Scotland and its place in Romancelandia

Scotland has long been a place connected to myth and legend, so I can see why so many romance authors are drawn to it. Much like our distant cousin Ireland, Scotland can seem like somewhere pulled from the imagination, with dramatic landscape, harrowing history, and architecture so old it looks like it was made to be part of another world. 

But the problem with this viewpoint is that Scotland is very much a place where people live now. People who may not conform to the traditional stereotype of being red haired, pale skinned and blue eyed. People who don’t have a crumbling castle that needs repaired, a secret fortune, or a house in the wind swept wilds of the Highlands. Instead we are a people who have two languages hanging on for dear life (Gaelic and Scots). One could argue that in some regions Scots is so removed from its origin it devolved into slang. 

I recently moved back to my hometown of Edinburgh, a place so transparently desperate for the tourist pound that it’s heart breaking. The Old Town has the lowest amount of permanent occupation of all time, even though Edinburgh’s wider population has exploded. And it’s all for a country that doesn’t actually exist. I know we could say that of any place. The Madrid I visit as a tourist isn’t the same as the one for people who live there, but there’s a real devaluing of Scottish people’s lives in favour of an imagined world, and honestly, it does a disservice to us all.

Sometimes I feel like Scotland becomes a stand-in in romance media. A stand-in for an imagined world, quaint and frozen in time. It’s not the most diverse place in the world, but the second most spoken language is Polish, followed by Chinese and then Urdu. Scotland is a place that’s growing and changing, and this is rarely reflected in romance books - or even the wider romance ecosystem. Instead we’re shown another burly man in tartan - which is basically a 19th century fever dream by Walter Scott - and expected to believe that’s how everyone lived during then and now. 

Scotland is a real place with a life beyond tartan and highlanders. A place that propped up the British Empire, a place devastated by AIDS in the 1980s and 90s, a place where black and brown people have lived for centuries. 

So let's try and do better, let’s work together in romancelandia to break the strange mould that the country has been forced into. And maybe ask ourselves why when we don’t want to.