Historical Romance Didn’t Die.

For years, we’ve been hearing that historical romance is dying. Sales are soft. Publishers aren’t acquiring as much of it. Longtime historical romance authors are being asked to write contemporary romance instead.

And in February 2026, Harlequin confirmed that its Historical line will close in fall 2027 after nearly forty years, citing evolving reader interests. That certainly sounds like a genre in trouble.

Except there’s one tiny problem with the narrative that readers don’t want historical romance anymore:

Have you met readers?

Because while publishing has been slowly backing away from historical romance, readers have been losing their collective minds over Bridgerton.

They’re watching period dramas. They’re buying special editions with sprayed edges and elaborate gowns. They’re reading about arranged marriages, political alliances, aristocratic families, forbidden relationships, social hierarchies, balls, castles, estates, carriages and men who cannot possibly marry the woman they desperately want. They are reading books where touching someone’s bare hand practically qualifies as foreplay. They’re just increasingly finding those things outside the Historical Romance section.

So I keep coming back to one question: Did readers actually stop wanting historical romance? Or did publishing stop figuring out how to sell historical romance to new readers? Because those are two very different problems. And I think we need to talk about the second one.

Historical romance’s struggles aren’t imaginary.

In an analysis of Publishers Marketplace deal reports, journalist Rebecca Ackermann found that of more than 80 romance novels acquired in 2024 by major publishers including Avon, Berkley, Canary Street, Forever, Kensington, St. Martin’s and Sourcebooks, only seven were historical romances.

Seven.

That’s not exactly a publishing category overflowing with confidence. Agent Kevan Lyon described historical romance as going through a “softer period,” while several established historical romance authors have publicly discussed publishers declining additional historical projects or encouraging them to pivot into other areas.

Then came another pretty significant sign. Harlequin announced in February 2026 that it would discontinue Harlequin Historical in fall 2027. The line launched in 1988 and survived nearly four decades.

The publisher attributed the decision to evolving global reader interests. And if we were looking at historical romance in isolation, we might shrug and say: Well, readers moved on. Genres cycle. Tastes change. It happens.

Except romance readers haven’t gone anywhere. Quite the opposite. Romance is booming.

Circana reported that by 2025, romance print sales were up 24 percent year over year, with 51 million units sold during the previous twelve months. Romance volume had more than doubled compared with four years earlier.

Romance wasn’t dying. Readers weren’t abandoning love stories. They were buying more of them. The fastest-growing areas included romantasy, sports romance, romantic suspense, and contemporary romance.

So the question becomes much more interesting. If romance readership exploded, why didn’t historical romance ride that wave?

This is where things get really weird.

When Netflix released Bridgerton in December 2020, it became a phenomenon. Not a cute little success. A cultural phenomenon. The first season reached tens of millions of households and hit number one in dozens of countries. And here’s the important part for this conversation:

People bought the books. Lots of them. Within weeks of the show’s debut, HarperCollins reported selling approximately 750,000 copies of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton books. Books originally published around twenty years earlier suddenly landed on bestseller lists.

The Duke and I hit number one on the New York Times combined print and ebook list. The series dominated ebook charts. Audiobook sales surged. And the effect wasn’t temporary. When Season Four premiered years later, Netflix reported that sales of the Bridgerton books tripled.

That tells us something important. When new audiences were introduced to historical romance in a way that felt exciting, sexy, accessible and culturally relevant... they bought historical romance novels.

So I’m having trouble accepting the explanation that younger or newer romance readers simply aren’t interested in historical romance. Because when historical romance was put directly in front of them?

They showed up.

This is the part that frustrates me.

Bridgerton should have been an enormous acquisition opportunity for historical romance publishing. Suddenly millions of people were talking about Regency romance. People who had never picked up a historical romance were discussing marriage markets, dukes, debutantes, balls, courtship and scandal.

They wanted the dresses. They wanted the houses. They wanted the romance. They wanted the YEARNING. Good Lord, the yearning.

Publishing had a giant flashing billboard pointing directly at one of romance’s oldest subgenres.

NEW READERS THIS WAY.

And somehow we didn’t build a sustainable bridge between the Bridgerton viewer and the Historical Romance shelf. We sold a lot more Julia Quinn. But did the category successfully turn those viewers into historical romance readers? The acquisition numbers we’re seeing several years later suggest that, at least within traditional publishing, something didn’t connect.

And I think that’s the part worth examining. Because an adaptation selling its source material is great.

A cultural phenomenon creating a new generation of genre readers would have been much bigger.

This is where I think publishing made a fundamental mistake.

For a very long time, historical romance knew exactly who its reader was. And that’s normally a good thing. Historical romance had an incredibly loyal readership. Readers knew the authors they loved. They recognized the covers. They understood the shorthand.

Duke.

Rake.

Wallflower.

Bluestocking.

Scandal.

Regency.

You didn’t have to explain much. The reader already understood the promise. But there’s a danger in becoming extremely good at selling books to people who already buy your books.

You can forget that you also need to create new readers. And eventually your established readership changes.

Some readers leave the genre.

Some move to other categories.

Some read fewer books.

Some switch formats.

Some stop buying as frequently.

That’s normal.

Healthy genres replace those departing readers by continually bringing new readers into the category. And I don’t know that traditional historical romance did enough of that. Instead, I think publishing became incredibly efficient at selling historical romance to historical romance readers.

The problem was that a 22-year-old discovering romance through TikTok in 2022 wasn’t necessarily walking into the bookstore understanding any of that shorthand. She didn’t know why she should care that he’s a viscount. She might not know what a viscount IS. And frankly? She doesn’t need to.

What she understands is:

• Enemies to lovers.

• Marriage of convenience.

• Forbidden romance.

• He falls first.

• Only one bed.

• Touch her and die.

• Forced proximity.

• She thinks he hates her. He’s been desperately in love with her for three years.

THAT is a language modern romance discovery taught readers to speak. Historical romance already had most of those things. We just weren’t necessarily selling it that way.

I love historical romance covers.

Give me a gorgeous gown and a clinch cover. Give me drama. Give me ridiculous flowing hair that clearly has its own wind machine. I will defend the traditional romance clinch until someone pries it from my cold dead hands. But I also understand why packaging matters when you’re trying to attract someone who doesn’t already identify as a historical romance reader.

Covers aren’t just decoration. They’re communication.

They tell a reader: This book is for you.

Or sometimes: This book is what your mother reads.

And fair or not, historical romance spent decades accumulating cultural baggage. The bodice ripper.

Fabio.

Helpless heroines.

Dubious consent.

Dominating alpha heroes.

Your grandmother’s paperback with the cracked spine hidden behind the couch cushions. Those stereotypes persisted even while the genre itself evolved. Historical romance became funnier.

Sexier in different ways. More diverse. More inclusive. More adventurous with protagonists and settings. Authors interrogated gender, class, race, sexuality and power. The books changed.

But did the public perception of the genre change with them? Not nearly enough. And that’s a marketing problem.

I’m going much deeper into this in Part Three, because I could yell about it for several thousand words. But we have to acknowledge the dragon currently sitting in the ballroom.

Romantasy is exploding. Circana identified romantasy as one of the fastest-growing romance categories in 2025, with triple-digit growth. And what are many of these books offering?

• Elaborate gowns.

• Royal courts.

• Kings and queens.

• Political alliances.

• Arranged marriages.

• Social hierarchy.

• Forbidden relationships.

• Castles.

• Balls.

• Inheritance.

• War.

• Reputation.

• Women navigating worlds where power isn’t equally distributed.

• Men with titles and swords and serious emotional constipation.

• Excuse me...

Haven’t we met these people before?

Obviously, Romantasy and historical romance aren’t interchangeable. Fantasy offers world-building possibilities historical fiction cannot, and I’ll get into that later. But I don’t think we can ignore the overlap. Readers clearly haven’t rejected stories removed from modern life.

They haven’t said, “No thank you, I only want smartphones, DoorDash, and dating apps in my romance.” They’re happily reading 600-page books about fictional kingdoms where everyone travels by horse. So perhaps the problem isn’t that historical romance feels too distant from contemporary life. Maybe it’s something else.

This is the theory I keep circling.

Publishing spent decades building historical romance into a powerful commercial category. Then, when reader discovery dramatically changed, we didn’t sufficiently reposition the genre for the readers entering romance through completely different doors.

Those readers weren’t browsing supermarket spinner racks. They weren’t necessarily starting with Harlequin category lines.

They were discovering books through BookTok, Bookstagram, Goodreads, Kindle Unlimited, influencers, podcasts, fandoms, subscription boxes and increasingly beautiful special editions.

They were being taught to shop for romance through emotional experience. Tell me how this book will make me feel. Tell me the tropes. Tell me the relationship dynamic. Tell me why I’m going to scream into my pillow at 2 a.m. Historical romance can deliver ALL OF THAT. Arguably better than almost any romance subgenre.

And yet somehow historical romance became the old-fashioned category while romantasy became the exciting new thing.

That’s wild to me.

Yearning.

I will die on this hill. Historical romance does yearning better than almost anything.

Contemporary romance authors have to invent reasons two adults with cell phones, cars, contraception and relative social freedom can’t just get together. Historical romance comes with barriers already installed.

They can’t be alone together. They can’t touch without someone noticing. They can’t always marry outside their class.

A woman can destroy her reputation by being seen in the wrong place with the wrong man. Family obligations matter. Inheritance matters. Marriage matters. Money matters. Society matters. One dance can carry an entire chapter’s worth of sexual tension. A hand at someone’s waist means something. Using a first name means something.

A LOOK ACROSS A BALLROOM means something.

You can build romantic tension out of almost nothing because the world itself is conspiring to keep these people apart.

And when they finally touch? Sweet baby Jesus. THAT is romance.

Which is why I refuse to believe younger readers simply don’t want historical romance.

You cannot show me a generation obsessed with slow burn, enemies-to-lovers, forbidden love, arranged marriages and tortured men staring longingly at women they cannot have and convince me they wouldn’t understand historical romance.

They understand it perfectly.

They may simply not realize that’s what they’re looking for.

And this is where I think the conversation gets bigger.

Publishing categories survive when they continuously invite new readers inside. You cannot rely forever on the people who have always bought something to keep buying it at the same rate. Eventually, every genre needs another generation.

And when that generation arrives, you have to speak their language. That doesn’t mean changing historical romance into something it isn’t. It doesn’t mean chasing every TikTok trend. It doesn’t mean putting cartoon covers on everything or pretending every book contains the trope of the week.

It means understanding why readers loved the genre in the first place and finding new ways to communicate that promise.

Historical romance isn’t great because there are dukes. It’s great because there are barriers. It’s great because desire has consequences. It’s great because the characters often have to choose between what society expects of them and what they desperately want. It’s great because longing can stretch for hundreds of pages before someone finally says the thing we’ve been waiting for them to say. It’s great because sometimes the smallest gesture can carry enormous emotional weight.

THAT’S the product. The duke is packaging. And perhaps publishing confused the two.

No. At least I don’t think so. I think traditional publishing has pulled back from it. I think acquisition trends are concerning. I think the end of Harlequin Historical is significant.

And I think publishers have legitimate sales data behind the decisions they’re making. I’m not pretending editors woke up one morning and collectively decided they hated ball gowns.

But sales data tells us what happened. It doesn’t always tell us why.

And when I look at the larger romance market, I don’t see readers rejecting the fundamental ingredients of historical romance.

I see them enthusiastically buying those ingredients somewhere else. That makes me wonder whether we’re diagnosing the wrong problem. Maybe readers didn’t leave historical romance. Maybe historical romance stopped meeting new readers where they were. And if that’s true, the next question becomes much more interesting:

Why don’t newer romance readers think historical romance is for them? That’s where we’re going next. Because before we declare a genre dead, maybe we should ask whether anyone remembered to invite the next generation to the party. And trust me.

They’re already wearing the gowns.

This conversation is bigger than one article, because I don’t think there is one neat explanation for what happened to historical romance.

In this three-part series, I’m looking at the disconnect between the decline of traditionally published historical romance and the continued popularity of historical settings, period television, sweeping romantic fantasy, and many of the tropes historical romance has been delivering for decades.

Part One: Historical Romance Didn’t Die. Publishing Stopped Selling It to New Readers looked at the big-picture contradiction. Romance is booming. Bridgerton became a cultural phenomenon. Readers still want yearning, social barriers, arranged marriages, forbidden love and worlds far removed from their everyday lives. Yet traditional publishing continues to retreat from historical romance.

Part Two: I Love Romance. So Why Don’t I Read Historical Romance? turns the question over to readers. Why are newer romance readers willing to read 600 pages about a fictional kingdom but hesitant to pick up a 350-page Regency romance? We’ll talk about covers, outdated perceptions of the genre, diversity, the dominance of dukes and Regency England, historical accuracy, BookTok, trope-based discovery and the enormous difference between what modern historical romance actually IS and what many readers think it is.

And finally, Part Three: Romantasy Is Historical Romance Wearing a Sword will look at where some of historical romance’s DNA may have gone. Because readers didn’t stop wanting arranged marriages, political alliances, elaborate gowns, rigid social hierarchies, forbidden relationships, balls, castles, powerful families and impossible love.

They may have simply traded the duke for a fae prince.