Canon Polyamory Recs

featherquillpen:

For this month’s Polyshipping Day, I thought I might rec some canons that have canon polyships. I don’t just mean strong subtext, or things that could be interpreted as poly, but actual explicit nonmonogamous relationships. I love non-canon polyships as much as the next person but I thought some folks might like to try out some canon ones!

The Magicians on SyFy

This has the best polyamory rep I’ve seen on television, period. The Magicians is a show about students at magic grad school. It started out with minor characters, showing us one student’s parents in a triad relationship with another magician. Then it brought polyamory into the foreground with a main character, Eliot, who is a king in an alternate reality where it is custom for royals to have both a husband and a wife. The show’s exploration of Eliot’s complicated emotional life is an absolute delight to watch.

The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin

This is one of the best fantasy book series of all time, in my opinion. It’s an epic set in a secondary world where a brutally oppressed class of geomancers are the only buffer against a tectonically active planet hostile to life. One of these geomancers, Syenite, and her friend and mentor Alabaster, enter into a long-term V relationship with a charming pirate named Innon (who is the hinge of the V.) I love the books’ loving, tender depiction of the metamour relationship between Syenite and Alabaster, who are so important to each other, and united by their love for the same man.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Rosemary, a human woman from Mars, and Sissix, a female lizard alien called an Aandrisk, end up in a committed open relationship by the end of the book. Aandrisks as a species are non-monogamous by default, and an important part of their relationship is Rosemary accepting that Sissix does not love her any less because she goes off to join Aandrisk orgies sometimes. Their romance is very sweet.

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold

The Vorkosigan Saga is an epic space opera centered on Barrayar, a planet that was cut off from the galaxy and regressed technologically, and was recently reintegrated into the galactic fold. It begins with a dramatic romance between Aral, a Barrayaran, and Cordelia, who basically comes from Space California. In the latest installment of the series, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, we learn that Aral and Cordelia were secretly in a committed V relationship (with Aral as the hinge) with Oliver Jole, Aral’s secretary. I liked how this newest book explores the metamour relationship between Cordelia and Oliver.

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel Delany

This book is centered around an epic romance between two men from different planets and radically different backgrounds. Korga is an ex-slave who went through hell to get where he is in life, while Marq is wealthy, respectable, and surrounded by a family that loves him. They end up in a committed open relationship. There is a scene where they go to a public bathhouse together and fuck a dragon. I don’t know what else you want from a book, honestly.

The Books of the Raksura by Martha Wells

These books explore a culture of dragon-people who live in colonies much like social insects. The worldbuilding is very interesting. In this culture, polyamory is normalized, and the main character is in a committed relationship with the queen of his dragon-hive, and later on a lower-ranked man of his hive as well.

The Red Threads of Fortune by J.Y. Yang

Set in a fantastical historical China, this book is centered on Sanao Mokoya, a magician on the run from her mother’s tyrannical regime. She is in an open marriage with a monk named Thennjay, and over the course of the book she falls in love with a mysterious naga-rider, who goes only by Rider, who she isn’t sure she can trust. Mokoya and Thennjay have a difficult marriage, but for reasons that have nothing to do with Mokoya’s lover. This book and its companion novel The Black Tides of Heaven are great new releases.