I'm still thinking about billionaire heroes

They're definitely better in romance novels than IRL but...

Remember when we all went wild for billionaire heroes? Millions of us collectively swooned for these young, hot, emotionally-tortured control freaks and sent their stories to the top of the bestseller lists. Many of us authors wrote to the market for these heroes—even I traded in my Regency dukes for a contemporary billionaire series. I’m thinking about it again because billionaires are in the still in the news (but not in a fun, sexy way). Also, I got the rights back to my billionaire romance trilogy, and in revising it I got to thinking about what emotional oomph we want from these stories. 

First, billionaire guys IRL. 

Not so swoon worthy. 

I mean—

This guy is afraid of the subway. 

This guy is a petty online troll with no sense of humor. 

This family of billionaires made a fortune selling drugs and ruining lives. 

This guy is destroying truth and chipping away at democracy with it. 

This guy makes online services that ruin the self esteem of teenage girls. 

These guys are funding a divisive political climate and damaging the actual climate.

This guy made the choice to have this facial hair.

Fetch my smelling salts. 

So what’s the allure of the billionaire romance hero? In romance novels, they’re never as openly lame or evil as the IRL guys seem to be. Their business ventures may be vague (lots of “enterprises”) but they’re never openly awful. My generous interpretation is this: 

When a hero has all the wealth, power and status that he could possibly acquire, his story can start to be about something else and that something else is his emotional journey. Of course, in a way, all romance novels are about that, but the billionaire romance provides a distilled, extra-strength version of it. Given that these novels are often told in the female first person point of view, it’s really about a woman helping a moody, domineering man on his emotional journey.

Like all romance novels, the process of falling in love and building a relationship with someone is where all the stuff comes out that must be worked through and resolved before an HEA is possible. Traditionally in romance, the heroine is all love and gentle light, she is the one safe space where the hero can do this. In these novels, the female body is where they tend to work out all their issues, even though they could afford therapy. 

But then there’s the anti-feminist reading of it—and I am paraphrasing an idea from smarter feminist philosophers. In a world of independent men and a women, a woman has so many relationships with men to negotiate—coworkers, bosses, partners, teachers,  friends, etc, etc. Exhausting, right?! But instead, if a woman marries one man who is in charge of everything, a woman just has to manage just one male, just one relationship. Sigh of relief. Right? All she has to do is trade her independence. 

So, the best strategy for a woman to succeed in the world is to secure the love and affections of a rich and powerful man. Her proximity to it makes it hers. She just has to let him work his issues out on her body. She just has to help out one moody, domineering man on his emotional journey and get him on her side. This is how to succeed in patriarchy. 

This is also, I think, billionaire romances. And frankly, it just seems so lonely to me. I am thinking now about Fifty Shades of Grey (still, I know). About how Anastasia has trouble at work so Christian just buys the publishing company for her and she never gets the personal growth and satisfaction of figuring it out herself (see above about trading her independence of protection by one man). Does she even have friends? Does he? I can’t remember. I just remember his need to control her world. And that she lets him. She never has to worry about anything again, just his happiness.

So, once upon a time I wrote to market and wrote a billionaire romance. I recently got my rights back to that series and thus got the chance to give it a new look and maybe change things about the story. I definitely intended to write out the billionaire aspect. In the end I only changed the title because in the story, Hero Duke Austen isn’t quite a billionaire yet—he’s made it but lost it—and he’s still determined to prove himself. That’s what drives him.

Jane definitely spends quite a few pages hung up on basking in his glow at her high school reunion. She does get her own success (from writing romance novels based on her love story with Duke!) and ultimately doesn’t need him to validate her.

But it still felt like the story wouldn’t make as much sense and the stakes wouldn’t be as high without a billionaire hero. So, Duke got to keep his “bad boy billionaire” nickname and get his fortune. But he at least has a sense of humor and isn’t afraid of the subway :-)

Here’s a question: where are all the lady billionaires in romance? Why do you think we don’t see more of them?