SAD LOVE STORY THEME

This sad love story theme evolved spontaneously! At the beginning, caution thrown to the wind, she thinks they’ll be together forever. And he, awed that such a glorious girl sees something in him worth loving, loves her almost beyond reason.

But he is not free … and this is London in 1919. Is he man enough to risk a scandal that could ruin him? More importantly, dare he risk losing her love, as he feels he might if he loses his place in theatrical society?

In steps an arrogant foreigner who makes up his mind to have her at any price. She might not love him now, but she will in time. Right from childhood, he has always had whatever he wanted – and he wants her enough to fight hard for her.

His has been a charmed life and once again the cards fall in his favor. She suddenly needs a husband and he is more than willing to fill this role. He must simply help her see that he can save her from disgrace. He does this with timely assistance from her harridan mother.

He also makes promises that he has no intention of keeping. These trick her into agreeing to visit his bizarre family castle in Czechoslovakia. There she faces heartbreak far from her soul mate and is forced into a kind of exile by a tragedy that ties her to a country and man she hates.

Over the years she turns into a shadow of the girl who once lit up the stage. Her past recedes into a half-remembered place as war clouds gather and as the Nazis rise to power, terrifyingly re-igniting the life-long enmity between her husband and his evil brother.

But in her dreams she still runs to him … to the man in whose arms she once found such bliss. He holds her till morning, when dreamers need to awaken. Her cheeks, when she awakes, are wet with the tears of yet another parting.

Not knowing, in the harsh reality later of war-torn London, whether he is alive or dead, she finds an old friend who gives her lodging. The pain of separation has been so great that she can’t bring herself to utter his name.

And she has changed! In the intervening years she has changed from a young girl into a careworn woman. Best, then, if he is dead. Better that he only ever knew her as she was back then, than that he should see her again in the present. Accept that it was all just a sad love story.

So – did he die in the blitz? Or maybe he died before that – back in the aftermath of their parting, of a broken heart?

Her friend tells her that his heart did indeed break and that he lost everything after her departure. But, as this sad love story theme develops what is her friend not telling her?