One common version of this trope, Love Above One's Station (i.e., being in love with someone from a different social class), is at least discredited if not actually dead and buried in contemporary settings, but was very much true in the past, and can still work when applied to historical settings. Furthermore, it may connote that the lovers entered into their union without sufficient forethought or preparation, that they did not have adequate knowledge of each other, or that they were not thinking rationally (because they were being controlled by fate). It usually, but not always, refers to unlucky outcomes, since Romeo and Juliet's affair ended tragically. It also refers to destiny and the inevitability of the two characters' paths crossing each other.

Then again, if the stars rule that much, they probably decreed the love as well as the impossibility, making the stars capricious and cruel at the very least. Compare the word 'disaster,' which has the etymology 'away without' ('dis') + 'star planet' ('aster'). destiny or the heavens) have ruled against them, or 'crossed' their plan. It means just the opposite - the stars (i.e. In modern times, the term 'star-crossed' is often unknowingly misused to mean lovers who are meant to be together. William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is the most famous example (and the Trope Namer), but the archetype dates at least as far back as Mesopotamian Mythology and Egyptian Mythology, making it Older Than Dirt. Often, the two can only be Together in Death. It may be Fate, or fatally- Feuding Families, or it may be something as mundane as a few hundred miles' separation, but something will always be in their way. Two lovers-often but not always teenagers-doomed to be kept apart no matter how hard they struggle to be together.

Torn by Billy Wood-Smith