All Amazons Want Hercules



"52. A high-ranking matriarch, in a society that oppresses men, falls for the Hero's rugged charms."

- The Grand List of Overused Science Fiction Clichés, Section III: Overused story events and plot devices

It's often said that No Guy Wants an Amazon, and most Amazon-type female societies tend to shun the male sex. However, a certain manly type of hero is often capable of winning over these tribes of women, even their leaders.

It packs a double whammy: a strong woman must have a stronger man to dominate her, and no woman is happy with a man who isn't better than she is at everything. Of course, there's also the Unfortunate Implication that real men need their women to be inferior.

Ironically, this trope may occur out of a misplaced if well-intentioned desire to make a beloved character's intended just as good as they are rather than the significant other being 'useless'. Interestingly, a twist on this trope may be used to invert it completely, where a female character conveniently never runs into a situation where this scenario is fulfilled, thus technically pleasing anyone still using this cliché and also those who hate it.

This trope is Older Than Feudalism: in Greek Mythology, Hercules is sent on a quest to the land of the Amazons in order to steal the golden girdle of Hippolyta. The Library of Apollodorus first tells the version in which the two of them battle to a stalemate and the queen is so impressed with him she gives it up freely.

Also see Best Her to Bed Her. Related to The Worf Effect or Faux Action Girl (depending on how powerful the women really are). See Never a Self-Made Woman for how a couple like this would be treated. The evil version of this is sometimes Villainesses Want Heroes. Essentially the polar opposite of Weakness Turns Her On. Related to Love At First Punch, when the amazon first meets her Hercules.

This trope is not universal enough for aversions to be meaningful; examples saying "averted in..." will be mowed down like wheat.

Anime and Manga

 * Amazon-like Kagura from Inuyasha to Sesshomaru, one of the strongest people in the series.
 * Shampoo's Chinese Amazon tribe in Ranma ½ qualifies with the law that a warrior must marry any man who manages to defeat her. In addition to being the law, Shampoo genuinely loves Ranma and became head over heels for him after he managed to defeat her in battle.
 * Whether the Chinese Amazons gender-twist this trope to "All Herculeses Want Amazons" is unknown. Mousse, a male Chinese Amazon, is most certainly attracted to Shampoo, and being that he is comedically poor of vision, it seems to be that it's her combat expertise that drew him to her. Unfortunately for him, when he challenged her to a marriage match (they were only three years old at the time), she beat him utterly. It's not known whether or not he's tried it again since, but Cologne (who, admittedly, is also Shampoo's great-grandmother and doesn't like Mousse, particularly compared to Ranma Saotome) insists that his initial loss means he can't ever win Shampoo by that method. The fact he's stronger than she is now doesn't really mean all that much, as it's heavily implied that Mousse could never bring himself to really hurt her, and so she will always be able to beat him.
 * Speaking of which, Kuno also seems to be a gender-reversal of this trope: his actions heavily imply that the reason why he is so attracted to Akane (and, later, Ranma's girl form) is because they are martial artists strong enough to handle him with ease.
 * There's a pretty classic example in a recent One Piece arc, where Luffy winds up on Amazon Lily, an island of badass women almost totally oblivious to the existence of an opposite sex ruled over by one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, the ridiculously gorgeous Boa Hancock; a puppy-kicking Vain Sorceress-to-be who despises men and has the power to turn people to stone using their own impure thoughts. This being a shounen manga, Luffy gets his Hero on in a big way and Hancock winds up falling for him. Interestingly, Luffy not only doesn't reciprocate such feelings, he's barely aware she has them. Even after seeing her topless twice and the second time complaining because he expected food instead. Lampshaded in that former Empress Nyon implies that this happens to every Empress of Amazon Lily eventually, and subverted somewhat because it's implied that it's killed them all except for Nyon, and now Hancock (who was dying but recovered as soon as she had the chance to help Luffy and stay with him a bit longer) because they were all too stubborn to act on their lovesickness.
 * Another major subversion is not only Hancock stronger than Luffy, it isn't his 'manly' traits that attracted her to him in the first place. It was his empathy, chastity (being able to resist her charms), and his general affability. In this case it was more like all Amazons end up with Hercules because they're the only ones capable of surviving long enough to show they're not complete dicks.
 * She also love him because he punched a World Noble in the face.
 * The Amazon Lily arc was obviously a Shout-Out to the Trope Namer.
 * Before Hancock, there was Alvida, who became smitten with Luffy due to the fact that he was the first man to beat her in a fight.
 * Might be either played straight or averted in Angel Densetsu, depending on your take. Kitano, after all, is pretty strong. On the other hand, we have two Ax Crazy Waif Fu practitioners hitting on an Actual Pacifist.
 * Possibly used in Gate Keepers, where  seems to be attracted to   when
 * Ku Fei in Mahou Sensei Negima will only allow Negi to kiss her if he can beat her in a fight, though she settles for an arm-wrestling match since time is pressing. Afterward, she "jokes" that now he'll have to marry her. On more than one occasion, Negi's reduced her to a semi-coherent puddle by displaying how strong he's become.
 * Averted in Black Lagoon, where the resident Hot Amazon likes Odysseus much better.
 * And maybe The Baroness likes him as well. Fandom likes to think so, at least..
 * In a more straight up example, there is a certain degree of UST between The Baroness and the local Heroic Bloodshed Chow Yan Fatt character Expy. It has been implied that they were one of the few people to have fought the other to a stalemate. At the very least Chang is one of the few people besides Rock that Balalaika seems to flirt with.
 * of course, the idea of anyone dominating Balalaika is too ridicolous to contemplate.
 * In Galaxy Angel, Forte Stollen's secret fantasy is to be a damsel-in-distress who has her life saved from certain death by "A Strong Man, A Really Strong Man", who will then carry her around in his arms like a bride. When she encounter just such a man—one of the galaxy's top criminals, who singlehandedly destroyed an entire planet with his bare hands and was thus imprisoned for life in a pocket dimension contained in an unbreakable boulder—she actually disobeys her orders by actively trying to get him out and manages to free him, in order to consumate her desires.
 * Neon Genesis Evangelion: The hot-blooded, aggressive Evangelion pilot Asuka Langley Soryu actively scorns admirers her age, but has a major crush on the suave, dashing (and much older) secret agent Ryoji Kaji. She even lampshades this at one point by saying something along the lines of, "none of these pathetic boys are a real man like Kaji." This being Eva, of course, the trope is played with by her secret attraction to the much more passive Shinji Ikari, although she is unwilling to admit this to herself.
 * The h-manga Isshoukenmei na Kimi ga Suk features a subversion: The head of the martial arts club (a girl) tells the boy who confessed to her that he's too weak to date. He immediately joins her club and starts training. While he does get stronger, after a year he's still nowhere near her level—but she falls for him anyway. Of course, this being an h-manga, it ends about as you'd expect.
 * In Saint Seiya, female saints have to wear a mask as a symbol that they've renounced their femininity. Traditionally, if a man ever sees their face without a mask, their choices are to either kill the man, or fall in love with him. This was evidenced in-story by Ophiuchus Shaina, who was seen without her mask by Pegasus Seiya, early on in the series. At first she tries to kill him out of humiliation... but eventually she falls in love with him, to the point where she risks her life for him several times.
 * Deconstructed (or something) in the Bamboo Blade manga: Ura's father was going to confess his love to Tsubaki (Tamaki's mother) once he beat her at kendo, but he Couldn't Catch Up, never managed to win, and therefore never confessed his love.
 * Possibly from Black Butler. The men she falls the hardest for are the men who have beaten her in a fight. Incidentally, guess what her favorite color is?

Comic Books

 * It doesn't play out like the typical scenario, but - Jennifer Walters, as Hot Amazon as they come, had a long-standing crush on the Marvel Universe take on Hercules. Hercules' relationship with the actual amazons is not that great, Hippolyta is still infatuated with him; however, she's an evil violent Stalker with a Crush who will do whatever she can to sleep with him including turning him into her sex slave. This trope is later Subverted with her Psychopathic Manchild daughter who hates him because of her mother's obsession with him.
 * Wonder Woman:
 * In The DCU, she certainly had no respect for Heracles for doing the above to her mother, but Herc and the Amazons eventually made peace in modern times.
 * Wonder Woman also averted the trope with her most recent boyfriend when she kisses him from a position of dominance (dipping him over her arm) they both agree they prefer it that way. The relationship doesn't last.
 * It's played straight in Frank Miller's Dark Knight universe. Her attraction towards Superman is a result of this.. She even implied in The Dark Knight Strikes Again that Superman threw her on the ground and made her his own.
 * Maxima was attracted to Superman because he is one of the only men in the universe who is as strong as she is. At other times, she's hit on Captain Atom and Amazing Man, who are also pretty tough.
 * The Hulk has this effect on women much like Herc does. Just ask Caiera.
 * In the Captain N comics Samus Aran is attracted to Kevin because of his strength as a fighter, he'd make an ideal partner for her space hunting.
 * Dwight from Sin City is already Mr. Fanservice but his relationship with Gail is a good illustration of this trope. Case in point: The Big Fat Kill. When he returned to Old Town after the events of A Dame To Kill For (and because he had gotten them into some trouble in this very story), Gail had a gun pointed at his head. He didn't flinch and instead, formulated a plan to get them out of the current mess they were in. He then demanded that she take the gun away. She didn't listen so he slapped her. She responded with "You bastard!" which was followed by, "I forgot how quick you were" which was then followed by her pulling him in for a quick makeout session.

Fan Works

 * Played straight and subverted within the same breath in With Strings Attached. The queen of the Warrior Women pants all over the large, handsome, muscular Hunter... but after the small, feeble, exhausted Ringo defeats the village's best male warrior in literally three seconds, she throws herself on him, as do many of the other women of the village.

Film

 * In the '50s film Queen of Outer Space, one of the leaders of the all-female (and man-hating) society on Venus falls in love with a visiting male astronaut.
 * Also happens to Jason and the Argonauts in the first of Steeve Reeve's Hercules movies. One wouldn't exactly call those Amazons "man-hating", but they did have a law on the books that required the men's deaths.
 * PCU implies that the only thing it takes to make a Straw Feminist into a man-loving party animal is beer.
 * In one of the last Abbott and Costello movies, Abbott and Costello Go To Mars (well, Venus, actually) Lou falls in love with the Amazonian Queen of Venus, a love she reciprocates... until his inability to keep his hands off of her subjects, and his cohorts' foolish attempt at staging a palace revolt, gets them all shipped back to Earth.
 * Heroic Trio has an aversion to this. A mild-mannered and gentle scientist is involved with a woman who is secretly an ass-kicking assassin who loves him dearly despite being capable of killing him. In fact, she originally met him because she was supposed to do just that.
 * In the Wuxia take on The Kalevala, Jade Warrior, Pin Yu doesn't even consider Sentai's advances until he easily turns away her attacks. Only afterwards (with a bit of soul-searching) does she return his love. Also a subversion,.
 * Gender inversion in the 2009 Sherlock Holmes movie with Holmes and Irene Adler. Apparently she's the only woman who's ever been able to outsmart him. Twice.

Literature
"Sarah admired strength, and she thought she had wanted to be mastered. But once she met a man capable of taming her, she didn't like it at all. A high-spirited woman secretly wants a man that needs looking after."
 * An old novel called Who Needs Men? had a post-Gendercide all-female society who go game-hunting for the last enclave of men, in Scotland. The protagonist, a hunter of escaped men, ends up in their settlement and falls for the leader.
 * The Courtship of Princess Leia has Luke as even more of a Chick Magnet than the rest of the Expanded Universe, bedding not one but two women from matriarchal societies. Of course, one is just trying to kill him and the other uses the Force to arouse him.
 * Inverted in Bethany's Sin, where the Amazon-possessed women of the town not only browbeat their cringing husbands, but . They don't just spurn Hercules, they deliberately turn their men into his hapless, weakling opposites.
 * Subverted in Reality Check by Charlie Brooks. Anne Westfeld is essentially an amazon who begins the novel dating the equivalent of Hercules in Jesse Gondolin, aka the Jungle Cat. However,.
 * Discworld by Terry Prachett.
 * Liessa Wyrmbidder and Hrun the barbarian in The Colour of Magic. There's a bit of enlightened self-interest going on too; she wants to use him to gain power.
 * Obviously set up as this but played with a subversion in Sourcery a hairdresser and a barbarian fall in love. The barbarian half is a total nerd who only knows about Barbering and is a false action hero, and the hairdresser is the child of Badass Grandpa Genghis Cohen and has sinews of steel.
 * Desra of the Malazan Book of the Fallen believes that those with weak wills being subjugated to those with stronger wills. That is why.
 * Chris Hargenson experiences something like this in Carrie while, as your standard Alpha Bitch she is used to wrapping boys around her little finger but is drawn to Billy Nolan because he is the first boy she hasn't been "able to dance dandle at her whim" and he controls her in the relationship.
 * Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: The series goes in the opposite direction with this trope, in the sense that These Amazons Do Not Want Hercules, but rather These Amazons Want Puppies Or Hen Pecked Husbands! That, of course, contains Unfortunate Implications!
 * Ayn Rand is well known for this trope, as it falls in line with her personal fetishes. Rand liked strong, take-charge men and bodice-ripping, ravishment-type sex. Her works are sometimes accused of containing Victim Falls For Rapist, though it is a debatable matter.
 * Dagny Taggart from Atlas Shrugged is a modernized version of this.
 * Dominique from The Fountainhead.
 * Parodied in The Illuminatus! Trilogy's Rand parody Telemachus Sneezed.
 * Rand also wrote an essay arguing that no rational woman would ever want to be president because "the essence of femininity is hero worship — the desire to look up to man." A woman president, being the supreme authority of the land, would have no superior man to admire.
 * Gender-swapped in the Star Wars Expanded Universe: One character notes that the only person Ace Pilot Jag Fel would ever have a relationship with would be one who could out-fly him. The jury's still out on whether he'll ever, ever get with the girl who did, much as he might want to.
 * Given that they're currently engaged, and a comic book series set a century later strongly implies that he founded a new Imperial dynasty with her, it seems that the jury has delivered its verdict.
 * Played straight in Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story Queen of the Black Coast. The pirate princess Belit becomes Conan's lover after witnessing him singlehandedly slay hordes of her crew.
 * Used, averted, inverted, and subverted with virtually every romance novel out there, from the old-fashioned bodice rippers to the modern-day Harlequin's--the hero or heroine always needs the later to either tame their wild ways, or in an inversion, to UNLEASH the "hidden passions within."
 * This trope is subverted in Agatha Christie's Appointment with Death, in which the protagonist Sarah has broken off her engagement with her strong-willed fiancé :


 * She ends up with a rather hen-pecked Momma's Boy, and with Sarah wearing the pants in the relationship, the two are perfectly happy together.
 * Gor infamously applies this idea to all women. In the first book Tarl doesn't rape the woman he kidnaps; at first she is offended, then she decides he isn't a real man and nearly manages to kill him. Once she does get enslaved she's totally into him after some token complaints.
 * Played with in Roger Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness: Megra insists on fighting the hero—because she has genetic Super Strength, and wants to make sure she doesn't break him accidentally.
 * Another male version of this is Peaceable Drummond Sherwood from The Sherwood Ring. His response to a woman who manages to outsmart him (something he's never seen before) is to propose to her. Before passing out from the drug she just convinced him to drink.

Live-Action TV

 * The title part of the trope happens literally in an episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. A group of Amazons show up and want to get it on with our hero. He explains that he's still in mourning for his dead wife.
 * This in turn comes from the myth of the Labors of Hercules, one of which was for him to take the belt of the Amazon Queen. The king who assigned the task assumed that the Queen would never hand it over (as it was a gift from Ares). When Hercules arrives though, the Queen respects his strength and conquests and thinks he's worthy of it. Depending on the legend, they then either swap stories or she wishes to marry him.
 * Partially subverted and partially played straight in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. On the one hand, Buffy is stronger than all the men she dates, making it a subversion. On the other hand, any man who she's involved with for more than a few episodes is a substantially stronger and better fighter than normal, often unnaturally so (whether due to vampirism or to the meddlings of an evil government scientist). Buffy may be stronger than anyone else around, but it still seems she wants a man who can almost defeat her. Its notable that the otherwise-progressive series never considered pairing Buffy with someone who was perfectly comfortable supporting her.
 * Spike was a LUST interest initially, not a romantic interest. Later episodes saw the two of them develop a genuine, meaningful friendship that seemed more important to them than romance. Many of the things Spike did after realising he was attracted to Buffy were more selfless than lustful anyway (eg: willing to die being tortured by Glory rather than reveal that, being protective of Buffy's family,  ) ... also played with in that he disliked his feelings for her at first, then succumbed to the lustful aspects, and then proved more meaningful interesting in her ... Even then, he rarely came close to beating her.
 * Subverted, however, in that Buffy's boyfriends never defeated her. Spike came the closest in their first clash, when he nearly bashed her brains out and only failed because . By the time they got romantically involved, however, he was suffering from an advanced case of Badass Decay. Angel gave her a run for her money on several occasions but always lost in the end. Riley's occasional sparring matches with Buffy made it very clear that Riley, for all his fancy Super Soldier augmentations, was nowhere close to her level.
 * Once the Super Soldier program shut down and Riley began to lose those augmentations, though, it was also very clear that he was terrified that this trope would come into effect and Buffy would lose interest in him.
 * The early episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation "Angel One" had Riker and the leader of a Women-Dominant society.
 * Charmed initially plays it straight with the Cole/Phoebe relationship as he is the first alpha male figure on the show with offensive powers. Piper and Prue's love interests had either been human or just The Medic. But then later on in the show, all men with powers tended to lose them or turn evil and get vanquished.
 * Firefly devotes an entire episode to subverting this, and establishing that Zoe is firmly devoted to her geeky husband and does not, nor has ever, felt any attraction to Mal. Although Wash is brilliant as a pilot, he never beats Zoe at "her own game" so to speak.
 * The Fresh Prince of Bel Air did this in a Season 6 episode. Will gets beaten up by a girl at the gym. The next day, he comes back and beats her. She immediately throws herself at him.

Music
""The man who shot her through was the only man she could admire...and as she died she said 'I love you,' and Vera always told the truth.""
 * The title character in Marian Call's Firefly-inspired ballad "Vera Flew The Coop."

Newspaper Comics
"Pat Ryan: "Funny how women can be realistic about everything but themselves! They know they can rule an empire - but in the final pay-off they aren't satisfied unless someone rules them!" Dragon Lady: "No person rules the Dragon lady!" Pat Ryan: "Sure... That's what Cleopatra and Queen Elizabeth thought - but they both realized, finally, there was no use kidding themselves - that a woman can't be really satisfied with absolute power! It's her destiny to be conquered!""
 * Implied to be a major factor in Dragon Lady's desire for Pat Ryan in Terry and the Pirates. Highlighted in the following exchange:

Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends

 * In the legends of Alexander the Great, it's often said that the Amazon Queen Thalestris invited him on a 'state visit' solely to get it on with him. It doesn't mention exactly who or where the Amazons are, unfortunately...
 * In the German folklore tale The Ring of the Nibelungs, the Valkyrie Brunilda can only be freed from her curse by being beat in single combat. When defeated, she falls for Sigfried and... the whole story goes on from there.

Tabletop Games

 * In the city-state of Danuvia from the Talislanta role-playing game, foreign male warriors are invited to parade themselves and compete in athletic events once a year. The highest-grade beefcake is claimed for her harem by Danuvia's queen, while her Amazon warriors bid for the companionship of the runner-ups.

Toys

 * In Bionicle, Kiina begins to develop feelings for Can't get much manlier than that. It's also the only kinda-romantic relationship in the entire story canon.

Video Games

 * The first Discworld game has a scantily clad Amazon warrior who can only marry a man who defeats her in armed combat. To the death.
 * It stretches both the definition of "Amazon" and the definition of "Hercules", but Dragon Age resident Dark Magical Girl Morrigan, while not physically imposing by any means, is a strong willed, domineering, Social Darwinist who absolutely hates the concept of people submitting their wills to others. However, there are two people in the game she expresses sexual attraction to. Sten, the qunari warrior who could break her in half like a tooth pick, and a male Gray Warden. While the specifics of the Warden's physical characteristics are for the player to decide, as is his personality, in general he is portrayed as a strong willed, take-charge person with a commanding presence. A figurative Hercules if not a literal one.
 * Juhani fromKnights of the Old Republic can only be painstakingly romanced after a female PC wins a vicious fight to the death against her.
 * In Policenauts, if you're able to beat Meryl's high score on the shooting range, she'll let you grope her boobs. Kind of subverted in that the person she eventually reveals real interest in is her friend Dave, who could never outshoot her. Plus, her breasts make an elephant trumpet sound effect when grabbed.

Western Animation

 * Inverted in Futurama in "Amazon Women In the Mood." The women of Amazonia attempt to execute the Hercules-like egomaniac through vigorous sex, but they find the wimpy and tiny green-skinned alien to be most attractive.
 * In the animated film Heavy Metal, Den is a 98 pound weakling voiced by John Candy. Sent to an alternate dimension, he transforms into a bald, muscle-bound, loin-cloth-wearing Action Hero, "with his dork hanging out." Den joins a small raid against an evil queen's palace only to blunder into the queen in the dark. When the lights come on, he is clearly grabbing her (very much uncovered) breasts. The queen doesn't mind; a few seconds of animated sex later, she proclaims Den her messiah. About par for female characters in that movie.
 * In How to Train Your Dragon, Hiccup is certain that this trope is only way to get a girlfriend, especially the smokin' Astrid. However, when Hiccup forgets that while befriending Toothless the Dragon, he eventually is confronted by her learning his secret. To explain the situation, Hiccup and Toothless take her on an amazing flight and she later makes it clear to Hiccup that she's thoroughly won over by him, a boy capable of exhilarating wonders no mere Hercules can match.
 * As mentioned in Comic Books above, Maxima also pursued Superman in the Dini-verse. At the end of that episode, she got over Superman and set her sights on Lobo! Whether that went anywhere is unknown, since the episode was Maxima's only appearance in the DCAU.
 * Male example: Brock Samson from The Venture Brothers fell in love with Molotov Cocktease when, the first time they met, she tied him to the bed and set the building on fire.
 * Queen Hippsodeth in the Aladdin series, with the unexpected result that she falls in love with the Sultan of Agrabah after he defeats her for kidnapping Jasmine.