Audiences love a great romantic couple. Romeo and Juliet, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara, Westley and Buttercup – there are so many pairs from movies and literature that people still view as the ideal lovers.
However, fans have often longed for other characters to have ended up with someone else. According to tv tropes, a fan-preferred couple is one that people support over the canon or actual one in the story. This can happen with classical literature such as pairing Hermia and Demetrius from The Midsummer Night’s Dream or pop culture such as Mary Crawford and Tom Branson from Downton Abbey.
With the internet, these fan-favorite pairings have become more obvious. Message boards, fan fiction, fan artwork and blogs now contain thousands of new couples from television, movies and books. Research by Wiatrowski published by academia.edu on online fandoms found that the web allows people from all over the world to gather together despite being far away physically.
This list contains some of the most popular couples that never ended up together in their stories. That has not stopped fans from “shipping” or combining these characters together. Searching for any of these couples on the internet would lead to thousands of hits. Be warned: this list does contain some spoilers.