Guardians and wards

[Catherine Delors]

In fiction, LoveHistory, big age differences make for interesting, if not twisted relationships (think Rebecca, a story/novel/film that is often on my mind these days.)

I also saw recently An Education, a film I found very moving.

In real life, most guardianships turn out much to the advantage of the ward. And marriages with a substantial age difference can work out very well. That was not my own experience, though. But it's just that: my own experience. It remains that I certainly projected this part of my life into my first novel...

[Ludmilla]

It really depends on the power dynamics between the guardian and ward, and the older both of them are, the less meaningful the age gap is for me, on how successfully an author can pull this off--and it almost always depends on how the individual relationship is portrayed.

I was wondering if there are examples of gender reversal, where the woman is the guardian with a male ward in anything you've read (obviously, throughout most of history, this wouldn't have happened, but it would be interesting to me if anyone had done it, and I'm not necessarily thinking about an eventual romantic entanglement in the example... just whether it had occurred in anything you have read).

[Catherine Delors]

Off the top of my head, Ludmilla, I can't think of any female guardian/male ward relationships in fiction. Maybe because for so long women couldn't be appointed guardians. In history, you have Empress Tseu-Hi and the child Emperors in whose name she reigned.

But I just wrote this blog post about a passionate relationship between a King and his 20 year older (oldER, mind you) mistress:
http://blog.catherinedelors.com/dian...-to-her-grave/

Diane de Poitiers was still going strong as a royal mistress at age 60, but King Henri was the one who died first...