Love Triangles

Love triangles are popular device that basically involves a Romance plot (or, in some cases, a Hapless Love plot) which is complicated by a third character who seeks to misdirect the affections of one of the parties. Generally, this person is a rival who also seeks the hand of the fair maid, or the affections of the young man.

There are three basic rivalry love triangles: the Epic Romance, which is complicated by the presence of the Villain (Beren and Luthien, for example); the Romantic Comedy, which relies on the Villain's Lieutenant; or the Romance of Errors, in which the rival is the Hero's Sidekick.

In the first case, the hero will face tough odds, and may be at serious risk of losing the Lover, either to death, or into the arms of the Villain (or both; slight reworkings of the Persephone tale in which Persephone is provided with a Princely lover to wrest her from the seductive arms of Pluto, are not uncommon.) Certainly, a rescue will be necessary: Wesley stumbling in at the last moment to rescue Princess Buttercup from Prince Humperdink, or the maid in “East O' the Moon, West O' the Sun” riding the North Wind to the ends of the earth to defeat the Troll Princess.

If, on the other hand, the Villain's Lieutenant is involved, rescue will probably not be called for. The hero need merely show up, reveal him or herself, romance the Lover, and trust that they will make the right choice. Jane Austen's comic use of competing suitors is an example of this formula, as is the mad wife in Jane Eyre.

Finally, there is the Romance of Errors: two friends are both in love with the same girl, they both romance her (or possibly they conspire together to romance her), and at the decisive moment one of them gallantly withdraws from the contest. This can be comic (perhaps they were both helping one another to win the girl of their dreams, and only at the last moment do they realize that it is the same girl...perhaps fairies have been dropping the juice of love-stricken flowers into the eyes of sleeping maids and youths...), but it can also be touchingly tragic (Sidney Carton at the gallows, or Cyrano de Bergerac penning lover letters for his rival).

Of course, there are other possibilities; instead of providing a rival for the Hero to defeat, we could provide a rival for the Hero's own affections. The most sinister possibility is to include the Nemesis. This is the woman who poses the most serious risk to the Romance because she is often able to actually turn the heart of the Hero away from his True Love, and towards his own destruction. These are the Sirens singing from the rocks to prevent Ulysses from getting home to Penelope, women so powerfully seductive that he cannot overcome their lures by his own strength. If a light-weight, but more sympathetic villainess is desired, the Ball & Chain can be used instead; because the Hero is bound to her in some way, he will generally not be able to escape her unaided, but her hold on the Hero will tend to be one of obligation more than of desire -- Calypso, keeping Ulysses on her island while he looks to sea and dreams of his wife. Finally, there is the possibility of a truly sympathetic, tragic rival: the Hapless Lover. This is a woman who has no chance of wrenching the Hero away from the Lover, but whose love and devotion for him is touching none the less: Eowyn pining for Aragorn, or Eponine giving her life to save Marius (in the musical – in the book, Eponine is a sinister Nemesis character who jealously lures Marius to his near-death on the barricades.)

Out of these basic love-triangle forms it is possible to create very sophisticated love-polygons. Gotterdamerung, for example, is the story of two intertwining, mirror-image triangles masterminded by the evil Hagen: Siegfried, the Hero, is in love with Brunhilde, the Lover, but their love is complicated by his Nemesis, Gutrune, who is able to bewitch Siegfried into falling in love with her and forgetting his true love. Crossed with this is the story from Brunhilde's perspective; she, the Heroine, is in love with Siegfried, the Lover, but she has been carried off, raped, and forced to marry Gunther, her Nemesis, instead. The perfect symmetry of these Tragic archetypal love-triangles leads to total destruction; “The Twilight of the Gods.”

On a lighter note, A Midsummer Night's Dream is basically a romp through an ever shifting kaleidoscope of triangles. With the help of Puck's magical interference, Shakespeare seems to be playing around with all the possible variations that he can think of; the moment the audience has an idea of what the triangles are, he breaks the relationships, shifts the lines, and the plot goes off on another farcical tangent.

For most stories, however, the simpler, three-pointed love triangle will do. Whether it is used as the foundation for the plot of a Romance, or merely as the form of a romantic Sub-plot, it is a valuable tool to have in one's narrative tool-kit.

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