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Muddying the path of true love: Love triangles

Muddying the path of true love: Love triangles

Muddying the path of true love: Love triangles

The course of true love never did run smooth’ – so wrote Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I think that no single axiom is more explored in romantic fiction! A romance story that unfolds simply, without a hiccup, is delightful, but uninteresting in literary terms. So authors create a set of obstacles to throw, with Machiavellian intent, into the path of the lovers. All sorts of obstacles exist, from social pressures to physical separation, illness to ideological differences, but perhaps the most classic and the most compelling is the introduction of The Other Woman or The Other Man.

Enter the love triangle, with its many variables, the most popularly used of which are:

  • Characters B and C love Character A, and Character A loves Character B only. I call this the One-Left-Out Triangle.
  • Characters B and C love Character A, and Character A is torn between Characters A and B. I call this the Torn Triangle.

In my novels, I like to really challenge my protagonists and test the strength of their love. That is why I often incorporate love triangles for both the hero and the heroine.

In Burning Embers, I incorporate three.Rafeis in love with Coral, but two other women, the bewitching Morgana and Cybil, Coral’s stepmother, are vying for his attention. Coral, meanwhile, is in love with Rafe, but her adulterous ex-fiancé eyes her with intent. The result looks something like this:

In The Echoes of Love, Paolo is in love with Venetia, but his charge, the wild young woman Allegra, is passionately possessive of him. Meanwhile, the heroine, Venetia, is falling in love with Paolo, but another man, Count Umberto, covets her.

In these books I stick to One-Left-Out triangles, but in the upcoming book (news on that one soon!) I develop a Torn Triangle, and all the confusion and longing that creates.

I don’t include love triangles superficially in my writing, as a means to throw up a quick and easily resolved issue in the story. The human heart is so deeply complex and riddled with conflicting emotion that I use love triangles to force the protagonists to really explore themselves and their true desires.

I also like the drama and high emotion they bring to the narrative. In The Echoes of Love, the Count and Paolo are friends, which places Venetia in an impossible situation – how can she tell Paolo of the Count’s lecherous advances on her? And then there is Allegra, dangerous in her desperation to keep hold of Paolo – so desperate she will resort to violent destruction. In Burning Embers, Cybil is manipulative and cunning, and determined to keep Rafe from Coral.And as for the sultry dancer, Morgana – how can the unworldly Coral stand firm in the face of this woman who tells her that Coral is merely a dream and that she is the reality to which Rafe must cling in order to survive?

Ultimately, both novels are the stories of lovers finding the courage to trust each other and to let go of their pasts – but they are also stories of people struggling against people, of love vanquishing envy and possessiveness. The battle is on, and the stakes are high: the winner attains the happy ever after.

And what of The Other Men, Dale and Umberto, and The Other Women, Cybil and Morgana and Allegra? Well, the all-powerful author has the means to leave those who play unfairly, those who are selfish and manipulative and would destroy the happiness of those they purport to love, to reap the effects of karma. But if any should redeem themselves, acquiesce and know that when you love someone, sometimes all you can do is set that person free – then, perhaps, that person deserves their own happy-ever-after. And I’ve a mind, one day, to write that story. About whom? Well, you’ll have to read the books and then decide…

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