A few were doomed to disappointment (Johnny Eames never won the heart of Lily Dale through two of the "Barsetshire" novels), but marital bliss--or at least the prospect of bliss--was the usual outcome.
Even so, the reader of Trollope soon notices his analytical description of Victorian courtship and marriage.

In the circles of Trollope's characters, only the wealthy could afford to marry for love; those without wealth had to marry for money, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

By the time of _Nina_, Trollope's best exploration of this subject was the marriage between Plantagenet Palliser and Lady Glencora M'Cluskie, the former a cold fish and the latter a hot-blooded heiress in love with a penniless scoundrel (_Can You Forgive Her ?_ 1865).

Yet to come was the disastrous marriage of intelligent Lady Laura Standish to the wealthy but old-maidish Robert Kennedy in _Phineas Finn_ and its sequel.
But _Nina Balatka_ is different from Trollope's previous novels in four respects.

First, Trollope was accustomed to include in his novels his own witty editorial comments about various subjects, often paragraphs or even several pages long.