In Lord Dunsany's novel The King of Elfland's Daughter, the theme of love is a convoluted one. The characters' love is more often a product of obsession, fascination, or loyalty. Alveric seems to love Lirazel, questing to find her after she is returned to Elfland. His love however, stems from his desire to please his father and carry out his wishes. Lirazel in turn is fascinated with Alveric, but chooses to read her father's rune to be sent back to Elfland.
When the townspeople request that their ruler be magical, the king sends Alveric to Elfland to marry the king's daughter. When he finds her in Elfland, he is taken with her. "And Alveric gazed in her eyes all speechless and powerless still: it was the Princess Lirazel in her beauty" (21). It is more that she is different from anything he knows and becomes somewhat mesmerized by her than the fact that he loves her. He takes her from her home and brings her back to Erl. It is evident that he does not care for her feelings but rather about pleasing his father. He would have taken her back to "the fields we know" whether he was taken with her or not.
Further, after Alveric and Lirazel are married in Erl and have a son, Alveric realizes that Lirazel will never understand the ways of Erl. It is at this point that Dunsany makes the first reference to any love between Alveric and Lirazel:
Between the spirits of Alveric and Lirazel lay all the distance there is between Earth and Elfland; and love bridged the distance, which can bridge further than that; yet when for a moment on the golden bridge he would pause and let his thoughts look down at the gulf, all his mind would grow giddy and Alveric trembled. What of the end, he thought? And feared it should be stranger than the beginning (36).
If it were really love that Alveric felt for Lirazel, he would not fear the end, and be confident that the love they had for each other would remain.
Consequently, there is a "love that bridged the gap between Erl and Elfland"; being the love that Lirazel has for her son Orion. As Dunsany writes:
…she wondered at the earthly ways of her child and all the little human things that he did more and more as he grew. And yet she loved him more than her father's realm, or the glittering centuries of her ageless youth, or the palace that may be told of only in song (35).
While reading the book, it is evident that Orion is very much loved by his mother.
Also, Alveric shows in his actions towards Lirazel that he does not truly love her. After she tries to assimilate to the ways of Erl he gets angry and calls her a heathen. His actions show his feelings towards her:
And Alveric would not speak the words that should have been said, to turn aside anger and soothe he; for no man, he foolishly thought, should compromise in matters touching heathenesse. So Lirazel went alone all sadly back to her tower. And Alveric stayed to cast the four flat stones afar (60).
If Alveric truly loved Lirazel, he would have appreciated her attempt to conform to his world and not cast her away.
Subsequently Lirazel decides to read her father's rune and go back to Elfland. She may have stayed if she truly loved Alveric and received love from him in return. This not being the case, the only person she really said goodbye to was her son Orion. Upon her initial return to Elfland she appeared not to regret her decision to return as she states "'Here is my home forever'". However she does wish to return to earth and see her son and Alveric again. This may not be so much for love but for the changes the earth promises.
Also, the King of Elfland, who appears to love his daughter greatly, loves selfishly. He sends her the rune to return her to Elfland because he is unhappy that she is gone. After she does return and Lirazel begs him for a rune to return to earth, he refuses. He was more concerned with his own happiness than with hers, evidenced by when Dunsany writes:
And his thoughts went into the future all alone, peering far down the years. More gladly had a traveler at night in lonely ways given up his lantern than had this elvish king now used his last great spell, and so cast it away, and gone without it into those dubious years; whose dim forms he saw and many of their events, but not to the end. Easily had she asked for that dread spell, which should appease the only need she has, easily might he have granted it were he but human; but his vast wisdom saw so much of the years to be that he feared to face them without this last great potency (222).
Being that the rune is the one thing to fulfill her only need, her father should have given it to her more readily. It is only after he considers the welfare of Elfland, not his daughter that he reads the rune.
In conclusion, The King of Elfland's Daughter is not a romantic, love-filled novel. Most of the love that exists is superficial and selfish. The love that the King has for his daughter is based on his happiness and the well being of Elfland. Alveric initially brought Lirazel to Erl because of his loyalty to his father. Even when they are reunited at the end, the focus is more on Lirazel and her son, with songs that "crooned now about the meeting of Lirazel and Orion" (238). At the end the love story between Alveric and Lirazel is hardly mentioned, because it one based on fascination, not love.