I'd also highly recommend giving the author's note at the back of this book a read. But honestly, all my concerns about this were wiped away by the tone of the book itself and the final note. It's fair to critique the book's fundamental erasure of the history of marginalization and colonialism after all, the very idea of this world does erase the hardships of marginalized people. This book has a fundamental sense of hope to it, a fundamental wish for a better world. And yes, it definitely would never have happened, but it was fucking awesome to think about the world if it had - to wish for a world without the legacy of decades of systematic oppression and scientific racism. In summary: it's a book about a world in which colonialism ended before its true impact could set in, a world in which brown people and disabled people and queer people don't have to fight for our very right to breathe. In a summer of high-society debutante balls, politically charged tea parties, and romantic country dances, Margaret, Helena, and August discover they share an unusual bond and maybe a one in a million chance to have what they want and to change the world in the process -just like the first Queen Victoria. In Toronto, she meets Helena Marcus, daughter of one of the empire's greatest placement geneticists, and August Callaghan, the heir apparent to a powerful shipping firm currently besieged by American pirates.

The imperial practice of genetically arranged matchmaking will soon guide Margaret into a politically advantageous marriage like her mother before her, but before she does her duty, she'll have one summer incognito in a far corner of empire.

Victoria-Margaret is the crown princess of the empire, a direct descendant of Victoria I, the queen who changed the course of history two centuries earlier. Set in a near-future world where the British Empire was preserved, not by the cost of blood and theft but by effort of repatriation and promises kept, That Inevitable Victorian Thing is a novel of love, duty, and the small moments that can change people and the world.

That inevitable victorian thing