by Alison Janssen
So last night my fiance and I watched Highlander. The original movie, with Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery. (Various asides: 1. Christopher Lambert looks like Aaron Eckhart sans chin dimple. 2. Whenever I type "Lambert" I sing the "Lambert the Sheepish Lion" song in my head. 3. I can't believe it took me this many years to watch the Highlander movie, as my dad and I used to watch the tv show regularly, alongside other tv classics like Xena, Andromeda, and Forever Knight.)
Anyway, I enjoyed the movie (who wouldn't enjoy pearl-earring-wearing Connery teaching swordplay atop beautiful mountains?), but now it's got me thinking. About Connor MacLeod, and Peter Pan, and Edward Cullen.
No, seriously! These fictional dreamboats (less applicable in the case of Peter Pan, but Wendy *did* love him) all suffer from eternal life. The poor guys, through various quickening, Neverlandish, and vampiric means, never grow old, never get sick, and won't die.*
And the women who love them are normal. And they age. And they die.
Well that hardly seems fair.
I like the romantic, tragic bent to these stories. I like the idea of one lonely soul living on and on and on, and one mortal who nature assures will be left behind. I can happily cry my way through various tellings of this same fate, and I'll almost always find it interesting. But I'm wondering, where are all the live-long ladies?
I can't think of any, to be honest. Maybe I'm not thinking hard enough ... do you have any recommendations for me, twists on the star-crossed lovers where the man is normal and the woman is an everlasting, ever-youthful immortal? Comment away!
* Yes, yes, I know that at the end of Highlander he wins the prize and he's able to age and whatever. But that felt pretty false to me, as it was clear that his *true* love was Heather, and the cop was just, you know, around once he turned mortal.
