Which fictional romantic couple did you get most invested in

[DilysPrice]

Reading the "Who was your earliest literary crush?" thread has made me think about the fictional couples I have been most emotionally involved with.

I wouldn't personally touch Peter Wimsey with a bargepole, but I really felt Harriet falling in love with him, and the sudden shock at the picnic where she realises she lusts after him.
Aragorn and Arwen, who we never really see together, are give emotional heft by seeing Eowyn hopelessly in love with him.
And I cry buckets over Genly Ai and Estraven falling in love as they trek across the ice in The Left Hand of Darkness.

Which literary couples made you cheer on a crowded train when they got together, or weep when they didn't?

Kevin and Sadie in Across the Barricades (catholic boy meets protestant girl in belfast) - loved this series when i was a teenager.

when i was a bit older, Anna Karenina and Vronsky were fairly captiviating, yet fundamentally flawed, characters.

I think the story of Anne and captain Wentworth just captures our hearts because besides being two likeable people surrounded by idiots, they had it, lost it and then it looked like they would have to live with that forever... His letter to her at the end just takes my breath away every time: you pierce my soul, for you only do I think and plan. Who wouldn't want to be told that by the man they are in love with and thought they had lost forever?

Mr and Mrs de Winter. I primed my husband for years to propose by saying "I'm asking you to marry mr, you little fool!" and the bastard let me down. Reader, I married him anyway.

Kevin & Sadie - YES I'd forgotten about them. What a great series.

Otherwise fairly predictable: Anne and Gilbert

Will and Lyra (HDM). I think I cried for about the last 50 pages of The Amber Spyglass.

I really agree about the letter from Captain Wentworth
"I am half agony, half hope" gets me every time, and I apparently read it out to DH approx once a year.

Buffy and Spike (I am not ashamed of this, I rate Buffy VERY highly). I had a great deal of emotion invested in this relationship.

Will and Lyra, I still think of them and feel sad. I feel as if I cannot bear it for them.

Aragorn and Arwen, in the footnotes where he dies and she is left alone in her grief - it pierces my heart.

Ahh, Will & Lyra

George & Lennie

I'm another for captain wentworth and Anne Elliot. Dorothea and will ladislaw, Frances and mehuru in a respectable trade -I cried a lot Jane eyre and Rochester-I remember my nan telling me that was banned at her school so raced out to read it at 13-the bit where she hears him calling gets me everytime

I cried over Will and Lyra too and swore never to read the book again it was too upsetting. Other than that, Rupert and Taggie.

Mr Rochester and Jane Eyre - I could read that book over and over and over and over.

Also Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth - reunited after so long!

Pretty much all of the above. Buffy and Spike definitely most memorably in the 00s. In my childhood/teens:
Cathy and Chris from Flowers in the Attic (blah)
Rupert and Taggie were sort of good except there was all that weird stuff about her being just like a horse, which I personally found vair unsexy
Bran and Jane from the Dark is Rising books
Meggie and the priest in The Thorn Birds
Every Georgette Heyer heroine going

Prof Bhaer was clearly a dirty old man and a bit weird, all that "sit on my knee leelte girl" shtick he had going made me retch.

OMG Bran and Jane. I know. Yet it is only hinted at.

I loved those books. I remember reading Silver On the Tree, and it was such an event in my life. I cried and cried, sitting up in bed at two in the morning.

Also I think of Michael and Rachel in The Chrysalids - when he refuses a place in the ship to get out of there, because it will mean leaving Rachel alone. The woman says "When you do come, you can be very sure of your place with us". The same book has the moment when David meets Sophie again and it is heartbreaking.

Jan and Tom in Red Shift.

I seem to have a fair few of these

Nowaynohow snap - those two - Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, and Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester. I am rereading the latter at the moment and I still get so into it, every time I watch the BBC version I am in tears. Pathetic!

Anne & Gilbert here too. I wanted their marriage scene as a wedding reading but DH wasn't impressed!

Had forgotten "Across the Barricades" off to Amazon

Adrian and Pandora

Aquila and Ness in "The Lantern Bearers".

Oh god Will and Lyra

Anne Elliot & Captain Wentworth I cry every time I read his letter to her. Darcy & Elizabeth depending on my mood. I love Philip Castallack & Trevose in Penmarric & Philip's realisation that he is gay & that's the reason he was impotent when attempting to have sex with his wife. Oh & John of Gaunt & Katherine Swynford when he goes back & asks her to marry him.

Adrian and Pandora

But yes definitely to The Chrysalids.

Other people know 'Kevin & Sadie' , But they are mine! :)
I met Joan Lingard when she visited a book fair at my school, Loved her.

Think I will buy the Kevin & Sadie series for me DD when she is older.

HumphreyCobbler are you my long-lost twin? Give me some book recommendations NOW as we clearly share a brain.

Philip Castallack and Trevose in Penmarric! Genius, Aftereights! Definitely the most romantic pair in the whole book. Although elsewhere on the Howatch front I also completely loved Sebastian and Vicky in Sins of the Fathers. He's so misunderstood

Oh who said Will & Lyra? That book came out when I was revising for important exams and I had to spend two days solidly reading it because I just couldn't think about anything else until I had. It was a really hot May and I was sitting outside in my bikini crying my flaming eyes out.

Also if we're doing telly, Dr Mac and Caroline in Green Wing. I thought I was him.

Lavendercakes Taggie wasn't like a horse, she was like an Irish Wolfhound. Phwoar!
Yes I loved Rupert and Taggie too, the way she's used to unrequited love but he's used to see it ? want it ? have it. And the bit in the car when he writes on the windscreen

I wasn't mad about Anne and Gilbert, I thought she was a bit dog-in-the-manger ish and played too hard to get for too long. Luckly he begged her yet AGAIN for the twenty-seventh time or whatever. She had a close shave I thought! Although I love everything else about her.

Bobby and Pam out of Dallas . They adore each other but all the family stuff is just too strong.

I did kind of love Henry and Claire in the Time Travelers Wife, I could only read the book once, I found it really disturbing and devastating, but "proper" love none the less.

I never got Wuthering Heights until I saw Tom Hardy as Heathcliff. NOW I get it! Such a shame he went all beefcaked up and Hollywood.

"The Chrysalids" was the first "adult" book I ever read (with DMs help) aged 10! The story affected me profoundly for years and gave me a lifelong love of science fiction/fantasy.

And Dear Jane's "You pierce my soul" - wow, it's SUCH a departure from the detached, ironic and pragamatic voice that she normally uses!

Do any other David Lodge fans remember the scene where Morris Zapp insists to his shocked Eng. Lit. students that Wentworth lifting the the naughty child from Anne's back is a metaphor for "a goddamn ORGASM!" ?