Duel, Interrupted

The underlying homoeroticism in historical romance's favorite pastime

I’m on an episode of Fated Mates this week talking about duels! (We had so much fun! Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.) In the episode, I mentioned that I feel as though there’s an inherent queerness in the act of dueling. This is where I further argue my case.

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Midway through Ridley Scott’s 1977 film The Duellists, Gabriel Feraud, played by Harvey Keitel at his wiliest, is confronted by Laura, the mistress of his longtime opponent Armand d’Hubert (Keith Carradine). “Nobody understands why you fight with Armand.” She looks at him with a mixture of disgust and despair. “It's supposed to be a secret between the pair of you. I believe it's a secret of your very own.”

The movie begins in 1800 France with Feraud—an earthy, truculent, erratic veteran duellist— unwittingly tying d’Hubert’s fate to his own and inciting a long courtship-by-blade. d’Hubert, sent to put Feraud under house arrest after he nearly killed another man in a duel, suddenly finds himself at swordpoint. Enraged at d’Hubert’s intrusion, Feraud demands an immediate battle.

“Can you fight?”

“I see no reason whatever for us to fight.”

“What reason would you like? Shall I spit in your face?”

Thus begins a years-long relationship, with escalating duels that stop just short of fatality. d’Hubert is bewildered by Feraud’s ferocity, afraid for his life but unsure of how to honorably extricate himself from the incessant challenges Feraud issues, or even if he’d want to.

When Laura, fed up with looming disaster and the dubious protestations of honor that hover over their relationship, leaves d’Hubert, she writes “goodbye” in red lipstick on his sabre. d’Hubert cannot love her because of his preoccupation with the sword, with Feraud himself. As the saying goes, three is a crowd.

In The Duel: A History of Duelling, Robert Baldick outlines the relationship of the real-life inspiration for Joseph Conrad’s The Duel (which the Ridley Scott movie was subsequently based), Dupont and Fournier. “They were as eager and impatient to meet as two lovers, and they never crossed swords without first exchanging a warm handshake.” This is evident in the letters they exchanged in between bouts:

“I have been invited to breakfast with the officers of the Regiment of Chasseurs at Lunéville. I hope to be able to accept the invitation. As you are on leave in that town, we will take the opportunity, if you are agreeable, to have a thrust at each other.”

The bloody affair only came to an end when Dupont, like his counterpart d’Hubert in Scott’s film, decided to marry. In the Ridley Scott movie, d’Hubert engages Feraud in a final duel to secure his future and ensure that he will remain a presence in the lives of his new wife and child. Baldick’s depiction of Dupont’s decision frames it as a breakup: now that he has a new, less tumultuous love, it is time to end things with Fournier once and for all.

The veracity of Baldick’s account has been called into question, but I think Baldick’s decision, in 1965, to include homoerotic subtext into this tale is just as fascinating as Scott’s image of lipstick on the blade. Duels are for lovers.

A Taste of Violence (A Kiss)

In Moonstruck Madness by Laurie McBain, the duel between Sabrina Verrick and the Duke of Camareigh is step one on their journey from enemies to lovers. Sabrina, who escaped the carnage of Culloden Moore a mere five years earlier, fled to her absentee father’s crumbling estate in England. Near destitution with two siblings to care for, she fashioned herself as the world’s smallest highwayman, Bonnie Charlie.

As Bonnie Charlie, Sabrina is all swagger and ruthless charm. When she robs a house party, she hones in Camareigh, who seethes as she relieves him of his gold snuffbox. His bad luck continues a few short days later when he stops to help a couple stranded in the road, only to find himself held at gunpoint by Bonnie Charlie once more. When the duke, annoyed at being bested yet again, gets mouthy, Sabrina strikes him across his face. The slap brands him like a kiss — an insult that reverberates through his soul and then lingers appealingly. Before then he might have let everything go, but wounded pride and a taste of impudence — which is rare for a duke to experience — keep Bonnie Charlie front of mind.

The duke sets a trap, a false house party rife for robbery, and Sabrina takes the bait. She arrives at the house not to find a rollicking party full of potential marks, but the duke’s gun trained on her. “No one slaps me and goes unpunished.” he says. “You may not be much to look at, but you’re a vicious little fellow and I think it’s about time that you learned a few lessons in manners.”

They agree to fight with swords, but the battle is brief. The duke stabs Sabrina through the shoulder, unmasks her, then realizes she’s a young woman. This revelation is not where the courtship begins. It’s where it continues.

When Ranulf insults Gwenllian in The King’s Man by Elizabeth Kingston, he is challenged by a young man for the lady’s honor. Ranulf is an expert swordsman, but much to his surprise he is easily bested by the youth, who goes on to reveal that he is actually Gwenllian herself. Winded but triumphant, Gwenllian taunts Ranulf: “Has my lord had… enough of my… womanly comfort?”

Ranulf, feeling embarrassed, aroused, and betrayed all at once, one-ups Gwenllian with a kiss. It’s not a tender ministration but a continuation of the battle, letting Gwenllian know that in one specific way, he holds the power. “He walked away, leaving her with shame and defeat, stealing her victory over him with a kiss.”

Stacy Reid’s A Matter of Temptation also begins with a duel between eventual lovers. Mina Crawford disguises herself as her feckless brother in order to take his place in a duel with the Earl of Creswick. She’s skilled with a blade but has no taste for bloodshed, satisfied by catching the earl off-guard. As she holds her sword to his throat, she offers an apology on her brother’s behalf while still pretending to be him. After Mina leaves, Creswick ponders the shape of her lips. Not a man’s lips, he decides.

I wonder if d’Hubert thought about Feraud’s mouth when he first caught sight of his sword, defiled by lipstick.

His (Second) Greatest Love

In the early pages of Mary Balogh’s More than a Mistress, Sir Conan Brougham pulls the Duke of Tresham aside to tell him his opponent will settle for an apology. “It might be worth considering,” his friend advised. “I would not be doing my job conscientiously if I did not thus advise you, Tresham. Oliver is a pretty decent shot.”

When Sir Conan fails to sway Tresham, an unexpected interloper takes up the reigns. Jane Ingleby is an aristocrat in hiding, nuisance, and— unbeknownst to Tresham— his future lover. She hurtles towards the duellists, shrieking at them to stop.

Jane outdoing Sir Conan, Tresham’s second, is not an anomaly in historical romance. In a duel, the second is the most crucial position — in Pistols at Dawn, Richard Hopton calls them “an amalgam of umpire, cornerman, and mediator.” Their primary task is avoiding bloodshed, but if that’s not a possibility, then they must select the weapons, make sure a surgeon is present, set the terms (twelve paces or sixteen?), and ensure that no party behaves dishonorably. In the cool light of dawn, with the possibility of death or mutilation looming overhead, a second occupies a uniquely intimate space in a duellist’s life. Which is why, in a heterosexual romance, the role of the second is often greatly reduced. The second can deliver the written challenge and even select the weapons, but the heroine will end the duel.

Prudence from Amanda Quick’s Dangerous is one of these intrepid heroines. After her brother challenges the Earl of Angelstone to a duel, Prudence bursts into the earl’s home in the dead of the night to demand that he apologize to her brother and end the prospect of violence. The earl accepts Prudence’s terms in exchange for an unspecified future favor, no seconds necessary.

Maggie from Gaelen Foley’s Duke of Storm makes a similar bargain: she’ll help the Duke of Amberley solve a crime if he doesn’t kill her beau in an upcoming duel. In The Duke and I, Simon forgoes having a second altogether (“Didn’t bother with it”), only to have Daphne’s dramatic horseback intervention halt the proceedings.

Queer historical romance, naturally, gets more use out of the role of second. In Joanna Chambers’ Enlightened, David, acting as second to his lover Murdo, finds himself in a precarious position. Murdo purposefully embroiled himself in a duel as a favor to David. By publicly insulting the villainous Lord Killen and inciting him to issue a challenge, he hoped to leverage Killen’s fear of being shot to convince him to divorce his battered wife, who is David’s close friend. To seal the deal, David must bring the terms to Killen’s second, who just so happens to be David’s former paramour, Will. Duels are for (former) lovers.

Julian Medlock, the frenetic merchant and social climber in Cat Sebastian’s The Ruin of a Rake, takes on the role of both duellist and second. When Julian’s lover’s spat with Lord Courtenay is overheard by servants, Courtenay moves to cover it up and keep Julian’s reputation intact, enlisting Julian’s brother-in-law in a heterosexual smokescreen. The brother-in-law, Standish, will challenge Courtenay for sleeping with Julian’s sister, which would then explain away why Julian and Courtenay were exchanging vulgar and heated words.

The trouble with this plan is that the whole reason Julian and Courtenay spent enough time together to become lovers in the first place is that Julian, adept at getting people to like him (social climbing, as I crudely put it earlier), was attempting to rehabilitate Courtenay’s tarnished reputation. In one fell swoop, Courtenay undoes all of Julian’s hard work— branding himself as an unscrupulous rake once more— all for Julian’s benefit.

To plaster over Courtenay’s lackluster problem-solving, Julian sits Courtenay in a chair, aims a gun a hairsbreadth from his head, and pulls the trigger.

“What’s our story?” Courtenay asked.

“I tried to shoot you because of the malicious falsehoods I mistakenly believed you spread about my sister. I missed.”

“While I was sitting. Unsporting of you.”

The story of Julian nearly shooting Courtenay spreads, and Julian’s dishonorable actions paint Courtenay in a flattering light by comparison. (“It turned out there was nothing like getting shot at to stir up local sympathy.”) From there, Julian arranges a public apology, allowing the two men to meet in the open and lay the grounds for a friendship that would explain why, exactly, they are seen together so frequently. (For friendship reasons! They are very good friends.) Julian’s shot (duellist) and orchestration of apology (second), is allowable because of the level of intimacy he and Courtenay share. Courtenay is besotted— he would follow Julian to the ends of the earth.

Pistols or Swords?

In The Duellists, after fifteen years of fighting with Feraud, d’Hubert finally moves to end the relationship. Killing had always been on the table— there was an easy out for the pair— but neither of them could swing it. They were married to the duel— a long-distance relationship that took considerable effort on the part of Feraud (the perennial instigator) to keep alive. Add in the letters of their real-life counterparts, (the well-wishes, the assignations) and this becomes a sort of failed epistolary romance.

Further signaling the breakup and end of an era, the duellists put down their swords for the final meeting and choose pistols instead. They each have two shots and, in the name of fairness, agree not to duel in the French method. (The “French method” is standing back to back, walking an agreed-upon distance, and then turning and firing simultaneously when signaled. There’s no evidence the French preferred this method over others, but as with calling condoms “French letters,” sometimes misattributing things to the French can be fun.) Because Feraud is known as a crack-shot, the men hide out in a wooded area nearby, where the cover of trees and tall grass could possibly even the odds. Feraud fires both bullets, only managing to scrape d’Hubert.

d’Hubert shoots and misses once, but he doesn’t kill Feraud with his remaining bullet. Instead, he deals their relationship a final blow: “I shall never again do what you demand of me. By every rule of single combat, your life now belongs to me. Is that not correct? I shall simply declare you dead. In all of your dealings with me, you will do me the courtesy to conduct yourself as a dead man.”

You’re dead to me. Duels are for (former) lovers.

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Thanks again to Fated Mates for having me on the podcast! We covered a lot of ground, but Sarah and Jen also talked about More than a Mistress and Dangerous, respectively! Listen here.