[Russ]

***No post-chapter 1 spoilers in this post***

Especially if the romance involved is with Jaheira, because it brings along all the background from BG1. After all, she's lost her husband, and you one of your best friends. It's an old, tired, hackneyed, yet *very true* plot device, that this kind of situation tends to bring women and men together.

Certainly you have to scrape up Gaelan Bayle's cash, and even more importantly, you have to re-equip yourself and a team sufficiently to try to survive the experience of going after Imoen, and by extension, Irenicus. So you have both a necessary digression, and the tension of "just when do I think we're ready to take on these heavyweights on their home turf" to deal with, and the romances are a definite aid to keeping focused on the real world of fantasy, where your characters are living people, with personalities and issues that transcend the immediate situation.