History Main / LoveRuinsTheRealm

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** It's made explicit with David's son, Solomon. All his famous wisdom didn't do him much good when he started [[IfYouKnowWhatIMean thinking with his other head]] and taking wives from other kingdoms who swayed his heart away from God, thus setting his kingdom up to fall.

* Subverted in ''[[{{ptitleqsy6l9lumn8g}} Naamah's Kiss]]''. Moirin's relationship with [[spoiler: Jehanne was said to make her a better ruler. Amusingly enough, it was the King (Jehanne's husband) who said this.]]

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* Since ''TheTudors'' is about Henry VIII, this shows up here when he throws England into political and religeous turmoil in order to be with Anne Boleyn.

* As are Marc Antony and Cleopatra from the {{Shakespeare}}an play.

* This is the reason of why [[MortalKombat Liu Kang]] refuses to become Edenia's king, alongside Kitana, in his ending in MortalKombat4.

** The Dowager Empress of the Qing dynasty was accused of wanting to be the next Wu Ze Tian and at the very least indirectly putting the final nails in the coffin of the Qing dynasty. (She did try to reform, but by then it was too late.)

** Although ironically- despite what TheKingsSpeach tells us- Churchill didn't actually ''want'' the succession to be diverted (Just Because, as far as is possible to see- he thought at the time it made a nonsense of the idea of monarchy. And George was also extremely- some might say, as he announced it as king before parliament had agreed on it- inappropriately eager to celebrate the achievements of Neville Chamberlain's peace treaty...

* Dido and Aeneas in ''TheAeneid''. According to Virgil, their short fling caused the Punic Wars. Let this be a lesson to all Good Romans to never put love before duty.

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* The above SailorMoon example is noted in Fanfic/WhiteDevilOfTheMoon. [[LyricalNanoha Nanoha]], who in this fic is the reincarnation of Princess Serenity, [[CallingTheOldWomanOut calls out Queen Serenity]] for allowing her daughter to do everything that she did, noting that in addition to the above consequences, the princess was placing herself in danger of coming to harm and sparking an international incident, and potentially allowing Endymion to seize control of the Moon Kingdom through marriage.

-->''Rulers make bad lovers''
-->''You better put your kingdom up for sale''

* Louis XV and Madame la Pompadourwere falsely accused of this, for political reasons, to make him look like under the cat's paw. In fact her influence was very limited in foreign politics, she mainly focused on getting various relations cushy jobs. She did strongly influence the kings patronage of various artists, and the Academie Francais to a lesser degree.

# It's an extramarital affair or some other sort of slap in the face, and it makes them a ''lot'' of enemies.
# Related to the above, it interferes with an ArrangedMarriage and disrupts everyone's plans for inheritances, alliances and succession.

* Marie Antoinette, the poor girl, was and still is often accused of influencing her husband inappropriately and substantially. It's enough to drive this troper MAD.
* Eric XIV of Sweden (reigned 1560-1568) managed to upset large parts of the Swedish nobility, including his own brothers, during his reign because of his somtimes violent insanity and paranoia. His decision to marry his mistress Karin Månsdotter, the daughter of a common jailkeeper, became the final straw that made it possible for his brothers and other political opponents to dethrone him.

** Historically, I seem to recall learning Theodora and Justinian were a competent power couple.
*** Judging from her famous quote during a particularily nasty Chariot Race Riot (Chariot Races are to Romans what Soccer/Football is to Man U.) about staying and possibly dying as queen rather then running as beggars encouraged her husband to try to quell the riot - one could suggest she's the more competent (or at least the bolder) of the two.

* Subverted in ''Naamah's Kiss''. Moirin's relationship with [[spoiler: Jehanne was said to make her a better ruler. Amusingly enough, it was the King (Jehanne's husband) who said this.]]

* Chinese emperor Xuanzong (reigned 712?756) spent a whole lot of his later reign with his beautiful consort Yang Guifei and passing out all sorts of high offices to her friends and family. Little details like national defense were neglected right up until the inevitable rebellion by a cocky general. The poor consort didn't survive the evacuation, as what troops Xuanzong had left demanded her scapegoat's head.
** And a long, long time before this, there was the rule of King Zhou, the last king of the Shang dynasty, and his cruel concubine Daji, who dragged the entire kingdom into senseless debauchery, cruelty and bloodshed. (This eventually made its way, through about 3000 years of AdaptationDecay, into the manga ''HoushinEngi''.)

* Ur-Example: the elopement of Helen of Troy (nee of Sparta) with Paris was directly responsible for starting TheTrojanWar.

* Ur-Example: the elopement of Helen of Troy (nee of Sparta) with Paris was directly responsible for starting the Trojan War.