wed, so Eila can save her reputation, while he runs off to marry his mistress?
This cocktail of chaos creates juicy tension for Dhanesh and Eila, who have an age gap and class difference between them, but also have both been similarly burned by love in the past. Dhanesh believes if he couldn’t keep Trisha, a woman who is Eila’s age and of his same aristocratic class, then how the hell could he hope to keep Eila? No doubt she’d prefer a man her own age, the same way that Trisha chose his younger brother Parth. (Obviously, Dhanesh doesn’t recognize it was his beastly personality that pushed Trisha into Parth’s arms, and not just the age difference). Eila believes if her former betrothed was an older and overbearing man of her own class, and that was a disaster, then why on earth would Dhanesh, a duke known for having the difficult temperament of a dragon, and having more power and privilege besides, be any different—let alone more trustworthy when it comes to fidelity in a marriage?
Also, Dhanesh doesn’t believe in love at all. Eila believes in it, but it’s meant for other people, not her. Yet, she secretly wants to start her own matchmaking agency. Helping the Duke of Whitby to keep Trisha and Parth’s wedding on the rails during this week-long houseparty would be a good start to seeing if she can do this for other people she doesn’t know as well. But who would trust her to be a matchmaker when her own love life is a mess? She feels like a fraud at the start of the book.
Okay, I did digress and delve into the details of Dhanesh and Eila’s story for longer than might be necessary for the sake of my Indian ducal inheritance example and argument here, but then, this is my newsletter, so hopefully you’re as excited as I am about their forthcoming story. You can see that even before the start of these books, I have to think through at least one, if not two or more, earlier generations of the duke’s family to get things rooted down.
Continuing with the discussion of Indian duke inheritances in Regency romance, it’s possible there could be some other wildcard scenarios for the fun of fiction. For example, depending on how quickly a woman married after she was with child and the baby was born. The child could be claimed/recognized as the heir of the woman’s new husband, rather than her late husband, especially if the duke didn’t know she was already pregnant and she lied, or let him believe, the child was his. It just depends on how many parties know she’s pregnant, and whose the child is. Although if the pregnancy was because she had a prior aristocratic marriage, then I imagine that the mourning period observance would prevent her from marrying again so soon. But again, a lot can be fudged in fiction for fun, and I’m sure there are books that have done exactly that, I’m just not thinking of one right now. In fact, very recently, I saw a question about this exact plot in a reader group, so I know there has to be a book out there.
In terms of why I may end up choosing that Mihir Panchal never really knows if he was the child of an affair or not, or at least, he himself never confirms this—and how this influences the Panchals that come later—the exploration of this family lore serves as a reminder that it is a great privilege to know your entire history. This is something Indian people, especially in Regency and Victorian England, weren’t always afforded.
There are very real, uncomfortable, and difficult truths about whether Indian women wanted, or had a choice in, marrying the English men in India.
Did she want this marriage or the child? Was there love there between them? Or was it all coercion?
Rachika reflects on this and what earlier generations could have done differently, and what she might have done differently. How Tarun’s parents, as well as he and Rachika, decided what Raaz and his siblings would know to make sure they had the best of what life in England could offer to them.
Sometimes those early stories are lost to time, and the people who come after don’t have the satisfaction of ever really knowing what darker deeds might exist in the branches of their family tree.
I wanted Urmila Panchal to assert agency, and find someone she did care for more than her husband, even if she and this paramour couldn’t be together forever—perhaps because he left England/the continent, or because he had passed, or because their stations didn’t allow for it. Urmila at least got to have her affair with him, and her son, Mihir.
Again, Diwali with Her Duke is nearly finished in its first draft iteration, but I will refine and revise as I go along, so we’ll see how the Panchal family lore ends up playing a role in Tarun and Rachika’s story when it’s in the final and finished form.
On Immigration
At least in my experience of the immigrant experience, some things have to be let go to make a new life, and the generation after might long for a stronger connection to the home their parents left behind. For all the children, there will always be something inaccessible about their parents’ lives. And the parents will never know everything about their children’s experiences either. This is even more complicated for biracial and multiracial children. So many different dynamics in one family.
I find this an interesting creative challenge to write and depict authentically. There has been a lot of discussion around the term own voices. I’m Indian, writing Indian characters, and so my characters won’t explain everything another character would know. They won’t italicize words that make it seem more like the dialogue pauses for them to turn to the camera, break the fourth wall, and explain what can be gleaned from context or Googled, read, and researched independently.
Again, I cannot write what is true for every Indian person. I don’t know what it’s like to have immigrated to the country I live in. I wasn’t born and/or raised on English soil. I write what I know, what is true and what makes sense for me.
Again, here’s that great post by Thien-Kim Lam where she voices similar sentiments and a whole lot more about the state of publishing for our kinds of stories.
And so my characters in later generations may not always know the full extent of their history and lineage’s story. It is a privilege for anyone to know the full story of who they are and where they came from.
More often, there are details that are lost to time, or intentionally kept hidden. Sometimes the choices of those who came before us can be understood, and sometimes not. Sometimes they are decisions you can agree with, but sometimes not.
They did what they had to in order to stay safe, protect those they loved, blend in, gain security, or a wide variety of other reasons dictated by dire circumstances, and often, little personal choice at the time.
I’ve had conversations with my own parents about how much of the culture, religion/spirituality, and traditions, I know, or wish I knew. And as a psychologist who studies attention, reading, memory, and language—it’s the languages I long for especially. So many of them were eradicated by colonization forever. Why didn’t my parents have us practice writing and speaking Gujarati more? We weren’t forced to use it at home, and I wish Gujarati was a language I could have studied in school.
Every generation has its sins, its regrets. And every generation struggles with the choices of the one before. People tried to make the best decisions they could, and did what they thought was right, with the knowledge they had at the time—hopefully, if they were good people, to make things easier or better for the ones who come after.
It’s always hindsight that is the easiest. As my mother said, “if only you were there to help guide the way, we might have gotten it just right.” This was delivered in a very wry tone, lest the words written out were not conveying that lol. Also, I’m the eldest daughter of immigrant parents in a country where most of my extended family doesn’t live. You can bet I’ve got my own baggage to bear, but it certainly isn’t all bad.
And as for The Siren of Sussex?
“I’ll be your partner. Your shield, your support, your champion,” Ahmad says—which had me asking, but what about him? Who protects him? He’s so worried about how he can’t save Evelyn against the hateful things society will say. But what of the things people say about—let alone directly to—him? He’s the one that is Indian.
In my current draft of Diwali with Her Duke, one of the first things that Rachika, the daughter of two shopkeepers, says about Tarun, heir to the Duke of Wednesbury—even before she ever meets him—is that she had been protective of him before she’d had any right to be.
Tarun and Rachika are not of the same class, there’s no real reason for him to require or want her protection, nor much she can offer with it in terms of power or privilege. And yet, there is love—in her desires, thoughts, actions, and words. Our heroes do need that.
And so, our heroes need protecting too.
Thank goodness Mimi Matthews understands this.
“I love you,” [Evelyn] said. “And I shall be your shield and support, too. Your friend. Your partner. And more.”
She wanted him too much. It was dangerous to want something this badly. A challenge to the universe to take it away. But wonderful things didn’t happen because one was cautious. They happened because one dared.
I’m glad I needn’t have worried.
If you made it this far, then I thank you for reading this vastly more personal and vulnerable letter. I hope you will be galvanized to pick up a book by a diverse author to read in the coming days. There are so many stories that need to be shared. Reading and discussing such books is one way that we can support these voices—at a time when it’s so important to continue to fight against book bans, and publisher decisions about who gets to have their words heard. And who does not.
Until next time, happy reading and writing—and happy Holi,
Sri
