This article reconsiders the role of sexual and romantic ideology in Heliodorus' Aethiopica , focusing particularly on Persinna's account of her daughter's conception. I contend that the triangulated sexual dynamics of the conception deviate from the binary, symmetrical romantic model embodied by Charicleia and Theagenes, complicating the novel's apparent norms. I suggest that the sexual multiplicity of Charicleia's conception mirrors the narrative complexity of the Aethiopica , as the authorial decision to include the conception story—despite its disruptive potential—privileges the plot-generating creation of Charicleia over and above a monolithic adherence to sexual and romantic ideology.

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Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies thoroughly unravels its own ‘marriage plot’. Narrating the romance of the golden Lancelot (‘Lotto’) and the mysterious Mathilde from each protagonist's perspective in turn, Groff's novel exposes countless cracks in the decades-long relationship between a pair of twenty-first-century college sweethearts. The second half of the novel is particularly haunted by a sadomasochistic and dubiously consensual relationship between Mathilde and a wealthy older man upon whom she has become financially dependent, a subplot that includes vivid and erotic descriptions of sexual humiliation and subjugation. Groff is certainly not the only modern author to explicitly and self-consciously interrogate the terms of the romantic novel as such: Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot announces its generic play in its title.

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