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This guide deals more with characters' backstories when it comes to relationships and personalities.

Nancy and Ned's relationship varies widely depending on the canon.

-Mystery Stories: Nancy and Ned's relationship begins in the seventh book of the series, Clue in the Diary. Nancy meets Ned while on a case, specifically when she passes the Raybolt estate, sees that the house is on fire, and stops to help. Ned also stops to help, and attempts to move Nancy's car away from the house when it appears to be in danger. Nancy immediately suspects him of trying to steal her car, but his behavior is above reproach and even a little flirty. As the mystery is near Mapleton, Ned's hometown, Nancy and Ned run into each other a few more times, and he arranges for a date or two. Soon after, in the series, Ned is her longtime boyfriend, who often invites her to Emerson for games or dances, and in the rare case that Nancy herself can't make it, she is jealous when Ned finds another date. Ned's fraternity brothers Burt and Dave often triple-date Bess and George with Nancy and Ned. In a few books Ned goes so far as to steal a kiss, and Nancy and Ned spend a lot of unchaperoned time together, but their behavior is above reproach. During a visit to a fortune teller at a traveling carnival, Ned implies to Nancy that he will ask her to marry him one day, but he doesn't go so far as to ask.

-Files: Nancy and Ned make out a lot but things never go any further. Their first meeting happens before the series, sometime while Nancy is still attending River Heights High School, but after her freshman year, and the circumstances are never fully revealed. While in the Mystery Stories, Nancy actually stayed at Ned's fraternity house, in guest rooms, she stays in the Omega Chi sister house, Theta Pi, when at Emerson (if not in guest rooms in other dorms). Bess in particular likes to date Ned's fraternity brothers, but the relationships generally aren't serious. Nancy and Ned break up, officially, early in the series, at the end of Files 8. While investigating a series of pranks against the Emerson Wildcats basketball team, Nancy finds that Ned's best friend and co-captain of the team Mike O'Shea may be involved. Ned asks her to ignore Mike as a suspect, but Nancy can't, and Ned, feeling frustrated and hurt by Nancy's single-minded determination, breaks up with her at the end of the volume. During Files 9, Nancy investigates a case for Ned's new girlfriend Belinda, a ballerina with the Chicago Ballet company, while Nancy herself is dating a law student named Brad. Nancy and Ned reconcile at the end of that book and during the next, and are officially back together in Files 11. Later in the series Nancy, during her Hamptons vacation in the Summer of Love trilogy, engages in a mutual flirtation with a Russian ballet dancer named Sasha Petrov. Ned comes to visit Nancy during the end of her trip and, when Sasha asks Nancy to commit to him, Nancy is unable and recommits to Ned. During the Passport to Romance trilogy, even later in the series, Nancy is attracted to a fellow detective, a dashing Australian named Mick Devlin. Mick flirts with Nancy during her European vacation, even going so far as to propose to her, but she turns him down, and in Files 75, Nancy and Ned go through a rough patch following her conflicted feelings and guilt over her behavior that summer. Nancy and Ned reconcile, but Nancy never canonically tells Ned about her relationship with Mick. Mick pops up again in another of Nancy's cases, but their relationship stays mostly business. Nancy and Ned's steamiest interlude, by far, occurs in Files 99, another case set at Emerson which directly involves Ned. Ned also, canonically, proposes to Nancy in Files 24; Nancy turns him down, saying that they're too young to be married, basically telling him "not yet." The case itself reveals that Ned only proposed to Nancy because he promised himself she was the first girl he would propose to, and he was going to propose to Jessica Thorne to see why she was pursuing him so strenuously. Nancy's jealousy over Ned's relationship with Jessica is clear, and when Nancy asks Ned what he would have said if she (Nancy) had agreed to marry him, Ned winks and responds, "What do you think?"

-On Campus: Nancy reveals that she and Ned did in fact discuss having sex, but never actually did so. They have very little time together before Nancy breaks up with him, and later, when Ned comes back into her life, comforting Bess after Bess's good friend is killed in a motorcycle accident, Nancy is disproportionately jealous of Ned's relationship with Bess, going so far as to date a man who looks very similar to Ned in appearance and kissing him in front of Ned. Nancy dates a few men: Peter, a medical student, who leaves Wilder to return to his pregnant ex-girlfriend; Jake, a fellow reporter at the Wilder Times, the campus newspaper; and Michael, a fellow reporter at the campus television station. At the end of the series Nancy is single and nostalgic about her relationship with Ned. George becomes physically intimate with her boyfriend Will Blackfeather, but ends up breaking up with him. While it's unclear whether Nancy ever slept with any of her boyfriends at Wilder, it is clear that she could, and therefore that, if she began dating Ned again, that relationship is a possibility.

-SuperMysteries: Those fanfic writers who support Nancy and Frank Hardy's relationship focus on particular SuperMysteries, including Secrets of the Nile and The Last Resort, as proof of their attraction. In the former, Nancy posed as Frank's wife on a cruise, and in the latter, Nancy and Frank, while trapped in a mountain cabin during a snowstorm and slowly freezing to death, share a kiss. To be fair, Nancy and Ned are also a strong couple during other SuperMysteries, particularly Shock Waves, and generally any attraction Nancy and Frank act on is dismissed as just a passing spark of mutual affection. The SuperMysteries are also the only canonic basis for any relationship between Nancy and Frank Hardy.

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Nancy and Carson's relationship is always close. In the Mystery Stories, Nancy disapproves of her father dating. In the Files, Carson dates a few women (Mrs. Da Silva and Adriana Polidori, to name two), but has no particular girlfriend. In the On Campus series, Carson is in a serious relationship with a woman named Avery, and Nancy is jealous of that relationship, but comes to terms with it.

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Bess and George's relationship is generally like that of sisters. George is especially cruel to Bess regarding her weight and skittishness during the Mystery Stories, but in the Files and On Campus books, George and Nancy are supportive of Bess's efforts and generally reassure her that she looks fine just the way she is, and doesn't need to diet (which could mean that they are being nice and Bess could stand to lose a few pounds, or that Bess has a latent case of anorexia or bulimia that is never actually explored in the books).

Bess and George also support Nancy in her relationship with Ned and any flirtations she engages in, mostly because they themselves do not have consistent steady boyfriends. Bess, in the Files, does comment that she wishes Ned could be cloned, so that she could date him. However, also in the Files, it seems that Ned's only connection to Bess and George is through Nancy; Ned has a separate relationship with Bess in the On Campus series, which, as discussed, provokes extreme jealousy in Nancy. Thus, canonically, Bess and Ned's attraction is established, though whether Ned is mutually attracted to Bess is never really made clear.

George's sexuality has also been a matter of some small debate, in regards to the Mystery Stories series (since in the Files and On Campus series, she appears to be generally heterosexual). George is proud to call herself by a masculine name, engages in more masculine pursuits, and is a pointed tomboy. As established, she does triple date with Nancy and Bess, when Ned and his fraternity brothers are along, but George doesn't specifically identify herself as steadily dating any man.

Bess is also more likely than not to engage in mutual flirtation with Joe Hardy, on cases when Nancy is working with the Hardy Boys. They have never formed a lasting relationship, though, and are possibly too temperamentally similar to succeed as a couple.

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