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Romance Protagonists
I think Stephanie Laurens is at her best when she breaks her own mold-- she's normally writing very domineering heroes who are certain of the world and their place in it and can't possibly admit they're in love because then the woman has CONTROL over them and that's terrible. This sort of mindset as her ideal hero choice may be why Stephanie Laurens is *really awful* at consent even for romance novels; one of the early books gives us Regency date rape drugs which the heroine uses on the hero to rape him. (And they still end up together!)
But sometimes, especially in her later books, she'll give us other types of heroes, and these books tend to be the best and most interesting. In the kidnapping trilogy, we get Jeremy Carling, scholar who we know from an early book is more interested in translating ancient languages than in anything around him, and while he's spent a lot of time around warriors and people who deal in intrigue, he is explicitly not himself a heroic type. And he happens to spot a kidnapped family friend and realize she's been kidnapped, except they're inconveniently deep in rural areas where no one knows him, so he can't just summon help. He's got to rescue her all by himself. Which he does, because he is very intelligent and he's spent some time helping out his extremely heroic brother-in-law so he's got a running thought of "What would Tristan do in this situation?" in the back of his head. He is believably not as good at it as one of the Bastion Club would be, in that he fails to account for "sometimes your plan goes wrong and you need to have backups," but he also does okay at adjusting on the fly. (This book is also made more interesting by the heroine breaking the usual mold, because while she's by no means a wilting flower she's also not the feisty spitfire her sisters and cousins are and she's acutely aware of the fact; a lot of her inner monologue is her telling herself "I can do this, I can do this" every time she's confronted with a new difficult thing and then shoving herself through it with gritted teeth while refusing to complain about it. Since Jeremy's not domineering, the combination comes across as much more "two people versus the situation" than "two people versus each other and also the situation is there" and that makes for a better romance.)
Similarly, I also like "The Ideal Bride", in which we get a Regency politician as romantic hero, who certainly can be domineering if he wants to be but that isn't his first reaction to everything and he knows the woman he's courting won't stand for it if he tries it on her-- and one of the things he most values about her is that she can hold her own in that way-- so he spends much more time than the other heroes usually do thinking "okay, she's a very sensible and competent person; she must have reasons for her behavior; I just need to figure out what those are" and he never tries to just ride roughshod over her.
But sometimes, especially in her later books, she'll give us other types of heroes, and these books tend to be the best and most interesting. In the kidnapping trilogy, we get Jeremy Carling, scholar who we know from an early book is more interested in translating ancient languages than in anything around him, and while he's spent a lot of time around warriors and people who deal in intrigue, he is explicitly not himself a heroic type. And he happens to spot a kidnapped family friend and realize she's been kidnapped, except they're inconveniently deep in rural areas where no one knows him, so he can't just summon help. He's got to rescue her all by himself. Which he does, because he is very intelligent and he's spent some time helping out his extremely heroic brother-in-law so he's got a running thought of "What would Tristan do in this situation?" in the back of his head. He is believably not as good at it as one of the Bastion Club would be, in that he fails to account for "sometimes your plan goes wrong and you need to have backups," but he also does okay at adjusting on the fly. (This book is also made more interesting by the heroine breaking the usual mold, because while she's by no means a wilting flower she's also not the feisty spitfire her sisters and cousins are and she's acutely aware of the fact; a lot of her inner monologue is her telling herself "I can do this, I can do this" every time she's confronted with a new difficult thing and then shoving herself through it with gritted teeth while refusing to complain about it. Since Jeremy's not domineering, the combination comes across as much more "two people versus the situation" than "two people versus each other and also the situation is there" and that makes for a better romance.)
Similarly, I also like "The Ideal Bride", in which we get a Regency politician as romantic hero, who certainly can be domineering if he wants to be but that isn't his first reaction to everything and he knows the woman he's courting won't stand for it if he tries it on her-- and one of the things he most values about her is that she can hold her own in that way-- so he spends much more time than the other heroes usually do thinking "okay, she's a very sensible and competent person; she must have reasons for her behavior; I just need to figure out what those are" and he never tries to just ride roughshod over her.