The Vampire Diaries: 5 Best Love Triangles (& The 5 Worst)
The Vampire Diaries is one of the most successful shows in the history of the CW, and it's not hard to see why. It's a pretty solid teen drama/thriller with a backdrop of the supernatural, and many of the romantic entanglements between the characters became the stuff of teen drama legend.
At the end of it all, it seems that TVD is best known for it's romance, and it is specifically notorious for putting nearly every character in the show in a love triangle. And of course, sometimes these love triangles worked out really well and were incredibly interesting, but sometimes they fell flat.
10 Best: Amara/Silas/Qetsiyah
By the time that this love triangle came around it was safe to say that the original TVD triangle was a little played out.
But the introduction of Silas, Qetsiyah, and Amara, as well as the link that seemed to bind all of the doppelgangers together and the fact that Qetsiyah basically redefined the entire supernatural world, gave a bit of new life to this endless drama.
9 Worst: Bonnie/Jeremy/Anna
The Vampire Diaries put an enormous focus on romance, but for whatever reason, one of the mainstays of the entire series, Bonnie Bennett, really never got her opportunity to shine as a love interest.
Jeremy was her first major romance which was odd enough, but the fact that Jeremy so quickly reconnected with Anna, despite the fact that she was A. dead and B. his second choice behind Vicki to begin with, was not the kind of treatment that Bonnie deserved.
8 Best: Jeremy/Vicki/Tyler
At the very start of the show, Tyler was kind of a hyper-aggressive monster, Vicki was out of control, and Jeremy was kind of a train wreck as well.
But it was clear that Jeremy had sincere feelings for Vicki, and interestingly it appeared that Tyler had some feelings for her deep down too, so there was a surprising amount of emotional weight behind their love triangle. Vicki's tragic and shocking death only made things more powerful.
7 Worst: Caroline/Stefan/Valerie
It's understandable that Stefan didn't spend literally his entire life obsessed with Elena and Katherine, however his long lost love Valerie seemed to come out of left field.
Stefan's relationship with Caroline was kind of odd in it's own right, but it honestly felt like Valerie was a random character that was invented just to be yet another obstacle in the already mediocre relationship between Caroline and Stefan.
6 Best: Vicki/Jeremy/Anna
This is one of the more unique love triangles in the history of The Vampire Diaries, because it left Anna in competition with Vicki's ghost, even though no one was aware that Vicki had even died at first.
Vicki was clearly Jeremy's first love, but Anna was a really cool girl in her own right, and she literally opened up a whole new world to Jeremy. Seeing Jer deal with that conflict about moving on was intriguing.
5 Worst: Stefan/Caroline/Alaric
It's hard to say which storyline in TVD was the weirdest in the entire series, but Alaric's twin daughters being magically transferred into Caroline's body is absolutely in the running for first place.
But for some ungodly reason, the writers also decided to write an actual romance subplot between Caroline and Alaric, her former teacher who's children she was quite literally unwillingly forced to bear. It was incredibly gross and thank god this love triangle was at least blissfully short.
4 Best: Matt/Caroline/Tyler
It seems that Caroline Forbes is quite literally the queen of love triangles in The Vampire Diaries, since she was entangled in more of them than any other female character by a long shot.
But it's easy to see why, when so many of her love triangles went so well. One of the more interesting of the series is the one between Caroline, Tyler, and Matt, which was both interesting in a narrative sense but also deftly illustrated the way in which the characters were maturing and adjusting to the transition from a natural world view to a supernatural one.
3 Worst: Damon/Katherine/Stefan
Katherine Pierce is undeniably one of the best villains in TVD history, but that also makes her kind of a weird centerpiece for a love triangle. Damon was utterly in love with her to the point of obsession, but she only ever seemed to want Stefan.
The thing is, Stefan didn't want her as a vampire, so she compelled him to comply with their "romance". Any love triangle where one party is not consenting to the actual relationship is icky, and it's unfortunate that the show spent so much time focused on it.
2 Best: Tyler/Caroline/Klaus
It's a shame that Klaus had to run off and impregnate a mass murderer, because the love triangle between Klaus, Caroline, and Tyler was probably the most interesting one of the series, and was tragically cut short before coming to it's conclusion.
But the interplay between all three of these characters made each of them more interesting and more developed, and both couples had insane chemistry as well as a genuinely interesting story.
1 Worst: Damon/Elena/Stefan
To be fair, for a very long time the love triangle between Damon, Elena, and Stefan was actually really interesting and well written.
However the real problem is that this triangle became the total focus of the series to the detriment of everything and everyone else, and the writers tried to wring as much as they could out of it even if it had become dull and repetitive long before.