LRT: I think something is missing when we discuss hist rom's issues with diversity. It isn't just that the leads are mostly white, cishet people. The characters are an issue but so is the SETTING.

Publishing has decided that hist rom = Upper class life in Regency England. There might be a few setting variations (the US during certain eras, Scotland, Victorian England, white people adventuring in "foreign lands") but it's still very narrow.

So marginalized writers are being told that their characters have to exist within a very limited number of settings and eras. Which then leads to the same arguments about diversity in Regency England.

Regency England was diverse. We know this. Arguing the opposite at this point is simply ridiculous. The problem is, I have spent a lot of time correcting uninformed ppl about the diversity of this one place in time, when there is literally a whole planet left to write about.

England is not the center of the universe. Publishing has made people think this, but it's not. Literal whole continents are being left out of hist rom because of this framing. That is a huge problem.

You're not a bad writer if you choose to write about marginalized characters in Regency England. Publishing and selling books is hard for marginalized writers so choosing the Regency makes a difficult path a little easier.

Lord knows, I'm currently writing characters who spent time in Regency England, so this isn't a judgement of writers' choices. It's just me making an observation that if hist rom is limited to a handful of times/places, then diversity is going to much harder to accomplish.

Some stories are automatically going to get left out if almost everything has to be about upper class Regency England. That's a reality that we're going to have to be honest about.

And it's taken me a long time to realize this. I've spent time arguing that more Black characters and Black history is needed in Regencies. Which is true. 10,000 white dukes and not one mention of Black people? Come on.

Buuuuut. Regency England isn't the totality of history and I think there should be a conversation about including the rest of the world in historical romance.