Ugh! I can empathise with the authors and publishers though. It seems axiomatic now that every female character must have significant agency, which clearly clashes with the reality of far too much of History. Perhaps a combination of personal values and an eye to commercial realities informs the "C21 in lace" style of historical fiction. The inclusion of modern mores may even be said to increse the "fiction" component"

As for Orczy's avoiding this trend, I wonder if her very haute background helped. If her own family fled from a possible revolution less than 100 years after the one she wrote about, her aristocratic family may well have filled her childhood with stories that gave her the atmosphere of the times she later wrote about.