I began thinking about what type of love I've been expecting/hoping for and then I remembered someone else explained it better than I can.
When my favorite author released the last book it my favorite series, I was super excited. Alanna and Jon had ended in a fight that separated them. Wanting to get to the part where they made up quickly, I skipped to the end and read that Alanna ended up with George (the other guy that liked her). It took me awhile to come to terms with this decision (I know that they are only book characters, but I like my characters to make rational decisions). Then I found this explanation from the author:
"Why did you make Alanna pick George and not Jonathan? In the original manuscript (the quartet started out as a single adult novel), Alanna did marry Jon. The problem was that the whole final third of the book then felt awkward and so not-right. When I broke it up into four books for kids, I realized the problem. Alanna did not want to marry Jon. If I wasn't going to let her have her way, she was going to make the writing a misery. You may have noticed that with Alanna, you do things her way or not at all.
She did not want to be Queen; she did not want to have to be nice to people she didn't like. She also understood that sooner or later she would embarrass Jon, or that he would want her to start acting like a proper queen and stop doing the things she loved.
George has always valued her for who she is. He doesn't want to change her; she doesn't want to change him. He takes pride in who and what she is, just as she takes pride in what he does. It's hard to describe a relationship like theirs to people, because most of us were raised to think love is fire, passion, and prolonged bouts of giddiness and strained emotions. The quieter kind of love looks kinda boring on the surface, even cool-hearted. Nobody wants that at first. Some people never learn how wonderful it is to be friends with a lover or spouse, to know that here is someone you can be yourself around, and they will love you anyway, sometimes not in spite of your worse characteristics, but because of them. That kind of lover will stay with you through thick and thin, will make you feel valued always, and will make any disastrous occasion seem less so because you are with that person.
That's the best explaining I can do. I don't know if readers will ever agree with me, but at least now you know why things turned out as they did. Alanna wanted her friend; she wanted the man who made her laugh and took delight in the very unfeminine things she did. Her king she can love and respect--most of the time, anyway. But she goes home to the guy with the sweet smile."
Reading this is when I realized that I also wanted to be married to a friend. Someone who I can be comfortable and can accept me for me and not try to turn me into something else. Someone who will be there with me for the duration. Yes, I am a hopeless romantic like the majority of people, but I also want something more concrete in the relationship.
