Volumnia, Coriolanus's mother, is the ultimate helicopter parent.
She pushes Coriolanus to become a great warrior. She then persuades him to become a consul, a position entirely unsuited to his personality. She then persuades him to try to behave in a conciliatory manner with the tribunes--which backfires. After Coriolanus is banished and decides to revenge himself on...everybody in Rome, she persuades him not to, after which his once-enemies kill him.
His wife is practically a non-entity. She is very deliberately and obviously regulated to second place so that when Coriolanus either teasingly or mockingly addresses her, his mother joins in.
The mama's boy or daddy's girl doesn't lend itself to romance. It shouts MARRIAGE PROBLEMS from Day One, even back in the medieval (masquerading as ancient) era!
So much so, that the CSI episode "Rashomama" excuses the bridesmaids for killing off the bride's mother-in-law to be. The son, though sweet, was obviously never going to stand up to her. He has already enshrined his mother when the episode begins in his memory as a Noble Woman. But she was horrible, and the bridesmaids protected the new marriage against her.
Okay, they are also going to jail. But one suspects that if they had been around in Shakespeare's Ancient Rome and done something about Volumnia, Coriolanus might have had a chance at just sticking to the job he knew how to do with a fairly pliant wife rather than offending a bunch of politicians, starting an insurrection, ticking off his temporary allies, and dying.
