Glatisant’s evocative tale for two players shows non-romantic love can cut just as deep

Lucas Zellers, the writer and designer behind Glatisant, was surprised that I referred to the two-player, card-based RPG’s central relationship as a form of unrequited love. “It's interesting that you read it that way!” he said in an email to Rascal. “Love in Glatisant isn't unrequited: it's a self-sacrificial, agape love rather than a romantic, eros love.”

Perhaps the right word is unreciprocated, even if Zellers did add that Glatisant is ultimately what players make of it. At the same time, the story of the Questing Beast, as depicted in The Once and Future King by T.H. White, is characterized by plenty of yearning. In the books, the Questing Beast is the target of a journey undertaken by King Pellinore, who wished to hunt her as part of his family’s ancestral tradition. When he decided to abandon his lifelong quest to sleep in a feather bed (it’s very luxurious), the Beast wasted away as she pined for his attention. In another version of the books, the Beast fell in love with the knight Palamedes when she saw him disguised as another Questing Beast. Palamedes had dressed up as the Beast in order to cheer Pellinore up, who was, in turn, pining for his own lover.