Love stories don’t always have a happy ending like in romantic movies.
Many times prejudice, hatred between families, politics, class differences, infidelities, death and other causes get in the way and prevent happiness. Those stories happen every day, here and now; maybe you know someone who has been a protagonist, maybe it has happened to you.
But there are great stories of truncated and impossible love, these are some of them. 1. Antony was on his way to the Eastern provinces to pacify a revolt in Judea when he met Cleopatra VII of Egypt. After the instant crush they became lovers. They spent a winter together, he left for Rome; four years later he returned with his beloved, abandoning his family and his military obligations, for which he was declared an enemy. Marco Antonio and Cleopatra lived for many years a life full of luxuries, but in September of the year 31 BC a battle took place in which their fleet was defeated by Octavian. Thinking that she would be dead, Marco committed suicide. Knowing the fate that awaited her as a prisoner, the empress also took her own life.
2. Many say that the story of the lovers of Teruel is just a legend, but there are historians who say it was real. It would have happened in the 13th century and it is said that Juan Martinez de Marcilla and Isabel de Segura fell in love with her, but her father, a rich merchant, rejected the suitor due to her poor fortune. Martinez did not give up: he asked for a term of five years to improve his situation and went to war. After the deadline without news, Isabel thought that her beloved had died in battle and agreed to marry another. The same day of the wedding, Juan returned loaded with riches, but it was too late. In love and desperate, he begged Isabel to at least say goodbye to hers with a kiss, but she refused him because she was already married and the young man fell dead at her feet. At his funeral Isabel approached the corpse of her beloved and kissed him, falling at that moment collapsed next to him. 3. Bonnie and Clyde met at a mutual friend’s party and immediately recognized each other as lovers of guns and cars. They were 22 years old when they began to live their romance and decided to start stealing, being intensely persecuted by the law. The bloody itinerary of Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow lasted from early 1932 until May 1934, when they were shot to death by six police officers during an ambush. In those years, 18 people, including civilians and policemen, ended up dead in their criminal acts. The tabloid press made them famous as they ridiculed the police who couldn’t catch them. Bonnie and Clyde were part of the first generation of thieves who grew up with movies and radio and as one of their relatives was fond of photography, there are many images of them, posing with weapons next to their vehicles. Bonnie wrote poems and her ferocity in her wanderings contrasts with her romantic works.
4. Juana la Loca and Felipe el Hermoso were promised in marriage, but they did not know each other. However, the day they did, they fell madly in love. She was the third daughter of Isabel I of Castile and Fernando II of Aragon (the Catholic Monarchs) and was born in Toledo on November 6, 1479, while he was the youngest son of Emperor Maximilian I and Maria de Borgona. He inherited innumerable noble titles: Duke of Burgundy, Luxembourg, Brabant, Gelderland and Limburg and Count of Tyrol, Artois and Flanders. Upon meeting, a deep attraction was installed in them and they were married on August 21, 1496. After the birth of their first daughter, Leonor, the prince lost interest in his partner and began to cheat on her with the women of the court, starting a story of jealousy and obsession that upset Juana. In a fit of jealousy, She cut the hair of one of her company ladies, accusing her of being her husband’s lover. When he died, she was pregnant and when her son Carlos ascended the throne, he locked his mother up alleging a mental illness that could never be proven, but that was based on the sick jealousy and behavior of Juana, who asked to uncover every day. her husband’s coffin. Juana died in 1555 after more than 30 years of captivity. 5. The story of Ines de Castro and King Pedro of Portugal fits perfectly into the definition of tragic love. She was a companion to Pedro’s second wife, a fact that did not prevent them from falling madly in love. When the queen died, the monarch wanted to marry the commoner, but the court and the father of the future King refused, so they had the woman assassinated. When Pedro finally acceded to the throne, he secretly revealed his marriage to Ines, but their love could never be fulfilled. Before dying, Pedro asked to be buried feet to feet with respect to Ines, so on Judgment Day, when they would resurrect they would see each other in his eyes.
6. Movie stars Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy starred in a movie story. He had been married to Louise Treadwell since 1923, but when he met the beautiful actress on the set of “The Woman of the Year” they knew they were made for each other. Together they shot 9 movies and began a relationship that everyone knew about, but no one dared to admit. They were together 26 years, until his death. Tracy never wanted to divorce his wife because he felt responsible for his illness, but he decided to be with the actress. The complicated situation led him to sink into alcohol. The day of his death, Katherine took him to the hospital and called his wife so that she could go see him. The actress never visited his grave. 7. The story of Abelardo and Eloisa has all the ingredients of a tragic love story. He was born in 1079 in Palais, Upper Brittany, a village near Nantes. Berengar, his father, was educated and illustrious and educated all his children. Abelardo was destined for a military career, but he abandoned it because of his passion for study, cultivating all the knowledge of his time, including music and singing, and it was his eagerness for knowledge that he renounced his inheritance as a his birthright. At the age of 20, Abelardo went to Paris, devoting himself to philosophy. He established a school on the hill of Santa Genevieve and to it attracted a large crowd of students from whom he deserved deep respect, excelling in philosophy and theology, as well as in rhetoric. Eloisa was a beautiful young woman of exceptional talent, the niece of Fulbert, canon of Paris. She was born in 1101 and was then 17 years old.
When she became pregnant, he kidnapped her and took her to Brittany, where a child was born in the house of her lover’s sister.
When Abelard returned to Paris, Fulbert was waiting for him to take revenge: his emissaries mutilated his niece’s seducer.
Eloisa took the robes at the convent of Argenteuil and Abelardo entered the convent of Saint-Denis. Later, he left the cloister and returned to teaching and philosophical debate. Because of his theological ideas and discussions, he was rejected by the monks of Saint-Denis and had to retire to the Diosis of Troyes, where he committed himself to an austere and rigorous life. There he founded the oratory to the Paraclete or Holy Spirit Comforter, of which Eloisa was later abbess.
At the Council of Sens, in 1140, Saint Bernard defeated Abelard in a public discussion. He was sentenced to life in prison, a sentence that was later commuted to imprisonment in a monastery. Years later, the abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable, managed to reconcile Bernard and Abelard.
Abelard died in the abbey of San Marcello, in Chalons-sur-Saone, on April 21, 1142, at the age of 63 years. In his later days, he had abandoned his heretical ideas, rejecting Arianism and Sabellianism. Eloisa claimed his body. She died in 1163, but it was not until 1808 that the remains of both lovers were deposited together in the Museum of French Monuments in Paris. In 1817, both were deposited in the same grave, in the Pere Lachaise cemetery. Although archaeologists question the authenticity of the remains, there is no doubt that Abelardo and Eloisa never stopped loving each other passionately, leading the terrible misfortune of an impossible love.
