Just like today, people’s quest for romance back in the days was often filled with all kinds of awkwardness, with the occasional outright disasters thrown in. Take the dying duelist whose last wish was to spend his final moments married to the woman in defense of whose honor he was mortally wounded. She acceded to the moving romantic request, and the couple were hurriedly wed. Soon as he officially became her husband, he made a miraculous recovery, took her for every penny she had, and made her life a living hell. Following are thirty things about that and other fascinating romance facts from history.
30. Victorians Had to Get Creative to Kick Off Romance
The Victorian Age is often perceived as a particularly uptight era of stifling social mores, and extreme prudishness that was often taken to absurd lengths. Compared to what had gone on before and what came after, it really was a buzzkill period, at least for young people of the middle and upper classes. Far as interactions between the genders, especially interactions that involved unmarried young women, the era’s fixation on propriety was not exactly conducive to the flowering of romance.
Victorian rituals of courtship did not lend themselves to spontaneity. Especially with ever-present and often dour chaperons who watched over the young ladies in their charges like hawks, and cast a baleful eye upon all young men in the vicinity. With such social dragons guarding maidens fair, it could be pretty daunting for an aspiring beau to even approach the object of his desire, let alone try to romance and sweep her off her feet. As seen below, one way to get around that was to discretely slip a young woman an “escort card” when her chaperone was not looking.
