" I had pledged my heart to someone, your Highness - '
'What happened?'
'Nothing,' Jahan said, Those who grew up with stories of love that inevitably ended in rapture, revelry, chivalry or calamity could not fathom why for many people love amounted to naught, eventually. 'She was beyond my reach and did not love me. It was not meant to be.'
'There're plenty of women,' the Shah said.
Jahan would have liked to say the same thing to him. Why did he still mourn his wife? What he could not put into words, the Shah understood. A thin smile etched on his lips as he said, 'Maybe not. "

― Elif Shafak , The Architect's Apprentice