Byron or Keats?

I choose Keats. I like his poetry better (I love Byron too, but Keats is special to me). Also, he was from a lower-middle-class background and Byron picked on him for that, which puts me squarely in the Keats camp. And while he was more likely than Byron to die of tuberculosis or write angry poetry about how you didn't love him enough, he was significantly less likely to cheat on you with his half-sister.

Your choice:

Napoleon or Wellington?

Wellington. I know Napoleon was a brilliant man and a military genius and that he had great personal charisma, but his charm just doesn't translate, for me, in anything I've read. I've also never really been into the whole "he conquered most of the known world" thing. Wellington, on the other hand, is the plucky underdog, and a blunt, sarcastic, get-things-done kind of guy; also, tall and scrawny with a big nose. I like that. Plus the two of them had a mistress in common (actually, I'm pretty sure Wellington slept with two of Napoleon's ex-girlfriends, which suggests that Napoleon may not have been the only one with a complex), and she said Wellington was better in bed. Yes, he was an extremely conservative Prime Minister who opposed the Reform Act of 1832--the nickname "Iron Duke" comes from the iron shutters he put over his windows to stop them from being broken by demonstrators for parliamentary reform, not from anything he did as a general--but he's up against a dictator here, so I'm not taking away points for that.

Your choice:

Faked engagements or marriages of convenience?

This is a tough one, because I love them both. I'm going to have to go with faked engagements, though. I'm also a sucker for stories where the main characters have to pretend to be married or pretend to be madly in love: they have to make the act real enough to convince everyone else, yet not so real the other person realizes that it's not an act. I love it when characters have to hide their feelings in situations that would naturally tend to reveal them. On a similar note, forced proximity stories are another favorite of mine, like when characters are snowed in in an abandoned hunting lodge or have to make a long journey in each other's company.

Your choice:

Best friends falling in love or enemies falling in love?

Another tough one. I adore them both--I love it when characters have a shared history, when intimate knowledge of the other person suddenly deepens into something new and unexpected. But I'm going to have to go with "best friends," just because that plot works for me almost every time, whereas I'm a little pickier about enemy stories. I love it when people who've previously been in conflict discover that actually, they fit together really well--especially if it makes them face some hard truths. I love stories about overcoming prejudices and preconceptions, both about another person and about yourself. Enemy spies, professional rivals, thieves and detectives, vampires and werewolves--I love it all. But the author has to convince me that by the end of the story these two people really do like each other. Too many enemy stories fall down for me because I read the relationship as genuine dislike overcome by overwhelming physical attraction.

Your choice:

Colin Firth or Hugh Grant?

Hugh Grant. Apparently he's personally kind of skeazy, but the man has charm out the you-know-what. Besides, I like Sense and Sensibility better than Pride and Prejudice.

Your choice:

Kirk or Picard?

Okay, I'm actually a little embarrassed by my answer to this one, but...Kirk. If you ask who's the better captain, who's more subtly acted, whose ship I would feel safer on--the answer is obviously Picard. But if you ask who I feel more affection for, who I most enjoy watching on my screen--well, it's Kirk all the way. And if I happened to be wearing a dress made out of tinfoil, and he happened to grab me by the upper arms and smush his face into mine, well...I probably wouldn't say no.

Your choice: