Sergei: You Keep Hugging Alix When She's Sad. Next Thing You Know, She's Going To Fall In Love With You.

Sergei: You keep hugging Alix when she's sad. Next thing you know, she's going to fall in love with you. Is that what you want?

Nicholas: Pfft, is that what I want?

Elisabeth, loudly from across the room: YES.

i have my mother's eyes

and her hair

and her sense of humour

but hair changes

and so do eyes and a sense of humour

all i have to connect her to me

is things that will change

like everything does

and i suppose that is natural

but it is also tragic

because she will not change

the dead cannot

but i will

i will not always be the eleven year old i was

GISELE PIERRAT

Nicholas: Oh, Alix, you're smiling! What at?

Alexandra: Oh, nothing. Life is misery.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and future wife Countess Sophie of  Chotek von Chotkow and Wognin, playing tennis.

"It seems, in the matter of love, that the two - the Archduke and the Duchess - were the wisest, yet the late Empress and the Archduchess Zita are more often held as the ideal, the pinnacle, as it were. But the romance of 'Sopherl' and 'Franzi', as they call each-other, is undoubtedly, even in such a subjective matter as affection, something that should be looked up to, perhaps even idealised."

Peeta having to ask Katniss - after being married and having kids for years at this point - if she loves him, because the brainwashing and trauma is so deep rooted and irreversible, keeps me up at night.

It is by far one of the most tragic stories I have ever read or heard of. You shouldn't have to fear the woman you love, the mother of your children, because the government tried to use you as a weapon against your will.

People seem to miss that point whenever they talk about the books and movies. It's never been a happy ending for any of them. Peeta brainwashed, Katniss traumatised and exiled, their kids growing up and playing on top of mass graves and Haymitch going back to being a lonely alcoholic. To name a few.

All that fighting, and for what?