the thing that makes emma and knightley my all time favorite austen couple is that they are best friends
knightley thinks emma is hilarious, they hang every single day, they are delighted to be in each other’s company, he has a chair in her house because he’s always there, emma walks unaccompanied with him which is textually insane in 1813
they could never ever marry other people because they’d never be able to, or want to, stop hanging out together and alone. their relationship, by all accounts, is absolutely scandalous. but everyone is so used to them together that they just accept it and move on and think that’s normal