The genre I write in is infested with dukes. They hold the same place in Georgian, Regency, and Victorian romance as billionaires do in contemporary romance. However unlikely our multitudes of young handsome dukes and billionaires might be, they represent a certain type of story — one in which all the power lies with the hero, but still the heroine wins. Because of love. It is a story with a timeless appeal, obviously, but I thought a few facts might be fun.

The title comes from the Latin word dux, meaning a military leader responsible for a sizeable territory, and is found in the countries that were part of the Roman Empire. It was adopted by the barbarians of Germany, and after the Roman Empire fell the dukes kept ruling, either in their own lands or on behalf of a king.

In Germany, eleven sovereign duchies survived into the twentieth century. In France, four duchies were almost independent of the Crown in the early feudal period, but were later absorbed back into the Crown. The ancien regime also appointed dukes who were part of the French peerage rather than hereditary sovereigns: first royal princes, and later illegitimate sons and royal favourites of all kinds. More than 30 of these titles survived into the late 20th century. In Italy, the title is still widespread, not only as a result of the territorial duchies, six of which lasted into modern times, but Popes, Kings and Emperors could — and did — bestow the title.  In Spain, the territorial duchies disappeared with the Moorish conquest, but when the title was revived, it was, as in France and Italy, awarded to royal princes and royal favourites, even most recently as the 1940s. Portugal suffered the same conquest, and likewise revived the title. Fewer Portugese dukes were created than Spanish ones, though.

Britain, with whom our genre is chiefly concerned, imported the title with the Duke of Normandy, but it was Edward III who created the first English dukes. In the 14th and 15th century, all creations had royal blood, but after that it was increasingly given outside the royal family. The same timeframe and devolvement to the wider peerage applied to Scotland.

There were never many dukes in the United Kingdom. In 1814, there were 25 non-royal dukes holding 28 ducal titles:  17 English, 7 Scots only, 1 Irish. Today, there are 26 holding 31 titles. Plus the various sons and grandsons of monarchs, of course, but such historical figures are not available for us to marry off to our heroines.

Ah well. We can always bring one in from the continent. They had a few spares, it seems.

UPDATE: following on from some of the comments, I’ve looked up the dukes alive in 1814. Excluding the Duke of Wellington, who was a new creation in that year,  four-fifths were 40 or over in 1814, and half were 50 or over. All but two were married in 1814. One of those never married, and one (Leinster, who succeeded aged 13 and was 23 in 1814) married a couple of years later. So debutantes of the 1814 season had, on the face of it, two dukes in their twenties looking for brides, one Irish and one not interested, as it turned out.

Most of the dukes around in 1814 had already married while still heirs, and nearly all of them married in their twenties. Eight married after they succeeded to the peerage. Seven of these were children at the time of succession. One was 69 at succession and was 80 when his only son was born. I’ll bet there’s a story there.