Hi Jo -- I was reading your answer to a question about favourite fictional couples in which you say.... " Aral and Cordelia in Shards of Honor? Because they're grown ups and their love seems plausible? But in later books, I'm not so sure." ...and wondering what it is in their later relationship which makes you unsure? And whether your uncertainty is re plausibility or healthiness?

Jo Walton I wrote this pre Gentleman Jole, and I no longer have this problem. Before getting another book in Cordelia's point of view, I had found Aral and Cordelia's marriage as seen through the eyes of their children implausible. Now I don't.

OK, without spoilers.

There's a very interesting thing with the question of writing sequels to romance plots. Because a romance plot is "A meets B, there are complications preventing them loving each other, the complications are resolved, A & B commit to each other". And when you write a sequel to that your options are limited. You can write "oops, not really resolved" and invalidate the emotional heft of the first book, or you can do "more different complications" or you can do what series romances do and have them become minor characters in stories focused on their friends getting together within an overall arc of something else happening. (You can see this problem clearly with the Sharing Knife books for instance. Or Kowal's Austen & magic series.) It's hard to go from a romance plot to "life is complex, marriage is long". Bujold does the "new complications" plot with Barrayar after Shards, and then lets them become background, and that works OK for me up to Mirror Dance, where I started having qualms, as expressed above. But then in Gentleman Jole she does something interesting, which is "A meets C while grieving for B" and I found the revelations in that book made me happy with it again.

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