Harriet Deborah Vane, later Lady Peter Wimsey, is a fictional character in the works of British writer Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) and the sequels by Jill Paton Walsh.
The detective falls in love with her and proposes marriage, but she refuses to begin a relationship with him, traumatised as she is by her dead lover's treatment of her and her recent ordeal.
She begins a relationship with Philip Boyes, a more literary but far less successful writer who professes not to believe in marriage, and she agrees to live with him without marrying.
Wimsey continues to pursue her romantically, but Harriet repeatedly declines marriage on the principle that gratitude is not a good basis for it.
The press is naturally interested; Wimsey hastens to the scene, after receiving a tip from a journalist friend, to help shield Harriet from suspicion.
Her cover is research into Sheridan Le Fanu (in the books spelled Lefanu), an Anglo-Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels of the 19th century.
Thrones, Dominations, a novel abandoned by Sayers and finished by Jill Paton Walsh, is set in and around London, shortly after Wimsey and Vane return from their honeymoon.
[3] Chronologically between the two are The Wimsey Papers, a series of epistolary articles Sayers wrote for The Spectator at the beginning of World War II.
Jill Paton Walsh referenced The Wimsey Papers in writing A Presumption of Death, set at the beginning of the Second World War, in which Harriet takes a leading role.
Vane's relationship with Boyes has many similarities with Sayers' love affair (1921–1922) with the author John Cournos (1881–1966), a Russian-born American Jew.