Why is 'The Princess Bride' Clearly NOT a Romance?

Let's talk genre!

The Princess Bride, a film based on a book of the same title by William Golding, is not a romance.

I stand by that statement, despite the fact that it has a several of the definitive ingredients for romance, in generous amounts. There’s an awful lot of kissing. We could definitely market it as a film with romantic elements. We’d be a little silly not to.

But The Princess Bride, to my view, is objectively not a romance.

Why not? I asked myself this morning, while I was in the midst of asking myself other questions more related to a book I am writing.

The whole film is about a love story, isn’t it? If you remove the love story between Buttercup and Wesley from the film or the book, the entire thing collapses in on itself. None of the events of the story make any sense without it.

It also (spoiler) has a happy ending. Which is one of the written-in-stone requirements of romance as a genre: if you do not have a happy ending where they end up together, you have not written a romance.

And if you try to pitch said story to readers as if it were a romance, be prepared for a mob of angry romance readers to show up at your place, ready to carry out a revenge subplot worthy of Inigo Montoya.

“Hello,” they will say. “Our name is All The Readers You Betrayed. You killed our book boyfriend. Prepare to die.”

Don’t do it. It’s not worth it.

The Princess Bride (and here I am speaking of the film specifically, the book is tonally very different from the film) has a very happy ending to the main story, where the couple ends up together.

Romance Ingredient: Check.

The other elements involved: a whimsical low-fantasy-ish/fairy tale world, a swashbuckling adventure, subplots with beloved side characters, all of these can pretty well fit into a romance too. Even Inigo Montoya hunting down the six-fingered man could just be considered a cool subplot, although I’ll admit it isn’t part and parcel with the standard romance formulas that I’m aware of, as a non-romance author.

Sidebar: Did I mention I am not a romance author? I feel like I need to make that clear. I am an intrigued outsider when it comes to romance books in general, a foreigner observing a fascinating and somewhat alien culture. I’m happy to write love stories, but that is different: love stories don’t have to have happy endings. All romances are love stories, not all love stories are romance.

Okay. Back on track. Where were we?

Ah yes. Inigo Montoya’s story, when held alone, wouldn’t necessarily be a genre-defining subplot for the main story.

It’s a subplot, after all, and the main plot is Buttercup and Wesley.

So, if we have all of these ingredients for a solid romance, why then is The Princess Bride not a romance? Or at least a romantasy?

I have a couple of thoughts. Again, take all this as from a foreigner to the genre. There are a few things that stand out to me as indicators as to whether this is a Romance or not.

First: the romance is decided within about the first 5-8 minutes of the film or so.

Seriously. I have a digital copy of the 1987 shooting script. Buttercup has figured out Wesley’s admittedly obscure confession of love on Page 4.

It takes about two minutes or less of Buttercup and Wesley’s on-screen time for them to have figured out that yes, indeed, they are a match, and then they are sharing a passionate onscreen kiss.

Shortest will-they-won’t-they ever.

The answer is yes. It’s just logistics after that, and the working out of several knotty problems, first among them Wesley dying at sea a few minutes of screentime later.

Minor logistics problem. But Buttercup still loves Wesley, and Wesley still loves Buttercup.

The remainder of the movie is about the thematic question set up in the first five minutes of the movie, during this defining scene prior to Wesley leaving to find his fortune.

“Does True Love Conquer All?” is the thematic question this movie is setting up. Or at least, that is how I am phrasing it. Wesley is sure he’ll be able to come back for her, because True Love. He makes a promise. The rest of the film is us watching to see if he can keep it. Despite, y’know, dying at sea in the first five minutes.

It sounds like a question that belongs in Romance, but I would like to argue that it is a thematic question far, far more universal than can be contained in Romance alone. It’s a theme that you can see woven into much of the rest of the film: the grandfather’s love for his grandson, the arguments made to Miracle Max as to why Wesley should live, the dark opposite displayed in the utter loveless-ness possessing the villains. Even Inigo Montoya’s quest for vengeance begins out of love for his father: go watch the scene where he and The Man in Black are chatting amiably before their duel. Listen to the dialogue. And the scene before that, when Inigo first speaks of his father in a manner so solemn and sincere that the Man in Black agrees to trust him in a significant way.

Actually, just watch the whole movie.

The framing of The Princess Bride is also a clue that tells me that this is not a romance, because it too highlights the existence of a higher theme. The film begins and ends not with Wesley and Buttercup and their passionate, eros-driven kiss, although kisses do bookend their story. But the bigger framing story, the first scene and the last scene of the film? That’s about the kindness and caring of a grandfather, for his sick-in-bed grandson.

And this broadens the love story in the Princess Bride to something far beyond a romance. It extends the possibility of this idea of true love’s power to something much more than the excited feelings between a man and a woman when they’re in those first stages of figuring out a life together. It reaches for something that’s a whole lot bigger, and long-lasting, something which all of us want whether we are aware of it or not: to be loved, to be cared about, to have someone who will always come for us.

So, if all that is so, then what genre is The Princess Bride?

Part of me just wants to say that it is a thing unto itself, belonging in its own category wherein resides a single film. But that’s not how the world works. If you were paying me a lot of money to brand and sell this film to the maximum number of readers… I’d probably have to call it a classic swashbuckling adventure fantasy with strong romantic elements.

Which would then be leaving out the comedic elements. And that is a sin. But you only have so much time when marketing to explain what a story is, and this movie breaks so many rules and pole-vaults outside the box so magnificently that our current genre conventions can’t actually contain or describe it all that well, which may have been why it was only a modest success when it first released.

So perhaps I’d have to amend that to ‘classic swashbuckling adventure fantasy with strong comedic and romantic elements’. Which is fairly accurate, but so unwieldy as to be a problem.

Alright. I have opined long enough. The Princess Bride, despite having many of the things which make a good romance, is itself not one. What are your thoughts?

— Cael