Two years ago, I lambasted that favored plot crutch of romance authors who can’t come up with a more interesting source of tension — the quest for the three magic words. In it, I bemoaned the endless waiting around for two people who already love one another but who are, for whatever reason, afraid to say the words. When nothing else is keeping the two apart, this makes for dull reading.
More recently, I have discovered another type of quest for the three magic words, one in which those words truly are magical. In this version of the quest, the hero and heroine face many seemingly insurmountable problems, so I am usually engaged until the very end. The trouble comes with the three words themselves — “I love you” somehow fixes everything.
I see this in stories about lovers from different worlds — perhaps one is a city socialite, the other a rancher; or perhaps one is an aristocrat while the other is a servant. The problems are real, and assuming that I think the two are a good match, the tension is real. But “I love you” is just a phrase. It doesn’t make a countrified born-and-bread farmer into someone who can mingle at parties, and it doesn’t force a Victorian-era society to accept the presence of a servant to their glorified ranks. It may mean that the two main characters desperately want to find a solution, but it is not in itself the solution.
I’m sort of a practical woman, which may makes my love of romance a little strange. I do enjoy the fantasy of it, but I confess that I often feel I have to hold my nose and pretend away the annoying undercurrents that are so central to the genre — soulmates, true love, and destiny. I don’t mind any of these things as long as I can also find some solid comparability between two people… which means their problems must have real-world solutions. If you believe in soulmates and destiny, then I’ll put it this way: Would destiny thrust two people together who simply cannot be?
I’m starting to develop a real fondness for romance novels in which “I love you” is first spoken well short of the end. The idea is important, and the words have their place, but they fail both as the ultimate goal and the ultimate solution. They are simply a part of the path.