Why Are So Many Romances Set in the Regency Period?

I guess the snarky answer would be "because Austen and the Brontës"

Sort of. From the article:

> For the origins of the modern Regency romance, look to the works of Georgette Heyer. Starting in 1935, Heyer wrote over two dozen meticulously researched historical books, all set in Jane Austen’s era, with an obsessive focus on London’s tiny upper class. According to literary scholar Diana Wallace, it was the incredible popularity of Heyer’s historical novels that helped transform historical fiction into a more feminine space that continues to “centralise female subjectivity, desires and apprehensions to an unusual extent.”

Georgette Heyer was explicitly inspired by Austen, and presumably many of her readers were Austen fans hungry for more stories from the same era.

In a similar way we might say that Tolkien was the progenitor of a line of pulp fantasy novels, even though they have a significantly different character.

Sure, but I think you have to draw a line somewhere between proximal and ultimate inspirations; modern Regency romances are very like Heyer (albeit generally much more explicit) and rather unlike Austen.

We subdivide modern fantasy into 'epic', 'sword and sorcery', 'low', and so on, even though they have common ancestors.

so I expand:

but of course, this is not an answer; it's an explanation in the style of the surreal way in which I have chosen to make sense of the larger world around me.

however, who am I to chose how to make sense of the world? who am I to say that mytholgy-engineering has anything to do with the reason for the creation lots and lots of romances set in the british pre-victorian era?

in order to be taken seriously I must provide sources, backing, it is not enough to explain my thoughts cogently. I must show other ideas that support what I say. I must acquire a reputation and then, only then, I can say whatever I want.

But how does one gather a reputation such that whatever I say will be read mindfully and not just dismissed right out when I start to make reasoning leaps all around? the most direct way is to simply repeat what other people with a reputation have said; to preach to the choir.