Tough Traveling – Forbidden Love

Nathan over at Fantasy Review Barn is the mastermind of Tough Traveling. What’s Tough Traveling? Pretty much, it’s a weekly feature on Thursdays where we dig around to come up with examples of common tropes in fantasy, using Diana Wynne Jones’ The Tough Guide to Fantasyland as our inspiration and guide. Nathan has invited one and all to join in the fun, so feel free to come up with your own lists and add the link on Nathan’s weekly post, which will also contain (unleash) the next weeks theme. So let the fun begin …

This weeks theme?  FORBIDDEN LOVE

Even in Fantasyland parents are not always happy with their children’s choice of partners.

Alana and Marko from Saga by Brian K. Vaughan 

It’s not just parents that are upset with this particular romance. It’s entire worlds. Alana and Marko are on the run for their lives, all because they are from warring races/planets. They risk everything for their love and their daughter. And they are fierce. You really don’t want to get in their way.

Any Couple or Parent/Child pair from The Just City by Jo Walton

The Just City tries to employ any number of tactics to prevent any person or family from being favored above others. So, “procreation” is reserved for rotating assigned partners on the specified night. Couples and families are forbidden. Even after a child is born, the mother is denied from knowing that child for fear she may show some level of favoritism. She does her duty of feeding other babies, but knows she will never be allowed to feed her own. So really, this can also be “forbidden love” between parent and child.

James and Elise from Time Salvager by Wes Chu

So, what is the number one rule of time traveling? Besides “don’t mess up history”? Well, how about “leave people from the past IN the past?”. Yeah. That’s the big one. So, when James, who’s job is to salvage resources just before a disaster would destroy them, meets Elise on a job, and gets these little electric tingles at her touch, what do you think happens? (It’s in the blurb, so no real spoilers). Yeah, he brings her back. And now they are on the run from some nasty people that have all kinds of resources.

Amber and “Mystery Man” from Liveship Traders by Robin Hobb

I really can’t say much about this one, because, well, this series is just full of spoilers, and I think this comes to light most likely in the third book.

Karigan and King Zachary from Green Rider Series from Kristen Britain

What? You mean to tell me a messenger is not good enough for the hand of the king? Evidently not, so poor Karigan must suffer her secret love for her patriarch alone.

Jaime and Cersei from A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin

Oh, come on. You knew I had to list these two. There’s just no end to their creepy entertainment value. And to show how mutual it is, I have a disturbing/shudder worthy quote from each of these loving siblings.