I Want My Beloved To Be Happy / Comic Books

• Archie Comics: There's a Little Archie comic story in which Veronica finds out she's moving away. When Betty hears this news, she's at first ecstatic, believing she'll now have Archie all to herself. But after seeing how majorly depressed Archie is about Veronica moving, Betty convinces the oil dealer Mr. Lodge is selling his house to that there are ghosts inhabiting the mansion, causing him to call off the deal. When Jughead asks why she's glad that the Lodges are staying, Betty replies, "If Archie's happy, then I'm happy."
• Asterix: In "Asterix The Legionary", when Obelix learns that the lovely Panacea (on whom he has a major crush) has a fiancé who has been forcibly recruited and sent to Caesar's legionaries in Africa, he immediately declares that he and Asterix will go and rescue Tragicomix. However, just as Asterix is applauding Obelix for being so mature, Obelix bursts into tears.
• Astro City: After a medical exam reveals that he is sterile, the Silver Agent gives up his dreams of marrying his longtime sweetheart, allowing her to eventually marry his brother and have the family she's always wanted.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: A non-romantic example in Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Search, when Zuko learns that his mother had her face changed and her memories of him and Azula erased, and is living a normal life in her home village with a new family, he plans to just leave and let her be happy. Her new husband gets Zuko to tell her the truth but Zuko still tries to stop her getting her memories back and, even after they are restored, Zuko initially encourages her to stay in the village rather than return to the capital with him.
• Batman:
  • Post Batman: Endgame, it's revealed that Bruce Wayne survived his should-have-been fatal encounter with the Joker, but has no memory of Batman or anything else related to it. Alfred is doing everything in his power to keep Bruce from going back into the cape and cowl, not wanting to see him hurt anymore. Sadly, when Bloom's rampage forces Bruce to remember, Alfred is forced to relent, though incredibly reluctantly.
  • Even though Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn are in a romantic relationship, Poison Ivy encourages Harley to go on dates and see other people, to the point where she stands on the sidelines smiling while Harley is making out with someone. When asked if she doesn't get jealous, Poison Ivy responds "No, if she's happy, I'm happy." Jealousy just doesn't appear to be her thing.
  • In Convergence: Nightwing/Oracle #1, Starfire encourages Dick to propose to Barbara, despite still being in love with him herself.^note As a consolation prize, an alternate universe version of Starfire is still with her Dick over in the event's Titans tie-in.
• The Batman Adventures: Mr. Freeze is being treated by a team of doctors, courtesy of Bruce Wayne. Dr. D'Anjeou, the man whom Mr. Freeze's wife married after leaving him, is called in as he is proficient in this field, but he is kidnapped by a man with a similar disease to Freeze from the show^note he tried to become immortal from it. He freezes Wayne, steals the doctors, and leaves, while Freeze, now just a head, merely laughs at Wayne's misfortune. However, he becomes serious when he realizes who the doctor was, and demands to be put in his suit to rescue him because Nora loves D'Anjeou. Even when he Nightwing and Batgirl are almost killed, he ignores them and all danger to himself (considering Barbara saving him to be a worthless gesture), and fights his way through to free the man his ex-wife loves.
• Black Canary: In JLA: Year One, a 19-year-old Dinah finds herself crushing quite hard on the older Barry Allen, The Flash, and the two ended up growing quite close in the early days. However, upon discovering Barry was engaged and realising the similar circumstances to how/why her mother had cheated on her father, she encourages him to stop neglecting Iris in favour of his superhero life and/or their own growing attraction, and the two settle on being Just Friends. Fortunately, she then immediately bumps into Green Arrow, and the rest is history.
• Candorville: Lemont's aiming for this in regards to Susan. He's completely unaware that Susan's attempting an Operation: Jealousy.
• Doctor Strange: Clea, Doctor Strange's lover and student, left him when she became aware of a woman who had met Strange and fallen in love with him in several of her past lives. Feeling that he deserved to have that endless love, she left him to return to her home dimension. He was completely shattered and spent a week in isolation, mourning her loss, and was nearly Driven to Suicide as a result.
• ElfQuest:
  • Zhantee is hopelessly in love with Leetah even though she already has a lifemate, Cutter. When Zhantee develops the power to generate a protective shield he uses it on a number of occasions to save Leetah from attacks. The irony here is that the elves have open marriages and both Leetah and Cutter would have been happy to allow Zhantee into their relationship. Zhantee was just too shy to ask. Zhantee later dies in Cutter's arms during a human-elf conflict, and as he dies he shows Cutter a vision of the child that he and Leetah could have had.
  • A non-romantic version between Cutter and his son Suntop. Cutter considers sending Suntop away to Sun Village where he would be safer.◊
    Suntop: You want me to go away?
    Cutter: I just want you to be happy. Even if you must be happy far away.
• The Mighty Thor: Loki invokes this, in a far happier example, with Leah in Gillen's run of Journey into Mystery.
• The Legend of Zelda: In the comic book adaptation, Zelda decides that to save her kingdom from future attacks by Ganon, she'll take the Triforce of Wisdom to a faraway place where he can't find it. She begs Link to help her, and while the thought of her leaving clearly devastates him, he agrees. He has the chance to prevent her from going by lying and saying that the magic item she needs isn't in the hidden chamber, but he can't bring himself to do it. Fortunately for him, while he's in the chamber collecting said MacGuffin, Zelda comes to the realization that she and the Triforce are safest wherever he is, and decides not to leave. He even gets a mini-glomp for his trouble.
• Legion of Super-Heroes: After Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad get married and learn they're going to have a child, Dr. Gym'll advises Saturn Girl should retire from active duty to be a full time mother. Lightning Lad chastises the doctor for such outdated thinking and announces he'll be the one to step back to watch their baby, knowing how much of a dedicated Legionnaire his wife is and that the team needs her far more than it needs him. The arrangement works out perfectly for everyone; Saturn Girl's there for the Legion during some of their most harrowing cases, and Lightning Lad deeply enjoys being a House Husband.
• Robocop: In Alan Grant's adaptation of Frank Miller's Robocop 2, Robocop finally accepts reprogramming when he meets his re-married and pregnant wife Ellen. Robocop annuls his marriage and accepts that he is a machine and not Alex Murphy.
• Scott Pilgrim:
  • The comic gets some of this from both Kim and Knives, during the last book. How much Kim is still in love with him is up for debate, but her response to him is that he should seek out Ramona. Knives less so (than in the film), but she's still realized whatever she felt for Scott, Scott isn't her true love.
  • In the third book, Knives Chau (17 years old) saves her arch-rival Ramona from a coup de grâce by Envy. She states that she just wants Scott to be happy.
• Secret Six: Catman, fresh from a Trauma Conga Line that made him relive his accidental murder of his mother and not so accidental murder of his father and made him realize that he would be an even worse father, enacted a complicated gambit to make Huntress hate him so that she would be free of any lingering doubts and "what ifs" about the nature of their relationship.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Immediately after finding out that Sonic loves Princess Sally and not her, Mina the Mongoose takes a bullet for Sally. In a later issue, Amy, whose intense crush on Sonic is one of her major character traits, insists that Sally and Sonic be allowed to have a nice date without interference; when a confused bystander asks why, her response is this trope almost word for word.
• Spider-Man:
  • The comics post-One More Day put Mary Jane in this role. After decades being depicted as Spider-Man's one true love, stories like One Moment in Time have her walking away from Peter so he can be with someone who is "stronger" and has actively been working to hook Peter up with girl-of-the-week Carlie Cooper. This sort of thing hasn't gone over well with the fanbase. Later the emphasis of this shifted slightly; following Superior Spider-Man (2013) both MJ and Carlie reckon that being with Peter, much as they love him, isn't conducive to a stable life. And Peter, who just wants them to be happy, can't disagree.
  • In an earlier story called "I Remember Gwen", told in flashback and set shortly after the death of Captain Stacy, Gwen Stacy angrily broke up with Peter when he tried to defend Spider-Man, whom she falsely blamed for her father's death. When Gwen announced their break-up, MJ initially thought this would leave the field clear to hook up with Peter. When she realized how Gwen's heart was breaking, MJ instead advised Gwen to give Peter a second chance, saying he only spoke up for Spider-Man because he didn't want Gwen to spend the rest of her life being bitter. MJ was as happy as anyone when both her beloveds (the man she loved and her best friend) reconciled.
• Strangers in Paradise: David Qin realizes that Katchoo loves Francine more than she could ever love him, and retreats to Japan. When Tambi tries to confront David concerning why he hasn't gotten Katchoo pregnant (in order to produce a family heir), he proposes that Tambi could carry this heir, on the condition that she leave Katchoo alone with Francine. Tambi then proceeds to fall in love with him herself, but still wants him to be with Katchoo since that's who he loves.
• Supergirl:
  • Sibling example in Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade when Lex Luthor tries to save his sister's life. However, Lena's mind is caught in a feedback loop, torn between her loyalty to him and her friendship with Kara. Lex tries to reinforce her hatred, but the strain might destroy her mind, so he lets her go, although it means that she will hate him.
  • The Untold Story of Argo City has a parents/daughter version. Fred and Edna Danvers love their adoptive daughter Linda, but they give her up when her birth parents come back, believing she will be happier with them. Zor-El and Allura love and need their daughter, but they realize she misses her adoptive parents, so they come up with a story to get her back in Midvale.
• Ultimate Marvel:
  • The Ultimates: Captain America holds no grudge against Gail or Bucky for marrying during the decades he was presumed dead.
  • Ultimate Spider-Man: Kitty and Peter become friends after she breaks-up and she also reluctantly admits that MJ is an amazing girlfriend, even if she is still in love with Peter.
• Vampirella: In the story "Into the Inferno" we learn that Pendragon agreed when his wife wanted a divorce because of this.
• X-Men:
  • Kitty Pryde and Caliban, one of the Morlocks. Short version: In one early encounter with the X-Men when most of the team was taken prisoner, Caliban fell in love with her, and she promised to stay with him forever if she helped them escape. He agreed, and they escaped, but she didn't keep her end of the bargain. Later, Callisto (the former leader of the Morlocks before Storm wrested that title away from her in ritual combat the first time) found out about the broken promise, and ordered Kitty kidnapped to make her own up to it. Eventually, Kitty decided she was bound to do as she promised and agreed to marry him, but he realized by then that she didn't love him, telling her he wouldn't hold her to that. (They became close friends soon after. On a related note, Kitty was using the alias "Ariel" at the time, making this an unsubtle Shout-Out to The Tempest)
  • Mystique's relationship to her son Nightcrawler and her adoptive daughter Rogue is often coloured by the non-romantic version of this trope. This is especially obvious in the case of Rogue, with whom she had a by all accounts happy family life. At first Mystique thought that Professor X had brainwashed Rogue into joining the X-Men, but once she found out in Uncanny X-Men #178 that this was what Rogue actually wanted, she came to accept her decision and never once tried to make her reverse it. In Uncanny X-Men #185 story Mystique seriously considers allowing Rogue to be shot be Forge's Neutralizer to strip her of her powers, which would enable her to touch people, lead a normal life, and, not least, to return to live with her adoptive parents. However in the end Mystique decides against this because this would have happened without Rogue's consent. And so she manipulates events so that Storm, not Rogue, is hit by the Neutralizer (Mystique is after all a villainess).
  • Sunspot makes a Deal with the Devil to reincarnate his dead girlfriend, as the devil in question reveals that she wasn't supposed to die when she did. The girlfriend, Juliana, wakes up in the body of a recently deceased girl, and slowly acclimates to her new identity despite having some lingering memories of her previous life. Sunspot decides it better if he stays away from her and doesn't ruin her new life with her past one, and so lets her go after meeting with her once.
• Young Avengers: Prodigy/David in vol. 2 realizes that, even though he is in love with Teddy/Hulkling, Teddy is meant to be with Billy, his longtime love: "I'm happy for them. They make a lovely couple."

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