You know they die, right?

So I like the song "Love Story" by Taylor Swift



If you don't know, the lyrics are
"Little did I know
That you were Romeo; you were throwing pebbles,
And my daddy said, "Stay away from Juliet."
And I was crying on the staircase,
begging you, 'Please, don't go.'"

And I said,
"Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone.
I'll be waiting; all there's left to do is run.
You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess
It's a love story - baby just say 'Yes.'"


The other day, it was on the radio and RF says "Uh, how far do you want to go with this Romeo and Juliet theme? You know they die right?" But the thing about Romeo and Juliet is that it is supposed to be the ultimate love story. They were willing to die instead of be apart.

Personally, I think that it is the ultimate in stupidity. I remember reading it in high school and how all the girls were ga-ga over the the thought of someone loving them enough to kill themselves. I always just rolled my eyes at them and maintained my low opinion of the idiots I went to school with.

I never understood the motivation of R&J. Why did she take the fake poison? If she was old enough to marry, why didn't she tell her parents to suck it, she wasn't marrying Paris? Or why didn't she just suck it up and marry him and have a wild affair with Romeo like every upper class person in the world? (if you've read either "Sex with Kings" or "Sex with the Queen", you'll know what I'm talking about).

And when he thought she was dead, why was his only course of action to kill himself? Had he never heard of grief and maybe suffering through and getting on with his life? I get it. He couldn't bear the thought of life without her but dude, could he be anymore melodramatic?

The only death in the whole thing I even sort of understood was her actually killing herself after she took the fake poison and he died. It was totally her fault that he died (obviously, he did it to himself but if she hadn't been stupid and taken the fake poison, he wouldn't have felt compelled, thus her fault) Dying was an acceptable punishment for her stupidity in the whole thing.

Big thanks to Quigs for correcting my memory about the sequence of events in the story. It has been awhile since I read it (either Freshman or Sophomore year of high school) and obviously, I didn't like it much so I didn't retain the exact details