The book I am about to send off to the publishers is set in 1792–a bit out of my usual era.

Most of my books are set in the Regency, broadly speaking. Technically, the Regency ran from February 1811, when the Prince of Wales was named Regent for his father the King, to January 1820, when the King died and Prince George inherited the Crown.

In common practice, the term is used to mean a longer period, from somewhere around 1795 until the start of the reign of Queen Victoria, in June 1837.

So The Sincerest Flattery isn’t covered by even the longest definition.

It was three years after the storming of the Bastille, but at the time of the story, the King of France, his wife, and his children were still alive, and not yet in prison. The French National Assembly, set up in 1789,were still debating the shape of government, with those who support some form of constitutional monarchy unable to find common ground with one another, let alone those who want a republic. This impasse ended in August 1792, after the events in my story, with the arrest of the king for treason. In January 1793, he was tried and executed.

After the king’s execution, declarations of war poured into France from various European powers and the United Kingdom (who at the time would not have thanked you for considering them European–the more things change, the more they remain the same). From then until the end of the Napoleonic era, France was at war for all but a couple of short respites.

In June 1793, the extremists took over. They ordered more aristocrats to the guillotine. The Reign of Terror had begun. It looms large in historical fiction and historical romance, but lasted around a year.

Political instability continued the Directorate was formed in 1795, their power supported by the army which was now led by a young general named Napoleon Bonaparte.

In 1792, the fashionable Englishwoman was not yet wearing what we think of as Regency fashion. Nor was she wearing the huge ornate gowns and towering wigs fashionable at time her mother made her debut. Instead, waists were still on the natural waistline–though by 1795 they had crept up to the Empire line (so-called because it was favoured by Josephine Bonaparte, and therefore by the women of the French court). They wouldn’t head back towards the waist again for another twenty-five years.

She wasn’t powdering her hair, though, or wearing a wig. Hair powder had already become unpopular with the most fashionable before the British government put a tax on it.