The Terror of Knowing

Welcome one and all to this week’s Top 5 Wednesday post! For those of you who don’t know Top 5 Wednesday is a weekly meme/challenge which was created by the wonderful Lainey from gingerreadslainey and is now overseen by the equally lovely Sam from Thoughts on Tomes. Every Wednesday, participants devise their Top 5 based on a given topic.

This Wednesday’s topic is Nostalgic Ships: discuss the first fictional couples you ever got butterflies over, or couples you used to be really into when you were younger. I’ll be honest, when I first heard this week’s topic, I didn’t think I’d be able to think of (read: remember) my earliest ships. It turns out I was wrong: a quick think back to some of my favourite childhood and pre-teen reads identified couples I adored pretty damn quickly. So it turns out I was a bigger shipper than I thought I was!

5. Michael/Mia from The Princess Diaries series by Meg Cabot

Is there anyone who read The Princess Diaries and didn’t find Lily’s older brother Michael hot? It was painfully obvious from the get go that Mia’s little crush on Michael would only get worse/better as the series went on. Admittedly, I “out grew” the series at about book 6 so I don’t know how this ship fared as they got older (not well, I assume?), but I used to LOVE Mia and Michael because of that ease of friendship which blossomed into more. I was disappointed when Michael didn’t stick around in the film adaptations to be honest, but his “replacements” are pretty damn appealing too so I’m not too mad about it! Even so, Michael and Mia will always hold a weirdly nostalgic bit of my heart.

4. Arwen/Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien

I can’t deny that the film trilogy has a lot everything to do with inflaming this particular ship because, let’s face it, they barely have any page time in the trilogy itself and you need to really dig into the appendices to appreciate them past a passing reference to Aragorn and Arwen being a Thing. However, regardless of how I came to it, I was all about Arwen and Aragorn. As soon as I became involved in LotR fandoms online, my usernames were related to them, when I wrote in LotR forum roleplays my characters were often the children of them, I wrote fanfiction at some point about what happened to them as a couple during Aragorn’s rule and the repercussions of Aragorn’s death on the family. Suffice it to say, I was invested in them, even if Tolkien wasn’t!

3. Remus/Tonks from Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling 

Remus Lupin is one of my favourite characters in Harry Potter so is it any surprise that when he’s given a character with whom he finds friendship, acceptance, and unconditional love I absolutely ate it up? Tonks was just the right kind of odd to encourage Lupin, I think, but also clearly had so much affection for him and making sure he knew that she loved him, werewolf and all. For someone who was largely rejected by society because of this, Tonks being so adamant about being allowed to love him and start a family with him was so touching to me as a pre-teen and then teen, and to be honest still is as an adult too!

2. Sabriel/Touchstone from The Old Kingdom trilogy by Garth Nix

Yet another fantasy book, yet another fantasy couple, is anyone surprised? At the time I read these books they were firmly a trilogy and the first book, Sabriel, was one of my favourites because the eponymous heroine was SO kickass and perfect and I loved her. In the course of that story she ends up discovering and rescuing Touchstone, a prince imprisoned by dark magic, and the two of them form a highly unlikely friendship as they journey across the kingdom. I loved the blossoming of the romance element throughout that journey and when the other books skip forward and I returned to the story to find Touchstone and Sabriel were now King and Queen of the Old Kingdom, well, I LOVED them even more.

1. The Duchessa/Rodolfo from Stravaganza trilogy by Mary Hoffman

It forever hurts my heart that this trilogy isn’t more well known, to the point of I think I mention it in every list like this that calls for nostalgic/childhood reads! True to form, I also had a fair few ships which I loved in these books. However, my most vehement ship was (bizarrely for my age) not the main character Lucien and Arianna, the duchess’ secret daughter, but rather the Duchessa herself and Rodolfo, a courtier/adviser often seen as a favourite of the Duchessa. Throughout the book there’s mention of many a rumour about their relationship when they were younger, and the Duchessa is known for being particularly beautiful and flirty, but I found her and Rodolfo’s relationship to be so… strangely captivating to me? I don’t know whether it was the courtly setup or their bantering interactions, but I loved them so much despite there being relatively little “page time” given to it. Still, I liked them as a couple!

Who are your nostalgic ships? Do you have a Top 5 Wednesday post for this week? Be sure to link me below if you do!

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