"If the Evil Overlord tries to force me into marriage, I will insist on a ceremony so expensive that it will debilitate his industrial capacity."
The villain's Evil Plan isn't always to take over the world, or to kill the hero. Their goal may be far more personal and sinister – he's going to force the heroine to marry him.
This is often a G-rated version of Rape as Drama — in fact, the whole concept usually carries at least an implicit threat of rape when you think about it. (This can be a common source of Fridge Horror for adults looking back on the many, many beloved works aimed at children that use the trope.) It's an intensely personal threat to the heroine, one that plays up her femininity and vulnerability, especially since the marriage is assumed to be permanent and irreversible. If the heroine has a heroic male Love Interest, as she usually does, it serves as a threat to his masculinity as well. It also provides a convenient excuse for scenes where the villain puts the heroine in compromising positions. And it can lead into all sorts of Wedding Tropes — Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace is almost mandatory.
Often, the villain is motivated by twisted affection or at least lust, but it can also just be about getting legal access to her money and property, or to her title. On the other hand, he might just be the kind of sick bastard who enjoys the idea of keeping someone trapped in a legally binding relationship that they find repulsive for the rest of their life. Or maybe the heroine herself is pretty much irrelevant, and it's really just about claiming ultimate victory over the hero by stealing his woman.
If the villain does this by kidnapping his desired bride, it's a subtrope of I Have You Now, My Pretty; when combined with Villainous Crush, it's also Abduction Is Love. If he threatens someone else and offers to relent if the heroine agrees to marry him, that's the G-rated variant of the Scarpia Ultimatum. In cultures with Arranged Marriage, he might convince the heroine's parents or guardians to force her into marriage. Evil Sorcerers will use their powers to Hypnotize the Princess. The villain might even attempt to trick the heroine into unwittingly doing something that counts as a legally binding wedding. (The Shotgun Wedding, where a third party forces the couple to marry, is only an example of this trope if one of them planned the whole thing.)
Female antagonists who use this trope are much less common than male examples, and are usually portrayed a bit differently. They're almost always motivated by a Villainous Crush (since Villainesses Want Heroes), and may even verge on being a really unstable Abhorrent Admirer rather than an outright villain; for some reason, female Gold Diggers are more likely to rely on seduction rather than coercion. Their male victims are also much more likely to foil the villainess's plan on their own, while female victims almost always have to be rescued by their male love interests.
There is even a trope for the special Big Damn Heroes moment when it prevents this kind of marriage: Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace.
Not to be confused with Shotgun Wedding or The Baby Trap.
Related tropes: Villainous Crush; I Have You Now, My Pretty; Disposable Woman; Damsel in Distress; Hypnotize the Princess; Mad Love; Abhorrent Admirer; Abduction Is Love; Save the Princess. Often Truth in Television — in fact this one's a very old real-world practice — but it's way more depressing in Real Life.
For in-depth information on the subject, see the article— No. 9 of The True Love List
, The Universal Genre Savvy Guide
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Cat's Eye: Mitsuko Asatani is at one point forced to marry the son of the owner of a pharmaceutical company, who threatens to bankrupt her father's company (that works by selling said company's products) if she refuses. When they learn of this, the Kisugi sisters, being obscenely rich, create their own pharmaceutical company to take over the support role, thus freeing Mitsuko to tell him no during the ceremony before hitting him in the face with a pie.
- The rare gender-flipped variant can be found in Crime Zone, in which the demonic pure-blood vampires seek to make the main character Shiro their groom for some sort of sinister purpose. Vampires are both commonplace and well-known mass killers in this setting, so Shiro is understandably terrified and it's played dead seriously.
- Prince Lotor's main goal in GoLion, the Americanized Voltron, and all the sequel series, aside from taking over the galaxy, is to get Princess Allura to marry him.
- In Infinite Stratos, Ichika saves Laura's life. Being Ichika, he doesn't think much of it. She, however, doesn't so much melt as go up like a torch, saves his life, then sticks her tongue down his throat and declares him her wife.
- One Piece:
- The lion-mouthed fiend Absalom tries to make Nami his bride after seeing her naked while she bathing. Using his Devil Fruit power of invisibility, he succeeds in abducting her and drugs her with sleeping pills so she won't refuse him at the altar. Thankfully Sanji interrupts to save her making it a Damsel in Distress scenario.
- Vander Decken is another stalker who is after the Mermaid Princess Shirahoshi for his bride, forcing Neptune to lock his daughter away. He's got a good reason, as Vander Decken sends her love letters (and flying axes), believing he must either marry or kill her.
- Princess Tutu:
- Played for Laughs when the ballet instructor threatens his students that they will have to marry him if they fail their task.
- And then weirdly played straight (albeit Gender Flipped) when Princess Kraehe threatens to marry Mytho. Although it's more "Oh no, Mytho got into another scrape" than anything else.
- In Sailor Moon, Queen Beryl's obsession with Endymion/Mamoru is her motivation for almost everything she does, though by the end of the Dark Kingdom arc she's rather expanded her villain goals. This is most evident in the manga, where her unrequited love for Endymion and jealousy of Princess Serenity is what drew Metallia to her in the first place.
- In Senki Zesshou Symphogear, after revealing that saving "Mankind" was just saving himself, Ver tells Maria they should talk later about repopulating the human race.
- In Shinzo, the Reptile King Ryuma (one of the seven Enterran generals) decides to do this to Yakumo, the last living human, to prove his superiority over her. He says something to the effect of "Anyone can kill their enemy. Only the truly powerful can marry them", and further compares it to a snake wrapping a rabbit inside its coils and keeping it there instead of eating it.
- In Speed Grapher, Kagura is forced to marry Suitengu after her mother dies, giving him control of the family fortune.
- Used to absolutely nightmarish effect in Tokyo Ghoul:Re. Mutsuki is kidnapped by deranged Stalker with a Crush Torso, and told that they are going to be get married. What makes it even worse is that Torso reveals he's cut off Mutsuki's limbs, but not before giving his helpless "bride" a wedding ring.
- Vampire Hunter D: In the first volume and the 1985 film, Count Magnus Lee is determined to marry Doris Lang.
Comic Books
- In an early appearance, Namor defeated the Fantastic Four, then offered to spare them if Sue would agree to marry him and become Queen of Atlantis. She agreed, but when he saw that she wasn't thrilled about the whole thing, he threw a fit and stormed off.
- Doctor Doom has tried to do this to Storm more than once. (Another time, he simply decided to turn her into a trophy; one way or another, he has an odd thing for her.)
- Superman: sometime in the 1950's, Lois Lane inexplicably transformed from an ambitious, independent career woman to someone whose primary goal in life was discovering Superman's secret identity and using it to blackmail him into marrying her. This was especially bad in her own comic, Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane. The Silver Age was a strange time.
- In the Super Mario Bros. comic book, Bowser tries to do this to Peach several times. The top image comes from a scene in Super Mario Adventures where Bowser tells Peach she must marry him, accompanied with a threat of what he'll do if she doesn't.
- In X-Men the Morlocks seemed big on this, at least at first. Originally there was a rare female example where Angel's Abhorrent Admirer, Callisto kidnapped him to force him to marry her, as seen here.
- And later in the same storyline, another Morlock, Caliban tries to make Kitty Pryde marry him. He relented when he realized she didn't love him.
- Arkady/Dmitry does this to Jena towards the end of Nikolai Dante to cement his claim to the throne. And to punish Nikolai.
- In Runaways, Xavin tries to pull this on Karolina during the "Star Crossed" arc, because they are desperate to stop the war between the Skrulls and the Majesdanians.
Comic Strips
- Happens all the time in various versions of Flash Gordon, with Ming the Merciless trying to make Dale Arden marry him.
Fan Works
- In The Lion King Adventures, Hila plans to force Nala into marriage after beating Simba in The Royal Challenge.
- In the Walt Disney Zorro flick The Eagle's Gaze, the antagonist pulls one of these during the climax by threatening to torture a character's friend in front of her if she doesn't comply...
- A Future of Friendship, a History of Hate: Megalos Tyrant (one of Ruinate's heralds) seduces Rarity in his public persona of Regal Rule, lavishing her with all the trappings of a royal lifestyle, and then proposes to her. She initially accepts, but when she realizes everything she'd be giving up to run away to his kingdom with him, she turns him down... at which point he attempts to kidnap her and force her to marry him. He nearly gets away with it, if not for the timely arrival of the other Elements of Harmony.
- Given a downright bizarre spin on the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic King of Chaos
- The Legend of Zelda fanfiction that features the sorceror Vaati, like in his appearance in Four Swords (See Video Games), seeking to make Zelda his bride. In some stories, though, he actually succeeds and becomes King of Hyrule.
- Happens to Meg in Meg's Family when she sold her soul to Lucifer in order to get on the cheerleading squad, with the intent of making Meg his bride. Of course, Meg's actual husband and Lucifer's son Zack and their daughter Maddie wouldn't have any of it.
- In Harry Potter fanfic Do Not Meddle In The Affairs Of Wizards,
- In The Ultimate Evil — an Alternate Universe Fic of Jackie Chan Adventures —, once Shendu is restored to his true form, he takes Valerie Payne (his Other and his imprisoner's descendant) with him to his palace with the intention to make her his queen once he has conquered the world again. Fortunately he's stopped before any of that can happen.
- Nine hundred years earlier, Shendu forcibly took Lo Pei's daughter Lo Mei as his bride after killing the young man she loved before her eyes, intending to father a legacy of his own. This is what caused Lo Pei to start the uprising that led to Shendu's imprisonment, though Lo Mei died in the process by her own hand when the grief over losing her lover became too much.
- The Vow: Once Lord Shen takes over Gongmen City, he tells his prisoner and former fiancée Lady Lianne that he will wed her once he has conquered China. He says that to be his way to get back at her for seemingly rejecting him upon his banishment, but he does want her and only her as his spouse. After he forgives her when he's told of her real role in his banishment, they spend a night together. After Shen apparently kills Po, he decides to marry Lianne a day after, both out of love and to cover their night, leaving her no choice. However, when Lianne tells Shen at the altar that he'd have just needed to propose to her, he's hit by massive compunctions, interrupts the ceremony when it's Lianne's turn to say the marriage vows and gives her her freedom, having realized that he'd rather see her happy than chained to him on the road he doesn't believe he can step from. To his surprise, Lianne gives her marriage vows and promises to wait for him before she leaves.
- Discord and Fluttershy's relationship in Bride Of Discord starts out this way, after Discord asks for a bride as one of his demand, in exchange for not reeking havoc on Equestria, which Fluttershy volunteers for, but it becomes more mutually romantic by as the story goes on.
Films — Animation
- Jafar tries to force Jasmine to marry him in Aladdin by hypnotizing her father so that he'll set up an Arranged Marriage. It's not entirely clear why he doesn't just Hypnotize the Princess; her father's rather Weak-Willed, and Jasmine is definitely not, so this way might have just been easier. (Even the Sultan does manage to snap out of Jafar's hypnosis on his own at least once.) This example is somewhat unique in that Jafar is really using her as a way to become Sultan. In fact, Jafar's original plan was to simply kill both Jasmine and the Sultan once the marriage had been carried out.
- Though Jafar was not above being creeping on Jasmine after she thought Aladdin was dead and even asks Genie to make her fall in love with him when she was being defiant.
- In Beauty and the Beast, Gaston uses the Scarpia Ultimatum version on Belle when her father is going to be committed to an insane asylum. It didn't work.
- The Little Mermaid Ursula in a beautiful form hypnotizes Prince Eric. This is partly to prevent Ariel from fulfilling her bargain of making Eric fall in love with her in three days, and partly out of spite.
- In The Adventures of Tom Thumb and Thumbelina the Mole King tries to marry Thumbelina and fails.
- Didn't make it into the final version of the film, but this trope was very heavy in one scene that was cut from The Lion King. Scar was going to attempt to force Nala to marry him.
- The evil penguin Drake from The Pebble and the Penguin demands that Marina choose him as a husband during the mating ritual, or go to a watery grave ("Right this way to the Drake estate / or write your epitaph!")
- In The Scarecrow, Count Grisham plans to marry Polly so that he can take her money. Inevitably, the title character gets in his way.
- Strange Magic: Roland after failing to woo Marianne (who knows he's a cheating jerk), decides to simply force her to marry him by using a love potion.
- The Swan Princess: The villain Rothbart once tried to take Odette's kingdom by force, but it didn't work out so well. So he kidnaps Odette and turns her into a swan every time the moon sets until she agrees to marry him and give him a legal claim to the throne. That doesn't really go his way either.
Films — Live-Action
- Humperdinck tries to do this to Buttercup in The Princess Bride, because he needs a popular queen to murder so that he can pin the crime on a neighboring country and use it as a pretext for war. She was initially willing, but only because she believed her Love Interest was dead; when he returned, Humperdinck turned it into a Scarpia Ultimatum.
- The Sheriff of Nottingham tries to do this to Maid Marian in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and even tries to rape her during the ceremony as Robin and crew are beating down the door.
- Big Trouble in Little China: David Lo Pan originally wants to marry and sacrifice Miao Yin so he can become solid again. Eventually he decides to marry both Miao Yin and Gracie Law, sacrifice Gracie instead and live out his Earthly pleasures with Miao Yin.
- Beetlejuice: The title ghost's ultimate goal is to marry teenaged Lydia (a move that has Squick written all over it), because this will apparently allow him to stay in the world of the living indefinitely.
- The Spanish Main involves a Dutch captain turned pirate king who discovers that the ship they're... procuring... has the bride-to-be of the Spanish governor. He marries her to get back at the governor for putting him in prison.
- Flash Gordon: Emperor Ming forces Dale Arden to agree to marry him by promising to spare the lives of Prince Barin and Hans Zarkov if she does.
- Matai Shang's plan to help Sab Than take over Barsoom in the John Carter film adaptation involves having Sab force Dejah Thoris to marry him.
- Legend (1985): The Lord of Darkness' goblins capture the beautiful Princess Lily and take her to the dark castle, where Darkness falls in love with her and plans to marry her.
- The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra: The Skeleton declares that he will marry the alien woman Lattis and tries to have a wedding ceremony.
- The Lone Ranger: Cole wants to marry Rebecca so that her son can become his heir, since he's implied to be a eunuch and can therefore not produce a son of his own.
- No Man of Her Own: Helen's evil ex-boyfriend decides to blackmail her, saying that he'll uncover her secret identity if she doesn't marry him and give him her family's inheritance.
- In To Kill a Dragon, the reason that Lancelot decides to interfere is that Elsa is being forcibly married to the Dragon (which would result in her death). When the Dragon is defeated, the Burgomaster becomes a ruler and wants to forcibly marry Elsa himself.
- Cinderella (2015):
- Kit is a rare male victim of this trope, with the Duke marrying him off to the Princess Chelina (how directly involved she is in all this is unclear.)
- Strangely, in a twist, Lady Tremaine is at one point willing to force Cinderella to marry her prince... as long as she is made Queen Dowager. When Cinderella refuses to let her exploit the man she loves like she did her father, Tremaine leaves her in the tower room to rot.
Literature
- Many, many versions of the Robin Hood legend have the Sheriff or some other villain trying to do this to Marian.
- This happens in the first A Series of Unfortunate Events book (as well as the Film of the Book), in which Count Olaf tries to marry Violet. Bizarrely, even though the series is aimed at kids, even though Olaf is clearly a Gold Digger, and even though Violet is underage and Olaf is her much older legal guardian, the possibility of rape is actually more explicit than usual, with Violet imagining what it would be like to sleep beside Olaf and Olaf at one point declaring that they were “off to have our wedding night.”
- In Being a Green Mother, Natasha rescues Orb from a forced marriage to Satan, where he is using a magic song to destroy her will, embodying this trope. Then, Natasha courts Orb through several Rescue Romance scenes. She falls in love with him for this, his handsome appearance, gentle demeanor and his lovely singing, and agrees to marry him. Then comes The Reveal...
- The Scarpia Ultimatum is used for this in The Phantom of the Opera. It's an unusually sympathetic version, though — it's pretty explicit that Erik has no intention of raping Christine (the man seems to think of wives as pets or accessories that one takes on walks and buys pretty things for, rather than as sexual partners), and he actually calls the whole thing off himself.
- In J.R.R. Tolkien's "Tale of Beren and Lúthien" (from The Silmarillion), Celegorm imprisons the heroine with the intent of marrying her, wanting to advance his political power in Beleriand. Fortunately, Lúthien manages to escape with some assistance from his dog.
- The Pillars of the Earth
- Utter sub-human garbage William Hamleigh tries do this to Aleina multiple times and she refuses each time, but sickeningly he doesn't take it lightly. Which makes his death all the more satisfying.
- Poor Aliena has deal with shit from Tom Builder's crap son Alfred who proposes to her and given her experience with William it's no surprise she turns him instantly down. However when she looses all her money, she forced to give in and accept his proposal. Fortunately Jack Jackson (Aliena's true love) comes to house on her wedding night and she takes his virginity away. This however gets her pregnant and Alfred enraged kicks her out of the house but she goes to Jack in France and Alfred dies later, allowing a consensual marriage to happen. So it all turns out okay.
- The show changes it to Aliena's younger brother Richard allowing Alfred to marry her, so she won't be poor. Which is the complete opposite of h reaction to Alfred's unwanted advances on her in the book.
- In 1634: The Baltic War, Eddie Cantrell has fallen totally in love with Anne Cathrine, the 15-year-old daughter of the King of Denmark, but fears his love to be hopeless due to her jailbait age (he is 20) and social standing. When escaping a destroyed prison, he and Anne Cathrine do a great deal of This and That for two days, leading the person to believe he is going to be executed, as the King reads a huge scroll of serious charges against him. But, when he realizes this trope is being offered, he is ecstatic. (So is Anne Cathrine.)
- In 1634: The Bavarian Crisis, Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar tries to kidnap the Hapsburg princess Maria Anna (who has just run away from her previous Arranged Marriage and is currently very close to his own territory) in order to reinforce his status when he sets himself up as an independent ruler. The plan doesn't really go anywhere, and he even provides her and hew new intended with free passage and an escort led by the officer whom he sent to capture her in the first place, figuring that if he can't have her, he might as well get some decent PR out of the whole mess.
- It is part of Celimus' plan to take over the world in Fiona McIntosh's Quickening Trilogy. He first sends the hero to ask the princess of the neighboring country's hand in marriage, but also sends mercenaries to kill the king so she has no choice but to marry him, since her country is too weak and she's too young for a war. Of course, the main character falls in love with her, but he only manages to save her in the nick of time between her marriage and the wedding night, due to a rather annoying curse.
- The Reynard Cycle: Reynard's nemesis, Duke Nobel, plans to marry a captive Countess in order to unify two warring states. The plan works.
- A Song of Ice and Fire
- Sansa is at first thrilled about her betrothal to Prince Joffrey, but it quickly turns into this trope when it becomes clear the Lannisters intend to hold her to the bargain even after Joffrey has her father executed in front of her. Wide-Eyed Idealist though she is, Sansa is very much aware of the Marital Rape License and what it means for her situation. She gets out of marrying Joffrey once they realize Margaery Tyrell is a better political match... so they marry her off to Joffrey's uglier uncle Tyrion instead. Fortunately, Tyrion is a much nicer guy than his nephew, and refrains from raping her on their wedding night.
- It seems like Sansa might fall victim to this trope yet ''again'', this time with Littlefinger. In the most recent book, A Dance with Dragons, it's mentioned that Littlefinger's first attempt to do this happened when Sansa was eleven.
- Also done to Jeyne Poole, who was forced to masquerade as Arya Stark and marry Ramsay Snow, so as to more firmly establish the Bolton claim to the North.
- And Ramsay did the same thing to Lady Hornwood before that. Then she pushed his Berserk Button.
- Brother Cadfael:
- In The Virgin in the Ice, a young heiress fights off the Big Bad, knowing that if he succeeds in raping her she will be forced to marry him and her life and fortune will be in his hands.
- It shows up again in The Rose Rent. When the wealthy widow Judith Perle disappears, it's feared that she faces "marriage by rape".
- The heroes (sort of) of the Deryni novels pull this one — in The Bishop's Heir, the rebel princess is kidnapped, held captive, and then told she must marry protagonist King Kelson (so that her claim to lands will be once again joined to his royal line). He tells her he wants her to agree "willingly", but it's made clear to the user that he will apply Mind Rape if necessary. She's killed instants after saying her vows, so the issue of sex is never dealt with. It's presented as the only way to end a protracted and bloody civil war, which continues in the following book until all possible rival heirs are dead. and Sidana chooses to cooperate. She is also given several weeks of wedding preparations to get used to the idea and notice that Kelson is a more than presentable young man.
- In The Innocent, the lead Elinor fights off a rapist with the help of a serf. The creep was the cousin and lover of the wife of Elinor's dying brother; if he had succeeded, he could have claimed Elinor as his wife, giving him access to her lands. The cousin and the sister-in-law had further plans that would have ended with them married and in control of the lands.
- Near the end of A Brother's Price, Kij Porter and her sisters kidnap Jerin Whistler for this purpose. With his Royal Blood, they'd have a shot at the throne if the women already on it were all killed. He promises that if they don't kill his companion, a thorn in their side for ages, that he will marry them willingly, please them in bed, never run away or tell the sordid tale to anyone, and care for their children. He is lying like a rug and escapes at the first opportunity.
- In the Old Icelandic Saga of Hrolf Kraki, King Helgi of Denmark takes Queen Olof of Saxony hostage and tries to force her to marry him. It doesn't work.
- Prince Kai in the Lunar Chronicles is a rare male example. Queen Levana is determined to get a legitimate claim over Earth via marriage to an Earthen leader. First she tries to withhold the antidote for the Letumosis virus from him, then threaten his Love Interest Cinder's life to force him to marry her. At the end of Scarlett, she succeeded but in Cress, Cinder stopped the wedding by kidnapping Kai.
- The Red Necklace: Count Kalliovski keeps Sido imprisoned until she agrees to marry him. Later, he creepily tells her if she doesn't marry him, he'll bed her whether she wants it or not anyway.
- John Carter of Mars: This happens twice with Dejah Thoris. In the first book, she is pressured into marrying a prince from a rival city-state in order to spare her realm from being destroyed by his armies. In the third book, she ends up taken to a foreign land whose tyrant declares he will make her his queen.
- In The Queen's Thief, the king of Sounis wants Hamiathes' Gift, a mythical artifact that legitimises the owner to rule over neighbouring Eddis. While the artifact is so ancient that he could not hope to wrench power from the ruling queen (whose ancestors have ruled without it, too), he hopes to be able to bully her into marrying him. Considering that protagonist Gen has been employed by the king of Sounis to steal said artifact, the reader is not quite sure whether to hope that Gen succeeds. Later is turns out that Gen has not been unwillingly dragged along but had plans of his own ... which do not involve handing the Gift over to Sounis.
- In Lucy Daniel Raby's Nikolai of the North, there is a more rare version since both parties involved are pretty villainous. Volpo, The Dragon to Wicked Witch Magda, tells her that he'll only reveal his genius Evil Plan to capture the heroes if Magda agrees to marry him. If she doesn't, he won't help her at all with anything anymore. Since Magda is the World's Most Beautiful Woman (after certain dark magic, that is) and Volpo is horrendously ugly, she's not very enthusiastic about it. They announce their engagement as the Evil Plan seems to succeed, but then Big Damn Heroes kill them off before things can progress further.
Live-Action TV
- The 1960's Batman
- "Marsha Queen of Diamonds/Marsha Scheme of Diamonds": Marsha blackmails Batman into marrying her or Robin will be her prisoner forever. The marriage would be a case of Loophole Abuse. Marsha's original plan was blackmailing him into letting her into the Batcave so she'd gain access to the bat-diamond but even for Robin he wouldn't break his vow (never revealing the Batcave's location to any strangers) so she demanded the marriage to make herself no longer a stranger.
- "King Tut’s Coup/Batman’s Waterloo": King Tut kidnaps socialite Lisa Carson to make her Queen of the Nile.
- Green Ice/Deep Freeze": Mr. Freeze kidnaps beauty queen Miss Iceland with this purpose in mind.
- "Enter Batgirl, Exit Penguin": The Penguin does the same to Barbara Gordon with the belief that his new father-in-law Commissioner Gordon will grant him immunity to arrest.
- In the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a demon threatens to kill everyone in Sunnydale and make Dawn his “queen”. He relents when it's revealed the terms of his summoning would actually make Xander his bride.
Anya: I've seen some of these Underworld child bride deals, and they never end well. Well, maybe once.
- A strange version occurs in Farscape. John is, unfortunately, the only male able to give a princess healthy children and she must marry in order to become Empress. John is fully prepared to let her down gently, but the current Empress gives him a choice: marry her daughter, or let Scorpius play with his brain.
- Game of Thrones:
- A rare female-on-male version when Daenerys forces Hizdahr to marry her after imprisoning and threatening to execute him in "Kill the Boy", hoping the marriage will placate her enemies. She later tells Tyrion she may not resort to killing him.
- Similar to Jeyne Poole's situation who is Adapted Out from the show, Sansa is forced to marry Ramsey Bolton, of all people. However, this is part of Littlefinger's schemes to take control of the North. It's actually worse than that when during their wedding night, Ramsey rapes Sansa and as a result, Theon/Reek helped her escape.
- Lord Zedd suddenly decided he wanted to marry Kimberly in one episode of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, leading to a completely failed attempt to hypnotize her. And by failed, we mean that Kimberly uses her acting lessons to give a truly Rita-worthy performance that scares the hell out of the bad guys, buying the others time to rescue her.
- Robin Hood starts with Marian leading Guy of Gisbourne on for information, but Guy ends up developing this for her which actually culminates in her death.
- An episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine called "The House of Quark" has the Klingon Grilka kidnap Quark and force him to marry her at knifepoint. This is a relatively sympathetic version, as Grilka's only doing it to maneuver her family out of a political crisis that was partly Quark's fault in the first place. It quickly turns into a more equal partnership, with Quark using his cunning and financial skills to help her resolve the situation, and afterward she gladly divorces him and they part on good terms.
- In Tinsel, Kwame Mensah gets Telema Duke to marry him by holding his testimony — the only chance for her on-again/off-again lover, Soji Bankole, to escape a Murder One conviction — to ransom.
- Best Friends Whenever has Daisy being forcibly engaged to a Jerkass named Sebastian who wants to rule her kingdom. The gang must rescue her from her Arranged Marriage.
- In Newhart, Larry once revealed that his dad was very persistent in courting his mom until she said the words he longed to hear, "Okay, untie me and I'll marry you." This worried the rest of the cast as he began courting Stephanie. Fortunately, when asked about it, Larry admits that what his dad did was "just weird".
- LazyTown had the "evil dude" creates a love potion for his "usual damsel in distress", to make her fall in love with him & get married.
- In The Tribe, Ram takes an interest in Ebony when he finds out that she is his lieutenants Java and Siva's younger sister, both of whom he has already married. He tries to persuade her nicely at first by presenting her with gifts and noting how much power she would gain by it, but eventually gets fed up with her reluctance and pretty much gives Ebony an ultimatum to make up her mind. She ultimately chooses Ram's good-hearted Dragon Jay instead.
- In one episode of The Suite Life on Deck, Maddie is tricked accidentally becomes engaged to an 8 year-old prince and is saved by Zack challenging the brat to a Duel to the Death.
- In one episode of Red Dwarf, the guys must trade with a grunting, Yeti-like tribe of G.E.L.F.s to obtain some vital equipment. The tribe's chief demands that Lister marry his daughter in return. He ends up going through with the ceremony, but runs out before consummation.
- On 'Allo 'Allo! Denise Laroche of the Communist Resistance forces Renee to marry her somewhat unintentionally - Renee won't refuse because she killed the only other man who ever broke her heart. She doesn't even think there is a question of him refusing, because she believes they are star-crossed lovers, not realizing that Renee Really Gets Around (the marriage is eventually sabotaged by three of the other women in line to marry him) and that he barely remembers her name.
- Frontier Circus: In "The Courtship", the Southern Belle who runs the town attempts to force Casey to marry her by impounding all of the circus' equipment and animals.
Myths & Legend
- Classical Mythology: As the ancient Mediterranean is one of the places where marriage by abduction was a perfectly acceptable real-world practice, it's referenced all over the place in Greek and Roman mythology.
- Hades, the Greek god of the underworld, kidnapped Persephone to be his wife, persuading her to bind herself to the underworld by eating the food of the dead. However, Alternate Character Interpretation applies.
- The traditional account of the founding of Rome has Romulus kidnap the women of a neighboring tribe, the Sabines, so that his followers could have brides. As Romulus explains to the kidnapped women, this is perfectly justified and really all their fathers' fault, because the Romans had come as respectable suitors and the Sabine men had rejected them for no good reason. And to be fair it's not like the Sabine daughters would have had any choice in who they married in the normal way.
- Virgil has the Roman men excusing themselves on the grounds of their desperate desire for wives and the Sabine women's beauty and virtue. They follow this up by making much of their captives and not laying a finger on them til they freely consent. By the time the Sabine Dads finally show up their daughters are happily married and many of them mothers. All this suggests that even the Romans felt the original story needed softening.
- The Trojan War supposedly started this way, with Paris' abduction of Helen, although the ancient accounts differ on whether Helen was actually kidnapped or went along willingly.
- Norse Mythology: A giant named Thrym steals Thor's hammer and demands that the gods gave him Freyja as his wife in return for Mjölnir. Instead, on Loki's advice, the gods dress up Thor as Freyja to trick Thrym into returning the hammer and then using it to kill him.
Pro Wrestling
- The Undertaker tried to force Stephanie McMahon to marry him when he was leader of the Ministry of Darkness, after capturing her. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin rescued her though.
- Kane forced Lita to marry him after Matt Hardy, her then-boyfriend both on-screen and off, lost his match with Kane. Lita marrying Kane was the stipulation if Hardy lost. Unlike his Kayfabe brother, he actually succeeded in forcing Lita to marry him, though she dumped him for Edge a few months later, and the storyline was retconned after Matt Hardy came back.
Tabletop Games
- In Exalted, an actual game mechanic called "Exquisite Bride Obsession" encourages certain villains to do this. The Ebon Dragon is a demon who has kidnapped the Scarlet Empress for these purposes, and the Dragon's Infernal Exalts can abstain punishment for disobedience by mimicking that behaviour - concocting and executing plans to marry somebody.
- It Came from the Late, Late Show. In the adventure "The Iron Fist of Shao-Lin vs. the Dragon Ninjas", the villain Omu Yogwatzi kidnaps the Damsel in Distress Lotus Blossom and tries to force her to marry him.
Theater
- Shakespeare does it more than once:
- In The Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio forces Katherine into an arranged marriage by telling her father that she had agreed to marry him but they had made a bargain that she would pretend to hate him around other people. Her father buys it, taking the idea that characters in comedies are always gullible Up to Eleven.
- In All's Well That Ends Well, Helena, a lovestruck commoner woman, saves the king's life and is granted a boon. She asks to marry the snobby nobleman Bertram, and the king orders him to go along with it against his will. In this case Helena isn't actually a villain at all, as (a) Arranged Marriage was pretty normal at the time the play was written, and (b) Bertram manages to be such a massive tool that it's pretty much impossible to feel sorry for him; if anything most people pity Helena for having such bad taste.
- In The Yeomen of the Guard, not one, but two major characters are forced into loveless marriages to detested admirers who have enough dirt on them to get them executed.
- In "Corn!" from The Musical of Musicals: The Musical!, Jidder intends to marry June unless he can collect her rent by 5 o'clock.
Big Willy: Well, you cain't up and marry her jest 'cause she cain't pay her rent!
Jidder: Oh, cain't I? It says I can right here in this Lease!
Big Willy: That lease'll never hold up in court!
Jidder: Yes it will. And don't call me Liesl!
Video Games
- In Castle Crashers, the leader of the Coneheads is attempting to marry the Green Princess against her will when you show up.
- Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp has the Evil Sorceror, Mordroc, kidnapping the Beautiful Princess Daphne, so he can put the Death Ring on Daphne in marriage, which will also turn the beautiful princess into a hideous monster. The motives of evil wizards are curious indeed.
- Dragon Quest VII plays with this in Verdham, where this creates a Love Dodecahedron: Linda agrees to an Arranged Marriage with Iwan, the son of the richest man in town, in order to clear her late parents' debt to him. However, while Iwan loves Linda, Linda loves Pepe, who works as one of Borlock's gardeners. Interestingly, Borlock is shown to be a Reasonable Authority Figure who is completely unaware of the Dodecahedron, and it's outright stated that if made aware of the situation, he would probably cancel the marriage and find some other way of dealing with the debt. Unfortunately, that's not what happens.
- Final Fantasy VI:
- Celes has to agree to marry Setzer to get the party access to an airship. Or rather, she makes a wager on a coin toss: Heads they get his ship, tails she marries him. When he loses and realizes she's using a coin with two heads he's so impressed he joins the party.
- A more straight example is in the opera in the game, where the princess Maria is being forced to marry the prince of the conquering kingdom for the sake of unification despite her beloved Draco still leading an insurrection to free them.
- Seymour forces Yuna to marry him in Final Fantasy X, though the implications of it are ignored (partially since he's dead. But then again, he was alive when he proposed to her in the first place). It gets worse when you consider that his reason for doing so is to be used as the basis for her Final Aeon, thereby becoming the next Sin and destroying the world.
- King's Quest:
- A "proxy" version in King's Quest IV: The Perils Of Rosella, where the Big Bad going to force Rosella into a marriage to her "son" in a Deconstruction of Standard Hero Reward. It ends up being her undoing as Edgar really is Good All Along and pulls a Heel–Face Turn to free Rosella.
- King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride: Edgar is kidnapped by his wicked aunt, brainwashed, and transmogrified again (this time to impersonate the Troll King) and in his confused and morally compromised state, he kidnaps Rosella, transforms her into a troll, and tries to pull this trope himself, but it's arguable as to if he was actually serious about it, or just very confused and knew on some level that Rosella was someone he could trust.
- King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow has the evil vizier trying to force Princess Cassima to marry him. He almost pulls it off by getting the shapeshifting genie to impersonate Cassima at the ceremony, while the real Cassima is tied up elsewhere.
- In the Extended Universe novel The Floating Castle, Alexander ends up incidentally rescuing a princess who's being held captive against her will by an Evil Sorceror in a Jail Bait Wait until she's old enough for him to marry.
- A "proxy" version in King's Quest IV: The Perils Of Rosella, where the Big Bad going to force Rosella into a marriage to her "son" in a Deconstruction of Standard Hero Reward. It ends up being her undoing as Edgar really is Good All Along and pulls a Heel–Face Turn to free Rosella.
- In the The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, Vaati's plan to take over Hyrule starts with him kidnapping Zelda to make her his bride. That she was a Princess made Vaati want even more.
- LeChuck is always trying to do this to Elaine Marley in the Monkey Island games.
- In the Super Mario series, Bowser's schemes, more often than not, were made to forcibly marry Princess Peach, both to consummate his control over the Mushroom Kingdom and to be with his Villainous Crush.
- This goes horribly right in Super Paper Mario.
- The squicky implications of this are lampshaded in Super Mario Sunshine, in which Peach is suggested to be Bowser Jr.'s mother and she has to stop and think about it.
- in Super Mario Odyssey, this is Bowser's explicit goal.
- In Super Mario RPG, Bowser hasn't kidnapped the Peach, it's actually a man named Booster. While it seems sinister, as it turns out, Booster has no idea what a wedding actually means, and plans on leaving Toadstool after the party is done. After he eats the wedding cake, he heads off with his minions and is never heard from again.
- Fire Emblem:
- In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, this happens several times. The first time trips off the plot of the game, when a thuggish prince kidnaps a childhood friend of The Hero with the intent of forcing her to marry him.
- In Fire Emblem Gaiden and its remake Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows Of Valentia, King Lima IV forced the World's Most Beautiful Woman, a priestess named Lipraca, to become his Hot Consort. They're the parents of the female protagonist of the game, Princess Celica.
- In Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, General Tsao captures the Panda King's daughter and forces her to marry him against her will. She escapes thanks to the Cooper Gang, and Tsao ends up almost married to Carmelita.
- A rare gender-flipped version of this occurs in the Spider-Man 3 game, where Priscilla, leader of the "Arsenic Candy" gang, attempts to marry a man against his will.
- In Gingiva, almost all of the boss monsters will try to pull this on the player (and immediately turn hostile when you refuse).
- Maximilian seeks to marry Princess Cordelia in Valkyria Chronicles as part of his takeover of her kingdom. Unfortunately for her, even after revealing her family bloodline is a lie he's still bent on taking her as a bride.
- In Pinball Quest, Lord Beezelbub has kidnapped Princess Ball and plans to marry her in three days. No fair guessing what the player has to do.
- In Crusader Kings II, tribal chiefs and pagan, Zoroastrian, and Dharmic rulers can force captured women to be their concubines, even married women. Naturally this incurs a nasty relations penalty with the woman, her relatives, and her husband (if she has one), and such concubines are often helpful to those wishing to assassinate the ruler.
Visual Novels
- Episode 6 of Umineko: When They Cry has such a scene when Battler has his mind trapped in a logic error and Erika also wants to enslave his body. Between Erika's, err, words of love, and her forcing the "wedding ring" on Battler's finger, you won't be blamed if you think you're reading a rape scene. And then, Beatrice happened.
- Gilgamesh to Saber in Fate/stay night, though his true intents towards her are considerably more perverse.note Naturally, this doesn't sit well with Saber.
- In Sunrider, Veniczar Arcadius wants to force Princess Asaga of Ryuvia to marry him so he can gain access to the secrets of Ryuvia’s Lost Technology; in return, he will spare her planet from a PACT invasion and guarantee its autonomy. Once the ceremony has concluded, he reneges on the deal, kills her father and annexes the planet anyway, though the party shows up just in time to crash the afterparty.
Web Comics
- In Girl Genius it was suggested that Agatha's grandmother married one of the old Heterodynes, to protect her family from harm. It apparently later backfired, when she tought their sons how to use their Sparky powers for good not for evil and at the end poisoned her husband.
- Female-on-male version
Web Original
- As you might expect, the Evil Overlord List has some advice in this area.
After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.
If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.
Western Animation
- Woody Woodpecker:
- Gorgeous Gal in the cartoon "A Fine Feathered Frenzy". She places a newspaper ad saying she's looking for a husband. Woody calls her and instantly gets turned on by her lovely voice, but when he meets her it turns out she's a featherless crow five times his size and three times his age. Woody's no longer interested but for Gorgeous Gal it's love at first sight. Hilarity Ensues. After a long chase, she manages to trap him on a submarine with a priest who actually succeeds in marrying them despite Woody's protests. Gorgeous sails off with Woody for their honeymoon.
- In the cartoon "Red Riding Hoodlum" a tall elderly decaying woodpecker called Granny spots an intruder in her house. Once she notices it's a Wolf she rushes to her powder room. Granny loses her glasses, curls her eyelashes, puts on a red wig and a red shade of lipstick. Now looking much younger and prettier she grabs the Wolf, leans him back and plants a giant kiss on his lips. The Wolf is stunned to be embraced in her arms and smooched but Granny is smitten as indicated by the little hearts floating around her and beating. We are not sure how much time passes but in the next scene she is wearing a blonde wig and a wedding dress happily getting married to the Wolf. The Wolf doesn't seem too thrilled about it though.
- In the Daffy Duck cartoon "The Super Snooper" a beautiful red headed duck took an immediate interest in the detective Daffy was portraying. Reffered to as 'The Body,' she spent most of her time in the cartoon flirting and forcibly kissing Daffy. Eventually Daffy noticed that she literally had balls with chains in her eyes, indicating she wanted to get married even though they just met. Wishing to remain a bachelor, Daffy ran through a closed door and The Body ran after him. The holes their bodies left on the door where that of a bride and groom, implying that she does manage to seduce and marry him.
- In the Quack Pack episode "Gator Aid" a gigantic non anthropomorphic alligator named Antionette fell in love with Donald Duck. She chased after him puckering her lips while Donald did his best to try to get away from her. Eventually Daisy, Donald and his nepews get captured and tied up by others. Antionette stops by and Daisy says she can do whatever she wants with Donald if she frees them. So Antionette puts on a wedding veil! Later she gives Donald a wedding ring too. They don't actually get married and it's never made clear how Donald managed to get out of it. While sitting on top of him she gave him a big smootch on top of his head and that's about as far as they go on camera.
- The Ice King in Adventure Time is a rather bizarrely sympathetic character despite having this trope as pretty much his entire motivation. It's not like he's in love with his target — in fact he doesn't seem to really care which princess he marries as long as he can marry one. He seems to just genuinely want to be Happily Married, and he's apparently completely unable to comprehend that kidnapping or hypnotizing a random princess and marrying her against her will is not a way to achieve that.
- He eventually gets a Freudian Excuse: he Was Once a Man before being driven mad by his crown, and is subconsciously trying to regain his "princess," the fiancée who vanished after he went mad.
- Ganon once tried using a mind control necklace to marry Zelda in The Legend of Zelda cartoon.
- In the first Futurama series finale, "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings," after the Robot Devil is forced to swap hands with Fry, he pulls off a complex Gambit Roulette in order to obtain Leela's hand...in marriage. Fry, out of concern for Leela, agrees to return the Robot Devil's hands — and since that was his real goal all along, the Robot Devil calls off the marriage.
- In X-Men, Bella Donna forces Gambit to agree to marry her by threatening his family in the Thieves' Guild. With the X-Men's help, the threat gets annulled, so Gambit is able to walk away.
- In the very first Popeye cartoon, Bluto demands this from Olive when he kidnaps her.
- A reversal occurs in the Al Brodax Popeye cartoon "College Of Hard Knocks." Popeye defeats Professor Brutus at a school for higher education, and Olive hands him what he thinks is a diploma. It turns out to be a marriage license.
Popeye: YEOW! (to us, worriedly) I needs me spinach! - In Superman: The Animated Series, Lady Maxima, alien ruler of Alermac, selects Superman as her mate after he defeats her in a fight. Superman tells her point blank that she can't just force someone into marriage; her response is to use her alien tech to knock him out and drag him back to her home planet. Fortunately, a citizen uprising derails her marriage plans.
- In two episodes of Codename: Kids Next Door King Sandy tries to force Numbuh Three to marry him.
- My Life as a Teenage Robot: There's one-shot villain Little Acorn in the episode "Puppet Bride", who falls in love with Jenny at first sight and tries to force her to become his bride.
- There's a rare gender-reversal in Alfred J. Kwak when a Wicked Witch tries to force Alfred to marry her. The witch actually succeeds, but it thankfully turns out to a nightmare Alfred was having.
- Occurs in the pilot episode of Gravity Falls, when a bunch of gnomes want Mabel to become their queen.
- In The Fairly OddParents!, the first of appearance of the singer Chip Skylark has him being captured by Vicky, one of his fangirls, who chains him up and, of course, tries to marry him. Timmy helps him escape and he ends up writing a hit song about how horrible she is.
- In The Smurfs episode "Smurfette's Dancing Shoes", the nameless treasure-hunting imp who is after the Treasure Of The Ancient Trolls forces Smurfette to marry him in exchange for giving her the titular shoes that she can never remove. When the Smurfs confront the imp and demand him to release Smurfette, he gives them the challenge of collecting three items from Dreadful Hollow before the sun rises. Although the Smurfs succeed in the challenge, the imp refuses to let Smurfette go, requiring Papa Smurf to use a magic spell to cast the magic dancing shoes on the imp instead.
- In the middle 1980s Superfriends version, one of the goals of Darkseid was to marry Wonder Woman!
- Season 2 of The Legend of Korra; Bolin is stuck in a Pitbull Dates Puppy relationship with Korra's cousin Eska, so he goes to her to try and break things off. She notes that they have become somewhat distant... which she plans to rectify by marrying him that night. Bolin's only response is to sob as she drags him off, although he does make a break for it at the first opportunity (Eska doesn't take this very well).
- One of the first Mighty Mouse cartoons with Oil Can Harry and Pearl Pureheart has Harry attempting to marry Pearl throughout the cartoon, only for the minister to get constantly pre-empted.
- Bully The Crud tries to get Lydia to marry him in the Beetlejuice episode "Pest O' The West."
- In the Tiny Toon Adventures movie, a trio of alligator sisters decide to marry Buster, and clearly don't care whether he wants to or not. When their father gives the blessing, he even waves off Buster's protest that marrying all of them would be bigamy.
- The Beatles: In "Can't Buy Me Love," John is consigned to marry a Polynesian tribe chief's daughter after he accepts a ring the chief had sent as a token of friendship. John (who at that time was already married to Cynthia Twist) escapes and hides out in a pineapple factory where he's canned with the other pineapples and delivered to the tribe chief. Marriage is imminent, until the chief's daughter calls it off because "he smells of pineapple. And I hate pineapple!"
- Two other interrupted forced marriages: Paul to a vampire girl in "Baby's In Black," and Ringo to a gypsy queen in "What You're Doing."
- Defenders of the Earth includes a five-part story arc in which Ming's son, Prince Kro-Tan, not only deposes his father but also abducts Jedda with a view to making her his bride. To ensure her co-operation, he plants "mind bombs" on all but one of her fellow Defenders and threatens to detonate them unless she agrees to marry him.
- Ivanhoe: The King's Knight features this a few times with Prince John towards Lady Rowena. One time even involves her being under the influence of a potion.
- The plot of the two part My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "A Canterlot Wedding" is this when Princess Cadance is discovered to be Queen Chrysalis and is using the wedding as a way to feed off Shinning Armor’s love for Cadance which weakens Canterlot's defenses allowing her army to invade. The real Cadance works with the Mane Cast to free her groom and then expel the invaders.