Hamundarson vs the family of Gissur the White
In Icelandic sagas life is given its relish by family feuds. In Njal’s Saga, the main feud is begun when Njal’s friend Gunnar Hamundarson kills two members of the same family. He is told to leave Iceland, but cannot bear to do so.
Montague vs Capulet
The model for many a fictional family feud was established in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The two top families in Verona hate each other and their young bucks regularly scrap. Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet naturally fall for each other.
Ravenswood vs Ashton
In Walter Scott’s tragic bestseller, The Bride of Lammermoor, the source of Donizetti’s opera, Edgar Ravenswood, has inherited his father’s hatred of the Ashton family, responsible, he thinks, for their ruin. But then he falls in love with Lucy Ashton. Her appalled family decide to marry her off to an obnoxious laird. Murder and madness follow.
Piombo vs Porta
At the heart of Balzac’s novel, La Vendetta, is the doomed marriage of Ginevra Piombo to Luigi Porta. Most of Luigi’s family has already been wiped out by the rival Piombo clan and Ginevra’s father is appalled to see his beloved daughter hitched to a Porta. He lets them sink into destitution and relents too late to save Ginevra and her baby.
Doone vs Ridd
Set in the 17th century, RD Blackmore’s Lorna Doone tells of the love between members of two Exmoor families who hate each other. John Ridd loves Lorna Doone, even though the Doones have murdered his father. She is promised as a wife to the ferocious Carver Doone. When John and Lorna wed, Carver bursts into the church and shoots her.
Grangerford vs Shepherdson
The young hero of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn escapes from his drunken father and flees down the Mississippi with runaway slave Jim. When their raft sinks they are helped by the Grangerfords and get sucked into their decades-long vendetta against the neighbouring Shepherdsons.
The bridegroom’s family vs the Felixes
In Lorca’s Blood Wedding the main characters are not named, except for the Felix family, apparently responsible, years earlier, for killing the father of a young man who is about to get married. On the wedding night the bride elopes with Leonardo Felix. The lovers flee to the forest, where death appears in the guise of a beggar woman. The outlook is not good.
Corleone vs Tattaglia
Before it was ever a film, The Godfather was a novel by Mario Puzo centring on the murderous vendetta between two New York Mafia families. After a quarrel over control of the heroin trade, the killings begin —
Kryeqyqe vs Berisha
Ismail Kadare’s Broken April tracks the murderous customs of Albanian mountain folk. The Kanun (traditional Albanian law) dictates that young Gjorg Berisha must avenge the death of his brother by killing a member of a rival family. The two clans have been murdering each other for more than half a century. His own life is forfeited in return, though he gets a 30-day truce. —