Star Crossed Lovers - Television Tropes & Idioms

Two lovers -- usually teenagers -- destined to be kept apart no matter how hard they struggle to be together. It may be Fate or just Feuding Families, or even something as mundane as a few hundred miles, but something will always be in their way. Often, the two can only be Together In Death. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is the most famous example of this archetype (and provides the title of the trope) but it dates back at least as far as the ancient Greeks, making it one of The Oldest Ones In The Book.

A version of this trope which is at least discredited if not actually dead and buried in modern fiction but was true in the past and works in historical settings is Love Above One's Station, i. e. being in love with someone from a different social class. Yes, it's hard even today to have a relationship with someone from a very different background, but in the old days, it was completely out of order; you'd be treated with utter contempt and risk violence and/or arrest if you were from the lower class and courted a "better," and a "better" who reciprocated would be disowned or sent to a nunnery or asylum. This leads to all those usually tragic "servant/slave/peasant loves the lord/lady/king/queen" stories.

Compare Dating Catwoman, where the relationship is forbidden but doesn't end as tragically. Notice the overlaps with Interspecies Romance.

Examples:

Buffy and Angel in Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
Angel and Cordelia in Angel.
Subverted in the musical The Fantasticks: two neighboring fathers maintain the appearance of an virulent feud and forbid their children (a son and a daughter) to even look at each other as part of a scheme to get them to fall in love and marry.
In the Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch manga, Rina and Hanon both fall in love with humans, knowing full well that they will eventually have to leave them to rule over their kingdoms. (Hamasaki actually has a mermaid ancestor, but this seems inconsequential.) They tell Lucia this too, but her guy turns out to be the prince of an ancient powerful race that can breathe underwater, so she's safe.
American Dragon Jake Long features a romance between a dragon and a girl raised by a family of dragon-slayers.
Charmer and Ranger in The Animals Of Farthing Wood.
Played for laughs in Degrassi Junior High. Snake and Melanie are hopelessly crushing on each other, but every attempt they make to date ends in a comic disaster. In one episode, they plan to meet at a Wild Teen Party. Snake and his friends are put in charge of bringing the beer, but get arrested by the cops on the way -- so Melanie doesn't get to see him, and the Wild Teen Party doesn't get to be wild.
Chinese mythology speaks of the Weaver and the Cowherd, a legend of the stars Vega and Altair. Star-crossed lovers Zhi Nu and Niu Lang are separated forever across the Milky Way. They may only reunite once a year when magpies form a bridge between them. This is the basis of the Chinese cultural equivalent to Valentine's Day. Tanabata no Matsuri is the Japanese version with Orihime and Hikoboshi as the star-crossed lovers.
Parodied in the Discworld novel Mort with the characters of Mellius and Gretelina "whose pure, passionate and soul-searing affair would have scorched the pages of History if they had not, by some unexplained quirk of fate, been born two hundred years apart on different continents."
Game Example: Aerith and Cloud in Final Fantasy VII, and Aerith and Zack in Crisis Core. Aerith really just has no luck with relationships. Of course Aerith and Zack could be together in Advent Children.
Tequila and Billie, the daughter of Big Bad Mr. Wong in John Woo Presents Stranglehold.
Timpani and Blumiere of Super Paper Mario. Or, as you know them for most of the game, Tippi and Count Bleck.
Two examples from The Dresden Files: Harry and Susan are the more obvious, but also Thomas and Justine. Thomas is an incubus, while Justine is a rather disturbed hottie. At first, their relationship was just for mutual benefit; he could feed off her life energy, while he was her psychiatric drug. Unfortunately, Thomas is, quite literally, Allergic To Love, so when they actually did fall for each other, the relationship had to be immediately cut off.
Mari and Hagino from Blue Drop are divided by the fact that one is a school girl and the other the commander of an alien battleship, whose people plan to invade earth.
Though romance is not a major theme in the books, Eisenhorn and Bequin from the Warhammer 40000: Eisenhorn series. Eisenhorn is a Psyker and Bequin is a Blank (anti-psyker), thus meaning it was painful for Eisenhorn just to be near Bequin. The only time he is able to be close to her and open his heart is when Bequin is in a coma (thus canceling her 'Blankness'), after trying and failing to stop a possessed Imperial Titan. Unfortunately she doesn't wake up.
In Fire Emblem, this really happens to Priscilla, if she is paired with either the myrmidon Guy or the Dragon Rider Heath. Basically, she's a noble girl. But Guy is a tribesman from Sacae, and Heath is a deserter from Bern. So in the end, they back down. This is especially true on the Heath-Priscilla pairing, their A Support Conversation is almost on Tear Jerker level.
Wolf's Rain has not one but three sets of lovers, all of whom could be considered "star-crossed" in various ways.
- Much of Lord Darcia's motivation for becoming the series' villain involves his lover Hamona falling into a coma and subsequently dying, which he blames on the wolves.
- Hubb Leboski spends most of the series trying to get back together with his ex-wife Cher Degré, which indirectly leads to his getting involved with the wolves.
- The wolf Hige, who's always dreamed of finding a hot babe, eventually gets together with the wolf-dog Blue.
  - Of course, with everything else that's going on nobody gets much time for romance, and they all die in the OVA episodes. At the very end Hige is apparently reincarnated as a human, along with the other wolves, but we don't see Blue.
Lyra and Will from the His Dark Materials series, specifically the last book, The Amber Spyglass.
Kazuya and Erika in Daimos. Kazuya is the pilot of Daimos, defender of Earth from the Balm invaders. While Erika is the little sister of Richter, Prince of Balm and leader of the invasion.
Kat and Alistair from Gunnerkrigg Court. It was a Foregone Conclusion that Ali would leave at the end of the week, but it's made worse when the details of his departure (and the word of the narrator) ensure that Kat will never see him again.
Chrono has the worst luck when it comes to relationships. First, he meets Mary Magdalene, who informs him after he's known her for months that she has had prophetic dreams since she was a child that he would be the one to take her life. He does, although not in the way either one expects. He's so guilt-ridden over her death that he sleeps for 50 years in her tomb, waiting for his energy to deplete to join her in death. But Rosette Christopher comes and wakes him up from his years of slumber, and things start to be going good for him...until her brother is kidnapped by Aion and he's forced to make a contract with her, slowly draining away at her life. In the anime they die together, Rosette as a result of the contract and Chrono from his wounds in the final battle, but in the manga they spend six years apart, and Chrono arrives back to her side just in time for her to die in his arms. It's implied that he lives on for decades afterwards.
Subverted in Princess Tutu. Ahiru is forced to give up the pendant she uses to transform into a girl to save Mytho, but Fakir still promises to stay by her side, even though she's now just a duck.
Arcueid/Shiki from Shingetsutan Tsukihime.
Danny Phantom had Half Human Hybrid ghost hero Danny and Valerie, the Ghost Hunter. They dated briefly with Valerie breaking up because of her job, unaware of Danny's ghostly alter ego, but love-lost feelings were mutual during the aftermath...until Season Three.