the ask@AAR: What famous couple would you like to inspire a romance novel?
One of my favorite country love songs of the past few years is Johnny Cash Heart by Caleb Lee Hutchison. The chorus is:
You wrap me up in some kind of magic
Lift me up, take me so high
Finally something good for me happened
Such a rush, can’t get enough of your love
Show me every color I can imagine
When its November and my soul ain’t dark
You are my June
June in my Johnny Cash heart
As anyone who saw Walk the Line knows, June and Johnny Cash were a love story with heat and heart. They were each married to others when they met, but were ineluctably drawn to one another. Once together, they were wed for almost 35 years, they died within months of each other. Johnny described June’s love for him as unconditional and June says she always walked along right by his side. They were flawed but, together, they were amazing.
I’d love to read a Johnny and June-ish story, with leads as interesting as they were and a love story as determined. They’re one of several couples I’d love to see inspire a romance novel. I’d love to see something similar done with Michelle and Barack Obama, Marie And Pierre Curie, or Paul and Julia Child.
How ’bout you? What famous couple would you like to see inspire a romance novel?
BRAD PITT AND ANGELINA,
One would have to rewrite them both and redo their ending.
Oh! I forgot Emma Thompson and Greg Wise! She had just broken up with Kenneth Branagh, who had cheated on her with Helena Bonham Carter. They met on the set of Sense and Sensibility, where he was playing Willoughby and she played Elinor.
John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor.
I know nothing about them either! Thanks!
Nineteenth-century philosophers in love. They met when they were fairly young; she was already married, although I think they were estranged, because her husband agreed to allow her friendship with Mill if she moved back in with him to act as his social hostess. The husband eventually died, and after waiting another three years, because Taylor didn’t want to cause more scandal than they had already, they finally got married when they were in their forties. Unfortunately they only had seven years together before she died of a lung ailment.
Taylor was brilliant, and Mill considered her both his intellectual superior and the inspiration for all his work, to the point that apparently even after her death, he still felt he owed his subsequent work to her because she was the one who had inspired his intellect to evolve in that direction and did not believe that would have been possible without her. When she was alive, she was his collaborator and co-author. Their work was only in his name because Taylor felt that if her name were attached, no one would read it; Mill (who was a feminist) had wanted it to be in both their names. If you read his letters to her, it’s abundantly obvious not only that he adored her (which he clearly did), but that she really was his partner. There’s debate apparently about how great her influence was, because almost nothing of her own work survives (she burned her notes religiously; one gets a sense that being a brilliant woman in that era was rough on one’s psyche), but Mill himself didn’t seem to think there was anything to debate.
That’s a wonderful story. Thank you for sharing it!
I am not sure if we are meant to be looking at modern and well-known couples or not. If so, then perhaps Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward? Their story fascinated me in my teens. And I was head over heels in love with him myself!!
If a famous couple can be from very ancient history, then I wonder about the Old Testament story in the Book of Esther. I realise it’s been done as a film though the latest version was completely under my radar and I’d never heard of it until I started looking into this story. My mother was a member of the Doubleday Book Club in the 1950s and years later I gobbled up her very nice collection of books by Norah Lofts including her take on Esther’s story. I realise that to modern tastes, the story is full of things that some would really object to: male dominance, women judged purely on their beauty, female subservience, outright anti-semitism, etc. However the story, seemingly based on Xerxes and his court in ancient Persia, took place around 600 BC so I think we can all agree that things were very different then. The story of the Jewess Esther and the powerful King, Ahasuerus, his disgraced queen Vashti, Esther’s Uncle Mordecai and the dreadful, spiteful Haman is timeless, really. Dirty politics, religious hatred, a thriving, spectacular and erotic court, fabulous wealth and several different kinds of love. And, ultimately, female empowerment and the triumph of good over evil. All the makings for a cracking read.
That sounds… fabulous!
Authors, take note!
David Bowie and Iman!
I think the problem with a lot of the “great love stories” of famous people is that so many of them started out as adulterous (if passionate) love affairs and/or ended with heartache for at least one of the partners. Take Liz Taylor & Richard Burton, for instance (although I strongly recommend the book FURIOUS LOVE, the story of their relationship). Do we want to read those stories in a romance novel? The one famous couple I think has a great story is Meryl Street and her husband. Meryl Streep was still reeling from the death of her partner, actor John Cazale, and she called her brother to ask him to help her clean out the apartment. He said he would bring a friend of his to also help. That friend was the man she eventually married. They have been married close to 40 years and have four children.
Agreed. Romance tends to be agin stories with cheaters. I think the Johnny and June story is one that most people, however, are OK with. Same with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.
I agree: real life is messy; but would we want to read about that messiness in a romance novel? I’d have trouble relating to a heroine who found her great love with a married man, even if it were a love for the ages and resulted in a long & happy marriage (after the hero dumps wife number one).
There is a great historical fiction novel, KATHERINE, by Anya Seton, about Katherine Swyneford who had a thirty-years-long relationship with John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster—while, for much of that time, he was married to his second wife (his first wife died from plague, apparently before Katherine entered the picture). They eventually married after his second wife died and he had his children with Katherine (by that time, all adults) legitimized. It’s a brilliantly-written book, but there’s no doubt it’s an adulterous relationship. For historical fiction (or something like FOREVER AMBER), I think we accept the circumstances of the story, but whether a romance novel could accommodate that situation, I’m not sure.
I guess I am the rare romance reader–in a 35 year relationship, 33 of which are married–that sometimes thinks divorce is a good thing. In the case of many first marriages that end, the marriages themselves were a huge mistake. I also think there’s a difference between falling for someone who’s married and having a sexual affair with someone who’s married.
I’m also, even rarer in romance, willing to forgive infidelity in certain circumstances.
Ainsley Booth’s SHAME (published earlier this year) is about the after-effects of an affair and if the heroine can forgive her unfaithful husband. It’s the very rare romance that addresses infidelity.
I hate adultery- but I love the Bette Davis movie “Now Voyager” which involves her long suffering (and mutual) love with married Paul Henreid -who is “trapped” in a bad marriage. It’s pretty subtly handled if the affair ever got physical (I say it did). But poor Bette starts off so downtrodden it’s impossible not to sympathize with her and much of her love for him is sublimated into motherly love for his neglected (by his wife) daughter.
I watch it every time it’s on TV and one of the few instances where I can say I root for the adulterers.
I have a distant memory of seeing that movie as a young teen and sobbing at the ending so hard my grandmother got worried about me. Does that sound right?
It sounds very plausible to me! It’s a very bittersweet ending but it leaves it open for their happiness (potentially) down the line.
And see I have a–clearly wrong–memory that she dies in that film. I must be confusing it with another classic.
I must be rare, too, then. I’ve been very happily married for 37 years, but one of the reason I got the chance was I was able to divorce my husband from a disastrous first marriage. I can overlook some infidelity and divorce in romances if the author handles the circumstances well.
It should be said that more than a few m/m stories deal with MCs who engage in sex with others while working through the relationship with the other MC. It might work out because sex in some m/m books is looked on more casually all the way around, and not necessarily linked to “love.”
I don’t disagree that people should be able to get out of bad marriages (and like you and Dabney, I have been with my husband a long time—34 years together, 32 of them married, this was the first marriage for both of us, although we’d both been in long-term relationships before, but were both unattached when we met); but I was addressing the question of whether a romance novel could work if either MC was married when the relationship started. I guess that’s really a different question than the original question for this post—which famous couple’s relationship would make a good romance novel—so apologies for pulling the comment thread off the track.
Don’t apologize! I wasn’t really thinking about your question,but more musing on the fact that when handled well, I can deal with infidelity and/or divorce in romance.
I think your question is relevant,since so many famous (and infamous) love stories involve infidelity and/or divorce. I’m not sure. I’d say that it might do better of marketed as “fiction with romance” than straight romance, since it seems a lot of romance readers (including myself most of the time) don’t like the idea of cheating.
Real people are complex and flawed, and even if one person starts off married,I think redemption is possible in the long run. I would think readers would appreciate that (I know many won’t) if only because we are all flawed,and most of us have done things in the past we aren’t proud of.
I’ve read a number of books where the hero or heroine had a bad marriage or was in the process of finalizing ending a bad marriage.
I think readers are very sympathetic to protagonists if they are in a bad situation. In Nora Roberts book “Dance Upon The Air” the heroine starts a relationship with the “Boy Scout” type hero even though she is still married because she’s in a “Sleeping With Enemy” situation and on the run from an abusive husband. Technically it’s “adultery”, but who can blame a heroine running for her life?
It could work for me and that’s all I can speak to.
I have to admit I always had a bit of a problem with the movie “Sweet Home Alabama” because the couple just stayed married but had relationships with other people over the years? I kind of didn’t get that part. Marriage must have meant something to them but they just all ignored the fact they were married for many years until one person wanted to remarry?
I thinks some people don’t want to go through the hassle of divorce. My relatives, who were married for a long time, live in separate households but have yet to go through divorce proceedings. They are also in relationships with other people. I find this incredibly bizarre, but I guess it does happen.
One of our closest couple friends split up five or six years ago. After an extremely acrimonious first two years, they decided they loved each other again, but not as romantic/sexual couple. They still aren’t divorced, but they’re very good friends, and both see other people. They say they’ll get divorced “at some point” but what they’re doing now works for them and gives them greater legal say over each others’ lives. They have two 20 something kids and they think it’s better legally for their progeny to stay together.
I think the main issue is consent here. This is a couple who worked out how they want their marriage to go and frankly that’s their business to do so.
I think the big problem with adultery, and my big problem, is when one party is taking advantage and deceiving another. Whether it’s adultery or some other situation, that’s just not acceptable in my book. I think we have this image of one spouse running around while another is sitting home waiting and contributing to the marriage and the relationship.
That’s rough.
Katherine is one of Top All Time Ten Keepers. I managed to visit her tomb at Lincoln Cathdral two years ago.
Marie Antoinette and Axel von Fersen would be interesting.
Wow–I know nothing about them. What’s their story?
He was reputedly Marie Antoinette’s lover and was instrumental in the “flight to Varennes”, the plan to get her and her children away from Paris during the Revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_von_Fersen_the_Younger
Intersting.
Jamie Dornan played him in the Kirsten Dunst Marie Antoinette movie.