#HEGIVEAWAY Day 1: Why Happily Ever After?

Happily Ever After. It's talked about all the time. Romance books are all about the happy ending. What makes us want that? I write romance and therefore love me a good happy ending, and I'm certainly not alone. Even non-romance readers want a satisfying and 'happy' ending. (Except those literary type people.)

Menage romance is no different. All participants must fall in love, and that's even more fun because how do you get 3 (or more!) people to fall in love with each other? In Seduction of my Proper Wife: A Victorian Menage at the Parisian Exposition, Philip and Lillian already loved each other--there were other problems, and Aria was never supposed to be part of their marriage. And yet.

So let's talk about Happy Endings...

A quick internet search of "Happily Ever After" reveals everything from a no-kill animal shelter to a tattoo parlor to several dating sites. Even USA Today has a page called that dedicated to romance books.

Is it because we want to see a couple that has worked so hard to be together actually together? The fact that love can conquer all, it's just a matter of finding it and holding onto it?

In April of 2009 BBC News had this to say in their article Why the obsession with happy endings? I copied the pertinent parts here, but the entire article is a quick and very interesting read. Read some of the comments, too--they're worth it.

In troubled times there are plenty of people who want happy endings - an matter perhaps recognised by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, last week, when he cautioned God will not intervene in climate change to supply a happy ending.

Go back to the 1930s, particularly to films of that era, and you see the process of "happyendingification" in full flow during a time of grinding poverty and uncertainty about the future.

Of course, the theory can be undermined by examples of happyendingification from every decade, whether times were grim or not.

You can even take it back to classical times. We may think of Greek drama in terms of the unrelenting tragedy of Oedipus Rex or Medea. But even the Greeks expected a happy ending, says Alan Sommerstein, professor of Greek at Nottingham University.

But there are always some who regard the process of happyendingification as fundamentally crass, a sign of the excessive commercialisation of the concept of story, of pandering to our weaker side.

Aristotle wasn't happy when, a couple of generations after the passing of the classic tragedy playwrights, he sensed that the plays were getting a bit more unthinkingly jolly.

What about you? Do you only read romances to ensure a happy ending? Do you like movies with happy endings better than ones that don't have a happy resolution. I'm not even talking romance, but say The Avengers. If they'd all died and Loki won that certainly doesn't make for a happy ending. So what is it that drives us to the happily ever after?

#HEGIVEAWAY

Tell your happy ending story!

The Happy Endings Giveaway Hop was organized by Reading Romances!

What you can win here: $10 electronic gift card to either Amazon or Barnes and Noble and a copy of Seduction of my Proper Wife: A Victorian Menage at the Parisian Exposition

Number of winners: 5

Open to (INT, US or US/CAN): If you can receive an e-gift card then you can enter!

How to enter: Leave a comment on why YOU think we love our happy endings. If you decide to follow this blog or me on Twitter, you get extra entries in the gift card pot.