Munday: The Romance Plot
1) Are there any romances in your story/canon/fanon/universe? [If the answer is none, go to question 4]
That's a very complicated question. Obviously the easiest part to answer is that yes, I have kept one canon pairing (one that doesn't involve and is a counterpoint to the pairing involving my muse), and those two are very much in a romance.
But what my muse, AU!Prue, is involved in with the Cole Turner who returned to evil? When I first began writing Binding Ties, I would have been very clear that their arranged marriage and the partnership, the alliance, that they develop out of it as they fight to assert their own place and their son's role in the Underworld had no room for even the mere mention of romantic love. They are in their situation in no small part due to the consequences of the Underworld discovering the canon relationship between Cole and Prue's sister, Phoebe. They are very keenly aware that any hint of history repeating itself will have dire consequences -- and more to the point, they are practical-minded, and romance would be a distraction from their other evil goals. (Lust, not so much. But lust for me is used to illustrate some thematic points, not carry the story.)
And as I've pointed out to at least one reviewer, these are two characters who don't love easily under whatever could be called "the best circumstances". Another guiding principle from canon is that evil itself cannot love. But I'm also emphasizing that these two characters recognize in each other what is arguably the centrally defining impulse they each have, regardless of morality or other circumstances -- concealing, suppressing, hiding a major part of who they are. Knowing Prue had wanted, not this man until they were forced together, but a man who had the understanding of what she went through every day, magical and mortal, the difficulty became (still kinda is) figuring out what Cole's humanity felt for her. And then I saw that yes, he could feel, in his mortal soul, admiration for her humanity, the sacrifices she has made which define her, including the conscious-yet-coerced choice to come to his bed to protect her sisters; gratitude towards her for that, and for their son, and fierce protectiveness of them, protectiveness that is genuinely about their lives and their humanity (as opposed to the protectiveness his demonic self feels, which is rooted purely in their powers and their use to him).
As I already have planned for her to say when the issue comes up, "We both still had our souls."
2) How central are these romances to the story in terms of plot?
Prue's sister Piper and her husband deal with delayed fertility (Law of Inverse Fertility) that contrasts with how quickly Prue became pregnant. And as in canon, their love for each other is part of the basis on which Piper recognizes her own ability to be the new leader of the family after Prue's "death".
As for what genuine romantic feelings between the souls of Prue and Cole mean for BT's plot ... I've had a scene set some months down the line from the story's current point flooding unattached in my head, in which they reveal their souls to each other in order to suppress them further before returning to San Francisco. Prue will get some questions answered, and mortal feelings about each other and the baby will be revealed. But the real consequence of that loosely plotted scene will be in the true reveals between Prue and Phoebe, and Prue and the spirit of her grandmother, after Prue's return to her family, where they are fodder for and the proof of how the two relationships have been changed by the course of the story.
3) How important are these romances to the characters themselves?
Their developing alliance, the need for it, is already important. And I've given my Prue a glimpse of what Cole's humanity feels for her. And it's already scared her like it scared me when I realized that not only was it possible for him to admire her, but that he feels gratitude: for her choice, coerced as it was, because without it her family and humanity would have suffered more, and his humanity doesn't actually want that, and for their child, which he knows will bring her great physical suffering at the least.
4) Do you like 'romantic plotlines' in the fiction you enjoy, even if the genre itself may not be specifically romantic?
Depends on how I like whatever chemistry there is between the characters, and how romantic storylines are used to advance overall plot. I want romances to at least provide character development -- what do they see in each other that has pulled them together, how to they grow together and deal with discovering new things about themselves while still being able to see traits in each other (original ones or new) that are attractive?
5) Do you feel love stories between characters are used too much, not enough, or just right in the stories you enjoy most?
How to put this... I feel that romance is not the only sort of story that can be told about the interaction of well, het pairings. I'm trying to do several things with my story, but one of them is an attempt to demonstrate to fandom that characters can be motivated by things other than or perhaps more complex than romantic love. Love is a motivation in BT, but all kinds of love: romantic, but also agape or loving concern for humanity/one's neighbor/the innocent, familial, between sisters, between fathers and daughters, and mothers/grandmothers and daughters.
Actually, the opening line demonstrates this to a T: "She did it for love." In canon, it's about a betrayal of family for romantic love. In BT, it's seemly about a noble sisterly sacrifice, but there are increasing shades of suggestion that it was more self-motivated, that that there was also a degree of just wanting the embrace of those family members taken from her that she'd see on the other side, and that perhaps she'd given up some hope of finding romantic love here on the mortal coil.