Eternal love
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Eternal love

Love that outlasts time

Quick answer

Eternal love is the kind that survives death, centuries and forgetting. These are the stories that left behind a monument, a book or a legend still making us believe something can last forever.

Love stories

Showing 6 stories
Shah Jahan & Mumtaz Mahal
Mughal India · 1612–1631

Shah Jahan & Mumtaz Mahal

Eternal love carved in marble

The Mughal emperor who, when his favorite wife died bearing their fourteenth child, built the Taj Mahal as her tomb and the grandest declaration of eternal love ever raised.

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Florentino Ariza & Fermina Daza
Colombia · García Márquez, 1985

Florentino Ariza & Fermina Daza

Fifty-one years, nine months and four days

Florentino's wait for Fermina is fixed by the novel itself: fifty-one years, nine months and four days, until he declares his love again at her husband's funeral.

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Queen Victoria & Prince Albert
UK · married 1840; he died 1861

Queen Victoria & Prince Albert

Forty years of mourning for love

When Albert died in 1861, Queen Victoria wore mourning black for the remaining 40 years of her life.

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Dante & Beatrice
Florence · 13th–14th c.

Dante & Beatrice

The love that wrote the Divine Comedy

Dante barely spoke with Beatrice, whom he first saw at nine, yet he made her his guide to Paradise and the muse of all Western literature.

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Penelope & Odysseus
Greek myth · "The Odyssey"

Penelope & Odysseus

Twenty years weaving the wait

While Odysseus takes twenty years to return from Troy, Penelope holds off 108 suitors by weaving and unweaving a shroud to buy time, faithful until the reunion.

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Rio de Janeiro · together 1953–1980

Cartola & Dona Zica

The samba reborn by love

The great poet of samba, founder of the Mangueira school, and Eusébia "Dona Zica," the cook who had loved him since youth: they reunited as mature widowers, and she pulled him out of obscurity and drink to give him back his song.

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Frequently asked questions

What is the most famous eternal love story?

Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal: when she died, the Mughal emperor built the Taj Mahal as her tomb and a declaration of eternal love — the most visited monument to love on earth.

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