my 4 favorite (appropriately tragic) literary love triangles

by alexandra richardson

001 Guinevere, King Arthur, and Sir Lancelot

“Lancelot and Guinevere – they looked like two flowers, bright enough to turn to each other for sunlight.” -Clara Winter, Tintagel

This simply could not be an article devoted to doomed literary love triangles and not open with the OG, the Once and Future Doomed Love Triangle, if you will: King Arthur, his Queen, Guinevere, and Sir Lancelot.

You, reader, probably know this story right already, likely without knowing quite how you know it: Arthur is off fighting a Very Important War. He finds out that his wife, Guinevere, has been cheating on him with Lancelot, universally acknowledged as the best of the Knights of the Round Table (there’s a whole thing where he’s asleep and is stricken by a thunderbolt in an outrageously blatant moment of name symbology. We could also spend some time with the Big Dick Energy implications of his name, while we’re at it: “lance – a – lot,” as in he lances about. With women (and men, actually). He’s particularly adept with a sword. Getting it now? Ok, moving on). Arthur, betrayed and emasculated (we might say that Lancelot has metaphorically castrated him), loses the Very Important War, Camelot falls (where exactly it falls, I could not tell you), finis.

The story is all the more complicated because the Arthurian legend is ultimately an amalgamation of many, many, many stories, collected over centuries, existing only really because a more or less common narrative has become ingrained in the collective consciousness. This means that there are inconsistencies from text to text, so the story varies depending on who you ask. Let’s unpack a few interpretations, shall we?

In the earliest texts, Guinevere actually cheats on Arthur with his nephew Mordred (this is what we might today call “incest”). This prompts a colossal civil war of sorts in which everyone is killed, except Guinevere, who, after casually orchestrating the downfall of England’s Glory Days, retires to a convent (and this is what we today call an “HBIC”).  

The Guinevere-Lancelot love story was introduced much later, and was particularly popular in the French romances of Chretien de Troyes. In the French tradition, Guinevere and Lancelot’s relationship was idealized as one of the purest, truest forms of love, and is never even referred to as adulterous, which makes perfect sense considering the nature of French literature. Simply, the French LOVE a good tragic romance. Or a three-way. Or a tragic three-way. Honestly, as far as literary tropes go, we are on their turf now. Arthur himself is also kind of irrelevant, depicted as an absent, generally incompetent king-figure with his knights doing most of the heavy lifting, probably because the French and the English did not get along at this time (several miles of parchment unscroll to list the numerous wars fought between the English and French since forever).

In contrast, in the British tradition Guinevere is famously promiscuous, a harlot who tempts Lancelot into betraying his knightly oath. In all scenarios, the whole cheating-on-the-King (and not just any king, everyone – this is supposed to be the King of All the Kings Ever in the History and Future of the World Forever) is allegedly what brings about the downfall of Arthur’s Camelot. So, when we say “doomed,” we mean DOOMED in every sense of the word.

For an idea of the early incarnations of the Arthurian legend, you can’t go wrong with Chretien’s Le Chevalier de la Charrette (The Knight of the Cart, or, Lancelot). Sir Thomas’s Malory’s La Morte Darthur is, while certainly a denser read, a reliable chronological compilation of the events of Arthur’s reign. For a more modern interpretation, try The Mists of Avalon.

002 Charles Darnay, Lucie Manette, and Sydney Carton, from A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

“‎And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire.”

We have a guillotine, we have a Revolution, we have a treatise on the rights of the peasants and class struggle, and we have the greatest literary love story probably ever. Nothing says “true love” like the imminent threat of decapitation by guillotine, you know. A Tale of Two Cities is set between London and France during the years of the French Revolution and, with well over 2 million copies sold, it is arguably the most popular book written in the English language. Our tragic trio consists of: Sydney Carton, a depressed, alcoholic barrister who is generally not the greatest guy; Charles Darnay, an aristocrat of generally faultless character; and Lucie Manette, a half-English, half-French gal who faints a lot but, on the whole, has moxie. The story is one wild ride, told in verbose Dickensian fashion, oscillating back and forth over the Channel, but let’s skip to the good stuff: when Darnay is slated for execution, Sydney, knowing he is not worthy of Lucie (“I shall never be better than I am. I shall sink lower, and be worse”) gives her the only thing he can – he takes Darnay’s place on the block. And then the book ends with the most gloriously tragic letter ever written. It’s absolutely heartbreaking, and it’s amazing.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” 

003 Jay Gatsby, and Tom and Daisy Buchanan, from The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald set the standard for the American Tragic Romance with this one, and I am not even mad about it. The characters of The Great Gatsby range from hateable to bizarre, but the long, strange trip is compelling. Indeed, the narrative itself is a lot like champagne: easy to drink, sweet and bubbly, and then it leaves you with a splitting headache and slight nausea (but in a good way, promise). Narrator Nick rents a house on Long Island, next door to flashy, nouveau-riche billionaire Jay Gatsby, who throws ragers nightly and just so happens to have been in love for years and years with Daisy, Nick’s cousin, married to Tom Buchanan, who also happens to live right across the Sound from the titular character (so many coincidences! It’s almost as if someone is pulling the strings in a dream-like master plan!). Fitzgerald’s lyrical, hyper-saturated prose provides a delightfully cynical commentary on money and class in New York and it’s orbit during the 1920’s. Excess is virtually another character, more so than a backdrop, most apparent in the all-consuming, not wholly realistic love Gatsby has for Daisy. In classically caustic, inimitably Fitzgeraldian fashion, the novel points dangers of pinning our hopes to such ephemeral, changeable things as people, all while reinforcing the pervasive, stubborn necessity of hope and a belief in the beautiful things. The enigmatic persona at the beginning of the story, the man with the greatest capacity for hope that Nick has ever seen, is taken down by a selfish, frightened little girl, and it is glorious.

“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

004 Linton, Cathy, Heathcliff , from Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte

“My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary.”

If ever two words could be used to describe this book, it would be: mass chaos. I simply cannot emphasize this enough: reading this book means accepting that you will be reading in a state of total confusion and utter disorientation, unable to fathom what will next occur. The novel spans two generations, with all the characters being given the same names, and is a classically Gothic novel in that it relies on lack of light, large and cavernous spaces, visual excess, Baroquian repetition and confusion of the senses. All of that being said, Wuthering Heights is, honestly, compulsively readable. However unrealiable, utterly bizarre, pseudo-incestuous, and absolutely horrific the characters (and we’re not talking slightly problematic here – we’re talking utterly debased, for-sure-racist, viciously cruel, entirely amoral) we are immersed in their story, desperate to know what happens next, if only because we realize there’s no conceivable way we could ever predict just what that will be. It’s as though Emily Bronte confuses the senses so much that we just can’t help but keep reading.

The gist is: Cathy likes Edgar, who is decently pretty and who loves her, but she also has this on-again-off-again thing (by which we mean “a textbook toxic attraction”) to her childhood love – and adopted brother — Heathcliff who is also love with (by which we mean “unhealthily obsessed with”) her. Also, all of the above are legitimately unhinged. Oh, and this all takes place on a moor and is being told to us by a travelling writer, who is staying with the now elderly former nurse of Cathy and Heathcliff (we love an unreliable, twice-removed narrator). As I said, mass chaos.

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.” 

Alexandra Richardson | @ali_darcy