A couple of other threads have been discussing the swashbuckling and Ruritanian romance genres. It reminded me that a few years ago I picked up one of those cinder-block hardcovers that decorate the front tables in Barnes & Noble stores:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-t...ous/1123908064
It provides a nice survey of the field. At least the list of authors might be helpful. Here's the contents:
The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope
How the Brigadier Bore Himself at Waterloo by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Captain Moratti's Last Affair by Sidney Levettt-Yeats
How Jean-Pierre Met the Scarlet Pimpernel By Baroness Orczy
The Adventures of a Night by John Bloundelle-Burton
The Story of Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmund Rastand and Anne O'Hagan
Crillon's Stake by Stanley J. Weyman
The Corsican Brothers by Alexandre Dumas
English Steel and Spanish Passion by Drake Williams and Warren Geiger
Alamut by Harold Lamb
The Plot of Signor Salvi by Marion Polk Angellotti
Scourge of the Main by James Perley Hughes
The Substitute Sword by "Alexander Blade"
Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
The novels they have chosen to book-end this tome are instructive. Opening with Zenda lays claim to the Ruritanian throne. I mean, it's where Ruritania was invented!
And winding up with Captain Blood, the Platonic ideal pirate story, anchors us in the Caribbean. Sabatini was a genius. In this novel he squarely faces the fact that pirates were merciless bandits, and finds a way to make one the epitome of honor.
It seems clear that the term "swashbuckling" will have to stretch to cover a cluster of similar genres, with very different flavors.