Post date: Nov 15, 2016 3:38:07 PM
Why are these barons so obsessed with Yseut and Tristan?? Like are their lives so lacking that they have to stir up drama?
Anyways. As I read The Romance of Tristan, I kept coming back to the idea that it reads like bad fanfiction. It's full of tropes, situations that further the plot in the direction the author (and supposedly the audience) would want, and really doesn't explain anything in a satisfactory or coherent way - especially the inconsistent characterizations and plot holes.
Then I realized that this romance, while asinine and ridiculous to today's readers, reminded me of the top romance tropes of today that are just as ridiculous when taken rationally. The internet (and I'm embarrassed I know this) is big on coffee shop AUs, fake dating tropes, and soulmate AUs to put the two love interests into a situation where the outcome is obvious - they fall in love. Romance in all of it's forms is predictable, and that's why we like it. It's not about plot, it's about the journey and the emotions that drive the story to its end. I don't read romance because of how it ends, I read it to see how the writer will get the characters to that end.
Even though Tristan and Yseut died at the end, they were together eternally in death and heaven and in the representation of the two trees. We can forgive the inconsistent plot (the love potion wore off 3 years into this thing yet both claim to still be under it's influence at various points), the inconsistent characterization (King Mark is either dealing with short term memory disorder or he really needs to woman up and stop listening to the same people who try and make him distrust his wife and nephew), and really over the top romance (let's be real, we all have that one couple who can do no wrong).
When reading Tristan and Yseut's love story, we have to remember that it is a romance. Romance isn't plot driven, it's driven by emotion and the empathy of the reader. Reader's want that validation that love will win and that their is a pure emotion somewhere in the universe, especially in a time where marriage was based on alliance and power and wealth. It doesn't have to make sense and, from the way Beroul interjects, we have to remember that people who wrote and told these stories truly loved them. Beroul in today's terms shipped Tristan and Yseut so hard that he probably could recite the story verbatim (probably).