Top Ten Tuesday: Favourite Fictional Couples

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because they are particularly fond of lists over at The Broke and the Bookish. They love to share their lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week they will post a new Top Ten list that one of the bloggers there at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. Are you a blogger as well? All that’s asked is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it!

Today’s Top Ten:

The Top Ten Favorite Fictional Couples in Books. 

Full confession: This week’s theme is supposed to be ten tips for new book bloggers, but since I still consider myself a newbie, I’m not entirely sure I could fulfill the brief!

Instead, I’m going to a past Top Ten that I didn’t get a chance to comment upon … my Top Ten Favourite Fictional Couples! I’m going to allow besties, bromances, romances, May-Decembers, parent-child and anything else that is not illegal or squick-worthy in my considerations, so here it is!

10. Jamie & Claire from Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Here’s the May-December romance that started out as a marriage of necessity – with the woman being the elder for once. Half the fun is watching this time travelling heroine learn how to stay alive in medieval Scotland, and to see how this pair gradually falls for each other. It’s fun to witness them learn more about each other, and how they must become a team if they are to survive.

9. Elena & Clay from the Women of the Otherworld series by Kelley Armstrong

Apparently I have something for the dysfunctional couples, and they don’t get more dysfunctional than the girlfriend of a werewolf who then gets bitten by the said werewolf and ends up becoming one herself … yeah. Just read the book. It’s far better than I could ever make it out to be.

8. Buttercup and Wesley from The Princess Bride by William Goldman

Perfect romantic moment? “As you wish”. That’s all.

7. Elizabeth and Darcy from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

This is the book that taught me that you can hate the one you love – at least at first. Watching as they go from adversaries to acquaintances to something much more is beautiful, and there is a reason why this book is a classic.

6. Tris and Four from Divergent/Insurgent by Veronica Roth

I love that these two are thrown together, but they grow together as well. The only thing that stands in the way of their HEA is … well, dying (an occupational hazard when you’re in Dauntless, I guess). Theirs is a very adult relationship for a sixteen year old girl, and the two of them have to face their fears in order to survive as a couple.

Skulduggery Pleasant, Book 1

5. Valkyrie Cain and Skulduggery Pleasant from the Skulduggery Pleasant series by Derek Landy

She’s a thirteen year old girl who’s recently inherited her dead uncle’s mysterious home – and possible magical talent. He’s a skeleton detective who fights evil and saves the world on a regular basis. Together, they are unstoppable. One of the best YA series I’ve read in a very long time.

4. Ben and Zan from Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel

The best part of this book comes from watching Ben overcome his resentment of the tiny baby chimp Zan and come to love him like a brother. There is a particular scene in the book where Zan teaches Ben the benefit of being in the moment and just enjoying his surroundings…. It’s not an action-packed scene, but one that speaks volumes about how much this relationship teaches each of the participants. Truly poignant.

3. Ella Tipton and Andrew Copeland from Inside Out by Lauren Dane

Here are character who have had to learn more about themselves before they are ready to be with each other. Ella, a spousal abuse survivor, needs to regain a sense of self before she is ready to open herself up again. Cope (oh, lovely, lovely Cope) has slowly come to realize that he wants what his friends have found and he waits patiently until Ella is ready for that too. So, the fact that he writes actual letters and knows poetry in addition to being able to renovate his own home? Gah. He’s likely my fictional ideal man.

2. Thursday Next and Landen Park-Laine from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde

Talk about a complicated relationship!! They were together, then not, then he almost married someone else, then didn’t and Thursday and Landen were finally together. The course of true love never does run smoothly, and Landen is eventually eradicated from history, eventually only existing in Thursday’s memories until finally he is reactualized and lives happily (somewhat) with Thursday and their children. True love is remembering the love of your life even when no one else can.

1. Beatrice and Benedick from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing

I’ll never forget watching this play live at Stratford, and then seeing the Kenneth Branagh movie. This was the play that taught me that couples who banter and tease and share witty dialogue can, all the while, be telling each other how much they care.

Benedick: pray thee now tell me, for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?

Beatrice: For them all together, which maintained so politic a state of evil that they will not admit any good part to intermingle with them: but for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?

Benedick: Suffer love. a good epithet, I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will.

Beatrice: In spite of your heart, I think. Alas poor heart, if you spite it for my sake, I will spite it for yours, for I will never love that which my friend hates

Benedick: Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.

 Special mention: Biff and Jesus in Lamb: The Story of Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore

C’mon – admit it. Doesn’t everyone want to see what Jesus would be like before he had to assume the reigns of the ‘family business’? Don’t you want to learn the ways of the Jew (Ju-do)?? This pair has to be read to be believed…. So why are you still here?

Tagged as: austen, bitten, divergent, favourite couples, gabaldon, jasper fforde, kenneth oppel, lauren dane, outlander, princess bride, shakespeare, skulduggery, top ten tuesday