There’s Robert, the hero of Lady Audley’s Secret, who spends the whole novel hunting for his male best friend George and ends up falling in love with George’s sister purely because, and I am not making this up, she looks exactly like George.

I could go on! So many feminine men and masculine women and hidden longings and subverted gender roles! But I need to move on to the OG detective couple Holmes and Watson.

Holmes and Watson set the pattern for detective duos in terms of case solving, and also for that detective relationship where they’re married but haven’t got around to noticing it yet.

Yes of course, Watson marries a woman at one point but it is literally barely mentioned in the stories, Holmes refuses to engage with the relationship and poor old Mary is shuffled off ASAP. The true couple are Holmes and Watson, loyal to each other to the end.