Author Renee Savage

You either love ’em or hate ’em. Personally, I love them. Usually, my position on choices is that too many options only makes us unhappy. But my position on romantic leads? The more the merrier!

A heroine (lets also admit… love triangles are only fun for a girl and at least two boys. I’ll get into it later) spends her entire story determining her path. The romantic interests are typically symbolic of larger choices and the potential outcomes of different decisions.

In A Kiss of Deception by Mary Pearson, Lea is going back and forth between The Prince and the Assassin. We do not know which is which until their true identities are revealed at the end, but we do know that her decision to love one over the other changes the course of her life. This is one of my favorite love triangles to read because the author so masterfully hides their identities from us so we can be totally enraptured by the bucolic setting and looming suspense.

Love triangles leave some people deeply unsatisfied. The part of us that craves certainty and clear communication doesn’t enjoy the back and forth or the premise that there could be questions around something as critical to our well-being as a soul mate. However, for some people, the love triangle is unsatisfying because

Reverse Haram is a genre that takes the love triangle (Or the love quartet or quintet in some cases…) and insists the heroine can in fact make no choices. If she wants every man in her orbit to be her lover, they all happily concede, without jealousy or conflict. Romance is truly a fantastical genre.

However, I am a true blue romance fan. I like a soul mate. I like exclusivity. I like the idea of intentional, obsessive, and dedicated monogamy. A partner you share you soul with, who you know intimately and who knows you, dark sides and all, and still loves and adores you.

But I like a little drama up to that point.

I think a love triangle appeals to the part of me that really believed (or maybe just hoped) that I was incredibly lovable. Many boys (in my head) wanted to be with me and I had the luxury of options. In some ways this is true of my experiences, but I never enjoyed a true love triangle in my life.

If my personal love story was a trope, it would be love at first sight. I hate to read it, but I loved to live it.

I used a love triangle in the first draft of my novel “The Misplaced Princess” to give my main character Lillian a choice between a comfortable life or more autonomy. Raised in Missouri and thrust into a new realm with unexpected privileges and power, she could follow the path laid out for her with a comfortable marriage to a nice enough man or pursue the one she knows her soul longs for, even if it compromises her alliances at court.

I don’t know if I will maintain the same romantic leads in the following drafts (the end game stays the same, but I might reassign other roles) but love triangles are fun to write.

But why are love triangles only fun when it’s a woman being pursued by two different men? I believe that is because of the shifting power dynamic. Historically, a lot of our relationships are male-centric. We’re used to men holding a certain amount of power over the woman. It is on the man to ask you to go on a date, to get married, and make certain decisions.

In a female-centric love triangle, all the power shifts into the hands of the woman. The men are ready to do whatever she asks, and it is incumbent on her to make the final decisions. This is just a good time for those of us used to it being the other way ’round.

In a male-centric love triangle, you end up with two women who are competing to essentially minimize themselves. I am not a scholar and I have no citations, only what I have observed in my years of reading but this is my basic observation; in male-centric love triangles, women appear worse, usually are treated poorly, and become caricatures of women obsessed with a man. They’re a joke. In female-centric love triangles, men appear better, with conflicting but admirable traits that make the choice harder, and usually look more attractive as a result.

Bearing in mind that I read certain types of literature (books written by women) exclusively, this definitely colors my perception. A man writing about women usually leaves the woman worse for wear. A woman writing about a man usually leaves the man impossibly wonderful.

One of the most famous love triangles of my generation has to be the incomparable Bella/Edward/Jacob. I was an originally Edward girlie myself, but I thought Bella should choose Jacob. He was warm and fun, which Bella really needed in her life. After a childhood spent parenting her own mother, she needed someone who could give her a little freedom and joy. Instead, she chose life as a vampire, which would always be high stress, vigilance, and burdensome immortality. As an adult, I am even more sure that Jacob was the right choice for all involved and he definitely got the short end of the stick falling in love with a literal baby.

Peeta/Katniss/Gale is another great love triangle to study. It took me years to understand that Peeta was the right choice for Katniss, but now I am a full-throated believer. Gale may have been her oldest friend, but he lost sight of who she was to the war she represented. Despite her skills, she never wanted to belong to a resistance. She always craved peace and quiet for those she loved. Peeta saw the girl inside her desperate to be cared for and he delivered that care with joy, whereas Gale would have always pushed her to be more.

Share your favorite love triangles!