What romance looks like

In working on my larp Brockhurst, I've been rewatching Downton Abbey. While not a perfect show, I love it very dearly, particularly because I find the relationship between Mary and Matthew so intensely romantic. In large part, probably, because their love reminds me a great deal of Bernie and myself.

When I first watched it, I disliked Mary immediately, with the instinctive, visceral dislike you have when encountering someone flawed in exactly the same ways you are. She is arrogant, stuck up, superior. So used to commanding attention due to gifts that she basically lucked into a birth. Craving adoration at will and getting upset when its not automatically delivered. Cold, imperious, aristocratic. I see the worst of myself in her.

And then came Matthew. Intelligent and sweet, and with a stubborn, borderline awkward refusal to be anything but himself-- he is rough around the edges, but also honest, straightforward. Devotedly principled. No lies or secrets about his nature or his feelings. So like Bernie I can't stand it. Matthew loves Mary the way Bernie loves me. Looking past all the sharp spiky flaws of the exterior to what's actually decent inside, to love her adoringly, unreservedly. She'll try to play off a difficult situation with a cold barbed joke, and his response disarmingly brings it back to the raw, real heart of the truth.

Sometimes I don't think I know what "romance" is. I know what love is, surely, but I don't really see romance in the images that it conjures to me. Talking about a common interest. Packing a lunch for someone in the morning. Supporting a loved one through cancer. Those are love, but they're not romantic.

But that scene where they're dancing at the bottom of the stairs? I think that might be what romance looks like.