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mermaidsirennikita · 1 year ago

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Please, give us some loser heroes

Hahaha gladly

(this got long)

I mean, I've gotta say, one of the loseriest heroes I've read recently is Envy from Throne of the Fallen by Kerri Maniscalco. I've said it before and I'll say it again--if you're looking for a fantasy romance to try, especially if you normally read historicals, this is it (and TotF does stand alone if you want to try it first versus the trilogy that comes before it).

Envy is like, on a quest to save his court, and he's ostensibly a Prince of Hell and therefore very strong and full of supernatural gifts but like... He spends so much of this book falling flat on his face, ESPECIALLY with his heroine Camilla, who is Extremely Unimpressed. (There's a moment wherein he has to do something amazing to save his own life, and she's genuinely like assuming he's just going to die lmao.) His brothers randomly show up to dunk on him throughout the book. Not even for like, plot, just to be like "Sooooo have you seduced her yet? No? Shocker." He does things he thinks are so cool and then is like "Oh God immediate regret mistake".

*love him*

Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed by Anna Campbell is a recent read wherein the hero presents himself as very suave and confident, and he's like "I SHALL KEEP YOU HERE FOR SEVEN DAYS AND SEDUCE YOU, MY INNOCENT MUAHAHAHA" before being like "nooooo I have harmed the innocent, I AM A WORM!!!" when the heroine shows pitches an emotional fit at him.

Allegreto in Shadowheart by Laura Kinsale is another "muahahahahaha" hero, and he is like, legitimately dangerous and threatening (TW: noncon in the first encounter) but once the heroine, Elena, gets her hooks in him... He is.... a sad little baby. A sad little baby who doesn't think he can go to church because he's done too many murders and is going to hell. BUT HE'S COOL WITH THAT. He's totally cool with that.... he's cool.... Arguably even more of a loser if you read For My Lady's Heart first, which is set ten years earlier and features another couple (the hero is less of a loser but still has embarrassing moments like being visibly aroused in front of the heroine and getting called out on it by her in front of SEVERAL priests, and also thinking this heroine is his perfect lady who he's pledged to for thirteen years only to meet her for real and be like "oh my god she's kind of EVIL??? My life has been devoted to a VILLAINESS???? I'm so STUPID") and also a teenage Allegreto who does absolutely RIDICULOUS things like carry a plague apple around because he's scared of plague, and like, hold the hero's hand during sleep because he thinks the hero will ward off plague, and pretend to be A CASTRATO for an ELABORATE SCHEME which he HONESTLY DID NOT HAVE TO DO.

A Rose at Midnight by Anne Stuart (TW: a lot of dubcon between the hero and heroine at first, noncon in the heroine's past not with the hero) has another "I am such a villain, my lady!!!" hero who is actually a massive ball of guilt and angst. The first time they sleep together she actually secretly enjoys it and hates herself for it, but she didn't Get All The Way There and he walks away like "I'M SO EMBARRASSING I CAN'T DO ANYTHING RIGHT" and like kicking rocks while pretending to be very above it.

Mafia Madman by Mila Finelli. Enzo d'Agostino's master plan is to kidnap the heroine by blowing up a bar for REVENGE and everyone around him is like "honestly your master plan... doesn't even make a lot of sense" even though it TOTALLY makes sense, y'all just DON'T GET IT. He then proceeds to get schooled by the heroine at every opportunity and become her dog (literally there's a bonus epilogue where she's gone for like 30 seconds and his brothers are like "look at what she did to him, he used to be a perfectly good mafia don, now he has anxiety").

Charlotte and The Seductive Spymaster by Grace Callaway has the titular spymaster who faked his death to keep his wife safe and IMMEDIATELY regretted it, returning from the dead twelve years later and getting mad that she's flirting with another man. So he like. THROWS ROCKS AT THE OTHER MAN??? FROM A SECRET HIDING PLACE? Embarrassing behavior. He also faints at one point. Like, it made sense, but I still laughed my ass off. And his wife is super competent, so she's constantly like "... really?"

Seduce Me at Sunrise by Lisa Kleypas has Kev Merripen, who is extremely competent on paper because he's literally the only person in that series who has a real job, but emotionally... the boy ain't right. He literally thinks that if he sleeps with Win ONCE she'll get pregnant and die. He like, hides in the background. Married by Morning also has an extremely losery moment from Leo Hathaway in which he basically does that thing from that meme where he trips and drops all of his obsessive things about the heroine, and the obsessive things are tons of drawings he did of her wearing nothing but her glasses. And she's like ".... you sure have an active imagination". Honestly, Harry from Tempt Me at Twilight also has his share of cringe, like the time he thought he was super hurting Poppy during her first time, so he just jumped off her and hated himself for days and ran away and she had to literally hunt him down and go "I'm FINE now FINISH IT".

Hart Mackenzie from The Duke's Perfect Wife, I will always maintain, is a massive loser who pretend to be extremely competent. Like, he's all "Eleanor, as you know, we did it three times when we were engaged" and she's like "yes.... like a decade ago Hart... I'm not.... impressed". He's being blackmailed by a stranger who sent Eleanor (a reporter) nude photos he took years ago and he's like ".... well those certainly are photos I took Eleanor". He gets all growly at her and she boops his nose. It's pathetic.

Dreams of a Dark Warrior by Kresley Cole, aka "he's constantly being reincarnated after sleeping with the heroine, like they hook up and then he just dies half an hour later in what sound like frankly increasingly comical death scenes, and she's immortal so she finally just gives up on even kissing him"... One of the legitimately saddest heroes I've ever read, lol. He's been brainwashed into hating immortals (with some solid reasons tbf) so he's like, the head torturer in this prison of immortals (TW, it's kinda intense) and he HAAAATES the heroine and she's DETERMINED to kiss him to kill him this time because she HAAAATES him. But like. His body count is like 1.5 because he's never actually really been interested in anyone because, though he doesn't know it because he doesn't remember, his soul only wants HER. So he meets her and is very *boing* about her and HATES it, and they literally have a fight in his office where he ends up on top of her and she's like "... I can feel EXACTLY how into this you are" and he's like !!!!!!!!!! He's just increasingly confused.

Also, this leads very nicely into Lothaire, where the big bad of the series is revealed to be a frankly loony tunes nightmare who's like "honestly I'm only 50% lucid at any given time". And he does a lot of puzzles in his spare time. And he wears trenchcoats because he thinks it looks cool (it doesn't). And he's constantly getting OWNED by a 24 year old psych major dropout. Like, she'll just perfectly diagnose him and he goes "... well you got me there". At one point, she hops on it with their clothes on (because he's trying to menacingly be like "YOU HAVE NO CHOICE" but it was actually exactly what she wanted him to do) and he has an Incident in his jeans, and she later finds him in the shower and throws said jeans at him like "NEXT TIME YOU TRY TO BE ALL HIGH AND MIGHTY REMEMBER WHAT I MADE YOU DO LOSER". Sad of him.

Embry Moore in Sierra Simone's New Camelot trilogy falls in love with Ash when he's literally stepping on him. And it's honestly just a string of embarrassments after that.

The Master by Kresley Cole (Kresley kinda specializes in Powerful Losers) features a billionaire Russian mafia hero shivering in the rain while the heroine takes an important test texting her like "I hope you do well :D!" because he's trying to get on her good side again lmao I was frankly embarrassed on his behalf

A Demon's Guide to Wooing a Witch by Sarah Hawley features the demonic big bad of the last book coming back with AMNESIA and the heroine rescues him from getting beaten up in like, the first chapter. And he's all "wooooow she's so strong *_*"

Hugo and The Maiden by S.M. LaViolette has a sex worker hero who's all "I'M JADED, I CARE FOR NOTHING BUT MYSELF" getting shipwrecked while being transported on a tiny island, and he gets picked up by a giant, sweet guy who carries him like a baby (while he angrily protests) to this makeshift hospital where the heroine, a vicar's uptight, bossy daughter berates him, and it's like all downhill for his dignity from there.

We cannot forget my beloved Duke of Lockwood from The Duke Gets Even, who spends three books getting swerved or cucked or both, and finally admits he's into Nellie and is all "we shall begin a no strings affair" only to like, immediately fall in love with her. And the rest of the book is her being like "we aren't going to get married Lockwood" and he's all "but whyyyy" and she's like "because you literally said this was a no strings affair which is the only reason why I agreed to it. (Him: :(.) He's also completely broke and thinks that he, as a duke, has sway in America, and there's an entire scene where Teddy Roosevelt himself is like "I like you but I can't help you because you're actually just a broke loser here" after he tries to boss up.

Wynter from C.L. Wilson 's The Winter King is all, "I'm a conqueror, I'm so dangerous, if you don't give me a child within a year I'll leave you on a glacier to die" only for everyone in his employ to be like "girl the glacier thing is actually bullshit". He's actually a puppy. The heroine discovers that he makes sad little ice sculptures of his dead family because he's so lonely. I was like "aww" but also "Jesus dude go outside".

The Duke Gets Desperate features a duke who's an art history major, basically, and like all art history majors (I say as one) he has no applicable life skills and his estate is going under. (I LOVE a broke aristo.) So when the heroine shows up having also inherited the estate and is like "we're going to charge people for tours of the castle to make sure we can pay for it" he's all "GAAAAAASP MADAME DUKES DO NOT HAVE TOURS OF CASTLES DUKES ARE DIGNIFIED AND BROKE!!"

Mercy by Sara Cate features a hero who was literally a cheater in a previous book, a rotten SCOUNDREL finding out that what he really needs to straighten up is to be humiliated and dominated by an older woman (ideally, his dad's close friend).

The Queer Principles of Kit Webb by Cat Sebastian has former highwayman and local sad man and cafe owner Kit begin tutoring dandy swordsman Percy on how to like, rob people. But Kit is ridiculously attracted to Percy, something Percy clocks immediately by being like "this loser is looking at my ankles" and whenever Percy Does Something to Kit Kit is like "THANK YOU OMG".

Oh, speaking of, Shane in Heated Rivalry is like, a perfect athlete and also a massive dork. He's also a "thank you omg that was amazing" guy and then is immediately like "I SAID THANK YOU???" At one point when he and Ilya do it for the first time his inner monologue is like "what if we get stuck together and the fire department has to come and pull us apart and EVERYONE WILL KNOW". A human ball of anxiety. Constantly embarrassed by himself. Ilya is more confident and smooth but also has some losery moments, like when they're camming for each other and he looks at Shane after and says in Russian "I'm so in love and it's horrible" lmao.

Lol Jamison from Tracey Livesay's American Royalty is notably pathetic because he's like, a frosty uptight British prince, and as soon as he sees the heroine he immediately becomes a slobbering ridiculous mess. He manages to keep up the frosty prince act for approx. five minutes.

Managed by Kristen Callihan. Scottie is so in control and prickly and TOGETHER... except for the scene where he fishes her dirty laundry out in the bathroom and does Unspeakable Things and then hand washes it and hides it under the mattress for Later and she FINDS IT.

Hotel of Secrets by Diana Biller has a virginal hero who believes he must be celibate to be an amazing operative, and he's great at the operative stuff, but he's soooo into the heroine. At one point there's a scene where she's bandaging him and she touches his ribs and he's like "pls stop" and she's all "why" and then Looks Down and goes "oh". Humiliating stuff!

Lush Money by Angelina M. Lopez has a hero who gets caught by the paparazzi when he's servicing the heroine on his knees in a car. Very sad for his dignity.

#i mean there are more #i guess i just really like men being humiliated #romance novel blogging #book recs #romance novels #declan chase (DC!) is really peak humiliation and he deserves it #when he's like...#sitting on a chair while regin sits in a bathtub talking about how they could live out this life #and he's like *I literally can't handle this* shifting around in the chair #getting put in Torturer Detention bc he 'put his had in the cookie jar'#(she is the cookie jar)

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