A wonderful author, and a friend, Patt Mihailoff, is an advocate of writing historical romance not so much as we might have wished it were, but more as it really was. Warts, unpleasantness and all.
Historical romance has to walk a fine line. Romance readers who are fans of a particular era tend to know a lot of details. They're quick to spot mistakes ("oops, killed Henry VIII off in the wrong year!") and they let you know. However, while you are busy writing the pristine historical romance how much of those historical details do you include? To whit, we always leave out the more unpleasant facts - chamber pots emptied into the streets, body odor, bad teeth, rampant disease and more often than not, the REAL way men and women dealt with each other (women = chattel, in almost every period).
But what about the more subtle harsh realities of life in the good old days? When a woman had no rights and physical relationships were a lot less like wooing and a lot more like "it's my right so on your back" (where do you think the expression came from, "just lie back and think of England"?). How and where do you draw the line in portraying those less appealing aspects of how things really were? Especially when some of the behavior that any average man might exhibit will not look good for your hero.
It is a tough call. The more thought you give this issue, the more apt you are to be able to include some details that will satisfy a reader who is looking for the history to ring true, even as they enjoy the romance that is (as we all must agree), far more "make believe" than "reality".
If you have a character who flies in the face of convention, you can get away with it as long as you have a good explanation to back it up. Provided, of course, that the era in which you are writing would have brooked such a rebel. Sometimes it just won't work, no matter how ingenious your explanation.
The tone of your book will also give you an idea as to how you can go. If you are writing a gritty, erotic Victorian romance, you can get away with some of the brutal realities of life. If you're writing a bubbly Regency, not so much.
I've read great romance authors who weave in realistic details and yet also produce anachronistic protagonists by using just such tactics. Explaining that the girl had a nanny from [pick the right place in the world] where bathing was more than just an annual event. Or whose father was a great thinker and followed the teachings of [pick the right name] who believed in equality for all and raised his sons that way, too.
Bottom line. Be true to the time frame you are rendering. Get your facts straight and know the conventions so that you know whether your characters are going to ring true and genuine, or will grate on the nerves of the readers who know that those characters would never have behaved that way, or that things would never have been so rosy. Then decide how far you can break those rules, and get away with it, while still penning a wonderful romance story.
To a certain extent the use of historical facts mirror the debate over inclusion in contemporary romances of the references to birth control, condoms, AIDS and so forth. It is a thorny issue and, quite frankly, there are always going to be some readers who think you went too far .... or not far enough.
Decide how real your romance is going to be or how far you are willing to remove yourself in the interest of your artistic vision.
