In Praise of Friendship - a Robin and Strike Heresy
Or the Post that Got Nick Cancelled.
When either Affection or Eros is one’s theme, one finds a prepared audience. The importance and beauty of both have been stressed and almost exaggerated again and again… But very few modern people think Friendship is a love of comparable value or even a love at all. I cannot remember that any poem since In Memoriam, or any novel, has celebrated it. Tristan and Isolde, Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, have innumerable counterparts in modern literature: David and Jonathan, Pylades and Orestes, Roland and Oliver, Amis and Amile, have not.
The Four Loves C. S. Lewis
It is almost a given in the fandom that the Cormoran Strike - Robin Ellacott relationship arc will resolve into a romantic, not to say erotic conclusion. The story tension is maintained by leaving us wondering how and when, not if, this will be realised. The aim of this post is to argue that such a conclusion is not inevitable. At a stretch, I will even argue that such a conclusion might not even be desirable.
As the biographic member of the Hogwarts Professor 4th generation faculty, I will start with attempting to identify real life parallels that might have influenced J. K. Rowling's lake inspiration, when plotting the overall series. Rowling's "oldest and probably best friend" is Colonel Sean Harris OBE, retired of the Royal Engineers (a sapper). From the "getaway driver and foulweather friend" of Wydean Comprehensive School, to a literary field trip on her 50th birthday, the Harris-Rowling friendship has been a constant in Joanne's (turbulent) and Sean's (action packed and peripatetic) life.
Some of the happiest memories of my teenage years involve zooming off into the darkness in Sean's car. He was the first person with whom I really discussed my serious ambition to be a writer and he was also the only person who thought I was bound to be a success at it, which meant much more to me than I ever told him at the time.
J.K.Rowling Official Site saved by The Rowling Library
It was to Sean, rather than her family that she turned to, for the deposit for her flat in Edinburgh when her life came crashing down after the failure of her abusive marriage. While Rowling turned down the opportunity to visit Nelson Mandela in South Africa, she took her whole family to Nepal, at the request of the British embassy, when Colonel Harris was British Defence Attache there. Sean has since retired from the army, and is now working at the Institute of Civil Engineers in London. If that name might seem familiar, the building appears in The Running Grave, and we can thank Sean for the description of the office, if not for the description of the witness.
We know that Sean was the inspiration for the character of Ron Weasley:
It was at Wyedean that I met Sean, which has been a very important friendship in my life... huge friendship in my life. I always felt a bit of an outsider and that might perhaps explain why Sean and I were so close. Because he came in late. Like me, he didn't have the local accent, and so I think to an extent, we felt like outsiders in the place, and that probably formed quite a big bond between us.
Rowling: So this is, um, Sean. To whom the second Harry Potter book is dedicated. And Ron owes a fair bit to Sean. I never set out to describe Sean in Ron, but Ron has a certain Seanish turn of phrase.
Sean: I suppose the similarities are that he's not... he's never quite first eleven... [the senior cricket team in a school or club] but he's on the verges of being first eleven. And I think I... If I...
Rowling: um... If I may...
Sean: No... Jo... sorry... I was going to say, academically, for example in school, it was quite clear that Jo was... embarrassment aside... was first eleven, and I was very definitely hanging on the coattails there. Borrowing essays occasionally, and um... and I think with the um... Ron character... I think what come through... to me anyway... maybe I've misinterpreted it, it that he's always there, or there about, well intentioned.
Rowling: He's always there when you need him. That's Ron Weasley.
This is the inspiring story of a lifelong friendship. Not just friends, but best friends. A platonic love between a man and a woman, who are both happily married with families. In my admittedly limited experience, this is very unusual, if not unique. This is not to say that Rowling has not considered the might-have-been.
I know that Hermione is incredibly recognizable to a lot of readers and yet you don’t see a lot of Hermiones in film or on TV except to be laughed at. I mean that the intense, clever, in some ways not terribly self-aware, girl is rarely the heroine and I really wanted her to be the heroine. She is part of me, although she is not wholly me. I think that is how I might have appeared to people when I was younger, but that is not really how I was inside.
What I will say is that I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione with Ron….
But daydreams and wish fulfilment is one thing, and reality is another. Both the lovely Dr Neil Murray and the objectively awful Arantes are more Harry Potter than Ron Weasley. In her current marriage, Rowling has made the best romantic decision, and Mr and Mrs Murray appear to be very much in love. So far, so good, but what about Cormoran Strike?
I know quite a few veterans, and my oldest and probably best friend is still serving. So I had a kind of brains trust for the military, that was there and available. And I know that people like Cormoran are out there.
It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Robin's relationship with Strike is an analogue of Rowling's with Harris. Strike was the first to hear of Robin's ambition to be a detective and believe she would be a success at it.
Robin stood quite still, with her mouth slightly open, experiencing a moment of wonder that nobody who knew her could have understood. She had never confided in a solitary human being (even Matthew) her lifelong, secret, childish ambition.
The Cuckoo's Calling chapter 1
They have admitted to each other that they are best friends:
But he was her best friend. This admission, held at bay for so long, caused an almost painful twist in Robin’s heart, not least because she knew it would be impossible ever to tell Strike so.
Troubled Blood chapter 45
“He’s my oldest mate,” Strike corrected her. “My best mate…”
For a split-second he wondered whether he was going to say it, but the whisky had lifted the guard he usually kept upon himself: why not say it, why not let go?
“… is you.”
Robin was so amazed, she couldn’t speak. Never, in four years, had Strike come close to telling her what she was to him. Fondness had had to be deduced from offhand comments, small kindnesses, awkward silences or gestures forced from him under stress. She’d only once before felt as she did now, and the unexpected gift that had engendered the feeling had been a sapphire and diamond ring, which she’d left behind when she walked out on the man who’d given it to her.
She wanted to make some kind of return, but for a moment or two, her throat felt too constricted.
“I… well, the feeling’s mutual,” she said, trying not to sound too happy.
Over on the sofa, Strike dimly registered that somebody was on the metal staircase below their floor. Sometimes the graphic designer in the office beneath worked late. Mostly Strike was savouring the pleasure it had given him to hear Robin return his declaration of affection.
Troubled Blood chapter 58
For both of them, this is quite some reaction for the declaration of platonic affection. To Robin, "my best mate is you" makes her feel like she did when her ex-husband proposed, and Strike is basking in pleasure from Robin's less than articulate "well, the feeling's mutual". In this moment at least they are declaring a mutual love in friendship, without the baggage and risks of romantic love or erotic lust. Could this be a foreshadowing of the series conclusion? Or is this just a step on the road to conjugal completion?
J. K. Rowling has experience of this rarest of friendships, that of true, deep, lifelong platonic love between heterosexual men and women. This in itself would make a fascinating subject for novelisation, and address one of the criticisms of modern writing by C. S. Lewis. Detective partners in the platonic love of friendship could be the ne plus ultra of a working partnership. Rowling would have pulled a plot twist in the series of books to end all twists. The difficult part will be to make a legion of fans, many accustomed to slow burn romances, not just believe this has happened, but be glad that it did. Is Rowling capable of this near miracle? I believe she is. Especially with her unique life experience of a lifelong friendship with her best friend Sean. And she would be constructing a hymn in praise of friendship!