Incest Is Relative

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


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    "Welcum ta Meryod! We're all family heer!"
    —Meryod citizen, Lunar: The Silver Star

    Incest is a romantic or sexual relationship between close blood relations, which is taboo in most, if not all, societies -- primarily because it leads to birth defects. Or because it counts as abuse of power, where an older, trusted member of the family uses his/her status to get sex from another family member.

    But this taboo is precisely is what is so exciting to writers, as incest creates an instant conflict between characters who would normally like each other, and a reason to have a really long Will They or Won't They? But it's also exciting to writers for other reasons. Writing is a way to explore ideas without actually doing them (we hope!).

    Much as with all other (consensual) sex, incest is relative when it comes to legality: common law jurisdictions generally ban incestuous relationships when it comes to both having sex with siblings and/or parents, while civic law jurisdictions tend to either leave various loopholes for the sexual part (like for example: Germany not banning homosexual incest; some of the former Yugoslav countries only banning sex between an adult and a minor, but not between two minors or two adults) or just outright don't ban it (like in Japan and Russia). Either way marriages out of incest are always considered to be null and void, so incestuous marriage isn't a thing (but incestuous cohabitation is).

    This page is the supertrope of the Incest Tropes. Look to see if it goes there before adding examples here.

    No real life examples, please; Squick, and also because incest in fiction is different than in real life.