by Kate

Last week, the internet went absolutely nuts over one single photo.

This photo:

And in between all the joy and the pleasure were voices getting progressively louder asking why? Why was everyone so happy? Why did this pregnancy matter to anyone except the family? Why were we talking about a celebrity like she was a goddess?

Barring all arguments contradicting Beyonce’s goddess-status (we at Escape definitely fall on the Goddess side), the answer to all those questions is already well known to romance readers. It’s why so many epilogues feature the happy couple adding an extra member to their family (either in progress or in actuality). It’s why the infertility trope is so popular, especially in historicals, when due to a lack of medical insight, a miracle baby really does feel like a miracle.

Babies are new beginnings. They are hope and innocence and the promise of a future. And when represented in romance fiction, they are a tangible representation of an act of love, a representation of two people who have committed to each other in the present and going forward. They are a vessel of that love and commitment, a visual symbol that the love between the couple will endure beyond their own lifetimes. In short, babies are love.

Of course, babies aren’t the only way of representing this vow, but they are a very poignant illustration.

There’s a reason that Beyonce’s pregnancy felt so monumental: because in these turbulent times, the world needed some hope. And she gave it to us.