Happily ever after
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The term happily ever after is used to refer to many works of children’s fiction and romantic fiction. It describes a happy ending, often cliche in which all the good characters have emerged victorious and all the evil characters have been punished. The hero and heroine typically settle into matrimonial bliss, with the implication that their lives will be harmonious and happy forever more.
Certain fairy tales end with the actual phrase "and they lived happily ever after". The abolition of death implied by the phrase sometimes restricts it to stories that are set in mythological time, although the phrase "happily ever after" is often interpreted to mean "until the end of their life", rather than conferring any implication of immortality.
The phrase is often used in a sarcastic sense, to indicate that a story has too schematic a view of life or brings events to too neat a resolution. However, it could be argued that such stories hark back to folk narrative such as those collected by The Brothers Grimm.
