Mary Renault: Difference between revisions

* [[Battle Couple]]: Lysis and Alexias, Theseus and Hippolyta, Alexander and Hephaistion. In ''The Charioteer'' Laurie imagines himself and Ralph as a Battle Couple.

* [[Beauty Equals Goodness]]: Sometimes. The ancient Greeks tended to believe this, so it comes up a lot, and most of Renault's male heroes and good guys in general are good-looking, often very much so. In ''The Praise Singer'', however, she tried something new, making Simonides both very ugly (history records that he was) and very heterosexual. ''The Charioteer'''s Bunny is very good-looking and thoroughly detestable.

* [[The Big Damn Kiss]]: In ''The Charioteer'', Laurie and Andrew, tending to a dying friend of Laurie's, have a fight over Andrew's religious principles. Laurie reveals to Andrew that he is being transferred from the hospital where Andrew is an orderly, so they won't be able to see each other as often. Andrew's grief at this shakes him into an almost-realisation of his feelings for Laurie and how Laurie is concealing something from him -- that thing being the whole homosexuality deal. Laurie spontaneously leans over and kisses Andrew. Andrew is stunned. A nurse walks in on them. It's a major moment. In ''The Last of the Wine'', Lysis and Alexias, sitting on a hill by a river at sunset, make vows to one another and kiss.

* [[Bilingual Bonus]]: There's a fair bit of untranslated French in ''The Charioteer''.

* [[Dropped a Bridget On Him]]: In ''The Mask of Apollo'', main character Nikeratos, an actor in his later twenties, meets a good-looking fifteen-year-old boy and asks him out. The boy reveals that he is nineteen-year-old Axiothea, who prefers to wear men's clothes and cropped hair because they "fit her soul".

* [[Drowning My Sorrows]]: Ralph in ''The Charioteer'' is becoming an alcoholic due to disillusionment and loneliness.

* [[Earn Your Happy Ending]]: {{spoiler|''North Face''.}}

* [[Eyes Never Lie]]

* [[Hello, Sailor!]]: Ralph in ''The Charioteer'' explains why he tried to turn straight: "I'd had rather a sickener of the other side. Once people know about you at sea, they want you to be too obliging, and you never get away from it. It's not so good in peacetime starting below decks with the wrong accent and so on. I didn't want to give them anything on me."

* [[Hide Your Lesbians]]: Lots of gay subtext in the contemporary novels. Given that Renault discussed homosexuality openly in her first novel, she seems to have put the subtext in the later ones largely to amuse herself.

* [[Hospital Hottie]]

* [[Hot Amazon]]: Hippolyta, an actual Amazon.

* [[Long-Distance Relationship]]: In ''The Charioteer'', Laurie and Andrew are separated when, thanks to Ralph's high-handedness, Laurie is transferred from the hospital where Andrew is working. Laurie and Andrew write to one another, telephone, and plan to meet on Andrew's days off. Laurie will be going back to Oxford after Christmas to do his final year there, his studies having been interrupted by the war, and he tells Andrew that "after he was discharged he could often come over, he could stay at some farm in the vac. ..."

* [[Long-Haired Pretty Boy]]

* [[Lover and Beloved]], given that she wrote about ancient Greece.

* [[Love At First Sight]]: Lots. Again, this is the Plato talking. In ''The Charioteer'', Laurie falls in love with Andrew on their first meeting. In ''The Last of the Wine'', Lysis falls in love with Alexias at first sight, and Alexias {{spoiler|later falls in love with Aster at first sight.}} In ''The Bull from the Sea'', Theseus falls in love with Hippolyta at first sight.

* [[Not Making This Up Disclaimer]]

* [[Oedipus Complex]]

* [[Older Than They Look]]: At nineteen, Niko in ''The Mask of Apollo'' is "young-looking for [his] age".

* [[Old Soldier]]

* [[Precocious Crush]] - ''The King Must Die''

* [[Queer Romance]] - basically all of them

* [[Relationship Upgrade]]: {{spoiler|Laurie and Ralph in ''The Charioteer''.}}

* [[Restored My Faith in Humanity]]: "He had got to see Andrew. He felt a need more imperative than any he had experienced in the keenest crisis of personal love. He wanted to recover his belief in the human status."

* [[Secret Diary]]: Ralph's in ''The Charioteer''.

* [[Sexless Marriage]]: ''Kind Are Her Answers''.

* [[Significant Monogram]]: Kind of. ''The Last of the Wine'' was written immediately after ''The Charioteer'' and is in some ways a recasting of some elements ''The Charioteer'' into a culture which promoted a noble homosexual ethos, instead of forcing homosexuals underground. Laurie and Andrew are the lovers in ''The Charioteer'', Lysis and Alexias are the lovers in ''The Last of the Wine''. It's hard to think this is accidental, since there are other similarities between the two pairs, and no other Renault couples share the same initials.

* [[Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids]]: Ralph.

* [[Star-Crossed Lovers]]: {{spoiler|Laurie and Andrew.}}

* [[Straight Gay]]: Many of her homosexual and bisexual men are decidedly masculine.

* [[Tomboy and Girly Girl]]: Her lesbian couples -- Colonna and Valentine in ''Purposes of Love'', Leo and Helen in ''The Friendly Young Ladies'', Axiothea and Lasthenia in ''The Mask of Apollo''.

* [[Too Good for This Sinful Earth]]: In ''The Last of the Wine'', {{spoiler|Aster}} dies of tuberculosis. In ''The Bull from the Sea'', {{spoiler|Hippolytos}} dies. In ''The Charioteer'', {{spoiler|Bertie Raynes}} died young, and Renault said of {{spoiler|Andrew}} that she thought he would eventually die a martyr in some fever-stricken swamp or murdered by the Viet Cong.