Great Love Stories - your thoughts, please.

[fictional]

So I was chatting with hofnarr last night, and we got to talking about Great Fictional Love Stories. (The conversation went from my saying that I think I would enjoy meeting the kind of people who believe Dangerous Liasons to be a romantic comedy - (there's love, there's amusement - seems perfectly clear to me) and devolved into attempting to list Great love stories in book universes. (We're tripping over the plethora of them in film media, so that's excluded from my search).

What are the really seminal love stories you've read - the ones that stick out in your head, the ones that you read and thought - yes, this is Love with a capital L. They don't necessarily have to be the complete focus of the book, but they need enough time spent on them that they have a profound effect on you. [Example of something that doesn't count: Aragorn/Arwen in LotR - their love story, while taken as read, takes place solely in the appendix to RotK - and is not really explored at all in the body of the novel(s)].

I came up with surprisingly fewer than I thought, considering how much romance figures in most books, and how much I feel my way of looking at the world has been influenced by stories in print media. Here's my list so far:
Lyra & Will: His Dark Materials>
Eddie & Susannah: The Dark Tower
Faris & Tyrian: A College of Magics
Rhodry & Evandar & Dalla: Deverry Series




Richard & Alec: Swordspoint
Beatrice & Benedick: Much Ado About Nothing
Mario & Tom: The Catch-trap
Jehane bet Ishak & Ammar ibn Khairan & Roderigo Belmonte: The Lions of Al-Rassan
Elizabeth & Darcy: Pride & Prejudice
Henry II & Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Lion in Winter
Shadow & Laura: American Gods
ETA:
Eric & Shelly: The Crow
Nan & Kitty (or Nan & Florence, depending): Tipping the Velvet

I'm sure I've forgotten some, so this may get added to later.

Please comment, if you have some additions: I'd love to hear 'em.

Comments

[calloocallay.livejournal.com]

Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Can't believe I spaced them.

[calloocallay.livejournal.com]

It's because you're a bad person.

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

Mossy & Tangle, The Golden Key
Kay & Gerta, The Snow Queen
Ishmael & Queequeg, Moby Dick (ok, that may be stretching it)

Hm. Damnit, you're right. This is harder than I thought. More after I think about it.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Yes, especially since I forced myself to limit it to stories where the love is expressed, intentionally, by the author, rather then explored in my own imagination (because then it would be without bound - bc I am a slashy ho.)

Eeep on the Kay and Gerta. I have not read the Golden Key. Would I like it?

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

How you mean, eeep? Don't agree? Do fairy tales not count in the same way?

Yeah, I know, it's very hard to keep from slashing -- but I truly do think that the Ishmael/Queequeg relationship was about as canon as a man of Melville's time could possibly make it. "He pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married." And all that. But I can understand wanting to keep things even more explicit, or there'd be lots of messiness everywhere.

I love the Golden Key, but then, I discovered it one day in my bookshelf (still have no idea how it got there) at about the age of ten, and thought it was the purest, most wonderful description of deep and simple magic I'd read of up to that point. Not sure if I can have any sort of objective opinion about it. Ask Kate, once she reads it -- she'll know if it's something you might dig.

How about Leto and Jessica from Dune?

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, and I forgot about "Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg -- a cosy, loving pair." (from the same chapter)

I mean, come on. Dude.

P.S.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

You got me with your pesky textual evidence re: the Ishmael & Queequeg. It does indeed fall into my parameters.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Eeep = great choice.
I eep in joyous excitement, generally.

I might be more inclined to say Paul and Chani from Dune?
"Sihaya - water in the desert" is one of the things that came to my mind, when Kat (a very long time ago) told me about this list serve meme type thing asking people what love-names they used from fictional languages.

and also...

[(Anonymous)]

umm...was this specifically intended for me? might as well've been. so, in no particular order:

Janet & Thomas (Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean)
Alexander & Hephaistion & Bagoas (Fire From Heaven & Persian Boy, by Mary Renault)
Jane & Mr. Rochester (Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte)
Thomasina & Septimus (Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard)
Eddi & the Phouka (War for the Oaks, by Emma Bull)
Annie & Liza (Annie On My Mind, by Nancy Garden)
Mac & Rose (Eight Cousins & Rose in Bloom, Louisa May Alcott)
Bracken & Rebecca (Duncton Wood, by William Horwood)
David & Giovanni (Giovanni's Room, by James Baldwin)
Bobby & Jonathan & Clare (House at the end of the world, by Michael Cunningham)

as you can no doubt tell, I am now thoroughly distracted from applying to grad schools...but I love you anyway. ~E.

Re: and also...

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

You were certainly up there at the top of my list, darling - but I wasn't sure you'd come out of hiding to respond.

I haven't read Annie On My Mind, (but I have read The Year They Burned the Books by the same author, which I liked) and I am grateful for this one, because I don't think so far anyone else has come up with another woman loving woman one. Which seems weird. Also haven't read Duncton Wood.

And I would dispute David and Giovanni - I think Gio loves David, but do you think David loves back, for real?

This is fun. I hope it wasn't *too* distracting from your apps.
Love you!

Re: and also...

[(Anonymous)]

David/Giovanni -
a) Even if David doesn't love back *properly*, for me a big part of love is the unrequited pining bit (as you should know!). It doesn't have to be reciprocated to be Love with a capital L.
b) Besides which, I think David simultaneously loves and doesn't love Giovanni. He is fearful of and estranged from the part of himself that desires Giovanni, and so he is fearful or and estranged from Giovanni as well. But he loves him as much as he could love anyone - certainly more than he loves that American woman wozzername, to whom he is engaged. And in the end I think Giovanni understands this, and accepts what little of himself David can bring himself to offer up, and therein lies a large chunk of the tragedy of the story.

In other news, I emailed you one of my grad school essays; can you review? love. ~E

[hofnarr.livejournal.com]

Louis & Lestat: Vampire Chronicles
Aureliano & Aunt (can't remember her name): 100 Years of Solitude
Thomas & Elf Queen: Riftwar
Jake & Zoe: Callahan's
Joe & Aurethusela (sp?): Lady Slings The Booze

man, i read trashy trashy shit. And i love it so.

[hofnarr.livejournal.com]

oh, and
joscelin & phedra: Kushiel