A quick search on Amazon for “amnesia historical romance”
produces 221 results. If you cut out the historical and go for “amnesia
romance” you get 1000 results. I should say that makes it quite a popular theme
among authors.
Personally, I’ve used it twice. In A Trace of Memory, our
hero finds the heroine wandering in his woods, dishevelled and unable to
remember who she is or how she got there. Of his two sisters, who are with him,
one believes Elaine genuine, while the other suggests she is guilty of an
elaborate ploy to entrap the eligible earl. Nevertheless, they take her in and
look after her, although Charles is in two minds.
My current book just launched features another earl who is
thrown from his curricle and injured. Widow Chloe takes him in but when he
wakes his memory is missing. In this scenario, his identity is known as he has
a groom with him, but Lance has no idea who he is and the story revolves around
his mistaking Chloe for his lost love, Clarissa.
The working out of an amnesia plot follows the same pattern
as any other Regency story. Boy meets girl. Attraction is followed by
complications which, when resolved, result in the happily ever after – or at
least a hope of it. The interesting bit comes in how much we can develop the
symptoms and progress of the condition and how much that influences the story.
An amnesiac, by definition, has an impaired memory. We are
not talking here of the distressing condition of the gradual onset of dementia
which we know is not going to go away. For the purposes of romance, that would
be impossible. But a knock on the head can produce a more immediately severe
condition that is, we hope, temporary.
The trick lies in how much memory our amnesiac discovers
through the story. How much of the mystery do we choose to reveal, piece by
piece? What triggers can we use to build even a vague picture of this person’s
past, and indeed of their character? The opportunities are legion and the
development of the story depends upon those choices.
You can, for example, change a man’s whole character, as
demonstrated by Harrison Ford in the film “Regarding Henry” where the hero
survives a bullet and becomes a completely different individual, warmer and
loathing what he learns of the man he used to be.
With Widow in Mistletoe, a dream-induced memory of Clarissa
pitches Lance into the first and major complication since Chloe resembles her.
He also begins to discover an arrogant attitude he had as a lord that he now
deprecates. His confusions abound and he begins to fear for his reason. Chloe
becomes the only stable point in his new existence.
I must say that as I was writing the story, I didn’t work
this out ahead. It grew in the writing. Logic dictated that in a person who
still has their faculties, the loss of memory must be distressing – unlike with
dementia where often the victim does not realise they even have the condition.
This presented scope for plenty of drama and the story became quite dark in
places. It’s hardly gothic, but the psychological disturbance creates that
darkness.
I wonder if this is the magnet that drives authors to the
trope? The fascination with the psychological aspects of the condition and how
that affects the victim and the people around them has so many possible
permutations that it’s unlikely any one story is repeated elsewhere.
Nevertheless, I think it’s a risky trope. Easy to overplay
or underplay it. For example, what of the convenient second accident that
miraculously recovers the memory lock, stock and barrel? I suspect any amnesiac
will retain hidden pockets that prove elusive. Far more believable to allow
snippets to appear here and there and perhaps widen as familiar territory helps
to jog them into more coherent memories.
I left my hero incomplete, I’m afraid, but at least with
sufficient recognition to know who he was really in love with!
Elizabeth Bailey
An overturned curricle
creates a vanished memory. When Chloe takes in the injured lord, she puts her
heart in danger. Dare she hope Lance may realise she is not his dead betrothed
and learn to love her for herself?
