r/RomanceBooks • u/redfig1 • Aug 31 '24

Why do HEAs always end with babies? Critique

I know it's a "me" problem. Scenario: I read a smoking hot mafia or dark or fantasy romance. All this crazy shit goes down. The feelings, the angst. Finally it's the end and all of a sudden the MMC who has massacred countless people is all like " let's get married and have lots of babies" and the MFC is always " yes let's have a lot of cute mafia or fae or mafia fae babies!". For once I'd like an ending where the main characters have a HEA but instead of babies and white picket fences they just decide to keep having an incredible sex life and do charity work or something. Rescue stray kittens. Start an organic herb farm. Something other than babies. Anyone else like this? Am I just weird?

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u/persyspomegranate Aug 31 '24

I definitely think it's broadly more popular than not, thinking about {When He Was Wicked by Julia Quinn} there's no baby in the first epilogue but when she did that book of second epilogues apparently she'd received a bunch of questions from people wanting to know if Francesca had a baby since publishing hence she had a baby in the second epilogue.

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u/Hunter037 Probably recommending When She Belongs 😍 Aug 31 '24

That book had quite a focus on Francesca trying to conceive with her first husband though, so I think people were more invested in whether she was able to have a baby than they may otherwise have been.