Star Crossed Lovers / Literature

• The books by Strugatsky Brothers feature several:
  • Tojvo Glumov and Asya from The Time Wanderers. Tojvo leaves Earth (and Asya) behind.
  • Wanderhoose and Postysheva from Far Rainbow, who only get together as they are about to be annihilated.
• In All Our Yesterdays, Marina is this with James since her future self, Em, has to kill him to save the world.
• John Grady Cole and Alejandra from All the Pretty Horses. He's a poor American ranch hand, she's the daughter of the wealthy Mexican ranch owner that employs him.
• A frequent theme in Always Coming Home:
  • Terter Abhao and Willow, with him being a military commander from a Putting on the Reich and Stay in the Kitchen society, and her from a pastoral and egalitarian culture which cannot see war as anything but meaningless or childish.
  • The Wedding Night at Chukulmas has the ghosts of two people who died before their wedding.
• From the teen science-fiction series, Animorphs:
  • Rachel and Tobias. She's a beautiful, smart, independent, funny and spirited suburban teenage hottie. He's a boy trapped in the body of a bird. And then The Beginning happens.
  • Like Father, Like Son. Elfangor and Loren, who were not only from different species but separated by time travel, a meddling Ellimist and memory erasure. The end result: he's dead and she can't remember his existence. Elfangor's human morph Allan "Al" Fangor did leave Loren Someone to Remember Him By: Tobias. Yeah, someone up there really hates that family.
• Marcus and the elfess Caitlys in The Arts of Dark and Light, since both the elf-kingdom Elebrion and the human Republic of Amorr usually look very unkindly upon human-elf relationships. Amorr's Ban on Magic doesn't make people there more accepting of the sorceress Caitlys, either.
• Hilariously lampshaded and (eventually) averted in David Eddings' The Belgariad and The Malloreon: A knight and a lady are in love, but she is married to another man. Various other protagonists grumble about the fact all three characters are genre-aware of their plight, play up to it, and even actively avoid possible solutions because they love the melodrama so much. Eventually, after the husband dies, the main character gets sick of the ongoing Wangst and forces the couple to get married at the point of a seven-foot-long sword.
• In the Black Blade series, there have been multiple relationships across the Sinclair/Draconi feud. In the back story, there was Lila's parents, Serena Sterling and Luke Silver, and in the story's present day, Felix Morales and Deah Draconi.
• Lenina and John in Brave New World; alternately, Lenina and Bernard. She likes him, he likes her, but everyone is cruel to Bernard due to his differences.
• Bravelands:
  • There is a famous legend amongst baboons about Sunrise Crownleaf and Moonlight Deeproot. They were as far apart on the Fantastic Caste System as can be, with Sunrise being The Leader of the troop and Moonlight being of the lowest rank. They fell in love but the rest of their troop didn't agree. During the war that broke out as a result, Sunrise was killed and Moonlight later died of a broken heart. Since then inter-rank pairings have been banned amongst baboons.
  • Thorn is a Deeproot that is mutually in love with Berry Highleaf. They have a Secret Relationship. Thorn intended on becoming a Highleaf in order to become official mates with Berry. However, at the last minute he gave up his chance of being a Highleaf in order to let his weakling best friend Mud become a Lowleaf. This means that Thorn is forever stuck a Middleleaf. Berry and Thorn keep their relationship secret until Thorn breaks it off in order to protect Berry after realizing that her father is a murderer.
• The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons. Tatiana (a seventeen year old girl who's never been in a relationship) and Alexander, a 23 year-old Soviet army officer, fall in Love at First Sight. Alexander walks her home and finds to his horror that his current Girl of the Week is Tatiana's older sister. And Tatiana refuses to let him break up with her because of this (and even if they did, Tatiana sleeps in the same bed as her sister; given the Soviet housing shortage, she can't just move). If that's not bad enough, Alexander is actually Alexander Barrington, the son of American communists executed by the Secret Police, and has a False Friend who hopes to use Alexander to escape to the United States, and views Tatiana as a threat to this plan.
• Captive Prince: Damen and Laurent are the crown princes of two kingdoms who loathe each other. Damen killed Laurent's beloved brother, while Laurent knew of, and took glee in, the arranged murder of Damen's father and household. In Kings Rising, the Akielons find the very notion of the two being lovers outrageous. Zig-zagged at the climax when Damen publicly defends their relationship.
• The Children of Húrin tells a particularly painful version of this. In this case, Túrin and Niniel get married and are, for a while, wonderfully happy. It's only when they are expecting a child that they discover they are actually brother and sister, making their romance of the most star crossed variety possible. They both (rather expectedly) commit suicide.
  Niniel: Farewell, O twice beloved! A Túrin Turambar turun ambartanen: master of doom by doom mastered! O happy to be dead!
• Scrooge and Belle in A Christmas Carol, who were driven apart by Scrooge's greed and obsession with money.
• The Chronicles of Dorsa: Mylla, Tasia's handmaid, grew from just being her very close friend to her lover. They know however that it can't last as Mylla is going to leave and then marry a man not long in the future, as her father insists on. Even if this were not the case, same-sex relationships are taboo, and they keep it secret because of that.
• Constance Verity Saves the World: Tia describes Connie and Larry as having a "real Romeo-and-Juliet" vibe to them, her being The Chosen One thwarting evil and he the heir to a Sinister Spy Agency. It apparently never got past second base, and to this day they're still on good terms with each other.
• Mirasol and Haik in The Crocodile God didn't start this way as a Filipino/Tagalog sea-god and his mortal wife, but the conquest of Spain has thrown a long-lasting wrench into their Reincarnation Romance. When a Spaniard shot the pregnant Mirasol and caused their first daughter's stillbirth, Haik promptly went over the Despair Event Horizon and has since lost contact with his increasingly Catholicized followers, of which the present-day Mirasol is the last one left in 2017 California. And before they lost their first daughter, Haik had already lost contact with the other Tagalog gods and assumed they were all dead--many of whom were his family members.
  • America isn't very welcoming to them either, since the forgotten Haik is constantly mistaken for an undocumented immigrant... and deported to the Philippines, where modern-day Filipinos hate/mock him for being a dark-skinned "tribesman" with extensive cultural tattoos.
• A couple of instances in the Deryni novels:
  • Duncan McLain and Maryse MacArdry. Expecting to be parted over a feud between their clans, they marry in secret and Maryse conceives a son, Dhugal. Duncan later learns Maryse died of a fever the following winter, but he doesn't know the rest of the story until much later.
  • Rothana Nur Hallaj and Kelson Haldane. After much thought, she decides to put aside her temporary novice's vows and marry him, then he disappears down a waterfall and is thought to be dead. She is persuaded to marry someone else traitorous Conall Haldane, and feels she cannot marry Kelson once they are both free to do so. She even arranges for him to marry someone else!
• Devdas: The book (and subsequent movie versions) is definitely of the second variation, having been written in 1917 when such rules still existed. The eponymous hero (son of a wealthy upper-class family) and Childhood Sweetheart Paro (daughter of a middle class trader family) fall in love upon adulthood, but because Devdas is too weak-willed to stand up to his father's disapproval of their getting married, the two of them spend the remainder of the book apart. He spends his days drinking and mourning her, while Paro is in an Arranged Marriage to an older aristocratic gentleman. Sensing that he's close to death because of his drinking and despair, Devdas crawls to Paro's house and dies in front of her gate, fulfilling a promise he made to her on the day of her wedding, and Paro can't even see his face because of the rules of Purdah.
• Discworld:
  • Parodied in 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." The Gods then turned them into an ironing board and a bollard, apparently under the impression this was helping somehow.
  • Juliet (yes...) and Trev in Unseen Academicals, who are closely connected to the most vicious rivals in Ankh-Morpork's football league ("two teams, alike in villainy"), with her being the daughter of the Dolly Sisters captain, and him being the son of Dimwell's most famous player, and a known Face in the gangs of supporters.
• Divergent: Matthew from Allegiant was once in love with a GD girl who died before they could fully realize their relationship. Even if she didn't die, they couldn't be together anyway, due to the society's unbelievable discrimination against the GD.
• Walter Huff and Phyllis Nirdlinger in Double Indemnity. They murder Phyllis's husband and attempt to make it look like an accident to get double indemnity on his insurance policy, but it falls through, they get found out, and subsequently commit mutual suicide by jumping from the stern of a cruise ship.
• Two examples from The Dresden Files:
  • Harry and Susan are the more obvious. Susan ignores Harry's warnings and Harry not telling her enough of his life led her to make a dangerous choice and ended up a half-vampire. Because she deeply loved him and wanted him it made her inner demon want him all the more, so they separated, only later did they have one night of passionate sex (with Susan bound and gagged so she didn't hurt him) and then she was gone from his life for many years. Then she came back telling him their child, conceived on that night of bondage, was kidnapped. Harry told her that keeping the knowledge he had a child from him ended any chance of them getting back together. She accepted that and, by gambits of others in play, would sacrifice her life to permanently destroy the Red Court vampires with Harry being her killer.
  • Thomas and Justine. Thomas is an incubus, while Justine is a rather disturbed hottie. Initially their relationship is mutually beneficial, with Thomas feeding on Justine's Life Energy and stabilizing her mental state in the process. Then Thomas was badly injured, on the verge of death if he did not feed. Justine willingly gave herself to Thomas knowing she could die and Thomas stopped himself moments before he was about to kill her, even if it could cost him his life. The result was both acts of genuine love now was contained in each other. Since Thomas is literally Allergic to Love, Justine's genuine love makes it so that they can't touch each other without seriously injuring him as he wants her so much he instinctively feeds on her. Finally averted when Justine starts having sex with a girlfriend so she can then have sex with Thomas, and then regain the protection. He heartily approves.
• Though romance is not a major theme in the books, Eisenhorn and Bequin from the Warhammer 40,000: 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.
• Enchantress from the Stars has Elana, a girl from The Federation, an extremely advanced society, fall in love with Georyn, a young man from a planet stuck in Middle Ages. Neither of them could be happy in another world, so they part once the Federation's expedition departs.
• Eurico and Hermengarda in Eurico the Presbyter. First off, he is a knight of low birth (albeit an extremely talented and badass one in combat) and she is a noblewoman whose father vetoes their marriage proposal. He is left so heartbroken that he becomes a priest to alleviate the pain of not being with her beloved, only to be pulled into action when her life is threatened by invaders. At the end, Eurico manages to rescue Hermengarda from a harem, but because of the vows he took as a priest and that most of their land is still occupied, they cannot be together as he is forced to leave her under her brother Pelagius' protection to continuing fighting against the invaders while she goes mad with grief.
• Marinell and Florimell from The Faerie Queene would make a lovely couple, but since a prophesy said Marinell would die due to a virgin, Marinell's mother forbid them to be together.
• Augustus and Hazel in The Fault in Our Stars both have cancer, so they start a relationship being aware that it won't last. It doesn't: Augustus, the most healthy at first sight, ends up having a relapse in his illness and dies.
• The Girl from the Miracles District has two such couples.
  • Nikita and Zelda are unwilling to make a Relationship Upgrade because they're afraid this would happen - Nikita can't live in the Miracles District without getting trapped there, while Zelda and her daughter can't leave it or they'll die.
  • Iben and his wife. The latter's a huldra, who by the divine law can only bind herself to a human. He, in turn, is an immortal, so the two can only spend together one, maybe two days before she has to leave him for months.
• Scarlett's mother, Ellen, in Gone with the Wind was this with her bad boy cousin Philippe, until her father and sisters drove him out of town. He later died in a barroom brawl and Ellen married Scarlett's father Gerald. The family thinks she's the Southern version of Yamato Nadeshiko; what she actually is a Stepford Smiler.
• The legend of "Sun and Shadow" in the Heralds of Valdemar series is about two Heralds from ancient Valdemar who are kept apart by a curse. While there are story hints that they eventually overcome it and get to be together, the author has deliberately left the details vague.
• Lyra and Will from the His Dark Materials series, specifically the last book, The Amber Spyglass. Despite falling in love, both have to return to their respective worlds and since all portals have to be closed, they aren't able to meet again for the rest of their lives. They promise that both will go to a bench in their respective world's Oxford Botanic Gardens every midsummer's day to remember each other.
• In Holes, we have the tragic case of Miss Katherine and Sam, though in love with each other, cannot be together because she's white and he's black. When the rest of the town found out that they had kissed (a huge crime back in their day), they burned down Miss Katherine's schoolhouse and killed Sam in front of her.
• From Honor Harrington: Eloise Pritchart and Javier Giscard. Just when it seems like they might have a chance at a happy ever after that doesn't include hiding from State Sec and/or fighting a war they don't want to fight, he is killed in battle. She never quite recovers. Interestingly, the couple in question know from the beginning that they are star-crossed lovers and that every minute they have is borrowed time; they just happen to love each other so much that the inevitable heartbreak is still worth it.
• In the first book of The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark use this trope for all it's worth to gain sympathy. In the third book of the series the trope ends up subverted as Katniss reciprocates Peeta's feelings and marries him.
  • The real star-crossed lovers of the trilogy turn out to be Finnick Odair and Annie Cresta, with her even ending up with Someone to Remember Him By.
• In Hyouketsu Kyoukai no Eden, Sheltis and Ymy can talk normally with each other and interact. There's just one problem: both of them can't touch each other because if they try, sparks form between the two of them thanks to Sheltis harboring so much dark energy called mateki while Ymy has an overwhelming amount of light energy called shinryoku. While both do try to find one day to have Sheltis be purified completely, what they can only do is basically talk with each other while everyone else can touch Sheltis completely fine.
• In The Iron Dragon's Daughter, Jane and Tetigistus. When she and one of his incarnations (Rooster, Peter, Puck or Rocket) got together, it ended in tragedy. More for him than for her.
• An Alaskan version of Romeo and Juliet, with a boy and a girl from feuding villages, forms a major part of the plot of the Kate Shugak mystery Bad Blood. Author Dana Stabenow says in her introduction that she always thought the play was more about the families than the lovers, and that Shakespeare could have handled the elopement far better.
• The Kevin And Sadie series by Joan Lingard is set in Belfast in the 1970s. Kevin is Catholic, Sadie is Protestant. They eventually move to England, where they can be together.
• Ava and Jacob in The Kingdom of Little Wounds. Jacob fled the country (presumably to Denmark) because it wasn't safe for him to be a Protestant in Skyggehavn.
• In "The Lady, or the Tiger?", a king's daughter falls in love with a man from her father's court. It's more or less the first time this has ever happened, so naturally her father sends him to the arena to test his fate — opening the correct option of a Door Roulette will win him a lovely bride, opening the other one will get him eaten by a tiger. The princess uses all her formidable will to learn which is the safe door, but even if she uses that knowledge to save him, they can't be together.
• The medieval Arabic/Persian epic, Layla and Majnun, a tragic love story written by Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi in the 12th century, based on an Arabic tale from around the late 7th or 8th century. The story is basically: boy meets girl, boy goes the Love Makes You Crazy way, boy loses girl since she gets an arranged marriage to another guy, boy loses what's left of his mind, girl soon dies of either illness or a Death by Despair, boy is found dead near girl's grave after carving his last words of love for her on a stone. Its popularity in the Middle East and Asia is comparable to (and predates) that of Romeo & Juliet in the Western world.
  • The tale later inspired the 1970 Eric Clapton song "Layla", about Clapton's Unrequited Love for Beatle George Harrison's wife Pattie Boyd... except that it's averted since Clapton did eventually end up marrying her.
• In The Last Don, by Mario Puzo, Rose Marie Clericuzio and Jimmy Santadio are the most decent members of their respective families and are very much in love, unfortunately, these are mafia families that are in an open war between themselves. However, they both believe that their love -and a pregnancy- can end the war and unite both families, so they decide to marry in a great ceremony... and everything ends tragically for both of them.
• The ancient Sanskrit play, The Little Clay Cart, written by the Indian playwright Sudraka around the 2nd century BC. It was about a forbidden love between an impoverished young man and a wealthy courtesian.
• The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul: Halajan and Rashif are in love, but were promised to different people. They still pine for each other, but they can't be open about their relationship because of how traditional Ashmat is.
• The Lord of Bembibre: Don Álvaro and Doña beatriz loved each other, and they were unofficially engaged until Beatriz's father decides Don Álvaro has become a politically undesireable son-in-law and breaks off their compromise to get his daughter in an arranged marriage to a powerful and unscrupulous aristocrat whom Beatriz openly hates.
• In Jack Campbell's The Lost Fleet series, Captain Bradomant and Colonel Rogero, on opposite sides of the war. Both intensely honorable and adamant against doing anything against their own sides.
• Miranda And Caliban, a retelling of The Tempest, shows the two title characters develop a strong relationship over the course of growing up together, only to be Doomed by Canon.
• Winston and Julia in Nineteen Eighty-Four, who are forbidden to love each other by the dictates of the Party, and are ultimately forced to betray their love for each other by the sadistic O'Brien.
• Callum and Sephy in Noughts & Crosses. Set in a speculative fiction universe where black people are the oppressive class over white people, Sephy is black and Callum is white and the fates are constantly conspiring against them. They do not get a happy ending.
• Renata Remedios "Meme" Buendía del Carpio and Mauricio Babilonia play the role in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Not only theirs is an Uptown Girl deal (Meme is from the powerful Buendia clan, Mauricio is a mere mechanic and hinted to be of Romani heritage), but there's a HUGE veto coming from her family — specially her mother Fernanda. They try to overcome said veto... and it goes From Bad to Worse.
• Oroonoko: Oroonoko and Imoinda's love go through enslavement, white society's unwillingness to acknowledge them, and a (failed) slave revolt. Their love is not enough to overcome these events.
• The Pillars of Reality: Master Mechanic Mari and Mage Alain come from guilds which ban members from even speaking to each other, but quickly fall in love.
• Maeve and Odran from the Deception duology in the Princesses of Myth series are a deconstruction. They spent so long being star crossed lovers that they hardly spent any time learning how to live with each other. When they actually get the chance, they realize that while they still love each other they are too different to be compatible as a couple.
• Discussed in Ravelling Wrath.
  Rinn: Haha, yeah, how likely is it that we'd both be chosen? Everyone will think we're the star-crossed lovers for sure.
  Yali: Actually, I think we might literally be star-crossed lovers.
  Rinn: What?
  Yali: 'Star-crossed' means the fates are against us. That definitely fits. Ironically, because –
  Rinn: But, don't you have to, uh, have sex, to count as 'lovers'?
  Yali: What? The word is 'lovers', we love each other, that should be enough! Besides, we're probably going to eventually, I, I, I –
  Rinn: But by then, we might not be star-crossed anymore! This is very important!
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Ophelia Salvadori, Carlos Whitrow, and Alvin Godfrey are revealed to be star-crossed in volume 3: the girl who can't help but make every male irrationally horny was loved by the one person physically immune to her charms (Carlos was castrated as a child as part of Ritual Magic to render him immune to her succubus perfume), and in turn she loved their best friend Godfrey, who is essentially a Chaste Hero. Ophelia was driven to villainy by the Slut-Shaming she experienced over her succubus ancestry and lost them both. Ultimately, Carlos and Ophelia are mutually consumed by the spell and are Together in Death, leaving Godfrey to carry on with their surviving friends.
• In Revelation Space, Ana Khouri and her husband are critically wounded in combat, leading them to be put in cryostorage and shipped to orbital hospitals to heal. A shipping error causes Ana to be loaded into the coldsleep chambers of a slower-than-light starship and sent to a system 20+ light years away. By the time she is awoken, an entire generation has gone past and she resigns herself to never seeing her husband again. However, a transhuman kidnaps her and reveals they have her husband in cryostorage and will reunite them if she kills a man on the world of Resurgram. They are never reunited as the Precursor Killers show up and slag the system, and Ana admits the cryostorage may have been a fake.
• In Saga de los Confines of Liliana Bodoc, we have the case of Thungur, a humble Husihuilke warrior and Nanahuatli, princess of The Lords of the Sun. Unlike other examples, their people are allies, but they belong to different social classes, and when Nanahuatli's older brother, the ruling prince, finds out about their affair, he is enraged to the point of sending his sister to the temple of the virgins to be sacrificed to the gods (she manages to escape)
• In Scavenger Alliance, when Blaze and Tad admit their feelings for each other, Blaze points out that they are both literally and figuratively from different worlds. They do start a relationship, but among many other problems it has to be kept secret. The Alliance would not be thrilled about an offworlder coming along and stealing their women...
• The Scholomance: The protagonist El's parents, Arjun Sharma and Gwen Higgins. In the backstory, the two fell in love while attending the Scholomance together, leading to El being conceived while they were still students. During the Graduation Run later that year, Arjun heroically gave his life to save the four-months pregnant Gwen from the maw-mouth Patience, his last words to them being a Dying Declaration of Love. Arjun's great-grandmother Deepthi, the greatest Seer in the world, later confirms that there was no future where they didn't fall in love, and no future where both of them survived — one was always going to die in the place of the other. In fact, every future where Arjun survived instead of Gwen and El, he would eventually be Driven to Suicide because he couldn't handle his grief over their deaths. Ultimately, Deepthi came to the conclusion that Arjun could not be saved and opted to give him no warning when he left to go to the Scholomance, so that way Gwen and El could live in his stead.
• Schooled in Magic: Love's Labor's Won involves two lovers who come from rival feuding families. The pair are disowned when found out, but still stay together.
• Shades of Grey, Eddie and Jane. Jane, who is the epitome of Tsundere, would rather kill Eddie than marry him, and he's supposed to marry upwards anyway. And then when they do fall mutually in love, it turns out Jane is a Green and shouldn't even talk to eighty-six-percent-Red Eddie, much less marry him.
• The lead couple of Hans Christian Andersen's short story "The Shepherdess and the Chimney-sweep" are two porcelain figurines who fall in love, but a mahogany satyr figure is in talks to an also porcelained Chinese Old Man figure (who is a sort-of Parental Substitute for the Shepherdess) to get her in an Arranged Marriage to him. (It Makes Sense in Context, we swear) So the two attempt to run away so they won't be separated. Unusually for the very angsty Andersen tales, they manage to stay together.
• About half of all romantic relationships in A Song of Ice and Fire. The best you can hope for is a Perfectly Arranged Marriage or a spouse who's accepting of you keeping a lover on the side (though even that can be problematic if you have any children with the latter).
  • A notable example, since they're the basis of In-Universe folktales and love songs, are the Prince of Dragonflies and Jenny of Oldstones. Prince Duncan Targaryen abdicates the throne for the common girl he falls in love with, leaving his less worthy younger brother and far less worthy nephew to run the dynasty into the ground within two generations.
  • Ser Barristan Selmy, hoping to put Daenerys Targaryen off the idea of carrying on with the sellsword Daario Naharis and commit to her political marriage, tells her the story of her mother Rhaella and a knight she was in love with. They had broken up in order for her to marry the king, and the knight turned to religion. Though Barristan is careful not to reveal his name, other sources say it was Ser Bonifer Hasty, now the leader of a hundred-strong company of devout knights who are holding the great fortress of Harrenhal.
  • During the Age of the Heroes, Elenei, the daughter of the sea god and the goddess of the wind. She gave her maidenhead to Durran Godsgrief, committing herself to a mortal life. Her divine parents forbade their love, but Durran and Elenei wed despite them. The gods' wrath destroyed Durran's keep on his wedding night, killing all his family and guests. Durran declared war on the gods, who replied by hammering his kingdom with massive storms.
  • The legend of Bael the Bard has Bael kidnapping Lord Stark's daughter, spent a year hidden with her and fathered her son, but then she comes back to Winterfell without him. When Lord Stark dies the boy - despite being a bastard - is his only male heir and becomes the next Lord Stark. Unfortunately, this Lord declares war to Bael and kills him not knowing he was his father, and as a result his mother commits suicide.
  • According to Second Hand Story Telling, Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark may have been this trope. It's safe to say that it bring an insane amount of grief to an entire kingdom.
  • Tyrion Lannister and his first wife, Tysha, whose relationship was cruelly ended by a lie. It's stated that Tyrion was baited into falling in love and marrying with a whore who was hired by his brother, Jaime, then forced to see her being gang raped. Except, as he finds out belatedly from Jaime, Tysha wasn't a whore and did genuinely love him, but was sent away because their father, Tywin, wanted to teach Tyrion a lesson. Her current whereabouts are unknown, but Tyrion is determined to find her.
  • For a present-day example, there is Jon Snow and Ygritte, whose love is separated by them being on the opposing sides. The revelation of Jon's true allegiance utterly crushes Ygritte, who spends the rest of her life wanting to murder him. Jon is there for her last moments after she is mortally wounded during the wildling attack on Castle Black, seeing her smile as she reminisces about their romantic time together.
• More than one couple, or sad non-couple in the Spaceforce (2012) books, mainly because of the Taysan Empire's insanely restrictive rules on who can marry whom, and how. Sexual relationships outside marriage, and marriage between people of different 'degree', are serious criminal offences. Jay defies the law to elope with and marry Ashlenn in an Earther wedding ceremony, but both pay heavily for it. Prince Ragoth and his bodyguard Maydith, we assume, never even discuss their mutual attraction - and Jay's commander Salthar had reciprocated, but nonetheless hopeless feelings for fellow agent Mizal.
• In Star Wars: Lost Stars, a pair of youths from an Outer Rim planet join the Empire together. Ciena Ree remains true to her oath as am Imperial officer, even as she becomes disillusioned by the Empire. Thane Kyrell defects and joins the Rebellion after Alderaan. They still remain in love, even as they fly against each other in combat. Ultimately, he rescues her after she crashes her star destroyer into Jakku, but it is only so that she can be arrested by the New Republic.
• Stinger: Rick Juroda and Cody Lochett are gang leaders who hate each other. Then Cody runs into Rick's sister at a bus station when she comes to town and develops a fast crush.
• The original fate of Gwidion and Emily in Symphony of Ages. While soul mates, they were born millenia and continents apart. By the time the two met in the original timeline, Emily was ancient and giving birth to their son, who could Set Right What Once Went Wrong, killed her. The changes to history averted this trope, eventually.
• In C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces, Orual, queen of Glome, falls in love with Bardia, her captain of the guard, who is already married. At the end, it's revealed that the stress her devotion caused him led him to an early grave.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • King Finwë and his first wife, Míriel, in The Silmarillion. She dies in childbirth and refuses to become reembodied, and Finwë eventually remarries, which means Míriel can never return since Elves are strictly monogamist. Finwë is himself killed many years later, however, and chooses to remain dead so Míriel can become reembodied.
  • Beren and Luthien are a subversion: Beren is a lord among mortal man, Luthien is the half-elven, half-maia (angelic being), princess of Doriath, daughter of Thingol and Melian. Upon first meeting Thingol, Beren swore that "Neither rock, nor steel, nor the fires of Morgoth, nor all the powers of the Elf-kingdoms" can keep him away from Luthien, which Thingol immediately turned into an Engagement Challenge, and tasked Beren with bringing him one silmaril from the crown of Morgoth (the Tolkienverse's Satanic Archetype), that the sons of Feanor, the creator of the silmarils, swore a terrible oath to not let anyoneelse, but them possess. Beren and Luthien in the end succeeded, but soon after Beren was killed by Carcharoth, the largest werewolf to ever live. Stricken by grief, Luthien died after him, and her soul went to Mandos, the vala of souls and fates, and she sang him such a beatiful song, it moved his heart, offering her two choices: be reincarnated by herself, and live-on as an elf forever in Valinor, the land of the gods, or be reborn, along with Beren as mortals, and live a short life together in Middle-Earth, and upon dying her soul would leave the world, and go where the souls of men do. She chose the latter. The subversion comes from the implication, that not only was their love destined, it was destined to succeed, since nothing in the world, not even the different afterlives meant for humans and elves, could keep them apart. Furthermore, they should't have been able to meet in the first place: the Girdle of Melian, a protective enchanment, was supposed to keep everyone out of Thingol's kigdom, that he did not allow to enter, and Melian even prophesied that someone sent by a higher power than herself would get around it.
  • Aegnor and Andreth, an immortal elf lord and a mortal woman. She will eventually grow old and die, while he will continue on, and even if he dies he will only be sent to the Halls of Mandos and eventually reembodied while her spirit will leave the world completely. They never marry, and ironically Aegnor dies long before Andreth does. He refuses to be reembodied because he can't live in a world without Andreth.
  • The Lord of the Rings sees Aragorn and Arwen in a similar situation: the two do eventually marry (though only after a 39-year wait, and this after 27 years of unrequited love on Aragorn's end), but, of course, Aragorn is mortal; when he dies, Arwen returns to her mother's lands in Lothlórien, where she dies of grief and loneliness. Fortunately, since Arwen renounced her immortality (and with it, her place on the last ship to Valinor and presumably her place in the Halls of Mandos), her spirit will leave the world as Aragorn's did; it may even be implied that he waited at Cerin Amroth for her.
  And taking Frodo's hand in his, he left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as a living man.
• By the end of The Underland Chronicles, it's strongly implied that Gregor will never see Luxa again.
• Rose's relationship with Dimitri in Vampire Academy, due to their age difference and student-teacher relationship. Eventually subverted, as at the end of the series their relationship is accepted.
• The Vampire Diaries:
  • Stefan Salvatore and Elena Gilbert. There is nothing that these two have not been through. Their love story is inspired by Romeo and Juliet according to the author. Stefan and Elena is a combination of Love Before First Sight, Boy Meets Girl, Love at First Sight, Starcrossed Lovers, One True Love, Red String of Fate, Interspecies Romance, Mayfly–December Romance, Eternal Love, and Inter-Class Romance all rolled into one.
  • Damon and Bonnie from the same series seem to be heading in this direction, especially from Midnight onwards.
• In the Warrior Cats series, medicine cats cannot fall in love, and neither can cats from rival clans. This results in cases of missing parents and fake parents.
  • Evident with Bluestar, who ends up pregnant with her lover Oakheart's kits, but due to them being in different clans, she has to leave her kits with him and not acknowledge her relationship with him or her kits for the rest of her life, up until she reveals to her kits that she is their mother just before she dies.
  • Ditto in the case of Leafpool and Crowfeather, except that Leafpool is also a medicine cat. Leafpool has to give her kits to her sister to raise, and has to pretend to be just an aunt when she is actually their mother. Furthermore, when the truth comes out, one of her kits turns insane and nearly murders Leafpool. Because of that, she even gives up her place as medicine cat, but still cannot be reunited with Crowfeather, as he is stuck with a mate he does not love, as well as another son, who is also a Jerkass.
  • Crowfeather and Feathertail as well. Both of them are also from separate clans, but become close in their journey for a new home. When they finally confess their love for each other, Feathertail is killed shortly afterwards in a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Ryewhisker and Cloudberry in "Code of the Clans". Just as Cloudberry is pregnant with Ryewhisker's kits, he is killed defending her from his own clanmates as she is from a rival clan. This causes an even bigger wedge to be driven between the two clans.
  • Warrior Cats is chock-full of such examples.