Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

No one likes an [[Arranged Marriage]], especially those so betrothed. They'll rip their clothes, gnash their teeth and swear to... [[Slap Slap Kiss|was that them necking in the atrium?]]

Despite their initial opposition, the couple who have been betrothed discover they not only like each other, but ''love'' each other, and make it perfectly clear that even if they weren't in an arranged marriage they'd still choose to marry or at least start dating. Drama being what it is, you can expect their earlier attempts to undo the arranged marriage will mature and succeed, and their parents set them up with a new fiancée or fiancé that they ''do'' hate. Expect one or the other to be have to swallow their pride and [[Will They or Won't They?|come out and say]] they do love the other.

 

 

 

This trope is frequently used as a justification for the use of the [[Arranged Marriage]] trope to audiences with Western sensibilities. It's not an imposition or violation of free will if both ''want'' to get married, after all.

 

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* Albert and Eugenie's arranged marriage in ''[[Gankutsuou]]''. Within about a dozen episodes, the two are well and truly in love. {{spoiler|Too bad both got broken later.}}

* This is pretty much the entire premise for the popular [[Manhwa]] ''[[Goong]]''.

* Teharu Kosukegawa in ''[[Change 123]]'' finds out that his father has engaged him to marry the daughter of the man who saved him from a bear. Kosukegawa, who is already in a close relationship with Motoko ([[Multiple Personalities]] notwithstanding (they're even ''helping'')), and naturally goes up to the country to politely turn her down. Until the girl in question turns out to ''be'' Motoko.

 

* Crystal and Ronan the Accuser during ''[[War of Kings]]''. Kind of. Crystal starts off hating Ronan and eventually begins to admire him and understand that he's in basically the same situation that she is.

* [[Doctor Strange]]'s manservant Wong was betrothed as a child to a girl who wasn't even born yet. Nevertheless, he has no problem falling in love with Imei once they meet, though she dies before they can get married.

 

== Fan Works ==

** As the Fridge Brilliance page for Tron points out, the Yori program is an admin-level debugging utility and the Tron program is the firewall. Even in canon they pretty much ''are'' designed for each other.

* In ''Blind'', a Naruto [[Fanfic]], 99% of arranged marriages with a Hyuga end up this way. How you ask? Well, the bride and groom are told at the age of 3 who they're arranged to marry but told that the other person doesn't know. They then have the option of trying to win the other person's love but have until they are 15 as they have to tell their spouse about the arrangement and when they're 16 they marry whether there is love or isn't. Many chose former.

 

* In ''[[Corpse Bride]]'', Victor is apprehensive about being put into an arranged marriage... until he actually meets his bride-to-be, Victoria, and finds her [[Proper Lady|gentle intelligence]] very appealing.

* Disney's ''[[Sleeping Beauty (Disney film)|Sleeping Beauty]]''. "Father, you're living in the past. This is the Fourteenth Century!" declares Prince Phillip. Luckily the girl he met in the woods turns out to be the princess he's promised to.

* ''[[The Swan Princess]]'' toys with this. Prince Derek and Princess Odette, the heirs of two neighboring kingdoms, are betrothed to each other by her widowed father and his widowed mother, who are good friends and want to unite their realms. The arrangement annoys them because they're kids and hate each other. Then one day they meet each other after puberty, and it's [[Love At First Sight]]! Derek demands that the wedding be arranged, but when Odette asks him why, he replies that she's beautiful...and when she asks "What else?" he replies, "What else is there?" (cue the mass [[Face Palm]] from the guests) Odette promptly refuses to marry him until he is able to find a reason he loves her besides her looks; he does, and they are happily married in the end, so the trope is ultimately played straight.

** They're not actually stated to be betrothed, though; the arrangement is just that they'll spend the summer together. William, Uberta and the citizens of both kingdoms ''expect'' Derek and Odette will fall in love and get married, but there doesn't seem to be any legal agreement.

* The movie ''Lady Jane'' depicts this between Lady Jane Grey and Guildford Dudley. ''Not'' a case of [[Truth in Television]], unfortunately for the ill-fated Jane.

* In the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie ''Loving Leah'', Jake Lever (Andy Kaufman) seems to be trying less and less hard to get out of his levirate marriage to his late brother Benjamin's wife Leah as the film progresses. The fact that [[Hollywood Homely|she's played by]] [[Heroes Want Redheads|Lauren Ambrose]] might have something to with it...

* The first of the infamous ''Sisi'' movies with Romy Schneider and Karl Boehm describes Sisi and Franz's love deals as this, as the [[Lonely Rich Kid]] Emperor is fascinated by the [[Manic Pixie Dream Girl]] lead female who comes as her [[Ojou]] sister ''and'' his betrothed's travel companion, so he plays a small [[Batman Gambit]] to get her engaged to him instead. In [[Real Life]] however, things weren't exactly that way.

* Emperor Pu Yi and Empress Wang Rong in ''[[The Last Emperor]]'', since Pu Yi's dream girl was "a modern wife who could follow the new dances and was educated outside China" and she fitted in perfectly. {{spoiler|It didn't last, though.}}

* Not exactly marriage, but in ''[[My Sassy Girl]]'' the male lead puts off his aunt's attempts to introduce him to her late son's former girlfriend because he is already interested in the female lead. The female lead meanwhile has been putting off meeting her dead boyfriend's cousin at his mother's request because of her budding interest in the male lead. At the end of the movie it's revealed that the male lead's aunt ''is'' the female lead's dead boyfriend's mother. This startling coincidence convinces the pair to give their romance another chance.

 

== Literature ==

* In Victoria Ugryumova's ''Doppelganger for the Jester'', a political marriage between [[The Emperor]] and a [[Princess Classic]] turns out to be so happy for both parties that even his closest advisers wonder whether he is sick or something. His answer? "Gods, I can't believe I've fallen in love with my own wife." {{spoiler|It doesn't end well.}}

* [[Nightrunner|Lynn Flewelling's]] ''Tamir Triad'' offers us Duke Rhius and Princess Ariani (parents of the main character); as Rhius put it: "I was in love with Ariani and her brother was in love with my holdings.". Played straight since they deeply loved each other when they married. And also subverted when later Ariani turned mad {{spoiler|after her son was killed right after birth to save his twin sister}} and started hating her husband {{spoiler|since he knew and allowed}}.

{{quote|"Magrat": It was all arranged! It was all set up before I even got here! I never had a chance to say yes or no!

"Nanny": Well, what would you have said if you had had the chance?

"Nanny": You'd still be marrying the king today, would you?

"Magrat": Well...

"Magrat" : Well, yes, but...

"Nanny" : That's nice, then. }}

* In ''The Long-Nosed Princess'' by Patricia Hallowell the eponymous Princess Felicity is arranged to marry the very handsome prince of a neighboring country but he rejects her insultingly at first sight breaking her heart. Not because she's fallen in love but because he's destroyed her self image. Later while on his way to court another princess he is attacked by Felicity's animal friends and she nurses him back to health. Why does he find himself thinking of Felicity constantly while courting the incredibly beautiful princess? And what is he going to do about that grinning fool of a Prince Harry who thinks ''he's'' going to marry Felicity?

* King Kelson of [[Katherine Kurtz]] Deryni series has truly rotten luck with his brides. His first marriage is a politically important match to a princess of a rival house who, better still, has been raised to regard him as hellspawn. Needless to say Kelson is incredibly nervous but the girl is young and beautiful - and he is seventeen - so by the time the wedding day rolls around he's convinced he's falling in love and there are indications that the girl may be too. Unfortunately Kelson is widowed before the ceremony ends. In the next book he falls in love with a perfectly acceptable princess - who due to convolutions of plot is rendered politically impossible as his wife. It is she who arranges for Kelson to marry his final prospect, a cousin who is a really ideal match from the political point of view. At first Kelson, still desperately in love with the other lady, can hardly bear the thought of marrying elsewhere but as he gets to know Araxie better the marriage becomes less and less distasteful to him...

* ''[[1632]]'': Prince Ulrik of Denmark and Princess Kristina of Sweden are headed this way. They aren't in love yet (something to do with him being in his thirties and her being only nine), but they are very close.

* The book ''Heroics for Beginners'' has this with the main character and his love interest; they met and fell in love before her father started looking for a husband for her, and so she intentionally became cold and unpleasant to all other potential suitors to put them off. Mention is also made of another prince whose family refused to let him marry until he was thirty and then betrothed him to a six-year-old girl; ten years later, he is the most envied man on the continent.

'''Lady Alys''': I eventually figured out the Vor part for myself. It left me with a dilemma, as you may imagine.}}

**Similarly in [[Vorkosigan Saga|Captain Vorpatril's Alliance]] Ivan marries Tej out of pure compassion and stays with her out of love because she is on the run from gangsters. The original goal is to keep immigration service from deporting her to where she is vulnerable to said gangsters, and the long-term goal is - as Ivan is a close friend and cousin of the Emperor - give her a skilled (and sometimes ruthless) security service as her "bodyguards-in-law". When her father, comes back to gather the family for a war of revenge against the enemy Tej had been fleeing from he impatiently berates her for not taking one of all the many marriages he had so patiently tried to arrange. In reality Ivan, who is a close cousin to both the Emperor of Barrayar ''and'' the tremendously influential Count Vorkosigan simultaneously, and is the 'spare heir' for both families, has enough connections to give the family a better deal then it could have ever dreamed of getting. It is just that [[Fridge Logic|he]] never arranged the deal and Tej got it just by falling in love.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* [[Deconstructed]] on an episode of ''[[Merlin (TV series)|Merlin]]''. After Guinevere is [[Mistaken for Cheating]] and banished from Camelot, Arthur becomes engaged to Princess Mithian. She's beautiful, charming and witty. She effortlessly integrates herself at court and proves herself to be quite politically savvy. Their marriage will solve the land dispute between their kingdoms. They get along well and have plenty of things in common. In many ways she's designed to be a ''better'' match for Arthur than Guinevere, and had they met at any other time or place ([[Wrong Genre Savvy|or in any other story]]) they probably would have ended up [[Happily Married]]. But unfortunately for Mithian, Arthur comes to realize that he's still deeply in love with Guinevere, and can't bring himself to give her up - not even for the [[Relationship Sue|perfect woman]].

 

* The song ''Do You Love Me?'' from ''[[Fiddler on the Roof]]'' is about this, although the couple have been married for decades, with several children.

{{quote|''[[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|"It doesn't change a thing, but even so...after 25 years, it's nice to know."]]''}}

* Arthur and Guenevere have a moment like this in ''Camelot,'' though given what happens later, it counts as dramatic irony.

* In ''The Game of Love and Chance (Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard)'' by Marivaux, Silvia and Dorante are engaged without knowing each other. They disguise themselves as servants, meet and fall in love, without either one knowing that the other is their betrothed.

 

== Video Games ==

* Oichi and Azai Nagamasa in ''[[Sengoku Basara]]''. Unfortunately, Oichi's brother (who arranged the marriage in the first place) is the The Demon King, so all happiness went to hell, literally.

 

* ''[[Girl Genius]]'' has Jiminez Hoffmann, officially an adopted son of the [[Mole Men|King of the Moligarchy]] (for saving his life) and Larana Chroma, princess of the Arguron, discover they are set up for a diplomatic marriage to bring the peace between the underground kingdoms. They are both students and know each other. The problem? He tend to be awkward around ladies and she is [[Everyone Can See It|so awkward around him]] that [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20160111 the first time they are seen together], Zeetha comments "''Everyone'' in Paris can't be like this. I mean, I've seen ''kids''." She set them up for a proper talk, but wacky misunderstandings ensued.

 

== Western Animation ==

** [[Alternate Character Interpretation|Or]] she ''could'' have liked him, but disliked the rigid social system in the North Water Tribe and then wasn't happy that Pakku didn't seem to support her own interests. She ''did'' take the necklace he made for her and cary it as a heirloom, then passed it on Katara.

* Derek and Odette in ''[[The Swan Princess]]'' had their engagement arranged by their parents before they met. Interestingly, their parents also wanted it to be a marriage of love, so they had the kids spend every summer together. They couldn't stand each other at first, but end up falling for each other when they're older.

 

== Real Life ==

** She also carried around Philip's dead body on her travels, another reason for her to be considered mad.

** And she had him buried so that she could see his tomb from her bedroom's window. Poor mad girl indeed. Phillip the Handsome's death would require a trope of its own.

* Speaking of Charles V, Joanna and Philip's son, the [[The Emperor|most powerful man in Europe]] at his time also had a surprisingly happy arranged marriage with Princess Isabella of Portugal, an intelligent and beautiful woman who [[Silk Hiding Steel|kept the entire Kingdom of Spain in line during her husband's absences]]. When she died, the Emperor never re-married and wore the mourning colors for the rest of his life.

** [[The House of Plantagenet|King Henry III]] of England is recorded to have been madly in love with his wife, Eleanor of Provence. Unusually for a medieval monarch, he never took a mistress.

** Similarly, their son Edward I seems to have had a deeply loving relationship with his first wife, Leonor (Eleanor) of Castile. They married as teenagers and had a long and happy marriage, with many children. When she died, he was heartbroken and had the [[wikipedia:Eleanor cross|Eleanor crosses]] erected along the path that her body took through England to its burial site; there were twelve such crosses, one at each location where the body stopped, and most of them still survive.

** [[The House of Hanover|George III]] of Great Britain (yes ''[[The American Revolution|that]]'' George III) had quite a happy marriage to Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Although they first met on their wedding day (at which point George was already king), all indications are that it worked. He never took a [[The Mistress|mistress]] (unlike his father, grandfather, and sons) and their marriage was by all accounts quite the happy one. They had fifteen (''fifteen!'') children.

** [[The House of Windsor|King George V]] of the United Kingdom - grandfather to [[HM The Queen]] - married his brother Albert's fiancee Mary of Teck when Albert died of pneumonia. This marriage of convenience became a love match and spawned one of England's most universally beloved monarchies - just about the only monarch seriously complained about from this dynasty is the rather selfish Edward VIII.

** Of course, the fact that it took him a few years to get around to consummating his marriage with Marie might imply that he simply didn't take mistresses because he wasn't quite into shagging women.

*** The possibility of him having that condition is debatable, as there's no record of the surgery to fix it and he frequently went horse riding during that time (which a surgery to the genitals would hamper). His brother, however, did record in his journal that half of Louis's difficulties was that he simply [[Anatomically-Impossible Sex|didn't understand the process]].

* Gilbert de Lafayette and Adrienne de Noailles. When the marriage was arranged, she was 15, he - 17. Just for money, of course (from her side - or the side of her parents, that is). You can guess how it went from there on, so just pointing out the more prominent parts. When Lafayette was imprisoned and she was about to be executed (revolution will not be civilised, after all) she was writing to the revolutionary tribune to save her husband, after the death penalty was substituted for imprisonment, she was released from custody and her only request was to be imprisoned in the same castle, as the Lafayette, and when she died, he wrote, that gone is the bigger and better part of him. If you wrote a book with such events now, one would undoubtedly be accused of sentimentalism in the terminal stage. Reality ensues, indeed...

* Another Roman, Tiberius Caesar, had more mixed luck. His first arranged marriage was to the daughter of the "vice-emperor" Agrippa, a woman named Vipsania, with whom he fell passionately in love. Then, inconveniently, Agrippa died... so Tiberius's step-father, the Emperor Augustus, forced him to marry Augustus's biological daughter Julia, who also happened to be Agrippa's widow... yep, Tiberius was forced to marry his ''mother in law.'' The good news was that Julia was the most beautiful woman in Rome. The bad news was that she was... [[Really Gets Around|a very, very sociable girl]] who ended up [[My Girl Is Not a Slut|causing such embarrassment to her husband and father that she was imprisoned on a small, desolate island for the rest of her life.]] The worse news was that Tiberius was still very much in love with Vipsania, and for the rest of his life, [[The Woobie|every time he caught sight of her in passing he burst into tears at the thought of what he'd lost]]. The worst news was that [[Trauma Conga Line|the shock of being forced to divorce Tiberius caused Vipsania to miscarry Tiberius's child.]] Tiberius later became [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds|Emperor himself]], and [[Laser-Guided Karma|found a reason to execute every single one of Augustus's descendents]]... [[The Caligula|with one exception.]]

* [[wikipedia:Llewelyn the Last|Llewelyn ap Gruffyd]], the last native Prince of Wales before it was conquered by the English, arranged a marriage for himself with Eleanor de Montfort, daughter of Simon de Montfort, because the latter was helping him to defend his crown and position. It turned out to be a genuine love match, despite an age difference of more than 20 years; Llewelyn is almost singularly unique among the Welsh princes for never having been known to take a mistress, and when Eleanor went the [[Death by Childbirth]] route bringing Princess Gwenllian into the world, Llewlyn pretty much lost it. He was persuaded by his greedy younger brother Dafydd to enter a dangerous campaign against the English, something he had been steadily resisting in Eleanor's lifetime, and died in the fight.

* A study in India showed that on average, couples in arranged marriages report greater levels of love for each other than couples who chose their own partners after roughly the three-year mark in the marriage. Beyond that point, arranged marriages more or less level off while love marriages plummet.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Bollywood Tropes]]

[[Category:Marriage Tropes]]

[[Category:Wedding and Engagement Tropes]]