Lovers and Villians

In My Humble Opinion
1

In the book I am writing one of the characters is being compared to three different historical or literary women, a famous lover, a famous subject of unrequited love, and a famous villian or femme fatale. Now the unrequited love was a piece of cake to come up with as there seem to be so many of them throughout history and they seem to have inspired so much poetry, I ended up using Beatrice Portinari, the courtly love of Dante. The problem is that I am completely blanking out on the other two. The only famous lovers I came come up with off the top of my head are Juliet and Helen, and they are both way over cliched, and as far as a villian/femme fatale goes I simply have no idea.

So when you think of female lovers and femme fatales who do you think of?

2

Do you want to avoid film noir as a source of villains/femme fatales? If so, there are still a few standouts.

Salome
Delilah
Scarlett O’Hara

3

For a femme fatale, I would go with Natasha from Rocky & Bullwinkle. It could be a nice change of pace to have your first two examples be very serious literary/historical examples and then have the third one be a cartoon character. Or maybe not.

Mata Hari is, obviously, cliche city.

4

I didn’t notice you said historical or literary. That opens up a lot of famous lovers.

Abigail Adams
The Duchess of Windsor
Eva Braun
Catherine the Great :eek:

5

When I think femme fatale, I think of Milady from The Three Musketeers. I’m not sure she’s famous enough to qualify, though.

6

Pussy Galore. May Day.

Fatalistic.

7

How about Elizabeth Bathory?

8

A bit obscure and possibly not what you’re looking for, but for the last category:

  • La Belle Dame sans Merci, from John Keats
  • I think Irene Adler from the Sherlock Holmes stories was portrayed as something of a femme fatale - clever, tricky, even beating the famous Holmes at his game.
9

I’d disagree on Irene Adler. Holmes himself admitted that she was more in the right than his client, the Bavarian prince; he dissed the prince to his face during their last meeting when the prince said Adler wasn’t on his level, pretty much saying that HE wasn’t worthy of HER. The prince was in the wrong, not she; she was just taking care of herself. Insufficient for femme fatale status.

10

Morgan le Fay.

Though Irene Adler is pretty definitive.

11

I think that I have to agree with Skald inre Irene Norton née Adler, while she did ‘beat’ Holmes she was never really portayed as villianous.

I can’t believe I did not think of Delilah, I mean I’ve listened to Regina Spektor’s song Samson at least a dozen times in the last several days and yet she never occured to me at all. Its a toss up between her and La Belle Dame sans Merci. La Belle Dame is certainly more obscure but the character who is making the comparisons is incredibly well read and has already referenced Keats several times so it would fit perfectly.

Abigail Adams is a definite possibility for the lover category, I have an entire book of the letters that went between her and John Adams (again asking myself why I did not think of her even though the book is on a shelf right next to me).