History Main / TheMourningAfter

* [[WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse]] Luz’s [[DisappearedDad father]] is explicitly confirmed in [[Recap/TheOwlHouseS2E14ReachingOut “Reaching Out”]] to have passed away when Luz was a little girl, many years before the events of the series when she’s a teenager, and her mother Camila never married anyone else, still being a single mother even in the present day.

** Henry's father goes to pieces after the death of his mother and drinks himself to infirmity.

** Tywin Lannister is hardened by his wife Joanna's death to the extent that he never smiles again and treats Tyrion (whose birth caused Joanna's death) like absolute shit.

* In ''Fanfic/{{Snowmaiden}}'', the elvish lover of the titular human maiden mourns her after she dies of old age, as is standard for Tolkien's elves, but takes it UpToEleven by refusing to return to his people, instead roaming the places where he was happy with her. He eventually meets someone else, who may, or may not, be his true love reborn

%%* Martin Riggs cranks this trope UpToEleven in the original ''Film/LethalWeapon''. He gets better in the sequels, though.

** All of them are trumped by Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish whose [[UnluckyChildhoodFriend years-long, unrequited love for Catelyn Stark]] has caused him to take the {{Yandere}} trope UpToEleven.

* James Sunderland of ''VideoGame/SilentHill2'' represents a disturbing variant of this archetype. Not only will he never get over his love for his dead wife Mary, but it is also implied that his obsession with their relationship and her memory leads him the recreate the world around him in her image, even to the extent of possibly recreating Mary herself. The entire story arc of the game revolves around James coming to terms (or not) with his inability to forget Mary, and the events leading to her death.

* In the UsefulNotes/{{Bollywood}} movie ''Mohabbatein'' the hero's girlfriend killed herself because they couldn't be together. A decade later, the hero is still in love with her and can "see" her whenever he closes his eyes...

* In the ChivalricRomance ''Floris and Blanchefleur'', Floris is told that Blanchefleur is dead; it grieves him but does not shake his love.

* In the novel ''Back to the Moon'', Jack is hesitant in his budding relationship with Penny because he is still mourning his dead wife Kate. In fact, his entire reason for doing ''anything'' in the story is out of loyalty/guilt over what happened to Kate.

* Booker Dewitt from ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite''. His wife died almost twenty years earlier and there's no indication he's ever remarried. Not the mention he received a double blow with also losing his daughter.

* Karen Hayes, Emily’s and Navin’s mother, in ''ComicBook/Amulet'' stays single, even years after the car accident in which her husband David (Emily’s and Navin’s DisappearedDad) died.

* In ''ComicBook/{{Runaways}}'', Chase has yet to get over the death of his first girlfriend, Gert, and it's questionable whether he ever will. Even [[ComicBook/RainbowRowellsRunaways bringing her back from the dead]] brings him no comfort, because he's now grown too old to resume their relationship (as the method of her resurrection involved bringing her past self forward in time), and she's moved on to dating Victor.

* In VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition fanfic ''FanFic/WalkingInCircles'', a non-fatal version of this trope happens to Solas after [[spoiler: Evelyn becomes Tranquil]].

* Creator/RobinWilliams' character Sean from ''Film/{{Good Will Hunting}}''.

* In ''Literature/{{Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows}}'', it turns out Severus Snape was Lily Evans's UnluckyChildhoodFriend, and the guilt and grief he felt over her death (which he partially ''caused'', during his time as a Death Eater) motivated him for the rest of his life.

* "Final Breath", a ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'' Eurobeat remix by Odyssey:

* Booker Dewitt from ''Videogame/BioShockInfinite''. His wife died almost twenty years earlier and there's no indication he's ever remarried. Not the mention he received a double blow with also losing his daughter.

* In ''Videogame/DiscoElysium'' it's revealed near the end that [[spoiler:the Detective was once in love with a woman named Dora who left him due to his unstable nature. The experience has since caused him to become even more unstable as he succumbed further to his addictions and became a burnout, ultimately culminating in him inducing amnesia in himself in a desperate attempt to escape his memories]].

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** Possibly the most famous example in royal history: [[UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria Queen Victoria]] was (famously) deeply, deeply in love with her husband Prince Albert. ([[http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=187 Here's]] the obligatory ''Webcomic/HarkAVagrant'' strip poking fun at their relationship.) When he died young in 1861 at the age of 42, Victoria went into mourning for the rest of her life--all ''thirty-nine years'' of it. She was never seen out of widow's weeds ever again and commissioned her [[CoolCrown famous small diamond crown]] specifically to accommodate this (the small size meant she could wear it on top of the veil, and it was made of silver and diamonds because those were appropriate materials for mourning). In the early years, she even failed to appear at the required social and state occasions, bringing the monarchy to its highest level of unpopularity since the [[UsefulNotes/EnglishCivilWar Civil War]]; it's often said that only the Prince of Wales' personal popularity prevented Britain from becoming a republic during this period. Of course, Victoria had strong personal reasons for ignoring this; as she herself said:

* Though he never treated her all that well when he was alive, Amelia in ''Literature/VanityFair'' mourns her dead husband George for years, ignoring the feelings of another suitor and eventually driving him away. It isn't until Becky tells her that George had been planning to run away with her (Becky, that is) just before he died that Amelia finally gets over him.
* Aegnor and Andreth in Creator/JRRTolkien's Middle-earth mythos. Aegnor, an elf, and Andreth, a mortal woman, fell in love, but Aegnor pretended not to return her affections because he believed love between elf and mortal could not work out. Andreth was bitter over this until Aegnor's brother Finrod revealed to her that Aegnor had vowed that he would never marry because he could never love anyone else. This continues even in death, as Aegnor refuses to leave the Halls of Mandos (kind of an Elvish purgatory) and be re-embodied in Valinor because he doesn't want to live in a world that doesn't have Andreth in it. In the meantime, Andreth refused to marry any mortal man and, ironically, outlived Aegnor when he was killed in battle.
** Another example from ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'' manages to both play this straight ''and'' avert it: In the tale of Beren and Lúthien as a mortal Man and Elf princess, there were already severe complications to their relationship. Eventually, Beren is slain by the great wolf Carcharoth, and Lúthien out of love for him dies from grief. Unfortunately, because the souls of Men aren't allowed to remain in Valinor and are forced to pass beyond the circles of the world, and Elves are forced to remain and can't pass to wherever it is Men go, the lovers are faced with being eternally separated ''again'' in the afterlife, at which point Lúthien out of love sings a lament over their fates, the suffering of Men and Elves at Morgoth's hands, and the prospect of spending an eternity without her love. This gets averted when her song moves the unmovable Mandos to pity, and he personally pleads their case to Manwë. Beren and Lúthien are allowed to return to Middle-earth to live out their lives together as mortals, and when they finally die their second deaths, pass from the world along with the rest of the race of Man.
** Thingol's wife Melian (a Maia spirit) is so heartbroken by his death, that she departs the world never to return after her husband is slain by dwarves over the ''silmaril'', dooming Doriath to eventual conquest. Turgon's wife perishes crossing into Middle-earth from Valinor, and he mourns her for the rest of his life. Húrin and Morwen are separated for decades, and Morwen never gives up her torch for Húrin, reuniting only in time for Morwen to pass away. Théoden never remarries following the death of his wife birthing their son, Théodred. Let's face it, Tolkien's works are ''filled'' with spouses who mourn their lost loves for the rest of their lives. It would probably be easier to list examples in which this ''doesn't'' happen.
* A [[TearJerker really tragic example]] (though without a death) is John Eames and Lily Dale from Anthony Trollope's ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfBarsetshire''. She falls in love with a cad who abandons her so he can marry a rich girl. She decides to remain perpetually single, and Eames, who loves her, ''also'' remains single for her sake.

* Sesshomaru does this for Kagura in ''Manga/{{Inuyasha}}''--while he does not ''cry'', he becomes so infuriated when Moryoumaru insults Kagura that he attacks him viciously and breaks his sword [[EvilWeapon Tokijin]] with the force of the blow, putting his own life in danger in the process. More notably, afterwards [[HealingShiv Tenseiga]] transforms into a fighting weapon because of Sesshomaru's feelings for Kagura. When he receives the finished sword, he thinks of her again and accepts it because "whether her death was in vain or not is for ''me'' to decide".
* Part of the primary concept of the manga ''Manga/WeWereThere'', although the relationship between Yano and his dead girlfriend Nana was more complex than it first appears.

* A darker version in ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'', Gendo Ikari is quite willing to commit planetary genocide in order to reunite himself with his dead wife.
** In fact, in ''Manga/NeonGenesisEvangelionCampusApocalypse'', ''all alternate universes'' are in peril thanks to original flavor Gendo.

** ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} is the only woman whom [[ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes Brainiac-5]] has loved and the only he'll ever love. He remains helplessly heartbroken and utterly devoted after [[ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes her death]].

* [[spoiler:''Film/SpiderManNoWayHome'' reveals that Webb-verse Peter never truly moved on from Gwen Stacy's death following ''Film/TheAmazingSpiderMan2'', as he points out that he has no time for 'Peter Parker stuff' when Raimi-Verse Peter asked him about his love life.]]

* [[spoiler:''Film/SpiderManNoWayHome'' reveals that Webb-verse Peter never truly moved on from Gwen Stacy's death following ''Film/TheAmazingSpiderMan2'', as he points out that he has no time for 'Peter Parker stuff' when Raimi-Verse asked him about his love life.]]

* [[spoiler:''Film/SpiderManNoWayHome'' reveals that Webb-verse Peter never truly moved on from Gwen Stacy's death following ''Film/TheAmazingSpiderManTwo'', as he points out that he has no time for 'Peter Parker stuff' when Raimi-Verse asked him about his love life.]]

* Betty White outlived husband Allen Ludden by 40 years. When asked if she had ever considered remarrying after Ludden, White famously replied “once you’ve had the best, who needs the rest?”.

* ''Series/HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys'': Hercules felt this way about his wife, Deianeira, who had been murdered by Hera. In one episode he politely turned down the [[AllAmazonsWantHercules proposition of a band of Amazons]], saying he was still in love with his wife. He does eventually get a SecondLove in the form of a Ceryneian Hind named Serena [[note]]after he receives Deianeira's blessing to find love again[[/note]], but [[StuffedIntoTheFridge Ares kills her]], [[CartwrightCurse putting a different trope into play]].

* ''Theatre/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet'' has a particularly tragic case of this. Sweeney is told by his neighbor Mrs. Lovett that his wife Lucy took poison shortly after Sweeney was wrongfully arrested and she was raped by the judge who convicted him. Sweeney vows vengeance against those responsible, and despite Mrs. Lovett's obvious feelings for him, he remains wholly uninterested in her. Eventually Sweeney is forced to kill a crazed beggar woman who has been bothering him throughout the show. Once he gets a good look at her, he's horrified to realize she was his wife all along; although [[FromACertainPointOfView Mrs. Lovett wasn't technically lying]] about Lucy poisoning herself, she became insane rather than dying.

Often invoked in IWillWaitForYou to confirm that the love really is that steadfast. See also TheLostLenore. It is common (and indeed, [[DoubleStandard in many cases]], ''expected'') for a YamatoNadeshiko or other variety of ProperLady to never remarry after the death of her husband.

* ''Literature/WarriorCats'':
** Fireheart has a crush on Spottedleaf. The two never talked about having a relationship while she was alive, but after she dies, he mourns her for a long time. Whenever he sees her in his dreams, it's mentioned that he always feels the pain of her death as if she's just died. It's only after seasons later when other cats tell him to open his eyes up to the present - and Spottedleaf herself visits him in his dreams and gives her blessing for him to have another relationship - that he falls in love with Sandstorm.
** This also happens to Graystripe and Silverstream. After she rescues him from drowning, Silverstream and Graystripe start to sneak off to see each other, and fall in love. Silverstream later dies [[DeathByChildbirth giving birth]] to his kits. Graystripe never really gets over this, even when he got a new mate, Millie, he admits that he's still in love with Silverstream and that he dreams about her frequently; and wishes that he didn't have to wake up from those dreams.

* A major character point for Carl in ''WesternAnimation/{{Up}}''.