Right now, Aidan Turner is doing well as Ross Poldark (not that I read the books to really know the integrity of this adaptation). I kind of like him so far. What I don't like though is the general romantic direction of the plot: it's a DT!Hermione-thing, isn't it? Every time this kind of romantic plot surfaces in a story, my blood simmers and boils.
The DT!Hermione trope is the kind of woman (or man too, I suppose) who attempts (or if I'm being ungenerous, pretends) to do right by the men she loves. Yes, men; by some stupid circumstance, she has somehow accidentally won the heart of two different persons. She doesn't mean to. (Oh, don't bullshit me.) So she supposedly tries to do what is right, picks one of them, but doesn't exactly properly let go of the other. She will try to. (Bullshit again. I have no sympathy for this kind of person.) How enraging the character is usually depends on how she really tries to let go of the other person. It drives me crazy that this character is not evil enough for me to be justified in hating them (oh, you know, she is trying to stay away from said other person) but clearly not so blithely ignorant of their actions that they are blameless. DT!Hermione was beyond annoying; which is why for me, she has become the benchmark for this kind of character.
It is easy to confuse this with a typical love triangle, but it is emphatically not. And good writers know the difference -- thankfully there looks to be another love interest for Ross Poldark in this romantic plot, which means this trope is done as it's meant to. We're meant to dislike this person. The worse situation is when the writer means for us to root for this trope instead of disliking them; the travesty! I can't come up with an example from the top of my head at the moment (mostly because I will trash the story out the window if I came across it in a book), but Bella from the Twilight series strikes me as a possible example. I might be wrong! because I obviously could not stomach the movie, much less the book, so what do I know.
I get passionate about this I think because I'm an... absolutist? ... a purist? Maybe it's quite mean of me, because we are all human; but I have little sympathy for people who get themselves into moral quandaries that appear obviously preventable, given a little more prudence, level-headedness, or simple loyalty earlier on. What, you didn't know if you spent that much time together you would get involved? Really? In the case of Elizabeth in this story: what, Elizabeth, did you think him 100% dead, that you were not willing to wait for 100% evidence, before you broke a promise and went on with your life? The way I see it, your love was not great enough, period. You don't deserve any sympathy.
Come on, Ross, yes! You're not a halfwit. You're better than this!
This line won him over for me.
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