The best romance story in Baldur's Gate 3 happened to Shadowheart in real life: "I wanted to hate her when we first met, but to me, we were enemies to lovers"

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"If you can't BE them, be with them"

Baldur's Gate 3
(Image credit: Larian)

The performance director of Baldur's Gate 3 has revealed that she had a real-life enemies-to-lovers storyline with Shadowheart, and it's actually so sweet.

Aliona Baranova, the performance director in question, took to Twitter to share the story of the start of her relationship with Shadowheart actor Jennifer English. In a series of screenshots taken from the notes app of a phone, Baranova explains that she wanted to hate English before meeting her due to losing out on the Shadowheart role. "I auditioned for Shadowheart… yep, you read that right. God's favorite princess could've been me," the actor's post reads. 

"As we all know, Jen [English] was cast as Shart. I then joined BG3 six months into production as a performance director for the mocap," Baranova continues, "and [to be honest] when I first started the job, I wanted to hate whoever got the part." The performance director then explains how she tried their best to dislike English, but then she saw her acting. "The audacity to be that talented?!?!," Baranova recalls thinking, "I couldn't hate her for her personality, I couldn't hate her for her performance!!" 

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Long story short, Baranova really couldn't hate English as the pair actually ended up dating: "Lots of exposition in the middle, 1.5 years working together, and then BOOM. Enemies to lovers," Baranova reveals, "Jen had no idea we were enemies, or that I'd auditioned for her role, or that I wanted to hate her when we first met, but to me, we were enemies to lovers!" 

The Baldur's Gate 3 developer then shared that she did in fact tell English about this around three days into dating and that she was "totally fine with it." The post concludes: "The moral of the story is, if you can't BE them, be with them," which is pretty much the moral of every enemies-to-lovers story out there. 

If you're a fan of the pair, you'll no doubt already have seen the moment when Baldur's Gate 3 Shadowheart actor suffers the ultimate act of betrayal after her partner declares love for the half-elf's archnemesis during a playthrough of the RPG. Things have escalated since then as the Shadowheart actor lost it last week as her real-life partner slept with her RPG nemesis: "Respectfully looking, respectfully looking."

Take a look at our Baldur's Gate 3 romances guide if you're interested in having your own enemies-to-lover storyline in the RPG.

Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.