The Geometry of Romance: Pairs
The simplest romance geometry of all is the pair. It is a perennial classic, used in works from Abelard and Heloise to a large percentage of fan fiction. You will never, ever spark a shipping debate if you limit your romantic potential to one guy and one gal--or two guys or two gals if your audience is accepting. If you want to really dig in and concentrate on the growth of love between two people you can strip away all extraneous distractions and just show the two of them interacting. This geometry is a favorite of serious romances with a deep exploration of character, but it also comes in handy in fiction with a bunch of other plot (war, adventure, mystery, survival, espionage, etc.) that only has room for the bare essentials when it comes to romance. You often see it in traditional male-oriented fiction where "the girl" or "the love interest" is only brought in to fall in love with the hero and she never considers anyone else.
But romantic pairs don't have to be sexist like that. For instance, one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett, usually writes his romances this way, with only one boy and one girl involved. He always has a bunch of other stuff going on in his books. Georgette Heyer has one novel that fits this pattern very well--Venetia--and it is a favorite with many people. The heroine has two other "suitors" but they are not serious possibilities and there is no other important single female in the book. The first two books in Lois Bujold's Wide Green World series fit this pattern, as does her most recent Vorkosigan novel, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (at least, it does if you only consider the time period in the novel). Some good movies that have the pair geometry are The African Queen, The Terminator, A Little Romance, and Two Mules for Sister Sara.
I would argue that Rowling (or Robert Galbraith, I suppose) uses the pair pattern in her/his Cormoran Strike novels. Yes, I will admit that Robin is engaged to Matthew, and Cormoran's longtime love Charlotte is still a person who exists in his world and has the potential to affect the plot. There are also a small number of women (three? four?) that Cormoran has slept with or dated in the three books so far, who obviously haven't made much of an impression on me. But the geometry of the novel in the main mystery plots is definitely not a Cormoran/Charlotte/Matthew/Robin quartet or a Cormoran/Robin/Matthew trio. Strike and Robin are the only point-of-view characters and the only active mystery solvers.
There are many romance novels, romantic movies, and romantic plays where the one of the principals (usually the heroine but not always) starts out involved with Mr./Ms. Wrong. Sometimes this results in a quartet geometry where Mr. or Ms. Wrong ends up happily attached to another character. Some examples of this are the movie What's Up Doc and George Bernard Shaw's wonderful play Arms and the Man. Other romances have a Mr./Ms. Wrong who is essentially a throw-away. They don't end up with someone else (at least not on page/stage/screen) and we don't really care if they do. Romeo has a throw-away love at the beginning of Romeo and Juliet. Rosalind Russell's fiancé in His Girl Friday is a nice man, but a throw-away love, poor guy, and Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are geometrically a pair through the action of the movie. In fact, "the Ralph Bellamy character" is a cliché for this kind of character who exists as a person but somehow doesn't count. I really think that Matthew will turn out to be a Ralph Bellamy. He is taking a long time to "go away" because the Strike/Robin romance is proceeding with glacial slowness in tiny little scenes squeezed here and there into the mystery plots across a huge number of books, and also because these books are written in a non-comic, realistic way. But one way or another he will go away, just as Charlotte did.
I said in my previous post that I find the Strike/Robin romance to be very much the type of romance that Harry/Hermione shippers wanted in the Harry Potter books. Robin is smart, competent, awesome, and extremely helpful in solving mysteries but not as important or effective as Strike (at least not yet) and she doesn't get her name on the book covers. They work together extremely well but occasionally have serious fights. They don't bicker or tease each other. They've been friends for a long time and know and understand each other deeply but they still haven't "crossed the line" into anything romantic (but they will!). They are, in my opinion, the two best (smartest, nicest, most ethical) people in the books and they both deserve to be happy. There is no inconvenient Ron character to interfere with their dynamic (well, there's Matthew but he's mostly absent, and disposable in the way they always wanted Ron to be but he wasn't). The clues that Strike and Robin will eventually end up together started out extremely subtle and subtextual and they're still not TOO obvious, so you have the fun of finding them. I suppose the pairing lacks symbolism, but I'm sure it's there if anyone had any incentive to look for it.
So how has Strike/Robin fared so far in the court of public opinion?
On the positive side, there seem to be no ship debates of any kind among Cormoran Strike readers (and now television viewers, in the UK). Nobody seems to be arguing that Robin belongs with Matthew or Cormoran belongs with Charlotte or his latest girlfriend Elin. I can't even find any evidence of slash ships or a "Romo" vs. "NoRomo" debate like in the X-Files fandom. Views of Cormoran and Robin as a romantic pairing range only from neutral to wildly positive.
On the negative side, the Cormoran Strike series is much, much less popular and beloved than the Harry Potter series and there is hardly any online comment on the Strike/Robin relationship. If we use fanfiction as an indicator and take "Archive of Our Own" as a representative sampling, we see 127 Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike stories as opposed to 1688 Hermione Granger/Harry Potter stories. And the Robin/Cormoran stories are more than 90% of all the fanfic for that series, while the Hermione/Harry stories are dwarfed by stories about other Potter pairings, including the slash powerhouses Drarry, Wolfstar, and Snarry:
I suspect that the Strike series will receive more online attention once the televised series is shown in the U.S. and the rest of the world. But I think the books are too long and realistic to ever transcend the traditional mystery market and make it big in the fandom sense.
Part One: Introduction
-
Part Three: Quartets and More
Part Four: Trios
Part Five: Conclusion
But romantic pairs don't have to be sexist like that. For instance, one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett, usually writes his romances this way, with only one boy and one girl involved. He always has a bunch of other stuff going on in his books. Georgette Heyer has one novel that fits this pattern very well--Venetia--and it is a favorite with many people. The heroine has two other "suitors" but they are not serious possibilities and there is no other important single female in the book. The first two books in Lois Bujold's Wide Green World series fit this pattern, as does her most recent Vorkosigan novel, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (at least, it does if you only consider the time period in the novel). Some good movies that have the pair geometry are The African Queen, The Terminator, A Little Romance, and Two Mules for Sister Sara.
I would argue that Rowling (or Robert Galbraith, I suppose) uses the pair pattern in her/his Cormoran Strike novels. Yes, I will admit that Robin is engaged to Matthew, and Cormoran's longtime love Charlotte is still a person who exists in his world and has the potential to affect the plot. There are also a small number of women (three? four?) that Cormoran has slept with or dated in the three books so far, who obviously haven't made much of an impression on me. But the geometry of the novel in the main mystery plots is definitely not a Cormoran/Charlotte/Matthew/Robin quartet or a Cormoran/Robin/Matthew trio. Strike and Robin are the only point-of-view characters and the only active mystery solvers.
There are many romance novels, romantic movies, and romantic plays where the one of the principals (usually the heroine but not always) starts out involved with Mr./Ms. Wrong. Sometimes this results in a quartet geometry where Mr. or Ms. Wrong ends up happily attached to another character. Some examples of this are the movie What's Up Doc and George Bernard Shaw's wonderful play Arms and the Man. Other romances have a Mr./Ms. Wrong who is essentially a throw-away. They don't end up with someone else (at least not on page/stage/screen) and we don't really care if they do. Romeo has a throw-away love at the beginning of Romeo and Juliet. Rosalind Russell's fiancé in His Girl Friday is a nice man, but a throw-away love, poor guy, and Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are geometrically a pair through the action of the movie. In fact, "the Ralph Bellamy character" is a cliché for this kind of character who exists as a person but somehow doesn't count. I really think that Matthew will turn out to be a Ralph Bellamy. He is taking a long time to "go away" because the Strike/Robin romance is proceeding with glacial slowness in tiny little scenes squeezed here and there into the mystery plots across a huge number of books, and also because these books are written in a non-comic, realistic way. But one way or another he will go away, just as Charlotte did.
I said in my previous post that I find the Strike/Robin romance to be very much the type of romance that Harry/Hermione shippers wanted in the Harry Potter books. Robin is smart, competent, awesome, and extremely helpful in solving mysteries but not as important or effective as Strike (at least not yet) and she doesn't get her name on the book covers. They work together extremely well but occasionally have serious fights. They don't bicker or tease each other. They've been friends for a long time and know and understand each other deeply but they still haven't "crossed the line" into anything romantic (but they will!). They are, in my opinion, the two best (smartest, nicest, most ethical) people in the books and they both deserve to be happy. There is no inconvenient Ron character to interfere with their dynamic (well, there's Matthew but he's mostly absent, and disposable in the way they always wanted Ron to be but he wasn't). The clues that Strike and Robin will eventually end up together started out extremely subtle and subtextual and they're still not TOO obvious, so you have the fun of finding them. I suppose the pairing lacks symbolism, but I'm sure it's there if anyone had any incentive to look for it.
So how has Strike/Robin fared so far in the court of public opinion?
On the positive side, there seem to be no ship debates of any kind among Cormoran Strike readers (and now television viewers, in the UK). Nobody seems to be arguing that Robin belongs with Matthew or Cormoran belongs with Charlotte or his latest girlfriend Elin. I can't even find any evidence of slash ships or a "Romo" vs. "NoRomo" debate like in the X-Files fandom. Views of Cormoran and Robin as a romantic pairing range only from neutral to wildly positive.
On the negative side, the Cormoran Strike series is much, much less popular and beloved than the Harry Potter series and there is hardly any online comment on the Strike/Robin relationship. If we use fanfiction as an indicator and take "Archive of Our Own" as a representative sampling, we see 127 Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike stories as opposed to 1688 Hermione Granger/Harry Potter stories. And the Robin/Cormoran stories are more than 90% of all the fanfic for that series, while the Hermione/Harry stories are dwarfed by stories about other Potter pairings, including the slash powerhouses Drarry, Wolfstar, and Snarry:
- 26,995 Draco/Harry
- 11,831 Sirius/Remus
- 9544 Harry/Snape
- 7618 Hermione/Ron
- 6004 James/Lily
- 5802 Harry/Ginny
- 5654 Hermione/Draco
- 2991 Hermione/Snape
- 2425 Remus/Snape
- 2131 Albus Severus/Scorpius
- 1815 Harry/Tom Riddle
I suspect that the Strike series will receive more online attention once the televised series is shown in the U.S. and the rest of the world. But I think the books are too long and realistic to ever transcend the traditional mystery market and make it big in the fandom sense.
Part One: Introduction
-
Part Three: Quartets and More
Part Four: Trios
Part Five: Conclusion