Chels

2026 seems to be the summer of period romance – between The Other Bennett Sister in the spring, and the upcoming Sense and Sensibility film (and, of course, Bridgerton’s seemingly evergreen popularity), we all seem to be invested in regency romances again. Finally. 

Period dramas have been through a difficult few years – from the 80s to the 2000s they were everywhere, then people seemed to decide they were too cheesy, or that they were all the same (while watching multiple samey action films a year). Finally, it seems that they’re coming back into favour, and I think the success of Bridgerton has helped to revive the genre.

I feel like I criticise the online misuse of terms from media studies or even psychology far more often than I should, but it seems like as the months go by, words start to shift meanings (or even lose their meanings altogether). Case in point: tropes. A trope is just a recurring theme or motif (both within individual texts, or between texts in a genre). For example, an unreliable narrator is a trope in many different genres of fiction – it’s more common in horror or mystery fiction, but an unreliable narrator can tell any story. Over time, trope has been used interchangeably with cliché. To be fair, the overuse of certain tropes makes them become cliché, but there’s a misconception that the existence of tropes at all in fiction is a bad thing – essentially, that all tropes are clichés, and as such, all tropes are bad. While the unreliable narrator is a trope, the specific ‘unreliable narrator is actually mentally ill’ reveal is cliché – it’s overdone, and often leaves the audience unsatisfied.

The online aversion to tropes has become almost performative – with creators claiming they ‘don’t want to read books with tropes’ (all books employ tropes) or that the new popular film is ‘too tropey’ (too cliché, perhaps?). It’s incredibly frustrating, because genres are essentially built on tropes. A genre is understood through shared structures, shared characters, and shared conventions – you’d be disappointed if the superhero film featured no secret identities, or the mystery novel had no red herrings. ‘Trope’ is a neutral term, not a critical one.

Romances seem to face the brunt of the critique of ‘tropes’ – and let’s be honest, we all know why. It’s a genre primarily enjoyed by women, so it’s seen as fair game for criticism. Fantasies have magical powers or invented worlds, thrillers have plot twists, and romances have happily ever afters. Romances seem to be the genre that people most express a desire to see defy conventions – with calls for realistic (read: unhappy) endings or love interests without charm. Why, though? The same people don’t call for more mysteries without grand reveals. People do not want to watch a sci-fi film with no science fiction in it. Genre conventions are conventions for a reason.

That being said, there’s also a new marketing technique that seems to have come from the rise of short form content, and it seems to be primarily affecting romance novels. Rather than a plot summary, or even reviews from other authors or celebrities, they seem to be advertised through a list of tropes. Creators recommend the brand new friends to lovers only one bed grumpy-sunshine trilogy, or provide a list of their favourite fake dating stories. To me, it feels like a harmful advertising technique, providing critics with an easy way to claim that romances are all the same. 

I had not intended to spend this post defending romance fiction against the mountains of criticism it seems to face; in fact, I’d like to examine genre conventions, and what actually makes a genre convention.

In 1995, the BBC released a six episode adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, starring Colin Firth as Mr Darcy. In the fourth episode, a scene was added to the story – the lake scene. Lives were changed. Mr Darcy in his soaked white shirt became an instant icon of regency romance. The Bridget Jones’ Diary film series, initially based on Pride and Prejudice, cast Firth as Mark Darcy, Bridget’s love interest, and showed a scene of Bridget watching the lake scene on repeat. The films paid homage to his iconic scene three times. The first film had Hugh Grant’s Daniel Cleaver fall into a lake while rowing with Bridget, in the second, Mark and Daniel fight in a water fountain, both emerging wet, and in the fourth film, Roxster replicates the entire scene – diving into a pool (this time to save a small dog), and emerging soaking wet.

Bridgerton, too, has paid homage to the iconic scene on multiple occasions. The first saw Anthony fall into a lake and emerge, furious, with his usually billowing shirt clinging to his skin. Two seasons later, Sophie sees Benedict after a swim in the lake, and while Anthony and Roxster remove their wet clothes, Benedict instead dresses himself, a subversion of the trope which feels equally intimate.

The Other Bennet Sister, another Pride and Prejudice adaptation, combines Mr Darcy’s lake scene with Mark and Daniel’s fight scenes – Mr Hayward and Mr Ryder continue their clash for Mary Bennet’s affection, and both end up in the lake. They bicker, and eventually emerge from the water in wet, white shirts.

With six instances of homage to the original, I think it’s safe to say that the lake scene has become a trope in its own right. After all, there will be plenty of people that watch Bridgerton that have no cultural reference to Colin Firth’s lake scene. And while three of the six instances don’t come from period drama, the Bridget Jones series is heavily inspired by period romance. The question, then, is when does homage become convention. Is there a set number of instances that establish a trope as convention? Or is it based on the cultural conversation around the trope? It’s likely that Mr Darcy’s iconic scene was not the first time a lake scene was shown on film, but it’s certainly the most famous. 

Shifting genres, the earliest known work of detective fiction where the grand reveal is ‘the butler did it’ is from Mary Roberts Rinehart’s The Door (1930). Before that, E. Phillips Oppenheim’s 1915 The Black Box featured a gangster who disguised himself as a butler in order to commit his crimes, similar in theme, but not quite the same trope. However, in 1928, two years before Rinehart’s novel, S.S. Van Dine criticised the use of the trope. Presumably, then, there were instances that haven’t survived over time, but if taken at face value, it would appear that the butler did it was a trope before it was even established in fiction.

The case of the butler did it, while we don’t have the full history, illuminates my issue with the way we talk about tropes – they only seem to get acknowledged in a negative light. Perhaps a century of tropes being mentioned only as cliché has given people an inherent aversion to them. That being said – I also don’t love the 2020s marketing of books solely by their tropes, rather than more detailed descriptions – can we not get a plot summary rather than a list of tropes?

All in all, I’d love it if we could all be a bit more normal about tropes.