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Do those exist? Gothic Romances, or Horror Gothic stories that end well for the protagonists?
I'm not counting survival as happy since living afterwards may be worse considering the scars left.
I just think that happy endings go against the tropes of the genre. But I'm here to learn. So, have you ever find one of those?
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Sure, all the time. Can't have a good romance without the "happily ever after" ending. The standard Gothic plot is a young, innocent girl with two suitors, one good and one bad. She has to determine which is which, and then gets to keep the good one. If she can just make it to the end of the book. Throw in a big, spooky house and some creepy relatives, and you've got 90% of what was printed in the 1970s. It's the newer Paranormal Romance novels masquerading as Gothic Romance that have the cliffhanger endings. Most of the Paranormal Romances are written as a series, and a happy ending would end the series.
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Thanks GothicLover to clarify me that Gothic and Gothic Romance are indeed not the same. I had that doubt since I started this interest.
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After following your suggestions and a little more research i came to this conclusion.
A romance gone wrong.
Where Romance is understood as it was in the Romantic Art Movement. An unusual being's passionate quest to achieve the impossible results in understanding and respect of nature. And Gothic as a subset of this romance is an unusual being's obsessive pursuit that ends in madness and transgression of natural laws.
A bad romance.
Where Romance is the longing for a significant other. And Gothic encloses: sensationalism, gore, tabu, decay, deprivation, exploitation, violence, lust, all things dark and unknown. It's when a relationship that must have been all love and care between parts degrades in isolation and constant dread, but still the hero wants to stay to reveal the mystery instead of scape.
For both the terror/ horror element that causes madness/dread must be inexplicable/ supernatural or at least pretend to be in the eyes of the hero, otherwise the former would be a failed quest and the latter, domestic violence. There's always the possibility that they might be just that since it should be suggested in the story that what was told is a parcial embellishment of what was in true worse.
