Wife Husbandry: Difference between revisions

* Part of the plot of the 2009 anime adaptation of ''[[The Tale of Genji]]'' (see Literature example below), ''[[Genji Monogatari Sennenki]]''.

* In [[Osamu Tezuka]]'s ''[[Phoenix|Phoenix: Life]]'', Aoi falls in love with the girl he adopted when she comes of age, but she only thinks of him as a father. This ultimately leads to his {{spoiler|[[Heroic Sacrifice]], as he feels he has nothing left to live for}}.

* Inverted in the manga ''[[Until Death Do Us Part]]'', where the heroine who ran up to the protagonist for rescue early on for help later revealed that she's staying with him not only to be rescued, but also because he's her future husband. The two she told this to were shocked on finding out and told her not to tell the protagonist about it, though she seems set on making said prediction come true. The heroine is twelve and the protagonist is in his mid-to-late twenties, which would make this a lot more squicky if not for the fact that there is no romance to speak of at this point and she is a powerful precognitive, so the foretold marriage could be decades off.

* Arguably used in ''[[Appleseed]]'' (the manga, at least—the movies are rather vague about the whole affair). Deunan is nine years younger than Briareos. She was eleven when they first met, and flashbacks have her father already aware of Bri's feelings for her when she was only seventeen. Averted slightly in that if either of them is forcing themselves on the other due to a past close relationship, it's ''Deunan''.

* An inadvertent version almost happened in Volume 4 of ''[[Ooku]]''. {{spoiler|As she lay dying at age 27, [[She Is the King|Shogun Iemitsu the Younger]] asked the former abbot (and only true love for all that his infertility obliged her to bear the children of several other men) Arikoto to guide the eldest of her daughters as a father. [[Clueless Chick Magnet]] that he was, Arikoto had no idea what feelings his charge was developing towards him until the [[A Child Shall Lead Them|teenage]] Shogun Ietsuna gave an [[Anguished Declaration of Love]] as he carried her to safety during a disastrous fire. As soon as a proper audience count be held, Arikoto made his feeling clear by formally petitioning to be dismissed from his duties in the Inner Chambers.}}

* In ''[[Dance in the Vampire Bund]]'', while the elder did not raise the younger the relationship between seventeen year old Akira Kaburagi Regendorf and his father's [[Legal Jailbait|90-plus]] liege lady Mina Tepes has strong overtones of this; especially as Akira was [[Unequal Pairing|pledged to serve her]] from birth and one of her vast [[Embarrassing Old Photo]] collection has her holding him as an infant.

* ''[[Occult Academy]]'' {{spoiler|(gender flipped.) Implied by the ending. 17 year old Maya's fallen in love with 23-year-old time-traveled-from-13-years-in-the-future Fumiaki, but he makes a heroic sacrifice. So she takes 10-year-old current-day Fumiaki in hand, and we see that 13 years later, they're at least living together.}}

* ''[[Black Butler]]''. Well, maybe more like [[Distaff Counterpart|Husband Husbandry]]. Or [[Our Souls Are Different|Soul Husbandry]]. Sebastian tries really hard to ... [[Unusual Euphemism|cultivate Ciel's soul.]]

* ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'' has Irie who plans on doing this to Satoko. While it's hard to judge just how earnest he is about it, it's seemingly played for laughs.

* Implied in ''[[Saber Marionette J]]'' in the very final last episode, where a young elementary-age Cherry is still in love —and [[Fille Fatale|lust]]— with Otaru, even after she's been reborn as a fully-organic human girl, along with her sisters, Lime and Bloodberry, who he's now raising as his adopted daughters.

* Gender flipped In ''[[Eureka Seven]]'', the eldest of Eureka's 3 adopted kids Maurice had some form of romantic affection towards his foster mom Eureka. He even resents and gets jealous of the protagonist Renton for being her lover, threatening to shoot him in episode 45, claiming that he can be a better replacement for Renton. If Eureka didn't resolve this issue, Maurice probably might end up playing this trope, despite knowing Eureka {{spoiler|killed his family}}.

* Clearly discussed (in a strangely gender-flipped way) in ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'', where some of the girls are plotting to raise Negi (their ten-year-old teacher) to be the perfect boyfriend. Explicitly called the 'Reverse Hikaru Genji Raising Plan'.

* Something akin to this happens in ''Sundays at Tiffany's'' by [[James Patterson]]. The main character, Jane, had an imaginary friend named Michael when she was eight. He was much older than her, and it's established that he doesn't know how he came to exist, just that he takes care of children by being their imaginary friend and has been doing this for quite some time now. {{spoiler|As the story progresses, they eventually meet again when Jane grows up and fall in love. Toward the end Michael gives up his immortality to be with Jane. A bit disturbing, considering Michael is, in all probability, extremely old}}.

* The disturbing aspect of this is the entire point of the [[Fyodor Dostoevsky]] short story "A Christmas Tree and a Wedding." Made even worse because the real motives of the older man are to get at the girl's finances, with him mentally calculating how much interest her bank balance will accumulate in the years before she comes of age.

* A boatman tried this in one of the short stories from the book ''Cuentos de Angustias y Paisajes'', the girl who called him ''[[Squick|dad]]'', she apparently drowned. However, {{spoiler|it was noted she was an excellent swimmer and a man she seemed to fancy disappeared around the same time}}.

* In the antebellum book series ''Elsie Dinsmore'', Elsie's father's best friend complains frequently that he and Elsie aren't closer in age, because she'd be the perfect bride. He starts saying this when she's '''seven''', right after she's been encouraged to call him her Uncle Edward. She marries him as soon as she hits 21, and the entire family rejoices. Her father had her quite young, so Edward Travilla is only about 16 years older than she is, but since he begins talking about wanting to marry her when she's a small child, and remains a huge influence in her life (taking her side against her insanely controlling father, trying to break things up with her first love), it's never not creepy.

* Due to the infamous one-child policy in China, and the accompanying widespread infanticide of infant girls, there are now people who do this so their sons can have wives. It's pervasive enough that there are now detectives whose entire careers are dedicated to finding people's daughters and bringing them back... just as there are people who make livings kidnapping and selling girls for wives.

** In more ancient times, some affluent Chinese families had the tradition of adopting, fostering, or just flat out buying children in order to raise then and marry them to their offspring when they came of age. While usually girls were subject to this, if the family has only had daugthers they would get a boy to adopt [[Heir Club for Men|so they could keep the fortune within the family]].

* John "Johnny Appleseed" Chapman apparently [[wikipedia:Johnny Appleseed#Attitude towards marriage|attempted this]].

* WB Yeats [[wikipedia:Iseult Gonne|did]] a subverted version of this trope. In his younger days he pined after Maude Gonne, who spurned him and married an abusive [[Complete Monster]] named John MacBride. After John MacBride's death Maude still refused Yeats' offers of marriage,so he finally proposed to Iseult Gonne, Maude's illegitimate daughter, who was born before her marriage to MacBride (he was 52 and she was 23). She turned him down, but apparently they became good friends and Yeats was something of a father figure to her.