The Mourning After: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Bob once loved Alice. How far this relationship went, whether Alice knew how Bob felt, how happy a couple they actually were (if they were a couple) are all unimportant.

 

Inverse of [[Second Love]]. Contrast [[You Have Waited Long Enough]], [[Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder]]. Not to be confused with [[The Murder After]].

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* Sesshomaru does this for Kagura in ''[[Inuyasha]]'' - while he does not ''cry'', he attacks Moroyumaru so viciously that he breaks his sword [[Evil Weapon|Tokijin]] with the force of the blow, putting his own life in danger in the process. More notably, afterwards Totosai approaches him, saying that [[Empathic Weapon|Tenseiga]] called out to him because of a change in Sesshomaru's heart (and Sesshomaru immediately thinks of Kagura). When he receives the finished sword, he thinks of her again and accepts it because "whether her death was in vain or not is for ''me'' to decide".

* In ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'' {{spoiler|Simon}} vows to never forget his late wife, {{spoiler|Nia}}, and in Lagann-hen he spends the rest of his life [[Walking the Earth]] in order to fulfill her last wish to make the world bloom with flowers.

** {{spoiler|Yoko}} also goes through this with {{spoiler|Kamina}}. With the possible exception of forgiving {{spoiler|Kittan}} for stealing a [[Last Kiss]] from her and tenderly hugging him goodbye just before his [[Heroic Sacrifice]], she neither loved another man after {{spoiler|Kamina}}'s death, nor stopped loving him.

* In ''[[Rumbling Hearts]]'' when a character goes into a coma. They don't show the mourning until after they showed him fully recover, though...

* Neviril from ''[[Simoun]]'' is a victim of this after her lover Amuria dies, which plays a big role in her refusal to pilot a Simoun with Aeru (aside from the fact that Aeru is also quite pushy). In the [[Distant Finale]], it's revealed that this also happened to {{spoiler|Rodoreamon, with regards to Mamiina}}.

* Fujitaka in ''[[Cardcaptor Sakura]]'', who never stops loving his dead wife Nadeshiko.

* This mixed with [[Love Makes You Evil]] is the driving force behind {{spoiler|Kaname Tousen}}'s motives in [[Bleach]].

* A mild example from ''[[Tiger and Bunny]]''. Even years after his beloved wife Tomoe's death, Kotetsu still wears his wedding ring and is [[Oblivious to Love|completely unaware that one of his female teammates has an enormous crush on him]]. He also keeps a portrait of Tomoe, which he occasionally confides in and visits her grave whenever he can.

* In ''[[Claudine]]'', {{spoiler|Rosemarie never stopped loving and caring for Claudine after his death and the last few panels of the manga shows her visiting his grave in the snow.}}

* In the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]], there was the Medstar Duology by [[Michael Reaves]] and [[Steve Perry]], a pair of books taking place during the Clone Wars and featuring several just-off-the-battlefield surgeons and a Jedi healer, among others. The Jedi healer made friends with several other mains, and died not more than a few years after those books. Twenty in-universe years later on the Death Star (in a novel called ''[[Death Star]]''), it turns out that one of those surgeons, having been [[Resignations Not Accepted|coerced into continuous service]] is still around and was very attached to that Jedi. He does state that he doesn't know if it was love or not, but he thinks of her often, particularly when trying to navigate ethical dilemmas.

** This is also how General Grievous gets his name his [[Battle Couple|co-general]] as kill during a battle.

* [[Lemony Snicket]]'s ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'': Lemony and {{spoiler|the first}} Beatrice.

* Nicolas Spark's ''A Walk to Remember'' IS this trope. {{spoiler|Landon and Jamie fall in love and get married at age 17 because Jamie's dying of incurable leukemia. Decades and decades later, Landon has not considered anybody else, once, and has not taken off his wedding ring.}}

 

 

* ''[[Hercules: The Legendary Journeys]]''. Hercules felt this way about his wife, who had been murdered by Hera. In one episode he politely turned down the proposition of a band of Amazons, saying he was still in love with his wife.

* In ''[[New Tricks]]'', Jack is still very much in love with his wife who died 9 years ago, and when asked about a [[Girl of the Week|woman]] who was showing an interest in him, simply replied "I'm married."

** So is Patrick Jane of ''[[The Mentalist]]''.

*** Though in Jane's case, it's worth noting that there ''have'' been other women whom he's met after his wife that he's shown to have feelings for. {{spoiler|Sadly, none of these [[It Got Worse|have gone well so far]].}}

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'': "Every morning for as long as she lived, Delenn got up before dawn and watched the sun come up."

* On ''[[ER]]'', we never see Elizabeth Corday show a hint of interest in anyone else after Mark Greene dies.

{{quote|'''Elizabeth:''' I'm not afraid of being with him - I'm afraid of being ''without'' him.}}

* ''[[That Mitchell and Webb Look]]'' manages to invert this with a man who's constantly brooding on what his second wife is going to be like, much to the distress of his current wife.

 

 

== Visual Novels ==

* In ''[[Fate/stay night]]'' Heaven's Feel Normal End has a depressing example that flashes through {{spoiler|the rest of Sakura's life in Shirou's home after he dies at the end of the Grail War, constantly waiting for him to come home}}.

 

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

 

 

== Real Life ==

* Joanna the Mad - Queen of Castile - for her husband, Philip the Handsome. She took to carrying his coffin around with her and sleeping with it. Her grandson, Carlos I of Castile (Charles V Holy Roman Emperor) played this up a little when assuming rule on her behalf. She clearly had a screw loose, in addition to being a woman - two major handicaps for any sixteenth century would-be monarch.

{{quote|[[The Woman Wearing the Queenly Mask|"There is no one to call me Victoria now."]]}}

* There are some people who genuinely consider the death of a spouse to be very different from the dissolution of marriage; most people, however, consider the death of a spouse to be akin to a forced dissolution of their marriage.

{{quote|''"That was it. There was no one else for me. Second best is no good for me. I would have liked a wife and family, but it was not to be."''}}

* James Buchanan, the only U.S. president to never marry, after his fiancée Ann Caroline Coleman's death. "Marry I could not, for my affections were buried in the grave." He seems to have eventually had romances and even reconsider his position on marriage, but never actually went through with it.

* Princess Helena of Wittelsbach, older sister of the famous Elisabeth of Wittelsbach aka Sisi, remained unmarried after the death of her husband Maximilian of Thurn-and-Taxis, refusing other possible engagements and focusing on helping manage the Thurn-und-Taxis family business and philantrophy instead.

** After the tragic murder of Sisi, it's said that ''her'' hubby Franz Josef felt similarly, [[Love Hurts|despite how unstable their marriage was]]; in her memoirs, his relative Princess Zita from the Habsburg clan wrote that she heard him say "nobody will ever know how much I loved Sisi".

 

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[[Category:Just for Pun]]

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