The Duke and I, however, was written 20 years ago-and it seems clear from context that what Daphne does to Simon is assault. As the larger conversation around sexual assault has shifted, that trope has largely started to fall away. The trope of the rapist who is "reformed" by his love for the heroine and eventually marries her became as common as they come in historical romances. Publishers, adhering to the social mores of the day, once believed the only way audiences would accept pre-marital sex was if the woman was forced. There’s a long history of rape, “rape fantasy,” and other permutations of lack of consent in the romance genre, tracing back to the early days of The Sheik (1919)-or even further back to Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740). Readers quickly get Simon’s point of view: “Daphne had aroused him in his sleep, taken advantage of him while he was still slightly intoxicated, and held him to her while he poured his seed into her.” Quinn writes Simon as blatantly traumatized by what has happened to him: "This complete loss of speech, this choking, strangling feeling-He had worked his entire life to escape it, and now she had brought it back with a vengeance.” So read on only if you’re ready to know how it will all play out for Daphne Bridgerton and her titular duke. How did Shondaland handle the story line in the series? Well, that would be a spoiler. (One might call it A Very Sexy MCU.) But despite Quinn’s success, the first book in the series- The Duke and I-is controversial, thanks to a central plot point that hinges on a very disturbing sex scene. In some ways, Quinn’s popular Bridgerton series-a nine-book interlocking saga focusing on the love lives of various members of the Bridgerton clan-is an ideal choice in the age of franchising. On one hand, it was thrilling to see Rhimes, one of the most well-respected and powerful TV showrunners in the business, bringing an unabashedly sexy romance novel to the screen-doubling down on the success of Starz’s Outlander adaptation, but with a series untempered by bloodthirsty Scotsmen. When the world learned that Shonda Rhimes would kick off her lucrative Netflix deal with an adaptation of Julia Quinn’s Regency romance novel The Duke and I, the reception in the book community was decidedly mixed.
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