cthia wrote:roseandheather wrote:My evil plan is working. Or rather, your imagination is.
I have it on better authority that Lester Tourville and Michelle Henke would be the diplomatic coup of the decade. Not to mention adorable.
(The evil plan, of course, is to loose as many pesky lovebirds as possible upon this unsuspecting messageboard.
)
Cupists are highly bred for non-evil tendencies. Love.
Help me with something here. First, what is Anton and Cathy's marital status? They're not married or engaged are they? Besides Thandi and Victor, what other single couples are there? Harkness is married. And how old is Berry?
RFC said once (I can't remember where) that Anton and Cathy aren't married because "Eric [Flint] doesn't want them to be." Which appears to have closed off the issue for the foreseeable future.
Given that Helen basically considers Cathy her stepmom, however, I think we can safely conclude that Cathy and Anton are married in pretty much everything but name.
Thandi and Victor aren't married either, and I doubt they're headed that way - they never have been the traditional sort.
Eloise and *sob* Javier weren't married either (though I suspect they would have been, once she was done with her Presidency), and I've gotten the impression that
she considered Javier her husband, in fact if not on paper, and that he was very much of the same mind.
[upon return from sobbing]
The point the Honorverse seems to be making is that what matters most is the commitment between partners, not whether or not they have a piece of paper saying so. We've see happily married couples (and plenty of them!), unhappily married couples (though not as many of those), and couples who aren't married but are perfectly happy and committed in spite of it.
And then there are those like Naomi Kaplan and Michelle Henke who are happy playing the field, those like Dame Estelle who don't seem to be interested in anyone (at least that we've heard about), and those like Mark Sarnow, who
is happily married but whose romantic life is never discussed "onscreen".
I think the overarching point of all this, however, is that what matters most is what works for the two people involved. It is what it is, and the rest will come out in the wash.