(This article was originally published on Heroes & Heartbreakers.)
The lengths we want a character to go for love knows no bounds. When someone they love is threatened, we want to see them do whatever they can to protect them.
In real life, we may have the urge to do violence when a loved one is hurt. Or protect someone from harm in a way that is impossible for us. It’s not civil to go beat up a bully. It’s illegal to seek justice on someone the law doesn’t catch. But in a romance fictional world, all characters good and evil get their due.
Like in Keeper: A Dark Captive Romance and the lengths Layla goes to for answers for her best friend Penny’s family mysteries. Or Logan’s obsession to avenge the death of his sister in Stranger.
Like Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, doing whatever he can with his money, his time and his reputation to make Wickham marry Lizzy’s sister after he runs away with Lydia. Mr. Darcy believed it was his wrong for not exposing Wickham to the world as the miscreant he was. But Mr. Darcy fully admits—he did it all purely for love of Lizzy.
At the end of the first Outlander book by Diana Gabaldon, though it’s tragic and horrible, Jamie Fraser does the unthinkable to save his wife, Claire. He gives himself up to Captain Randall. Sometimes the sacrifices characters make for the ones they love are painful to witness. The extremes Claire goes to to save him back is no small feat either.
We also love seeing villains get what’s coming to them. True heroes and heroines pursue the rightful justice that we should always get—for love of their families, friends, each other.
It can be dissatisfying to read about a heroine who doesn’t take her shot at doing the right thing because she’s scared. In real life, we do this. Self-preservation is important. We take the safest course of action and settle for the defensive strategy rather than the offensive. It makes for a more civilized society. But we rarely want to read that.
We want to see the characters be brave enough to make the choices we might not otherwise be brave enough to make.
Especially when it’s in the name of love.
We love fiercely, our friends, our family, our lovers, and we expect it just as fiercely in books. And when you truly love someone, it hurts—with a capital H and italics—to see them hurt.
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It makes us angry. It makes us want to defend them and protect them, to make sure they’re never hurt again.
It can drive us to insane fantasies about what we’d like to do to the people who hurt our loved ones—sometimes violent, often vengeful, an-eye-for-an-eye type of stuff. We want to rescue a person in trouble. To be the superhero who can swoop in and be the defender in time of need. To be the bodyguard who can fight off the attacker.
We get to do that when we read.
We get to be the man who punches the lights out of a someone who would dare attack his lover. We get to be the woman who saves her lover from being kidnapped.
Or more commonly, we get to go that extra mile, to say the right thing that makes the bullies realize how wrong they are. We get to stand up for the people we love and stop them from being hurt. We get to be the protectors and the revenge seekers.
Because when you love someone, there’s nothing you wouldn’t give them. There’s nothing you wouldn’t do to protect them. In a novel at least, we can watch and read being those characters who do those heroic things that we wish we could do every day.
And have the happy-ending work out every time.
Book 1: Stranger, a dark stalker romance
Book 2: Deceiver, a dark revenge romance
Book 3: Keeper, a dark captive romance