Loves that end in tears
The great tragic loves end in death, separation or sacrifice — and that is exactly why we never forget them. Cleopatra and Mark Antony, Orpheus and Eurydice, Inês de Castro: grief made them eternal.
Love, empire and a double suicide
The queen of Egypt and the Roman general whose romance fused love with imperial politics and ended in a double suicide that sealed the end of an era.
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The universal archetype of forbidden love
The teenage lovers of two feuding families whose deaths became the universal archetype of forbidden love.
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He went down to the underworld for love
The musician who descended to the underworld to retrieve his love and lost her by looking back one moment too soon.
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The queen crowned after death
The lover murdered on the orders of the king's father, whom Pedro — once king — by legend exhumed and crowned queen after death.
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The warrior who became a volcano
The warrior sent to war who receives a false report of his death; the princess dies of grief and he watches over her body forever. The two become Mexico's twin volcanoes.
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An obsessive love on the moors
The obsessive, destructive love of "Wuthering Heights": "I am Heathcliff," says Catherine, in one of literature's fiercest declarations.
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The Romeo and Juliet of China
Zhu disguises herself as a man to study; Liang never realizes she is a woman; she is betrothed to another; he dies of heartbreak and she throws herself into his grave, from which they emerge as butterflies.
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The love that created Iguazú Falls
The maiden Naipí, destined to be sacrificed to the serpent god M'Boi, flees by canoe with the warrior Tarobá; the enraged god splits the river to create the falls, turning her to rock and him to a tree leaning over the water.
Read the storyThe potion that doomed two lovers
The knight who escorts Isolde to marry his uncle, King Mark; on the voyage they mistakenly drink a love potion and fall into an impossible passion that destroys them.
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The legend of betrayed love
The woman who, betrayed by her lover, drowns her children and herself and wanders weeping "Oh, my children!": the legend of love turned to damnation that all of Latin America knows.
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The love that toppled Camelot
The greatest knight of the Round Table and Queen Guinevere, King Arthur's wife: an adulterous love that, once discovered, sinks the ideal kingdom of Camelot.
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A socialite and a priest, shot for love
The young Buenos Aires socialite and the Jesuit priest who fell in love, fled together in 1847, and were captured and executed by firing squad on Rosas's orders in 1848 — Camila eight months pregnant.
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The love that decided the Trojan War
The greatest Greek warrior and his companion Patroclus, whose love antiquity read as a model of devotion; Patroclus's death unleashes the rage that defines "The Iliad."
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The ambition that killed love
The beautiful, ambitious Rubí loves the doctor Alejandro but abandons him to marry for money: the most iconic antiheroine of the Mexican telenovela, undone by her own ambition.
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The face that launched a thousand ships
The Trojan prince Paris abducts — or seduces — Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world and wife of the king of Sparta, igniting the Trojan War.
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A kiss that came a day too late
Penniless Diego leaves for five years to earn the right to marry Isabel; he returns a day too late, when she has already wed. He dies of grief and she dies kissing him over his coffin.
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The love that spoke through a crack in the wall
Two Babylonian neighbors forbidden to love by their families, who whisper through a crack in the wall; a tragic misunderstanding leads them to a double suicide, sixteen centuries before Romeo and Juliet.
Read the storyThe poet-cacica and the last Taíno warrior
The cacica of Xaragua, famed for her areítos and her beauty, and the chief of Maguana who led the first Taíno rebellion against the Spanish: two sovereigns of Quisqueya joined in love and resistance, both destroyed by the conquest.
Read the storyThe persecuted writer and his companion in exile
The Cuban novelist imprisoned for his work and his homosexuality, and the young man who became his inseparable companion: they fled the regime in the Mariel exodus and lived the poverty of exile together in Manhattan until the end.
Read the storyLa Pola and her love, shot for independence
The seamstress and patriot spy known as "La Pola" and Alejo Sabaraín, the soldier she loved: the incriminating papers found on him gave her away, and the Royalists shot them on the same day, making them martyrs of Colombian independence.
Read the storyThe revolutionary love that fell on a Mexico City street
The Italian photographer of post-revolutionary Mexico and the young exiled Cuban student leader: they loved for a few months within Frida and Diego's circle, until Mella was shot dead while walking arm in arm with her in the open street.
Read the storyBecause happy endings fade and loss is engraved. Tragedy fixes a story in collective memory and generates art: operas, poems, films. The love canon is dominated by tragic endings.