Carnival Row has broken a funny romance rule that is common in popular fantasy. Amazon Prime's Carnival Row is set in a Victorian-style neo-noir fantasy world full of fascinating creatures and mysterious happenings. The series has received mixed reviews from critics but seems to have found a niche in the streaming world after garnering enough support for Amazon to green-light Carnival Row season 2.
One of Carnival Row's pillars is the complicated romance between Rycroft "Philo" Philostrate, a half-blood detective passing as full-human, and Vignette Stonemoss, the Pix refugee from Tirnanoc. The two struggle with their feelings for most of Carnival Row season 1 as their world slowly crumbles around them. Their relationship is a classic fantasy romance in many ways. However, Carnival Row season 2 has shown that it can break familiar romance tropes as well.
Carnival Row’s Relationships Flip A Common Romance Rule
Carnival Row's intricate, fantastical world flips a common fantasy romance rule by creating non-human polyamorous relationships. Strangely, most fantasy worlds show mythical races exclusively in relationships identical to monogamous human relationships. It's an especially strange trend when one considers that many fantasy races are culturally different from humans in almost every other way.
Carnival Row season 2 breaks this strange fantasy trend by including a relationship between 5 Fae who have chosen one another. This is one of the few polyamorous relationships in the fantasy genre, but it's possible that Carnival Row encourages other fantasy works to include this type of relationship. Polyamory is generally underrepresented in television, so it's possible that Carnival Row encourages other genres to include it as well.
How Carnival Row’s Rule Break Helps Build Its World
Carnival Row season 2's breaking of this fantasy romance trend helps build its world by providing representation for non-monogamous relationships. Carnival Row's main characters take the audience all around this intricate world, introducing all levels of world-building, but the inclusion of polyamory among the Fae is a unique way that Carnival Row separates itself from other fantasy series. It provides new depth to the Fae by creating complex relationships that challenge established fantasy tropes.
Carnival Row has received some lash back in the past for underdeveloping its world, but this is a valuable way of expanding its universe in a way that is not often done. Unfortunately, Carnival Row season 2 has to toe the line between continuing to build its world and wrapping up the series after the news that Orlando Bloom is done with Carnival Row. This represents a good start for the Amazon original, but there is still a ways to go.