A Fine Romance
Over on Teach Me Tonight, the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (nicknamed “Jasper” or “Aspire”, depending on how one wants to play with initials) is holding a fundraiser for its fledgling program by asking folks to donate $2 dollars in honor of their favorite romantic couple, either fictional or real. Fictional is easy, but the real got me thinking about historical couples, and how very hard it is to pin down those which one might consider a true romance.
As Tracy has discussed so articulately on this site, a romance needn’t run smooth to be true. Some of the most compelling romances in fiction are those with a distinctly bumpy trajectory, like Harriet and Lord Peter in the Dorothy Sayers books. But so many of the romances in history land somewhere beyond bumpy. Explosive might be a better term, as in jumping on a mine and scattering the resulting pieces over a large area of territory. Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine come to mind. Their initial passion was certainly legendary, but the corrosive aftermath shaped the fate of more than one kingdom. In the comments on Teach Me Tonight, someone put in a vote for Abelard and Heloise. While they have become a byword for true love, having the one castrated and the other banished to a nunnery is generally not deemed a desirable end to a romantic attachment.
Part of the problem for history, as opposed to fiction, may simply be that we get to see too much. Instead of being allowed to imagine the happily ever after, we have the sometimes unhappy sequels arrayed before us, casting the unhappy light of hindsight on what might have looked properly fairy tale-like if cut off at the appropriate moment. In my last book, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine, two of my modern characters, a history grad student and her boyfriend, have a debate on this topic:
Another problem may be that the bias of recorded history tends towards the annals of the great. As more than one doomed Shakespearean king has informed us, the head that wears the crown seldom lies easy. While it is possible to ferret out the odd royal love story (Victoria and Albert, Charles I and Henrietta Maria), those marriages that were happy for the principles were often viewed as bad for the kingdom. Henrietta Maria’s influence on Charles has often been cited as one of the causes of the English Civil War and Victoria was roundly criticized for her excessive mourning of Albert, to the detriment of state affairs. It needn't be a crown. The same caveats apply to ducal coronets, baronial bonnets, and other exalted chapeaux. Just look at the crazy career of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.
Below the level of the haut ton, one does find fragmentary evidence of happy couples-- the seventeenth century diary of Ralph Josselin records a warm and happy marriage between the diarist and his wife—but it tends to be the more glamorous and disastrous pairings that stick in the popular imagination, the Napoleons and Josephines of the world, dramatic and doomed.
Having wandered rather away from the point, who are your favorite historical couples? Can one have "romance" in the historical context, or is it a misplaced concept?
As Tracy has discussed so articulately on this site, a romance needn’t run smooth to be true. Some of the most compelling romances in fiction are those with a distinctly bumpy trajectory, like Harriet and Lord Peter in the Dorothy Sayers books. But so many of the romances in history land somewhere beyond bumpy. Explosive might be a better term, as in jumping on a mine and scattering the resulting pieces over a large area of territory. Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine come to mind. Their initial passion was certainly legendary, but the corrosive aftermath shaped the fate of more than one kingdom. In the comments on Teach Me Tonight, someone put in a vote for Abelard and Heloise. While they have become a byword for true love, having the one castrated and the other banished to a nunnery is generally not deemed a desirable end to a romantic attachment.
Part of the problem for history, as opposed to fiction, may simply be that we get to see too much. Instead of being allowed to imagine the happily ever after, we have the sometimes unhappy sequels arrayed before us, casting the unhappy light of hindsight on what might have looked properly fairy tale-like if cut off at the appropriate moment. In my last book, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine, two of my modern characters, a history grad student and her boyfriend, have a debate on this topic:
“They lived and loved and died,” said Colin briskly. “They lost money, they died in wars, they suffered broken hearts. It isn’t all trumpets and glory.”
“I know, I know… I think that’s why one sees more happily ever afters in fiction than biographies. It’s not that the two trajectories are necessarily so different, but in fiction you can take the moment when everyone is happy and just clip off the thread of the narrative there, right at that trumpets and glory moment.”
“Even in fiction, isn’t it more interesting when you look at the whole picture, with the bad as well as the good?” argued Colin. “I’d rather know the whole story, even if it ends on a low note.”
“Warts and all?” I said, quoting the famous phrase about Cromwell. “Perhaps. It may be more interesting. But sometimes it’s less satisfying.”
Every now and then, you just need to believe that everything can be frozen in that one moment where everything is going right.
Another problem may be that the bias of recorded history tends towards the annals of the great. As more than one doomed Shakespearean king has informed us, the head that wears the crown seldom lies easy. While it is possible to ferret out the odd royal love story (Victoria and Albert, Charles I and Henrietta Maria), those marriages that were happy for the principles were often viewed as bad for the kingdom. Henrietta Maria’s influence on Charles has often been cited as one of the causes of the English Civil War and Victoria was roundly criticized for her excessive mourning of Albert, to the detriment of state affairs. It needn't be a crown. The same caveats apply to ducal coronets, baronial bonnets, and other exalted chapeaux. Just look at the crazy career of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.
Below the level of the haut ton, one does find fragmentary evidence of happy couples-- the seventeenth century diary of Ralph Josselin records a warm and happy marriage between the diarist and his wife—but it tends to be the more glamorous and disastrous pairings that stick in the popular imagination, the Napoleons and Josephines of the world, dramatic and doomed.
Having wandered rather away from the point, who are your favorite historical couples? Can one have "romance" in the historical context, or is it a misplaced concept?
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