Velvet Squabs and Flat-Arc Heroines

The Duke Loop - Heroine Hero Loop

I know I'm currently stuck in a Duke Loop: long-form historical romance stories on YouTube involving misunderstood heroines, emotionally constipated dukes, disputed inheritances, tenant farmers, and an improbable number of carriages fitted with velvet squabs. In this post, I’m not going to discuss the addictive nature of these stories, algorithms, or how these algorithmic pulp-fiction pieces are produced, though that is interesting and maybe for another post. Instead, I would only like to address the story lines of these pieces, and why these story lines appeal to audiences and to me.

The stories are set in an elastic version of 19th-century England, somewhere between the Regency and Victorian periods. The heroine is not initiated; she is authenticated. In storytelling terms, she has something close to a flat character arc: rather than changing fundamentally herself, she holds steady while the people and circumstances around her change. In other words, the heroine travels through the plot, but not very far through the self.

This is in contrast to the Hero’s journey, also known as the monomyth, a common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.

The hero myth was popularized by Joseph Campbell (1904 – 1987):

• Campbell’s basic structure is: separation → initiation → return
• For my purposes, I render that as: ignorance → challenge → transformation → wisdom

The Duke Loop stories have an emotional cycle something like this:

• misrecognition → suffering → endurance → revelation → recognition → reversal

I became curious about why this altered story cycle is so satisfying to watch. The hero’s journey can be restated as this: “I can be tested, change, become more capable, and emerge as somebody different.” A Duke Loop story is typically this: “I don't need to change. I am already good. Other people simply haven't recognized it yet.”

The Duke Loop stories consistently state that the problem isn't the heroine. Eventually the evidence will come out. Everyone will realize how wrong they were. And the people who treated you badly will have to watch while somebody important recognizes your value.

Do members of the audience actually identify with the heroine, imagining that they too are right while the world stubbornly fails to recognize it? Some surely do, but I don't think the stories require that much identification.

For those watching or listening, it might be closer to something like “Those awful people are going to get what they deserve, and I want to see it happen.” The heroine can therefore function less as a richly (a generous term if you have seen the poor quality of some of these stories) imagined person than as an empty-enough vessel for moral identification. Making the heroine more psychologically complicated could damage the easy formula. Give her moral ambiguity and punishment becomes less satisfying. The one-dimensionality isn't necessarily an accidental failure of characterization. It may be part of the mechanism.

So what do I get out of it? Am I at a vulnerable time in my life? After all, I did write about being lightly observed and being okay with that. That was before I fell into the Duke Loop. It seems suspiciously related. Was I targeted? My fan snaps shut. I grasp my reticule. I’ve been exposed! Like all things binge and cringe, this too will pass.

The stories don't necessarily make the audience (including me) self-righteous. But they repeatedly offer the pleasurable experience of occupying a position in which righteousness never needs to be questioned.

A transformational story asks: What must I learn? A vindication story–like a Duke Loop story–asks: When will they finally realize I was right? And repeated exposure to the latter gives you a form of narrative pleasure that requires remarkably little self-interrogation. And there you have it, the crux of it. How much work do you want to do watching a story? How much thinking and self-reflection do you want if you are just want something to lull you to sleep or help you escape the world for one hour?

The audience temporarily occupies the morally privileged position in a Duke Loop story. Other people are wrong. The heroine’s (your) suffering demonstrates her (your) virtue. Recognition is coming.

I will end this post with more Duke Loop story vocabulary. It’s an endless lightly researched simulation of estate management and characters in our fictitious universe:

• Carriages with velvet squabs.
• A plucky village girl tending a turnip field who then become a duchess.
• Drainage concerns in low-lying fields.
• Tenant farmer contracts.
• Stern housekeepers usually named Miss Hawthorne.
• Stewards of the estate that can be kindly, incompetent, or thieving.
• Solicitors and magistrates listening on the other side of the door.
• Bored dukes attending balls that function as thinly disguised marriage markets.
• The price of good beeswax candles.
• Cream colored vellum with a good wax seal.
• The endless rain of London hitting windowpanes.
• The library as the center of the action in the love story.
• Appropriate distance between lovers.
• The aunt-chaperone in the room.
• Almost smiles on lips of dukes.
• Dark grey, stormy eyes.
• A heroine in a gown from three seasons ago.
• A turned dress or pair of gloves.
• Buying meat on credit from the butcher.
• The cramped bedroom under the eaves.
• Forearms corded with muscles.
• Low, rusty sounds from dukes that are laughs.
• Using someone’s Christian name.
• A kiss tasting of cold rain and tea.
• Hessian boots.
• When Michaelmas is and how many days are in a fortnight. 
• To have your breath catch.
• Breath pluming in cold air.