Rival Characters: The Good, the Bad, the Pointless

Robin McKinley's Beauty in her seminal work Beauty brings up the issue of rivals. In the classic tale, Beauty's sisters are rivals (as are the stepsisters in Cinderella). In McKinley's retelling, the sisters are entirely sweet and pleasant and supportive. Their behavior is a nice change from the over-the-top unpleasant version of the sister (see #2 and #3 below). 

Love Boat has a Cinderella tale where the stepsisters are too gauche and rude and unappealing to be even vaguely believable; the episode is hilarious, however, because the stepmother has no qualms at cozening up to Cinderella once she realizes which way the wind is blowing. The rivals are played for farce. 

Rivals  can be useful characters. Unfortunately, they sometimes feel like the product of vindictive self-indulgence by the writer. 

Rivals fall into several categories:

1. Awful people but not really rivals. 

Miss Bingley falls into this category. Whatever she, her sister, or Charles may have hoped, Darcy has zero interest in her and doesn't even seem to realize that he is supposed to. 

However, Austen plays fair. Miss Bingley isn't entirely unlikable. She isn't evil. Mostly jealous, she ends up sabotaging her own efforts. At the end of the novel, Austen tells us that Miss Bingley will make nice with Elizabeth: better to be a family friend of the Darcys than not!

2. Obviously awful & conniving.

Lucy Steele uses her "secret" engagement to  Edward to put Elinor in her place. Her arrival in the story is a little too convenient to the plot.  However, Austen is fair to Lucy or at least to the situation. That is, Lucy is complex enough that her "confidences" are not really something that Elinor can protest. Is Lucy jealous? Honest? Cruel? Self-satisfied and smug? 

The behavior is obviously unkind and the opposite of honorable. But what the character believes about herself is a different matter.

3. The non-friendly serious rival. 

Here is where I get creeped out. The non-friendly serious rival is actually trying to break the couple up, and the sheer arrogance of "I know what is best for you--it is me" sends me searching for something else to read/watch. I gather from the number of films and series out there with this type of rival that some people just love for a male or female protagonist to have endless choices but I find the constant competition tedious at best and nearly sociopathic at worst. 

4. The friendly serious rival. 

However, the friendly serious rival--common in manga--is quite fun. The friendly serious rival competes but gives way graciously, or at least gracefully, and remains friends with the main characters. 

Ryu Jihye in Semantic Error falls into this category. She's a decent person, honestly interested in Sangwoo (not for his potentially great future or family or money). She helps him relate to people and remains his friend after he and Jaeyeong pair up. 

Her rivalry is with Jaeyeong. And Jaeyeong knows it. He cleverly out-maneuvers her on several occasions, as indicated by his wink.

5. The hilarious rival. 

The teenage female high school students in His Favorite fall into this category. They pursue Sato. Then he starts dating Yoshida and tells everyone. Instead of beating up Yoshida (which Yoshida expects), they tell him, "Stop being such a wuss. We're going to keep competing with you, you know." 

Except often their competition backfires--as when they get Sato to study with them and he spends the whole time asking them dating advice, which annoys them to no end. Don't you understand that we are serious competitors here? 

Rivals are going to arise in romance: here's to hoping writers handle them in a non-revolting manner!