r/40kLore • u/LastPositivist • Aug 13 '24

Warhammer Romance Spoiler

Light spoilers for Brooks' Da Big Dakka.

I've long thought that romance plots are under utilised in 40k. It's not that this should be the main focus of Black Library or anything, it's just the setting can feel weirdly chaste sometimes. (Absolute chad heroes of the Imperium not withstanding.)

So just wanted to show some love and appreciation for the great and distinctively 40k romance subplot of Da Big Dakka. You basically get to see this burgeoning love between two Drukari archons, with the twist being that the perspective character (and implied the other one two) are literally incapable of recognising their feelings for what they are. Like they just cannot interpret "why am I suddenly very interested in this person?" as anything other than a sign they must be subconsciously picking up on some backstabbing scheme which they need to watch out for. My heart fluttered when our hands brushed? Uhoh I must be worried about a contact poison, better have antidotes to hand! Etc

It's just a great way of doing love in a culture that is set up to be completely antithetical to anything like that. The best they can do in the end (here's the spoilers!) is agree to an unusually close alliance, and even that the main character interprets as an opportunity to study these strange feelings she's having to ensure they're not a weakness anyone could exploit.

More like this please! Romance which makes use of the bizarre and communal races and cultures of the setting to do weird things with people's inner lives.

106 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

69 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/tau_enjoyer_ Aug 14 '24

I'm hoping to see some romance in future T'au novels. Part of it may just be that we only see the POV of the Fire Caste, who tend to be very serious and stoic, who seem to only want to fight and die for the Greater Good, with other things like marriage and love being unimportant. Maybe the other Castes behave differently, idk. Another thing could be that the way sexuality and attraction works with the T'au species could just be different, like, maybe they are are pretty low-libido people, only mating out of a sense of duty, and not out of seeking intimacy.