A nostalgia specific to a certain kind of historical romance — big, dramatic, emotionally excessive in the best possible way. The hero who is genuinely terrible at first and has a genuine arc.
A particular fantasy lives in the man who does not chase. Not the one who pursues relentlessly, who sends flowers and makes grand gestures and wears down resistance through sheer persistence.
Believing in someone the rest of the world has already written off — not naively, not without full knowledge of the evidence against them, but with the specific conviction that the verdict does not account for everything — is a kind of love that costs something from the start.
The eerie recognition of meeting someone whose damage rhymes with yours — not identical, not the same shape, but speaking the same language — is a very particular feeling. You did not expect to be understood here.