There's family drama; there are affairs of honor, blood feuds.
In a liberal democracy there are affairs that do not concern the state.
"Not only are affairs not principally about sex," she writes about Internet intimacy, "but you can have an affair without even taking your clothes off".
There are affairs, shams, deceptions, death, and a version of Hell that involves being forced to read Charles Dickens for eternity.
But, of course, the empire isn't known for its love matches; the marriages of princes are affairs of state, arranged for diplomatic rather than romantic purposes, and Franz Joseph, finding his heir's choice unworthy of him and the regime, does his best to separate the tenderly giddy couple.
Writing about Antonio Tabucchi's Pereira Maintains, he claims: "Novels are like affairs, and small novels are affairs with less history, affairs that involved just a few glances across a dinner table or a single ride together, unspeaking, on a train, and therefore affairs still electric with potential, still heart-quickening, even after the passage of all these years".
