Literary Love Triangles: Team Oscar, Team Carl—or Team Jacquette?

Posted on August 5, 2026 in Butterfly Games, Favorite Authors, Movies, TV, Books, Newsletter

The Literary Love Triangle in Butterfly Games Book Two

I’m writing Book Two in the Butterfly Games series, so literary love triangles are very much on my mind. Jacquette’s own love triangle is beginning to heat up. If you read the first book, you’ll know which three people I mean.

What simmered beneath the sharp glances and jealous interruptions in BG#1 is more complicated now. Each relationship offers Jacquette a different future. Each man wants something from her. And neither of the choices will be painless.

Naturally, the writing process sent me searching for other memorable love triangles that centered around one woman and her relationships with two men.

My favorites were Cassandra Clare’s The Infernal Devices series, The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, Mayluna by Kelley McNeil, The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, and Heart the Lover by Lily King.

Have you read any of them?

They are very different books, spanning YA fantasy, literary fiction, rock star romance, and more. All great reads, but I couldn’t put down Clockwork Princess or Mayluna. Like a song you can’t stop replaying, both stories are still living in my head.

Which fictional love triangle kept you turning the pages? Did you ever want to shake all three characters and demand to know what they were thinking?

Team Oscar, Team Carl—or Team Jacquette?

I have a confession: I love a good fictional love triangle.

Not the sort in which one perfectly pleasant person is included merely to delay the inevitable. I mean a triangle in which each relationship offers the heroine a genuinely different future—and every possible choice comes with a cost.

That is the kind of romantic entanglement at the heart of Butterfly Games.

The Prince She Cannot Have

Prince Oscar is the French-born heir to Sweden’s new royal dynasty. When he and Jacquette Gyldenstolpe meet at Drottningholm Palace, they are both outsiders in their own ways.

Jacquette has been left to endure the gossip surrounding the end of her parents’ spectacularly unhappy marriage. Oscar has been uprooted from France and deposited in a country where he is suddenly expected to become its future king.

Their connection begins with friendship. They understand one another before either fully appreciates what that connection might become.

Four years later, the situation is rather more complicated.

Oscar is charming, passionate, unpredictable—and impossible. He may care deeply for Jacquette, but he also belongs to the crown. His marriage will never be treated as a private decision.

Falling in love with him means entering a game Jacquette was never meant to win.

The Count Standing Nearby

Then there is Carl.

Carl is Swedish, ambitious, and perfectly capable of recognizing the value of a useful connection. Unlike Oscar, he can openly pursue Jacquette. He can dance with her, escort her home, and present himself as the sort of man a young countess might reasonably marry.

If reason had anything to do with it, that is.

Carl notices Jacquette—but he also notices her powerful stepfather, Chancellor Wetterstedt. At the Swedish court, romance and ambition are inseparable. A marriage can provide affection, but it can also provide wealth, influence, and access to the people who make careers.

So what does Carl truly want?

Jacquette?

Advancement?

Or some combination of the two?

He gives Jacquette something Oscar cannot: the possibility of a socially acceptable future. Oscar feels something he never expected to feel—jealousy.

And jealousy rarely goes unnoticed in a royal court. It’s a weapon people can use.

More Than a Choice Between Two Men

The most interesting love triangles are never really about deciding which suitor is more attractive.

Oscar represents the love Jacquette wants: intense, intoxicating, and free from the ordinary rules—at least when they are alone.

Carl represents the life society might permit her to have: marriage, legitimacy, and a recognized place in the world.

But neither choice is entirely safe. Whichever man she chooses, Jacquette risks her reputation, her security, and her family’s future.

Do We Need a Third Team?

Old-school love triangles ask readers to choose their heroine’s love match. Team Oscar or Team Carl?

But there may be another answer.

Team Jacquette.

She begins the novel believing that love might offer an escape from the cold calculations of court life. Gradually, she discovers that love can be used as another instrument of power—by families, courtiers, politicians, and even the people who sincerely believe they care for her.

The central question is therefore not simply which man she will choose.

It is whether Jacquette can claim any part of her future for herself.

So, where do you stand?

Are you drawn to the forbidden prince who understands Jacquette’s heart?

Would you trust the ambitious count who can offer her a legitimate place beside him?

Or are you firmly Team Jacquette—and waiting for both men to prove that either one deserves her? That’s the question Butterfly Games Book 2 will answer.