The families have a feud that doesn't involve their children, so they can't be together and they both die. While we don't normally see people dying from this, not allowing two people to be together for such trivial reasons is just plain cold. We see these things all the time. Even just in high school. She is a cheerleader, he is a nerd, therefore in love but society has forbidden them to be together based on their status within the school. Or we see gangs that no longer exist, but used to feud in the streets. Now they have kids who like each other and even though nothing that happened with them has anything to do with kids, they don't let them see each other. A perfect example is the Hatfield - McCoy feud. Rosanna, daughter of William McCoy, head of the McCoy family, began a courtship with the head of the Hatfield family's son, Johnson, also known as Johnse. Rosanna had moved to West Virginia with the Hatfeilds. She eventually went back, but after doing so, Johnse was arrested by the McCoys on a Kentucky bootlegging warrant. Johnse was freed only after Rosanna made a midnight trip to West Virginia to warn her father. Johnse later left Rosanna pregnant, for his cousin, Nancy McCoy. They got married