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Vice-Fearless Leader, listing her top ten fictional crushes a year ago, mentioned the Duke of Avon from These Old Shades. Now I see why. Avon (and how Blakes 7 resonant *that* name is) is a shoujo manga character, and not just the kewl/ shibui oyaji Heyer probably intended him as. (cf Yakumo Tatsu) No no; not when he minces down the street in heels *and* is a master swordsman. This is the scintillatingly dangerous, brilliantly debauched, hopelessly fascinating effeminate guy who dazzles and/or rapes the younger male protagonist as per genre. (Examples never come when you want them, because all I can think of is Berg Katse.)

So could we can these tedious and unconvincing references to the Duke's female liaisons? They're unnecessary and out of character.

(No, I know we can't, not when Heyer was writing. But she's clearly going to draw out the Duke's obscure intentions in re his (safely aged up) page as long as she can get away with it. Note that no one really believes Leon is actually 19. He's obviously a precocious 15-year-old bishie.)

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Hmmm, Bancoran. But Ban's irresistibility is half-gag, as in fact all of P! is half-gag. Ban has a bishounen killing eye! and all the bishounen blush and faint and go pit-a-pat when Ban looks at them. (Also I think his eyelids are that colour naturally. No really.)

Effeminate isn't actually the word I want. This kind of character isn't an okama, but he isn't at all otoko rashii either. The metrosexual of the manga world. Maybe Higuri You has done a version? Oh alright-- dj Servis is the quintessence of that, and there are 'notes towards' even in the manga.

Fumi Yoshinaga's Gerard from Gerard and Jacques?

Superficially yes, but doesn't have the proper frisson. Unless there were grand reversals later on in the manga, Gerard is basically on the side of the angels, and the characters I'm thinking of aren't. Mad, bad, and dangerous to know, which is why they're irresistible. (Has Yoshinaga ever done a real animus character ever? It seems so not her style.)

Nope. She hasn't. As far as I know.

I love Heyer, in general. Don't know what posessed me to dump all of them one year during spring cleaning, years and years ago. Ah well.

But *charming* MB&DTK. Seductive long-haired and seme, or else aged-up Rika might count. (But Motoni's whole approach is wrong. This character is Jungian female fantasy of the sort that sometimes shows up in straight shoujo, and no one in Rika is that.) What certain fanwriters did with movie Lucius Malfoy, or somebody's demon with long fingernails, or Utena's Akio on a less magnificent scale.

(shrug) It's bishounen land. Motohashi Keiko of Third Reich fame does it as well.

Oh dear, I'm really not sure that one should reread This Old Shade after a certain age. I have reread any number of Heyer in recent years, but have stayed away from this one.

But let me think... You're right that it's a Jungian female fantasy, once it shows up in a yaoi-ish universe it losses its frisson. It has to stay in the shoujo universe. Like... arghh, the name escapes me, like that one-eyed character from one of your series. Not Servius, the other one. Starts with a A..

Not a reread, a first time. So I'm sure Avon won't work for me, or ought not to work for me, but I can view the chara clinically, and grouse that she doesn't do with him what I would do with him.

one-eyed character from one of your series

Ageha, from Basara. Whose mangaka puts him in some pretty yaoi-ish situations, only that because it's shoujo the result is (and is intended to be) distinctly yuck.