Unholy Love

[Walter B]

This is an idea for a tragic love story. So far I don't have many details, just the synopsis. Please tell me what you think!

This is a story about the forbidden love between a christian girl and a muslim guy. The story takes place in spain in the middle ages. At the time, there were a lot of arabs on spain and there was a large muslim population. One day, a christian girl meets a muslim guy and they fall in love. The start a secret romance, since romantic relationships between muslims and christians were forbidden.

One day the girls father realizes she is seeing a muslim guy. He gets very angry and has the muslim guy killed. Unable to cope with grief, the girl takes poison and kills herself, so they both die and go to heaven.

The twist is, since they had different religions each one of them goes to a different heaven. The girl goes to the christian heaven and the guy goes to the muslim heaven. Upon arrival, each of them tries to find the other one but they are unable to do it. They both ended up in heaven but they can't be happy. They are destined to roam heavens forever, eternally looking for each other.

This is based on a song by Mago de Oz El paseo de los tristes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI7WF2DD9es

[GreenTrap]

The moral of story apples well for the first half, but personally I think it doesn't apply that well when they're in heaven. The fact they go to different heavens means that no matter how kind or horrid the lovers were, they would still be in different heavens unless one of them converted to the other's religion. Thus it makes the first half of the story pointless because the end result will be the same.
You don't necessarily need a moral to the story, just having theme such as "The difficulty of inter-faith relationships" is enough to give it depth.

Otherwise, you have a lot you can do with this sort of story. There's a lot to explore in a medieval world. You could even set it in Anatolia which had a mix of Orthodox and Muslim populations, or even in England 1214 when King John was rumored to have attempted to convert England to Islam which brought many Muslim nobles and diplomats over. You have a lot of creative room, so don't be afraid to dig deep with research and pull out some interesting facts to incorporate into the story.

[Walter B]

Nice thanks!

[Zetnodan]

I mean, I assume that you see the "Romeo & Juliet" "Star-crossed lovers" vibe here, I say you really play that up. I see a romantic dark comedy here. I see a story about love transcending religion, ALL religions. As Green Beverage said, the moral doesn't work because religion, in the end, is what keeps them separated. I think you can fix this by changing the focus of the story from the lives of these characters to their afterlives. You have an amazing setting for a romantic adventure series. After the two leads die and are separated into their respective heavens, have them search for each other, traversing all of the world's religions to find each other. I think that's where this story should be. That's how the moral of not being separated by religion can come in. You can throw in whatever religious commentary you feel is necessary but, I think you've got a great foundation here. Either way. You might be able to change the moral of the current story to talk more about how religion separates people.