Do you prefer “and she died.” or “they lived happily ever after.”?

In a book relationships are complicated, you don’t want everything to work out but you don’t want it to be failure after failure for the character either. As a reader I want the characters to win every once in a while, but a well written yet tragic love story is also welcome. As a writer I feel for my characters and I don’t want to be heartless to them, but would the love story really be the best for them/their character development? Which do you prefer? Let me know in the comments!

~Elowyn A. Archer