Italians have been simps since before the word existed. Their entire literary tradition is just a bunch of guys writing love poems to women who wanted nothing to do with them.

Start with Petrarch. He sees a woman named Laura in church. She is married. She ignores him. He spends the next thirty years writing poems about how perfect she is and how sad he feels. This man basically invented the sonnet just to cope with rejection. They teach this in schools like it is some noble pursuit. It is emotional begging in verse.

Then you have Dante. He speaks to Beatrice maybe twice. She dies. He writes the Divine Comedy so he can imagine meeting her in heaven. Not even in a dream. He has to write a three part cosmic tour just to pretend she acknowledged him. This is not romance. It is medieval fan fiction.

But the worst is Leopardi. He was sickly and bitter and he got rejected by a servant girl. A servant. After that he declares that life is pain and nature is cruel and everything is meaningless. His whole philosophy boils down to one woman not liking him. He turns that into a career. People call him a genius. He is just sad with a dictionary.

While other countries were building empires Italy was producing volumes of poetry about being ignored. Centuries of men crying into parchment. They did not pursue love. They submitted to it. They did not love women. They worshipped the idea of being noticed by them.

Italians did not invent romance. They invented the literary friendzone.