Star-crossed

"Star-crossed" or "star-crossed lovers" is a phrase describing a pair of lovers whose relationship is often by outside forces. The term encompasses other meanings, but originally means the pairing is being "thwarted by a malign star" or that the stars are working against the relationship.Astrological in origin, the phrase stems from the belief that the positions of the stars ruled over people's fates, and is best known from the play Romeo and Juliet by the Elizabethan playwright William Shakespeare. Such pairings are often said to be doomed from the start.

The phrase was coined in the prologue of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life (5–6).

It also refers to destiny and the inevitability of the two characters' paths crossing. It usually but not always refers to unlucky outcomes, since Romeo and Juliet's affair ended tragically. Further, it connotes that the lovers entered into their union without sufficient forethought or preparation; that the lovers may not have had adequate knowledge of each other or that they were not thinking rationally.

(The original texts of the prologue, Q1 and Q2, use the spelling "starre-crost", but the version "star-cross'd" is normally used in modern versions.)

Examples of famous star-crossed lovers vary in written work. Pyramus and Thisbe are usually regarded as the source for Romeo and Juliet, and is featured in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Wuthering Heights, considered to be one of the greatest love stories in literary works, is a tale of all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between the star-crossed Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them.

Lancelot, a trusted knight of King Arthur's Round Table, and Guinevere, the queen of Camelot and wife of Arthur, were involved in a star-crossed affair. In some versions of the tale, she is instantly smitten, and when they consummate their adulterous passion, it is an act which paves the way for the fall of Camelot and Arthur's death.

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