No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.

Even before Joss decided to give Giles a past at odds with his all-too-proper image, Romantic ideals were informing his character. From the very beginning his enthusiasm for his job reflects his attraction to a mystical world of heroes and monsters, rather in the same way Romantics and Victorians were attracted to folklore and inclined towards medievalism. Of course, in Giles' case, he does live in a mystical world of heroes and monsters; the romance of it is in the fact that (unlike Buffy) he gets excited about it. He emphasizes the mystical aspects of the Slayer’s power, telling Buffy she should be able to “sense” vampires’ presence, while she takes the much more practical approach of picking them out by their outdated fashion sense (BtVS 1.1). At the end of “The Harvest” (BtVS 1.2) Giles informs the Scoobies that “The next threat we face may be something quite different [than vampires]… We're at the center of a mystical convergence here. We may, in fact, stand between the Earth and its total destruction.” Buffy replies sarcastically “I can hardly wait!” but you can tell from his eager tone that Giles genuinely can hardly wait for their next adventure. While Buffy undercuts her mission, Giles romanticizes it. Set in opposition to the post-modern outlook of Buffy and her friends, Giles embodies the older ethos of Romanticism.

Giles' Romanticism comes through at other key moments as well. It's the Romantic in him that approves of Buffy and Angel's relationship. Though he admits that it verges into the maudlin, it's easy to see that the poeticness of "a vampire in love with a Slayer" appeals to Giles (BtVS 1.11). In "Innocence" (2.14) when Buffy is expecting Giles to be disappointed in her, he instead emphasizes that the important thing is that she and Angel really loved each other. It's the Romantic ideal of true love that he values. And what could be more Romantic than his reaction to Jenny's murder? He goes on a kamikaze mission to avenge her and bring down the world around him in flames (BtVS 2.17).

Less significant moments are evidence of a Romantic nature as well. Giles' thoughts on dramatic irony and predestination in "Graduation II" (3.22), his whimsical costumes in "Fear Itself" (4.04) and "No Place Like Home" (5.05), and the notion that Spike might be meant for "a higher purpose" in "The 'I' In Team" (4.13) all indicate an inclination towards romantic fancy and, in the latter case, idealism.

In fact, all of the major moments of Giles' character development can be understood in terms of Romanticism and/or idealism. Ten-year old Giles wanted to be a fighter-pilot (BtVS 1.05). He wanted to be a hero, and not just a hero -- a pilot, probably the most romantic kind of war hero there is. Dropping out from university and going to London was itself a Romantic rebellion against the suffocating system in the name of freedom, independence and individuality. He was living the anti-hero ideal, being the rebel without a cause. With Randal's death he became disenchanted with that particular romantic image and returned to the Council where his attraction to the mystical and the heroic appeal of fighting the forces of darkness led him to become the enthusiastic Watcher we met in Season 1. I've already used extensive examples of Giles' Romanticism at work throughout Seasons 1 and 2. In Season 3 he breaks with the Watcher's Council for valuing the emotional and the personal over the logical and abstract; for essentially privledging Romantic ideals over Modern ones (BtVS 3.12)

Up to this point Giles' idealism was always closely tied to the role he defined himself by. He aimed to be the ideal fighter pilot, the ideal rebel, the ideal Watcher. In Season 4 he is at loose ends. His dream in "Restless" (4.22) illustrates how he doesn't know who he is or how to define himself. He doesn't know what to aim for. At the end of his dream Giles discovers that ultimately he defines himself as a Watcher. But he doesn't get the opportunity to reaffirm his identity until a few months later, at the beginning of Season 5.

When Buffy asks him to be her Watcher again he latches on to that role as he never had before. Romatic ideals are bundled in to his conception of his work, but now he's projecting them on to Buffy so that she becomes his Romantic ideal. The opening scene of "The Real Me" (5.02) illustrates this shift in Buffy and Giles' relationship: Buffy balances on a pedestal as Giles paces around her at a distance. More than ever before she is the centre of his world, and by the end of the season he comes to figuratively put her on a pedestal and admire her as a hero from afar. At the end of the season Giles tells Buffy that he's proud of her for "Being able to place [her] heart above all else" (BtVS 5.20). Again, he values emotion. Though he later falls out with Buffy over the issue of killing Dawn, if what he said earlier about admiring Buffy's ability "to place her heart above all else" is true, he must not judge her harshly for prioritizing her sister's life. In his exchange with Ben in "The Gift" (5.22) Giles acknowledges that Buffy could never take a human life, and he idealizes her for it. "She's a hero, you see. She's not like us," he says, setting Buffy apart from himself, who he knows is capable of murder, and Ben, who for all he knows is an innocent. He identifies Buffy as a higher sort of being all together. His elevated perception of her is likely strengthened even more by her sacrifice.

Giles' murder of Ben also marks an important ideological turn in his character. As stated earlier, ten-year-old Giles wanted to be a hero; in "Welcome to the Hellmouth" Giles was psyched to be "stand[ing] between the Earth and its total destruction," i.e. about being a hero; in "Prophecy Girl" he wants to leave the safety of his library and go be a hero. The heroic ideal was an integral part of Giles' character and Romantic ideology, but by the end of Season 5 he has given up on it. Giles' final conclusion that he is not a hero, I would conjecture, is probably the result of a slow-burning realization that began with Jenny's murder, and was reinforced by his failure to find Buffy the summer she went away, his role in the Cruciamentum, and his year of uselessness Season 4. Giles stops trying to live up to his ideals, but he doesn't stop being an idealist -- he transplants his heroic ideals onto Buffy, which feeds into his idolization of her.

Moving now into the realm of complete conjecture, I would argue that Giles' view of Buffy as a hero, and of himself as a failure to be a hero, may have played in to his decision to leave her in Season 6. If Buffy is the kind of hero Giles imagined her to be -- and no doubt he built her up even more in his mind after her death -- then she would have had no use for him anyways. She should have been completely capable of standing on her own (as all classical heroes do). It may have even been that, on a subconscious level, Giles didn't like to see the all-too-human and broken Buffy that returned from the grave, and preferred to leave so as to keep his idealized vision of her intact. With his reaction to the deluge of bad news that greets him on his return to Sunnydale in "Grave" (6.22), in addition to the morbid absurdity of the situation, Giles may have been laughing at his own naivety in forgetting that Buffy is, after all, only human.

If this is the case, some of Giles' behaviour season 7 starts to make sense. If he had stopped believing in both his own and Buffy's ability to live up to the ideals he once valued so highly, it makes sense that he may start acting rather Machiavellian, as he does in "Lies My Parents Told Me." I'm not going to go to the trouble of explaining Season 7 Giles, however, since it was a huge mess.