t may have started as far back in time as Adam and Eve, if you consider the snake a rival of Adam’s for Eve’s hand. Competition in the affairs of love has always been a great plot twist, whether in fiction or real life. 

Lancelot and Guinevere fell in love while she was married to England’s King Arthur, his best friend. William Shakespeare wrote one of his greatest plays about the love triangle of Cleopatra, Antony and Ceasar. Think what Shakespeare could have done with a play about King Charles, Princess Diana and Queen Camella. Imagine the fabulous soliloquy he might write about how unfair it is that Kings cannot marry a divorced woman. Right King Edward VIII. 

James Cameron gave us one of the most beloved films in Titanic, where Rose falls for poor, but fun Jack, while her fiancé Cal fumes. Or in the southern Gothic tale, Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell gives us the iconic love triangle of Scarlett O’Hara, Rhett Butler and Ashley Wilkes.

And in Love in War there was Marti Cardo, a poor, farm boy, who falls head over heels for Montserrat Balaguer, the granddaughter and daughter of the town’s bankers. From childhood, she was pursued by Felix Castell, the son of a rich vineyard owner and the town’s mayor. When the Spanish Civil War began tearing the country apart, Felix used his father’s political connections in Madrid to rise from a disgraced private to be a powerful and evil Republican Army captain. 

Felix never tired of pursuing Monserrat. Montse, a rich girl, who loved fast, beautiful cars, might have married Felix, the heir to wealth and power. That certainly would have pleased her parents, traditional Spaniards in the conservative culture of the 1930s. 

Fortunately, Cupid does not check bank accounts before firing off his arrow. 

A romantic at heart, I fell for the real-life love story of Marti and Montse from the time I first heard it from two of their children. It inspired my latest novel, Love in War, which has won five medals in book competitions, has 30 five-star reviews and been featured at the Guadalajara Book Fair.

Had she married Felix, instead of Marti, the conflict of Love in War might have been that she met and fell in love with Marti, the poor, handsome baker. 

In the real story, Montse struck up a conversation with Marti, while he worked off a debt in Felix’s family vineyard. She liked Marti’s voice and his tall, good looks. Felix was eager, but proved to be no match for Marti. While driving her father’s expensive car too fast, she knocked Marti off his bicycle into a ditch. What better way to find a future husband? 

They fell in love in time to survive one of the most horrific civil wars in Europe. Think Ukraine.

Probably the love triangle that has spawned more novels was Paris, Helen and Memelaus in Homer’s Illiad. The trio not only burned up the sheets, but the whole town. 

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen with Darcy, Elizabeth and the scoundrel George Wickham, who like Felix wore a uniform, not that a uniform impressed Montse. 

The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins features a literary love triangle: Peeta Mellark, Katniss Everdeen and Gale Hawthorne who like Marti and Montse began their relationship as a childhood love. 

Emily Brontë gave us a love triangle in Wuthering Heights with Edgar, Catherine and Heathcliff.  Catherine must choose between Edgar, who offers her a fairly content life because of his wealth and social status, and Heathcliff, who offers a passionate, soulmate-level of love.

‘Til next month, happy reading and writing.