A love story bound by fate

Writing the love story between Eveline and Galean has been for me, a wonderful and heart-breaking experience. The hardest part was to create a love that was relatable. Many great love stories are sweeping experiences that move people in a way that touches them forever. Some love stories are instant and fast paced and others slow and steady. I had to really negotiate term with myself as a writer as to how I would not only write the love story between Eveline and Galean but also between herself and her husband. This was a difficult task, because she is bound to both them, not just by a prophecy but by her own free will. I also had to justify Eveline’s love for Galean, her being a married woman, ever cemented by her morals and ethics.

Drawing inspiration from experience…

If you have ever been in love before then you maybe understand what I am about to disclose. I believe there are many types of love between a man and a woman, and I have experienced two kinds; love at first sight and the slow burning seeds of love that develop over a period of time. Both types are marginally different and effect you in very different ways. Falling in love with someone at first sight is such a whirlwind of an experience, as though you have simply been drifting about, nonchalant and stiff. Then you set eyes on that person who in that moment, brings you to life for the first time. The world about you alters and brightens and you can feel your heart beat just that bit more. You feel replenished and anew as though spring has sprung forth from your soul and you find yourself bound to that person. This kind of love will make you do things you never thought possible, you find yourself swearing a silent oath to protect that person at all costs and to love them no matter what. That grey world you once knew becomes shattered by the most radiate of rays and everything around you bares a new colour, it is as though you have never been able to see. It is such an intoxicating love, so deep and so fervent you can hardly remember the person you were before.

However…

In my experience, it is a deceptive love if not returned and it can poison you. It becomes an addiction and you fall victim to its deceptive behaviour. I did and I found myself walking down at very troubled path. I became ill and so unalike myself, I hardly recognised my own reflection. And this is the journey that Theodore finds himself on, because he is in love with two women (Jophiel and Eveline) and this poisons him with greed and jealousy. Before he is assigned to protect Eveline, his past memory taken from him, he was in love with the kind and intelligent Jophiel, an angel like himself who worked alongside him in London during the eighteen hundreds. He instantly falls in love with Jophiel, a sentiment not returned at first, and spends years trying to gain her heart, whilst trying to pursue and heighten his career and in the end he wins both. But life is not fair and Theodore is flawed, marked by his own greed and selfishness, he faces a choice, to either claim Jophiel or to accept the offer of serving alongside the great angel Gabriel and his descendant, Galean. In the end he chooses the latter and leaves Jophiel heartbroken.

Theodore agrees to become Eveline’s protector and so he is changed into a young boy, devoid of any memory of his time as an angel and placed into the care of Estelle, Eveline’s adoptive mother. Always having an eye for the rare and beautiful, he finds himself once again in love with the strange and peculiar Eveline. I feel sorry for Theodore, mainly because during this time, his slate has been wiped clean and he truly redeems himself as a man. His love for Eveline is pure and without greed and he is a happy and content man and he wins the heart of Eveline and makes her his wife, before the veil of deception has fallen away.

…

Theodore’s story is a tragedy from beginning to end and one can’t help but feel sorry for him, at least until he begins to show his true colours. His feelings play a vital role within the story and in the end will change the course of the future.

The slow burning love…

They always say you are incredibly lucky to fall in love once in your lifetime, and I was, even if it was never reciprocated in that way I had imagined it to be. It had broken my self confidence in myself and others for a long time. And then I met another, who I hated at first and couldn’t bare to be around. Instead of it being love at first sight, it was quite the opposite in fact. But over a lengthy period of time we became firm friends and then that friendship turned to love. No there were no great firework displays or dramatic waves of feeling, it was a slow burning love story and I came to love that person more than I could have imagined or expected. He healed my wounded heart in a gentle way and became my best friend and despite it ending, his mark upon my heart is deeper than the other. This was the kind of love that I wished for Eveline and Galean.

The great love story…

I had known from the start that Eveline and Galean were bound to each other by fate and so writing the first scene in which they meet was tricky. After many weeks of debating with myself, I finally put pen to paper as you will and brought their story to life. Eveline marries Theodore because she believes herself in love, having no prior experience of it before. But when she encounters Galean for the first time, she in that moment suddenly feels aligned and centered. There are no great declarations of love, no, she simply lays a hand upon his heart and is altered.

Surely that is love at first sight?

No, she doesn't see it that way, she merely feels a connection to Galean, a connection that has always been. At first she doesn’t understand it, her heart belonging to another. But in time and throughout their shared experiences with one another, they become firm friends and she falls in love with him, not by choice but by the hands of fate that have brought them together.

Nothing is ever plain sailing…

Eveline is if anything a moral creature, and so on top of all the truly terrifying things that are happening to her, she is having to deal with the idea of being in love with two men. It is the first time in her life where she encounters selfishness. And it is the first time in her life that she has witnessed a different side to Theodore, a side that is darker and more complex. Love is messy and for the most part hard work. But despite all of her doubts, worries and moral duties, Eveline and Galean’s love for one another deepens. Over the course of the first book, it is evident, how both Theodore and Galean affect Eveline and in the end she is forced to choose between duty and fate, her decision baring terrible consequences either way.

Love can be a truly terrifying experience, it has the effect of either bringing out the best in us or the worst and this is ever true for Eveline, Theodore and Galean. Their messy and complicated love triangle brings about beauty and destruction. It is no love story plastered with a cheesy complexion, it is real, raw and beautiful, no matter whose side you find yourself on and in the end it will influence the woman Eveline evolves to become over the course of the series.

Iseult x