Huh? What sort of thinking bugs you? Are you responding to me, or are you responding to JoeFitz?
JoeFitz was making a value judgement about the relationship; I wasn't, I was merely trying to point out that the author had anticipated his reaction and tried to diffuse it in the text.
Yeah, and that bugs me. Obviously we all have certain images in our head when thinking of 'a princess', 'a king', 'a witch' etc. We automatically make assumptions as to age, looks, character, ... I grew up with Grimm's fairy tales and loved them, but I have to admit, they did screw me up a bit when it comes to installing ideas of romance, chivalry, good vs evil etc. ... in a child's mind.
What bugs me is that an author would feel the need to make the relationship between the 2 main characters more believable by feeding our preconceptions and images.
My point was that I prefer stories that challenge these images, stories that make me realize how I myself am guilty of stereotyping .... If a story does that and destroys the effect and takes it back by saying, but, well ... actually he is not that old and she is not that young, then I am a little disappointed. Which does not mean I did not like the story as a whole.
PS: I am still trying to figure out how to quote properly, sorry if that was confusing.