"He slaughtered my people and conquered my country . . . "

[kate_nepveu]

" . . . but I can't help it, I love him anyway, in a way that is True and Tragic and not at all pathetic."

I feel like there must be examples of this besides Tigana and Acacia, but I am coming up empty. I mean, even the Harry Potter "Death Eaters conquer" AUs I read back in the day were generally plastered with warnings for dubcon and wrongness. Anyone? (I would be particularly interested in any examples written by women.)

Comments

[snarp]

Yumi Tamura's Basara?

[kate_nepveu]

Not a work I am familiar with, and I can't tell from Wikipedia whether she eventually figures it out, though I presume she must. Anyway, I was thinking more of women who knew going in.

[flemmings]

Figures out that The Guy She Loves killed her dad and brother? Yup. Mid-series when they meet face to face in battle as Red King and Tatara. She goes catatonic briefly, works her way back to functionality, and takes up the fight again in a rather different fashion. (By me, the story goes downhill after the Fatal Encounter and the events refuse to stick in my mind.)

But oh does she decide at the end that Shuri is the one for her even if he killed her family, and she puts her body between Shuri and the avenging villagers, including her uncle, who intend to do last scene of Throne of Blood on him. So do a whole bunch of other people, and we have happi endo, and I will never ever reread that series in my life.

FWIW I don't recall that Wossername in Tigana was in love going in; it just happened over the years and then ohh she loved him, 'ich kann nicht anders'.

[kate_nepveu]

Right, right, but Dianora _knew_ what he'd done before she fell in love with him and she did anyway. Which, well.

[mme_hardy]

Stockholm Syndrome, man. Everything I can think of is "slave falls in love with her master", not "He raped Thrace thrice!"

[mkozlows]

I feel like "conquering barbarian horselord whom the deposed princess at first despises but later comes to respect... and even to love" is a cliche, and yet I'll be damned if I can think of an instance of it right now. Game of Thrones doesn't quite count...

[mkozlows]

Shards of Honor comes close, though.

[kate_nepveu]

I don't think being Butcher of Komarr--which is "all" Aral was when they first met--is enough, though I may well just be giving the book some slack because the perspective and attitude taken is so different in feel to me.

[marycontrary]

Well, he had just captured, killed, and permanently brain damaged people she worked with and felt responsible for.

[cme]

But he didn't! They were supposed to be detained, and the mutineers were the ones who injured/killed the survey team.

[mariness]

The Aeneid, if we assume that Aeneas and Lavinia really fell in love?

My vague recollection says that other examples appear in Livy and other classical sources, but I can't come up with specifics at the moment.

[kouredios]

Tekmessa, in Sophocles' Ajax, might count as an example of this.

[skygiants]

Another ancient example: Theseus and Hippolyta. Of course, that did not work out too well in the end anyway . . .

[mme_hardy]

Oh, my God, I loved The Bull from the Sea SO MUCH. I might have reread the print off the pages.

[kore]

MARY RENAULT <333

[kore]

Jason and Medea? ....also not ending well.

[melusinehr]

Not the same thing at all, but to me it feels a bit like an outgrowth of the "He kidnapped and raped me, the brute, but damnit, I'm in love" trope that made The Sheik so popular.

[(Anonymous)]

Elizabeth Vaughan's Warprize books fit, although we learn that the conquering hero is actually a good guy and the princess's uncles are the real bad guys.

When I think of Bujold books, the relationship between Duv Galeni and Aral fits best, although the love is platonic. And again Aral is mostly absolved of the slaughter.

I know there are others; I have vague memories of women (girls, I think) learning to Let Go of Their Hatred, but maybe they were just in love with people on the wrong side, not the actual general.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, this was ejmam from livejournal, and Vaughan books are definitely squarely in the "conquering barbarian horselord whom the deposed princess at first despises but later comes to respect... and even to love" role; perhaps close enough to be the immediate trigger. I think they are shelved in Paranormal Romance, so you know it was All Right to love the horselord.

[mme_hardy]

An interesting and morally complex take on this is Megan Whalen Turner's Thief series, in which various peoples do get conquered and saying more than that would be a spoiler.

[rymenhild]

Oh, yes. I didn't think of that series when reading this post, but it goes there... in an extremely off-kilter and queer manner.

But it's impossible to have a conversation about the Thief series, because everything interesting that happens in all four book is a book-destroying spoiler. As in, one should never read the back of the book description of one book before one has read the preceding book.

[mme_hardy]

Yes. Or, in some cases, the flap of the book itself.

[marydell]

(sorry, coming late to this)

Pocahontas/John Smith? Disney ships them, I guess (haven't seen it but the marketing seems to indicate that) and so have some historians despite her marrying a completely different dude IRL.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm even later to this conversation, but what about Azhrarn and Dunizel in Tanith Lee's Delusion's Master?

[kate_nepveu]

Not familiar with it, alas!

[wendylove]

Surfing friendsfriends and quite late to party, but my first thought was Verdi's Aida (which is not *supposed* to be pathetic) and my second thought was Cleopatra and Julius Caesar (in various literary iterations). My third thought, regrettably, was "bleah." :)