Literature / Polyamory

Polyamory in Literature.

In 2666, "The one about the critics," Espinoza and Pelletier are Heterosexual Life-Partners who are both having casual sex with fellow academic Liz Norton. Both men both love Norton and want their relationship to end up as this. They have Three-Way Sex once but Norton takes a fourth option, so to speak and ends up with their friend Morini.
Group marriages and open relationships are relatively common in Aeon 14, and sometimes include both humans and artificial intelligences: sentient AIs reproduce by blending minds with each other or with humans (they can also be copied, but this is banned as a (non)human rights violation under the Phobos Accords). Main character Tanis Richards has a group relationship with her organic husband Joe Evans and her AI partner Angela, and Joe openly alludes to swinging at one point, while Extreme Omnisexual characters Jessica Keller and Cheeky have open marriages with their respective partners Trevor and Finaeus Tomlinson (the former pairing also including Jessica's AI Iris). Tanis and Angela later merge to become the ascended being Tangel; however it later turns out Tangel is actually a separate entity created by the merge and who merely occupied their headspace for a while. The last book of the Orion War series alludes to the three of them and Joe having to have some serious discussions about the nature of their relationship going forward.
At the end of An African Millionaire, it's revealed that both of Clay's female associates consider themselves married to him, without any ill-feeling between them. "When a gentleman has as many aliases as Colonel Clay, you can hardly expect him to be over particular about having only one wife between them, can you?"
Anita Blake: Anita Blake eventually takes this option with her entire Unwanted Harem.
Occurs many places throughout The Bible, making this Older Than Feudalism at least. Many important figures had multiple wives, such as Jacob in the Book of Genesis who marries sisters Leah and Rachel (although the former was thanks to a Bed Trick). The Books of Samuel begin with a man named Elkanah, who has two wives. In the Books of Kings, David had eight wives and several concubines, in common with most kings of the time. The champion, however, is probably Solomon, who takes it up to eleven with 700 wives and 300 concubines! The practice had largely died out by the end of the Old Testament, and in the New Testament, Paul defies it by teaching (in 1st Timothy and Titus) that a man who desires to be a bishop [also translated as elder or overseer] or a deacon should only have one wife.
A Brother's Price is set in a seriously gender-skewed world, with 5-10 girls born for every boy. The solution for this is for boys to marry all sisters in a family. The hero, of course, goes on on to marry all of the princesses of the realm.
The Change Room: Shar has multiple clients/Friends with Benefits and she's happy that way, preferring it over one exclusive relationship, explicitly disdaining monogamy. Eliza, her new lover, is made aware of this and she accepts the fact Shar also sees other people.
The Chronicles of Dorsa: Tasia and Mylla are in a secret relationship as the series starts, while they both also sleep with men on the side, fully aware of this while it happens.
The Color of Distance has Juna mention her failed "group marriage". In the sequel we see that her brother is in a similar marriage and they are commonplace. Often two people are monogamous within the marriage, but in passing a triad consisting of two brothers and a woman is mentioned. The real purpose in group marriages is a sense of family and community, and sharing child rights.
Maya Banks's Colters Family series of romance novels are centered around the titular Colter family, in which Holly, the family matriarch, is married to the three Colter brothers. Her sons also continue the poly tradition of being married to the same woman. Oddly enough, her daughter does not get involved in a poly relationship.
In The Company Novels, Mendoza, Edward, Alec and Nicholas form a relationship.
The central theme of Conversations with Friends. The main characters Frances, Bobbi, Melissa and Nick form a complicated network of love interests; two of them, Frances and Nick, have romantic feelings for two of the other persons and actively pursue the multiple relationships.
In Jennifer Crusie's Crazy For You, the female protagonist's mother is involved with a best friend as well as a husband.
Crooked Little Vein: The main love interest is a polyamorist, much to the protagonist's dismay. Originally, at least.
Older Than Print: In the eighth story of the eighth day of Boccaccio's Decameron, "Two men keep with one another: the one lies with the other's wife: the other, being ware thereof, manages with the aid of his wife to have the one locked in a chest, upon which he then lies with the wife of him that is locked therein." At the end, they call it even and, decide, along with their wives, to live so that "each of the ladies had two husbands, and each of the husbands two wives."
Eva Luna: Male lead Rolf Carlé gets into a relationship like this with two girls that not only are both his lovers, but his cousins as well. It lasts some years, until Rolf leaves the "colony" they live in and goes to the city; there's no ultra dramatic break-up, and the cousins are later Happily Married to local males whereas Rolf becomes an Intrepid Reporter and gets involved with Eva, the female lead.
In Existence it's briefly mentioned that Hacker has two girlfriends and Gerald is in a group marriage.
In The Expanse polygamous marriages aren't the norm but also aren't considered especially odd. Main character James Holden is the child of just such a marriage, being created from the genetic material of all eight of his parents.
The Fifth Season has a happy relationship consisting of Innon, a bisexual man; Syenite, a straight woman; and Alabaster, a Straight Gay man. They're all romantically involved and, although Syenite and Alabaster have no interest in getting physical with each other, they very much enjoy playing spectator while Innon does. They raise Syenite and Alabaster's son together for a few years, before Innon and the son are killed.
At the end of the Fitz Osborne trilogy Toby and Julia have a loving but nonromantic marriage, and both are involved with Simon. This proves to be an ideal solution for them, as it allows Toby to maintain his relationship with Simon while also fulfilling his duties as king; Simon to father the heirs to the throne of Montmaray (to which he was the rightful, but illegitimate heir; yes, he and Toby found out they were secret cousins after they were sleeping together)^note; and Julia to marry on her own terms. The three of them live happily together with their children.
The sci-fi novel Forget Yourself features polyamory as a major theme, though it is never mentioned by name.
Gaea Trilogy: Bizarre Alien Biology makes this common practice among the Titanides. It's common for their reproductive process to involve three or four individuals' genetic contributions, although one female can self-impregnate.
The main theme of the polyamorous comedy romance The Giddy Death of the Gays and the Strange Demise of Straights, following the love between the characters Dom, Richard, and Caroline. Scenes set in the future show a greater acceptance of nonmonogamous relationships, and even the potential for legal rights.
Girls Don't Hit:
- Joss and Colin eventually agree on having an open marriage when both of them have confessed to their past adultery, deciding it's better to simply be open about sleeping with other people while still staying married.
- Joss also tells Echo she's free to have casual sex with other people while they're on separate hits, with her saying it's necessary to blow off steam after it's complete.
In Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree, the prince marries Gold-Tree, then marries another woman when Gold-Tree is killed by Silver-Tree. The second wife accidentally brings Gold-Tree back to life, and the prince is happy to consider both women his wives.
Fairly early on in The Harem Protagonist Was Turned Into A Girl!! And Doesn’t Want To Change Back!!!?? Svetlana's first girlfriend Vivian floats the idea of polyamory to Svetlana who agrees to try it out. The other members of Svetlana's anime-style harem take varying amounts of time coming around to the idea they all eventually do, and another alien princess joins at the end of the story ending an intergalactic war.
Honor Harrington:
- This is the eventual solution when Honor's Second Love turns out to be already married. As mentioned above, it takes some pretty extraordinary people to make this kind of thing work, and fortunately they all are: the man is her former boss, Hamish Alexander, the Earl of White Haven, whose wife Emily is a triplegic who Can't Have Sex, Ever. The whole thing is her idea more than anybody else's, and there's enough Les Yay between her and Honor to suggest that, for them, the marriage is not merely a formality. In the meanwhile, though, there's a lot of wangsting, due to the existing marriage and resulting adultery; not to mention the media circus and political maelstrom that would ensue since all three characters are celebrities.
- Grayson already practices Exotic Extended Marriage (polygyny, as women outnumber men on the planet by three to one), but it's hinted (by Allison Harrington, Honor's mother) that at least some of the women are bisexual, and that, if not openly encouraged, it is at least quietly tolerated.
The House of Night has many (sometimes with more than three people) involving Zoey, usually some sort of combination out of Zoey/Erik/Heath/Stark (and sometimes Loren). Zoey/Heath/Stark was a thing for a while.
Lucía Maraz's daughter Daniela from In the Midst of Winter goes to university in Coral Gables, Florida. She calls her parents back in Chile to announce that she is genderfluid^note and into polyamory relationships. Her father Carlos advises her not to tell anyone in Chile and calls her relationships just an excuse to practice free love.
Iron Widow: When Wu Zetian finds herself in the beginnings of a Love Triangle with Gao Yizhi and Li Shimin, Yizhi reassures her that her feelings for one of them don't invalidate her feelings for the other, so she enters relationships with them both, to everyone's approval. Yizhi and Shimin have their own Relationship Upgrade not long after.
This is the eventual resolution to the Unwanted Harem in Kharmic Rebound Gerald is forced to Marry Them All and live as one huge family as punishment for his crimes.
This is the resolution to the love triangle between Eric, Beth, and Korendil in Mercedes Lackey's Urban Fantasy A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows. The relationship continues happily throughout the next book, but Eric breaks up with them amicably between books two and three.
This seems to be pretty common practice in Kushiel's Legacy wherein many people have multiple sexual partners with whom they are in love.
The Legends of Ethshar: The hero of With A Single Spell falls in love and gets married during his quest to win a princess. The king is still insistent about reducing the headcount at his castle, and his wife is very practical.
In the Mahabharata, Draupadi is married to all five of the Pandavas. (She spends a year on a cyclic basis with each of them, to ensure paternity.) She was only supposed to marry Arjuna, who won her hand during an Engagement Challenge, but he was told by his mother to share what he'd brought home (Kunti didn't realize until too late that this something was more of a someone.) Krishna tells her that it's because in her past life, she wished for a husband with all these great qualities that were extremely difficult to squeeze into one person (or in some versions, repeated her wish one too many times). The sage Vyasa advises her that she can marry Arjuna, but he'll come to resent her for separating him from his family, she can reject the marriage, but likely be viewed as Defiled Forever and die alone, or she can Marry Them All. She chooses the latter option on the advice of Krishna, and becomes The High Queen, although at great cost. She is also not the first or only woman to have multiple husbands, and the epic even goes so far as to make a statement that was (and, frankly, still is to this day in India) quite radical: namely, that if a man can take multiple wives, concubines, and mistresses with impunity, a woman should be able to do the same.
- The trope is averted in the Javanese version of the story, because by the time the story made it over to Java, Islam had already taken hold there. And although Islam allows a man to have up to four wives as long as he can take care of them all equally, it specifically forbids a woman to have more than one husband at a time because Lineage Comes from the Father. So in that version of the story, she's married only to Yuddhisthra, although she has a crush on Arjuna (who was her favorite husband in the original). And he's married only to Subhadra in this version; in the original, he was married to both Draupadi and Subhadra, and had Chitraghanda as a concubine.
In Mechanica, Betsy Cornwell's YA steampunk retelling of Cinderella, the plot initially seems to follow the fairy-tale as the title character falls in love with the prince a.k.a. her friend Fin. But then her dreams are frustrated when she realizes he's already in love with servant girl Caro, her best female friend, whom his status won't allow him to marry. All three characters settle for platonic friendship at the end of the book, but in the sequel, Venturess, it gradually becomes clear that Fin loves Nick as well as Caro, that Nick loves Caro as well as Fin, and that Caro loves both of them, as well as another girl, Bex. Healthy polyamory becomes their Happily Ever After.
The Millennium Series has a situation somewhere between this and Friends with Benefits; Mikhael Blomkvist and Erika Berger's inability to stop sleeping with each other led to the failure of his marriage, but Erika's husband doesn't mind her seeing Mikhael, and the two men get on well together. Erika and her husband have experimented with threesomes (though only with other people since Mikhael himself wasn't interested,) and they don't actually live together, but otherwise it works quite similarly to this trope.
The Neanderthal Parallax: It's the norm among Neanderthals that all citizens have both a male and female spouse, since Everyone Is Bi. Only those who've recently lost a spouse are seen as exceptions.
Nightfall (Series): Indira teaches Myra some vampire customs:
Indira: Most vampires are polyamorous. It’s not uncommon to be in love with a few at the same time.
Myra: Why does everything I learn about vampires involve either blood-drinking or orgies?
Indira: It is not either one or the other. The blood-drinking is a part of the orgies.
Some of Octavia Butler's novels involve people ending up in this sort of situation, usually because of Bizarre Alien Biology—which the humans may struggle against before finally giving in.
- In the series Lilith's Brood a family may involve a human male, a human female, an Oankali male, an Oankali female, and an ooloi.
- In Fledgling, each vampire keeps a small collection of humans as a family (and a food source).
One Rose Trilogy takes place in a realm where group marriage is the norm.
Outlander series: Lizzie ends up with both Beardsley twins.
Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm Queen of the Dead: Chris likes Avery and doesn't mind the idea of him and Lipstick Lesbian Sue both having relationships with her.
Quarters: Annice is with Stasya in a happy long-term committed relationship, but still also had sex with Pjerin, becoming pregnant by doing so. Stasya isn't surprised or acts betrayed by this, indicating Annice and she have an open relationship, commenting simply that this is what you get from sex with men (she's a lesbian, unlike Annice who's bisexual).
Realm of the Elderlings: Fool told Fitz that he had two fathers and one mother, which was quite common in his land.
Reborn as a Space Mercenary: I Woke Up Piloting the Strongest Starship!: Hiro's Bridge Bunnies Mimi, Elma, and Mei are all in love with him. They get along pretty well outside of the bedroom and aren't averse to sharing him between them on occasion, but most of the time they take turns.
Red Mars Trilogy: Vlad's relationship with Marina and Ursula is the subject of speculation in universe - are they sharing him, is it a Love Triangle, are Marina and Ursula a couple who made a pet of Vlad?
Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Discussed in volume 10: Pete Reston basically suggests turning the Sword Roses from friend group into a polycule. Unlike Katie, he doesn't really mind the idea of Nanao and Oliver getting together provided there's also room for himself (he's been in love with Oliver for a while), and he also suggests having a child with Katie (on the notion it might reign her recklessness in) and proposes a date to Guy as an apology for underestimating him (Guy takes it as a joke). Part of it is motivated by fear of abandonment, as he explains to Chela:
“Kids are great. Why? Because they turn people into family. Put a chain between you that can’t be severed easily. The word friend is pretty and all, but it’s fragile in a way I just can’t trust. If it’s in the cards, I’d like to be more than that with all of you.”
The Reluctant King: As king of Xylar, Jorian had multiple wives, whom he was all fond of. However, he also found it tiring since they all wanted his attention. Dividing his time between them was difficult.
Robert A. Heinlein's works feature this heavily, especially as he got farther into his career, which gives it strong overtones of Author Appeal. Most of the works in question advance the concept that a truly free individual should not be restricted by cultural taboos in choosing whom or how many to love.
- The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress features prototypal matriarchal group marriages — that is, the woman is the dominant partner and has full discretion as to whom or how many men she marries.
- Stranger in a Strange Land has Mike, a human with Martian values, form an entire quasi-cult around the notion of Free Love. Said novel was widely influential in the counterculture of the American 1960s and arguably predicted it.
- Friday starts with the titular protagonist in a group marriage in New Zealand, although they divorce her after she exposes their racist hypocrisy. She later joins a much healthier group marriage.
- Time Enough for Love and all subsequent novels in his "Future History" series feature Lazarus Long's increasingly extended family, designed as a group marriage in which individuals are free to come and go as they please but are all mutually responsible for the maintenance of the household and care of the children. The only restriction on who sleeps with whom is genetic compatibility, and not even then if there is no risk of pregnancy. Outside of marriage, anyone can shack up as long as they follow the same rules, including blood-relatives; Long's own marriage includes his mother and grandfather.
- The protagonists of The Number of the Beast and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls all eventually fall into Lazarus' polyamory through various circumstances, including Time Travel and dimension hopping.
In Rachel Hartman's Seraphina duology, the ending of the second book implies that this might be the future for Seraphina, Prince Lucian Kiggs and Queen Glisselda. Kiggs and Seraphina love each other, but Kiggs and Glisselda are wed in an Arranged Marriage, and Glisselda also loves Seraphina, who "realizes new things" about herself when Glisselda kisses her. The ultimate relationship between the three is left uncertain, but Seraphina does move into a royal suite in the palace in the end.
In Sewer, Gas & Electric, the eco-pirate Dufresne is in a polyamorous relationship with an online journalist and her male-model second boyfriend, complete with threesomes. The model is bisexual and has no problem with this, but Dufresne's own lingering insecurities from an Amish upbringing compel him to wrestle his co-husband into submission each time they meet, offsetting his doubts about his own masculinity.
The Shadow Speaker: Sarauniya Jaa has two husbands.
In The Sharing Knife, polyamory is rare, not surprising given the pre-Industrial setting. However, it's not unheard of among the Lakewalkers. When one of the Otter women realizes her husband is sterile, she is urged to divorce him and take another who can give her children. Out of love for him, she refuses. Instead, she chooses a second husband, and all three of them marry each other. Among the Lakewalkers, marriages are proven by magical wedding bracelets. As each of the threesome has two bracelets proving that they are simultaneously married to two different people, there is nothing anyone else can do. The clan eventually gives up trying to break up the threeway marriage, and the children are considered the offspring of all three parents.
A Song of Ice and Fire:
- The Targaryens have been polygamous on and off throughout their history.
  - Aegon the Conqueror started the tradition when he decided to married both Visenya and Rhaenys. He was supposed to marry Visenya but loved Rhaenys, and it was a Marry Them All solution. Each of them rode one of the three famous Targaryen dragons. Aegon's case is kind of an Exaggerated Trope version of the idea "behind every great man is a great woman." It's clear that having two great women behind him is much of the reason he was so successful. Aegon was as least as much of a conqueror as Alexander the Great was in our world, but instead of dying young, he went on to rule his kingdom—and was by all accounts the greatest king Westeros has ever known. Despite being polygamous, Aegon's marriage was very much a closed one. For Altar Diplomacy reasons, his new vassals repeatedly tried to offer up their daughters as additional wives. Aegon resoundingly turned them all down. Having two wives did not leave the door open for a third—it meant he already had plenty of wives and did not want more.
  - Other Targaryens (descendants of the conquering triad) also went the polygamous route… although it was never again done successfully. Stupid Evil Maegor "the Cruel" had three wives simultaneously, including kidnapped wives he gambitted into it after killing a couple of others. It was so conspicuously terrible that polygamy was made illegal in reaction to him.
  - Saera had a clique of best friends: Jonah Mooton, Roy Connington, Braxton Beesbury, Perianne Moore, and Alys Turnberry. Then a scandal broke that Saera had been known to kiss every last one of them. She had sex with Jonah, Roy, and Braxton, telling each of them it was her first time when they did it. To clean up the scandal, Saera offered to take all three of them as her husbands. Her dad said no, thinking that doing Maegor-y things was the only thing that could make this situation worse.
  - A later descendant, Aegon "the Unworthy", was—at least—"just" a Fat Bastard who Really Gets Around and believed in open relationships on his end (just don't dare cheating on him).
  - It has been suggested than Daenerys reinstate the practice Aegon-the-Conqueror style and get herself a pair of husbands to ride her other two dragons.
- The Targaryen practice of polygamy was inherited from their Valyrian ancestors. In Essos, polygamy is still commonly practiced in cultures as far-flung as the Free Cities, the Slaver's Bay, and the Dothraki.
- There is Craster and his nineteen wives, some of whom, like Gilly, are his daughters.
- Ironborn tradition allow men to marry a single "rock wife" and multiple "salt wives", the latter of whom are acquired through plunder. In practice, these salt wives are basically concubines and are looked down upon in Ironborn society. That said, their children are more privileged than bastards in mainland Westeros (aside from Dorne) and are not automatically disinherited. A few Ironborn houses are descended from salt wives, as well.
Spellster: Tracker once was in a relationship with three other people.
Possibly used to resolve continuity issues in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Relaunch novels: One book gave Geordi a Relationship Upgrade with Leah Brahms, but other books before and after had him dating a fellow crewmember. A much later book had him considering Leah's suggestion that the three of them should all have dinner together.
The Supervillainy Saga: Villain Protagonist Gary is monogamous with his wife, Mandy, during the start of the series but becomes involved with sidekick Cindy when his wife is a soulless vampire. Then Mandy gets her soul back and it becomes complicated. Also, Supergirl Expy Gabrielle and Gary have an on again, off again relationship dating back to college. Later, Gary admits that he tries to maintain all of his relationships because he's afraid of losing any of them from his life.
Most of the main cast of The Tale of the Five series. Including the dragon. And the fire elemental.
Tales of the Pack: Lexie is surprised to see Blythe kissing Renee since she knows Blythe's dating Mitch. Blythe indicates they have an open relationship in response, and that it's standard for the Pack, a group they're both part of. Sharm and Corwin also have an open relationship. However, it really gets Sharm down whenever Corwin is with someone else, so it's for her benefit rather than mutually wanted. She's particularly unhappy after Corwin wants to date and have sex with men again.
The Tamuli: Per Imperial tradition, Sarabian is in an Exotic Extended Marriage with one wife from each kingdom in the Tamul empire. Meanwhile, with his blessing, his wife Elysoun has around a dozen lovers; when Berit calls her unfaithful, she angrily explains that by her country's values, she's being faithful to each and every one of them.
Third Time Lucky: And Other Stories of the Most Powerful Wizard in the World: In "And Who Is Joah?" Joah tells Magdelene how her father has six wives. Given this, she has many half-siblings. Her older half-brother Zayd is another character in the story as he comes to find her.
The Traitor Baru Cormorant: The eponymous main character has two fathers and one mother; polyamorous relationships were commonly accepted in her homeland before the Masquerade conquered them. The Duchess Nayauru also has two lovers, though this triad seems to be an outlier in their country.
In the sci-fi Uplift series, some alien species require more than two individuals all mating together in order to reproduce. Among the species with this variety of Bizarre Alien Biology are the Gubru (require one female, one blue male, and one yellow male) and the Brma (require an alpha female, a beta female, an alpha male, and a beta male). It's also becoming popular among humans, possibly because of our uplift of the by no mean monogamous chimps and dolphins. Robert's mother has four husbands for instance.
Vonda McIntyre seems to like this:
- In the Starfarers series, there's at least one married triad (who were previously a tetrad, and almost became one again, but in both cases someone died).
- Dreamsnake, it's monogamous characters like Arevin who stand out.
In Warrior Cats, Smoky lives in a barn with, and is mates with, both Daisy and Floss (who happen to be sisters), and both of them bear his kits. The two she-cats are fine with it, although Daisy feels that he always did like Floss a bit better.
The Wheel of Time:
- The main character Rand al'Thor falls in love with three women, who in turn all fall in love with him. Leads to a fair bit of angst until the women decide to share, and put it to Rand as a fait accompli.
- The Aiel people, one of whom is one of the above-mentioned love interests of Rand's, formalize polygamous marriages as "sister-wives". As women in Aiel society are the ones to propose marriage, they generally decide on this arrangement in advance and are considered to be married to each other as much as to the husband. Although an Aiel marriage could involve multiple husbands, it's not mentioned as something that happens.
- Some Aes Sedai from the Green Ajah (the only Ajah allowing multiple Warders) have a polyamorous relationship with their Warders, although this is rare and not officially sanctioned.
The Wicked Years:
- Wicked has Frex/Melena/Turtle Heart. It started with Melena cheating on her husband Frex with Turtle Heart. And then Turtle Heart and Frex fell in love too. Eventually, Melena had their daughter Nessarose, and in not knowing who the father was, Frex decided on some sub-rational level that she was all of theirs, which is why she always meant more to him than Elphaba (their eldest daughter who was unambiguously Frex's).
  Elphaba: You were in love with him.
  Frex: We both were, we shared him. Your mother and I did. It was a lifetime ago and I don't know why anymore; I don't think I knew why then. I haven't loved anyone else since your mother died, except of course my children.
- Discussed at the end of the final book in the series. Liir lives alone, but comments that he leaves both the doors of his house unlocked at all times, symbolising his willingness to accept either Candle or Trism back into his life if one or both should choose to return.
Wicked Lovely:
- Leslie, Niall and Irial are all totally cool with their threeway—but not threesome—relationship.
- To a lesser extent, Ani and Rae seem fine with sharing Devlin as well.
Wraith Knight: Regina, Jacob, and Serah are all in love with one another to varying degrees by the end of the book. It requires Jacob becoming the God of Darkness to realize that they can just do what they want. Polyarmory is also something that is common in the setting with the nobility known to taking second and third spouses after their primary one.

Polyamory / Literature

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