Unequal Pairing

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

I'm sure most of the men in the galaxy are familiar with the sinking feeling that accompanies the words 'Do you think you could do me a little favour, darling?', but when the woman doing the asking is an Inquisitor it's even less wise than usual to say, 'No'.

—Ciaphas Cain

When two characters are shipped together, in Canon or Fanon, despite the huge power issues that their relationship features. They can be a boss and their employee, a lord and their vassal, a mentor and their student etc. but one of the characters is in a position of greater influence over the other one.

Shippers either blissfully ignore the implication of the unequal power balance, or they fetishize it. The idea of devotion to the most powerful member (and vice versa) may be frequently mined (often with a version of the Bodyguard Crush or of the Subordinate Excuse). The power dynamic may also be subverted by showing other ways that the least powerful character actually holds status. It's frequently the less powerful character who is shown to be the initiator of the relationship, which reduces the potential Squick factor somewhat by demonstrating that they aren't being coerced.

In some societies an unequal power balance isn't necessarily viewed as strange or abhorrent. In fact, some societies dictate that a 'normal' pairing inherently isn't equal (probably because of gender roles).

Teacher-Student Romance, Mentor Ship, and Bodyguard Crush are subtropes of this. The probable, albeit frequently-ignored, result of Wife Husbandry.

Examples of Unequal Pairings include:

Anime and Manga

  • The Inuyasha Fanon pairing of Sesshomaru/Rin.
  • One Piece has Nami/Sanji. Nami likes to bend people to her will. Sanji won't say no to a girl. You take it from there. Most of the time it ends up fetishized.
    • Also in fanon, the domineering Smoker and his subordinate/protegee Tashigi. (Though in canon, it's probably more of a father/daughter or teacher/student relationship.)
    • And Luffy/Boa, but not in the way you'd normally expect looking at their age differences. She's canonically hopelessly in love with him and would do anything he'd ask (on top of believing they're already in a relationship), while he sees her as a friend who helps him rescue his older brother.
  • Cardcaptor Sakura features several Canon examples of those, such as Kaho/Touya, Terada/Rika and Clow/Yue.
  • Lyrical Nanoha has Hayate/Vita. They hit this trope more than once, and both ways. In one direction, it's a case of master/knight (within their personal sub-group) and superior/subordinate officer (within the military they joined). In the other direction, Hayate is 9 years old (25 by the fourth season), while Vita has been around for centuries (but looks young enough to be a first-grader).
    • Then again, Hayate sees the Wolkenritter as family rather than servants, and Vita seems to be the least inclined of the Wolkenritter to view Hayate as a mistress- note that she doesn't add any honorifics to Hayate's name and rarely speaks of her as her mistress.
    • At some point during Chrono and Amy's relationship, Chrono was captain of the same ship Amy was serving on, but by the time they get married, Amy has retired from the TSAB.
  • Kazuki in GetBackers is most frequently shipped with such characters. Just about everyone in his Backstory is slavishly devoted to him and acts like he left them at the altar when they reappear in the story proper. Juubei, Toshiki and Saizou were all his subordinates in their gang, Fuuga—which was started mainly as a way to gather protection around him. More specifically, his childhood friend, Juubei's, family has been allied to Kazuki's since time immemorial, and the male heirs of their families are traditionally a lord and his physician. Plus there's Ren, a thirteen-year-old girl who admires twenty-year-old Kazuki as he was a high-ranking member of the VOLTS gang, and just that charismatic when she actually met him face to face. Sakura, Juubei's sister, the Team Mom who turns Fuuga into a Five-Man Band, is probably the only one who doesn't act madly in love with him—and it was she who noted that no matter what happens, they will always be bound to Kazuki and always be there to protect him. For his part, Kazuki cherishes them all and repeatedly refuses to accept it when the thin line between love and hate turns them against him, or each other.
  • It is telling that pairing a 22 year old Noblewoman with the 69 year old Battle Butler that more or less raised her after her dad died a decade ago is among the least creepy 'ships in Hellsing fandom.
  • While Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye in Fullmetal Alchemist know each other from childhood, the fact is that he's a few ranks her superior in the current story. She calls him "Sir" or "Colonel". He calls her "Lieutenant".
    • There's also Ling and Lan Fan, who are possibly even more unequal, with Ling being the twelfth prince of Xing and Lan Fan being his bodyguard, and from a family that has served his for generations. Ling doesn't really seem to care about the differences in rank, while Lan Fan appears to be very dedicated to her duty; naturally, fans treat this approximately the same way a person dying of thirst might treat a glass of water.
    • Then there are Roy/Ed shippers. While the difference in their ranks is not as great as with RoyAi (Roy's two ranks above Ed and Ed usually doesn't give a damn), Ed's age adds to the unequality.
  • While they never actually become an Official Couple, Code Geass plays with this trope regarding Kallen and her Bodyguard Crush towards Lelouch. However, the one time that this trope is actually invoked is when Lelouch tries to force his attentions on Kallen under the pretext of needing "comfort"; this ends with Kallen slapping him. The event marks the turning point in their relationship where Kallen stops being a fangirl and becomes a full-on Love Interest (let's be clear, it's obvious she would have said "yes" any time he'd ask her in a less insulting way).
    • According to the official guidebook, Lelouch considered only four people his equals: his father, Schneizel, C.C. and Suzaku. Unless you ship him with one of those (and to be fair, Lelouch/C.C. and Suzaku/Lelouch are very popular pairings), any Lelouch ship is almost unequal by definition. Which is probably one of the reasons Lelouch stays celibate.
    • When you get down to it there are a lot of unequal pairings, mainly because the Code Geass writers love the whole Bodyguard Crush scenario (and using royalty and their knights) - apart from Lelouch and Kallen as mentioned, there's Suzaku/Euphemia (canon), Guilford/Cornelia (pretty much canon), Schneizel/Kanon (arguably canon) and Charles and Marianne (canon in the backstory). And Lelouch/Suzaku if you see it that way.
      • Interestingly enough, in Nightmare of Nunnally, Charles begins falling in love with Marianne after she calls him out on the amount of bloodshed in his quest to secure power and he is influenced by her ideals.
  • In Suzumiya Haruhi, Haruhi seems to really want to get into a relationship with Kyon, who is actively involved in a team effort to keep her in the dark about her true nature as a Reality Warper of inmense power. If Kyon were to reveal the secrets to her, however, it would not equalize them, but rather put her clearly above him.
    • But of course keeping Haruhi and, by extension, said power in check involves going along with all her crazy schemes and letting her believe she's in a level above anyway, and going along with it when she pulls rank.
    • Haruhi is a lot stronger than Kyon which has a lot of Unfortunate Implications.
    • Kyon and Yuki is also rather unequal, given that Kyon is a normal human (as far as we know), whereas Yuki is an alien who won the Superpower Lottery several times over.
  • In Full Metal Panic!, Captain Teletha "Tessa" Testarossa's Unrequited Love for Sergeant Sousuke Sagara is doomed mostly by this trope; because she is his commanding officer, Sousuke can't bring himself to reciprocate her feelings. Fan pairings of Sousuke with basically anyone else from Mithril, such as Commander Andrei Kalinin and Lieutenant Benjamin Clouseau, are subject to the same inequality.
    • There's also Melissa Mao and Kurz Weber; the less dramatic inequality in their ranks is made more significant by the fact that Mao is Sousuke and Kurz's team leader - a fact which Kurz mostly ignores and which isn't really addressed since Kurz is killed in action not long after the two of them begin their relationship.
      • Mao tries to enforce this, but once Kurtz is discovered to be alive, Mithril is all but dissolved and there is no need for rank anyway.
  • In Katekyo Hitman Reborn, there's the pairing of Gokudera and Tsuna. Tsuna is the current boss of the Vongola Family, and Gokudera is his incredibly loyal underling and wannabe right-hand man. Fangirls love the dynamic of their position and status difference. And despite Gokudera being the one who is most self conscious about the difference in position, he's always the aggressive one that tops.
  • A common issue for the Neji/Hinata pairing in Naruto, as Hinata is heir to the Hyuga clan while Neji is a branch house member whose duty is to protect and serve the main family. In some fan fics, the common application for the trope is inverted, with Neji becoming head of the clan and Hinata being demoted to the branch family.
  • A Running Gag in the Pokémon fandom is that no matter who he's shipped with (with the possible exception of May), Ash Ketchum will always, always be on the bottom.
  • Death Note has the 'ship of Light/Mikami, "God" and his servant.
    • And, of course, the canon ships of Light/Misa and Light/Takada. God and his two devoted slave girls (the fact that he isn't doing it because he likes them is beside the point).
    • Interestingly enough when Light gets shipped in Fanon it's frequently unequal the other way. This trope almost always comes into play when shipping him with L-an older man who controls the world's police and has the authority to have him sentenced to death if he says no. Also with the canon Light/Misa ship-especially early on when she essentially forces him to be her boyfriend under implied threat of death.
  • The pairing of twin brothers Agon and Unsui from Eyeshield 21 has this subtext as one of the reasons fangirls LIKE them as a couple.
    • To explain, Agon enjoys nothing more then exerting power and superiority over others and in general, is quite sadistic. Unsui, the kinder but weaker twin, wants his brother to live to his full potential and be the best. This is Flanderized in the anime, where Agon is made even more violent and Unsui flat out states he only exists to serve his brother. Needless to say, it doesn't take much effort to imagine their relationship as another extension of Agon's sadism.
  • Given the amount of Fan Service, many readers of Dance in the Vampire Bund find it more comfortable to think of Mina Tepes as an unusually short and flatchested noblewoman who is old enough for a veteran armsman such as Wolfgang Regendorf to have served his entire adult life. While this is true as far as it goes, it makes her relationship with Regendorf's teenage son Akira only somewhat less creepy.
  • Pick an Axis Powers Hetalia pairing, ANY pairing where one member used to raise/oversee/rule over the other. It doesn't matter if they've actually received canonical hints or not; there WILL be shippers for it. Sometimes they'll set their fanworks in a time period where the characters' statuses are more equal, but many other times they won't.
    • One canon example is the Official Couple of Finland and Sweden. Their relationship became equal at some point, but it started off with Sweden running off with Finland and insisting that Finland was now his wife, while Finland was still too afraid of Sweden to stand up to him.
  • Tenshi ni Narumon: Raphael and Mikael are teacher and student respectively although at the end of the series Mikael kinda ended being promoted to a teacher himself - but he still uses a highly respectful "sama" when talking to Raphael.
  • In Legend of the Galactic Heroes, both Kaiser Reinhard von Lohengram and Admiral Yang Wen-li marry their female assistants.
  • Taki and Klaus from Hyakujitsu no Bara. Taki is a Division Commander, and Klaus his knight. In military situations, Taki is clearly in command. It's a different scenario otherwise...
  • Pairings in Sekaiichi Hatsukoi revolve around a worker in the manga industry and someone with more authority.
  • Quite a few Yu-Gi-Oh! fans ship Kaiba and Jonouchi together. This has a few problems. The first if that Kaiba's a teen genius who's incredibly wealthy and has a lot of influence, while Jonouchi barely makes enough to get by, so socially, Kaiba far outranks him. Kaiba's also much smarter, stronger, and a better duelist than Jonouchi. Adding it all up, it basically means that Jonouchi would be Kaiba's bitch, whether he likes it or not - several fanfics actually have it that Jonouchi lives in Kaiba's mansion, which further adds to the unfairness of the ship as it makes Kaiba his landlord as well. A lot of fans fetishize this, giving them a VERY unequal Master-Servant style relationship.
  • In Gundam Seed and Gundam Seed Destiny we have Athrun and Cagalli, which was canon between the two series. He's an Ace Pilot and she's the daughter of the ruler of an island nation who takes up her father's position after his Heroic Sacrifice in the first series. This was actually the reason cited by the show's head writer as to why the relationship wouldn't work out. People who support the ship point out one often-forgotten fact: Athrun is also the son of a national leader, but he didn't take his father's place because said nation isn't a monarchy.
  • In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gendo Ikari has an affair with Ritsuko Akagi. He's Commander of NERV, and she's a direct subordinate as head of Science Division. Their relationship is loveless and doesn't end well. He previously had a relationship with Naoko Akagi (Ritsuko's mother, who was head of Science Division before Ritsuko came to work for NERV), and that one was also loveless and ended poorly.
    • If Misato's feelings toward Shinji are more than platonic, their relationship would also be this (he's a pilot, she's his direct superior as Operations Director).

Comic Books

  • In Watchmen, the immortal quantum-being Doctor Manhattan pairs up with the completely human Silk Spectre II.

Films -- Live-Action

  • Pairings of Jedi Masters with their Padawans are popular in the Star Wars fandom, especially Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan and Obi-Wan/Anakin. (As Masters are responsible for their Padawan's upbringing, at least part of the way, this also counts as Wife Husbandry.)
  • Though less drastic as other examples here, power dynamics are possibly the reason there's as much slash fic for Eastern Promises as there is.
  • The American President makes one of these its main plot, exploring it from several different angles. As you might guess, one participant is the President, and the other is an ordinary woman of no special fame or fortune.
  • A sizeable chunk of the fandom for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland ships the Mad Hatter with the White Queen, rather than Alice. Bear in mind that these two characters never actually speak to each other onscreen in the movie. They point out that the two have known each other for a long time (he had been her court hatter), they're the only ones who survived the Horunvendush Day attack, and they are staunch allies even if they're not shown talking. They're also the same species, which helps.


Literature

  • Harry Potter has many popular ships of the teacher/student kinds, with Snape/Hermione and Snape/Harry as their most popular. In the fandom, these are referred to as "cross-generational pairings." Many of them make fans quite squicked.
    • Voldemort and Bellatrix, his "most faithful" servant.
  • A non-fanon example occurs in David Edding's Belgariad. After Durnik's death, Polgara announces that she loves him. However, while Aldur helps him return, he informs Polgara that the fact that she's a sorceress and Durnik's not would doom their relationship. She agrees to "become his equal" as the price for his return, and for several weeks believes that she's lost her powers—but as it turned out, she didn't. Instead, Durnik had been given power to match hers.
    • It is also set up and then thoroughly averted with Garion and Ce'Nedra. King Garion is the ruler of Riva and Overlord of the West, as well as being an immortal sorcerer and the designated custodian of a cosmically powerful artifact that can smack down the gods. Princess Ce'Nedra is, outside of a couple extra centuries' of life expectancy via the Dryad side of her family, entirely mortal. Given that under Alorn law, the queen's role is limited to bearing the heirs and being royal chatelaine, this could easily have been one of the most lopsided power dynamics ever seen in a relationship. Fortunately, Garion takes one look at the situation, realizes that keeping Ce'Nedra in that unequal a situation would either crush her spirit or drive her to regicide, and hurriedly writes a 'The queen shall hold powers making her co-ruler to the king and regent of the realm in his absence' into the marriage contract, and then puts it into law.
      • This set up was, itself, already an aversion of the trope: Ce'Nedra was an Imperial Princess and Garion was, as far as they both knew, a simple Farm Boy. The reveal that he's royalty and that they're betrothed puts them on slightly more of an equal footing.
    • Also employed in canon in The Elenium, when twentysomething Queen Ehlana marries her middle-aged former bodyguard and surrogate parental figure Sparhawk. This trope concerns Sparhawk a good deal, but he eventually goes along with it. Perhaps the age gap and the authority gap (between sovereign and knight) cancel each other out.
  • Aes Sedai from the Green Ajah are notorious for having relationships with their Warders. Even weirder, Aes Sedai can actually mind control their Warders, though it is considered a bit unethical.
    • The real taboo seems to be bonding someone against their will in the first place. The assumption seems to be that once you've agreed to be bonded, you have only yourself to blame.
    • In Merise's case, all four, at the same time. That is, she had four Warders at the time, not that she... with four... oh hell.
  • Amberley Vail/Ciaphas Cain. Note that this is canon.
    • Note also that it does have the expected consequences; while Cain seems to genuinely love Amberley (and the feeling does seem mutual), he's also well aware that he can't exactly say no to her. Not that unusual in a relationship...except for the mortal combat against countless alien horrors bit.
    • As Cain puts it in Duty Calls:

I'm sure most of the men in the galaxy are familiar with the sinking feeling that accompanies the words 'Do you think you could do me a little favour, darling?', but when the woman doing the asking is an Inquisitor it's even less wise than usual to say, 'No'.

    • Actually, given the way 40K's universe is set up, Cain's reputation, and their jobs duties play out, this would actually subvert itself. Cain is the HERO OF THE IMPERIUM, and hooking up with an Inquisitor would not only bolster his image, but Amberly's as well, and given that Commisars and Inquistors tend to clamp down on the same thing (insubordination to the Imperium) and fight the same enemies, it would work. Also, considering that Cain is technically outside the Imperial Guard command structure, and Amberly has the ability to integrate herself into it at any time if it benefits her current assignment, most of the conflicts just seem to die on the vine. Hell, he almost got into a relationship with Regina Kasteen, which would make it unequal on her end, and it can be safely assumed this wouldn't be a major problem. Hell, even Kasteen/Broklaw, another possible ship, would work fairly well, given the above.
    • For that matter, Grifen and Magot. Grifen is Magot's squad leader but they're still a couple.
  • Honor Harrington/Hamish Alexander. Forty years her senior and consistently outranking her, Ham always was a mentor and authority figure for Honor, even before they hit it off. Somewhat subverted by the fact that they were acutely aware of the consequences (Hamish was, and still is, Happily Married, after all!), and almost worked themselves into nervous breakdowns (and Honor was taken prisoner and presumed dead for several years) trying to pretend that nothing happened at all, and overall Earned Their Happy Ending.
    • Also, Hamish and Honor did not actually start dating until after Honor's promotion to fleet admiral, which put the final nail in their former mentor/protege relationship and made them professional equals. At present, Hamish is again her nominal superior as First Space Lord, but if the Judge Advocate General of the RMN (who was actually consulted) says that their current relationship doesn't violate regs, then it doesn't. Lastly, being 40 years older than someone is less of a gap in a society where the average life expectancy is 250–300 years and the younger person in the relationship is still in her mid-60s.
  • In C. J. Cherryh's The Paladin, Master Swordsman Shoka and his peasant-girl student Taizu end up in a relationship, despite the teacher/student power imbalance, their social class imbalance, and the fact that Shoka is just under 40 and Taizu is about sixteen when they meet (although more like 18 when the relationship begins). Things are, in the end, more equal than they sound, because she's far from the passively obedient type.
    • Also from Cherryh, in the Morgaine series Vanye feared it was literally a sin for him to fall in love with Morgaine, partly because he thought she was qhal and therefore soulless, but also because he was pledged to her service and found that confusing (since normally a warrior could only be pledged to the service of a male noble).
  • Jeeves/Wooster shippers have to deal with this both ways. On the one hand, Jeeves is employed as Bertie Wooster's valet; on the other hand, though, Bertie is a docile Upper Class Twit while Jeeves is an intelligent, manipulative master of the Batman Gambit.
  • In A Song of Ice and Fire, Daenerys Targaryne was married off to Khal Drogo for political reasons when she was a destitute, powerless, friendless 13-year-old princess and he was an extremely powerful, feared, 30-something warlord with 50,000 men at his back. Once Dany gained power in her own right, her relationship with her handmaidens became this, as they are her slaves. The shippers love these ships, especially the former.
    • The shippers also like Sansa/almost every male character, which is basically a guaranteed Unequal Pairing; Sansa has almost no power behind her, aside from being the first daughter of a pretigious family, and she loses that in the first book when her father is executed for being a traitor. Awareness of the inequality in their relationship lead Tyrion to leave it unconsummated, and though Littlefinger is similarly aware, this may not stop him, as he appears to view Sansa as a surrogate for her mother. Which only raises the Squick factor, as he's effectively adopted her as a daughter.
    • There's also the popular Jaime/Brienne pairing, which can be cut both ways—Jaime is older, more experienced, and a scion of the wealthiest and most powerful family in Westeros and finds it easy to fluster Brienne, but Brienne is larger, stronger, and the better fighter, and likes to call Jaime out on his crap.
  • Charlotte Bronte features a Teacher-Student Romance Official Couple in The Professor and an employee/employer couple in Jane Eyre.
  • Septimus Heap displays much Septimus/Jenna-Shipping despite the fact that canonically a Wizard/Princess relationship is a taboo in the Castle due tot he political consequences and rivalry between them.

Live-Action TV

  • In Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, pretty much anyone on the team shipped with Takeru would have overtones of this, since they're all his vassals. The only possibility that could get around it is Takeru/Kaoru, which has its own problems after the results of episode 48.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic had Giles/Buffy. Note that this is never even suggested in the series, with the exception of a few jokes about how Giles spends all of his time around adolescent girls (and Xander).
    • There's also (a lot of) canon Angel/Buffy. Although, they both act like clueless fifteen year olds during the time they're in a relationship, Angel is actually over two hundred years old and rarely shares information if he can avoid it.
      • He's also an expert in emotional manipulation - well, Angelus is, but Angel shares the skills if not the motivation - and with a sexual history encompassing literal centuries of time and several continents while Buffy is, at this point in time, a naïve teenaged virgin. Emotionally she's completely defenseless against him and utterly unequipped to handle him, and only Angel's own sense of self-restraint could keep him from twisting her psyche around at will. Buffy eventually gets over this when Angel loses his soul and goes psychotically evil on her, but at the cost of her relationship crashing and burning and with serious emotional damage and intimacy issues that arguably plague her for the rest of her life.
    • Xander/Dawn pretty much cannot avoid being unequal in fanfics, given that he was an adult man and she was a 14-year-old girl (with a huge crush on him, to boot) when they first met. In canon, they were saved from this fate both by Xander's consistent history of letting his female partner wear the pants in any relationship and the fact that he didn't even begin to return her feelings until she was over 18.
      • Dawn is also approximately twice as smart as he is (while Xander's not stupid, Dawn's an outright genius once she grows up enough to actually start using her brain) and anything but shy or timid in personality. Even in fanfic it's generally accepted that Xander's her bitch, not vice versa.
  • House had House/Cameron.
    • And later, Cuddy/House.
  • Torchwood has both Jack/Ianto (all the way) and Jack/Gwen (UST) in canon—the fact that the former is the boss to both of them is the least of their worries.
  • Arguably any pairing of The Doctor and a human (particularly his companions). This is mainly due to the fact that he's a centuries-old Sufficiently Advanced Alien, and the companions are (for the most part) The Watson.
  • The rather odd Mal/River pairing that pops up often in the Firefly fandom. Not even considering the age difference (Mal is roughly twice as old as River) but he's also the ship's captain, and she's become its pilot, following Wash's death.
    • There's also the slash pairings, with Mal/Simon and Mal/Jayne.
  • In The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron is programmed to obey John Connor's orders. It hasn't taken the fandom long to extrapolate what John could, would, or has done with an extremely Ridiculously Human Robot.
    • Unless you're referring to the future John, it's doubtful this qualifies. She's disobeyed the present John at least once, and has stated explicitly that if given a choice between obeying future or present John, she'd choose the future one.
    • There's also implications of future John Connor/Allison Young, which gets really disturbing when one considers Cameron looks exactly like Allison and can apparently become Allison in personality.
    • On the other hand, Cameron spends a lot of time around Sarah, and for some reason blithely obeys her every order without question...
  • Other than Sam/Dean, the second most popular incestuous Supernatural ship is John and Dean. Seeing how Dean follows even the most criminally stupid of orders, you can guess how this one turns out.
    • Or how about Castiel/Dean? They've been paired together because they act like an astonishingly pretty married couple but, if he wants to stay out of hell and keep his eyes, Dean should probably behave like a good boy from now on.
  • Kara Thrace and her CO/daddy surrogate Bill Adama. Like that time he risked the entire Fleet to go looking for her after she'd been shot down and presumed dead.
    • And then there's Laura Roslin/Lee Adama. Again, it's not just the age difference—when they met, he was a hotshot pilot and she was the president. As he put it: "The lady's in charge."
    • A canon (albeit on-and-off) unequal pairing: Kara and Lee. No age difference, really (okay, Kara's a bit older than Lee), but Kara could take Lee's ass to school any day. And Lee is tough.
    • The "bible" document for Season One had it that Lee would develop romantic feelings for Roslin.
  • The main slash pairing of Tour of Duty is Lieutenant Goldman and Sergeant Anderson who are assigned to the same platoon during the Vietnam War.
  • ITV's The Palace had the King of England and his secretary falling in love, for maximum drama.
  • 30 Rock has Jack and Liz. Word of God says they'll never get together, but that doesn't deter shippers.
  • In Stargate Atlantis, there's some (not a whole lot, but it exists) fanfic pairing Todd with John Sheppard or Evan Lorne. Question: Which way does the inequality go? Answer: It varies.
  • Stargate Universe, when it is revealed that Young and TJ not only slept together, but conceived a child in the process.
  • Picard and Dr. Crusher invoke their differing ranks as a reason why they can't get together. Though, given that Beverly (as the ship's head doctor) could (and occasionally did) pull rank on Picard, that rational feels more like Ship Sinking than characterization. And not that that stopped the fic writers, at any rate.
    • It didn't stop much of anything, really. In the post-series novels, Picard's gotten over himself and married Beverly.
    • Also the rank thing was really just a convenient excuse, the real reason is because of Picard's feelings of guilt over the death of Jack, Beverly's husband.
  • This would apply to any hypothetical relationship involving Gibbs/Anyone on Team Gibbs in NCIS. Especially Abby, where the surrogate father/daughter relationship is particularly blatant. The one possible exception, Gibbs/Jenny, is somewhat balanced out by his having been her superior in the past and her now being dead.
    • Amusingly, Abby is one of the only two living cast regulars that Gibbs isn't in an unequal power relationship with -- at least officially. Everybody else except Ducky is either directly subordinate to or above Gibbs in the formal chain of command. Abby is a senior member of, if not the department head of, an adjunct compartment in the NCIS structure -- the forensics unit. Given that they are in separate but parallel chains of command and of roughly comparable seniority, even the more stringent military fraternization regs, let alone whatever NCIS uses, would allow them to date. The only unequal-ness is that emotionally, Abby is Gibbs' surrogate daughter -- but as they're not actually related, shifting that over to May-December Romance is not impossible.
  • Among Heroes fans who shipped Mohinder and Sylar, this was a VERY popular theme in fanfic before Mohinder gave himself superpowers in Season 3. Usually, Sylar's near-godlike advantage in raw physical power was tenuously balanced by Mohinder's relative grip on sanity and his being just too pretty to kill.
  • The Inspector Lynley Mysteries' Fan-Preferred Couple of Lynley/Havers has this in spades, in both class disparity (he's a Lord, she is very much not) and in rank (he's a Detective Inspector, she's a Detective Sergeant). This is mitigated in that by the end of the series their interactions are much more those of police partners as opposed to superior/subordinate, but there are still massive issues to overcome. The entire fandom ships them anyway.
  • Robin Hood had Guy/Marian (he was physically stronger, politically more powerful, and eventually stabs her to death) and Robin/Kate (he was the aristocratic lord of Locksley, she was an illiterate peasant girl). Both pairings were rife with Unfortunate Implications.
  • Pretty much every relationship ever on Grey's Anatomy.
  • Kamen Rider OOO has quite a bit of Ho Yay for Date/Gotou: Date being around 10–15 years older, Gotou's mentor, holding the position of Kamen Rider Birth (which Gotou desperately wants to become) and physically much stronger, to the point where he can easily handle the Birth Driver whereas Gotou has to train very hard to use it.
    • Saeko/Kirihiko in Kamen Rider Double is a pretty tragic example, leading to Kirihiko's acceptance of his wife abusing him, and finally murdering him.
  • The British sitcom The Thin Blue Line has Police Inspector Fowler paired with live-in girlfriend Sergeant Dawkins.
    • Given Fowler's outlook on his duties however this is not a major issue. At one point he offers Dawkins some advice, half now (as her senior officer) and half when he is on break (as her boyfriend, as he is not being paid to advise people as their boyfriends and so cannot due so during work hours.)
  • CSI was this way with Grissom and Sara and the whole boss/employee thing until it became canon.

Theatre

  • My Fair Lady ends with the Cockney street lass, and her high society Proper English mentor, paired off.


Videogames

  • Metal Gear Solid has one or two of these - including the (fairly popular and canon) background pairing in the third game of Colonel Volgin and Major Raikov. Volgin is around seven feet tall, musclebound, sadistic and ELECTRIC, not to mention years Ivan's senior. Raikov appears to be a Bishounen with occasional violent tendencies and a penchant for scanty underwear. (And the... whole... rank thing.)
  • Sengoku Basara has this with any ship that doesn't involve rival daimyo, especially any lord/vassal pairing you'd care to name. Probably the biggest one is Date Masamune with his second-in-command Katakura Kojuro. Given Kojuro's insane loyalty and the retainer-lord obligations of the time, the power imbalance would be mind boggling, except Kojuro is ten years older than Masamune, personally responsible for most of the army's strategy that isn't limited to "charge into battle screaming in Engrish and do crazy shit" and has, in both anime and video game canon, kicked his lord's ass, hard, when Masamune was being suicidally stupid (although both times afterward he tried to kill himself for having raised his blade to Masamune. That didn't go over well.). Close runner-up is Sanada Yukimura/Sarutobi Sasuke; see the entry on Jeeves and Wooster (although Yukimura is less dense than Bertie and more hot-blooded).
  • Touhou fandom has people shipping everyone with everyone else, which leads to many cases of this. One of the most popular is Yuyuko Saigyouji/Youmu Konpaku. Yuyuko is the Queen of Hakugyokurou, absolute ruler of the Netherworld and holding mastery over death. Youmu is... well, her official title is Hakugyokurou's gardener. The fact Yuyuko looks thirty-something while you'd be hard-pressed to think of Youmu as older than sixteen also factors for this trope.
    • The same for the Remilia Scarlet/Sakuya Izayoi pairing, the former a centuries-old terror of the night while the latter is a human probably no older than her early twenties. This mostly revolves around the persistent mystery of why a powerful, capable individual has dedicated herself to a capricious, over-bearing, literally childish being, most common theories involving some variation of Subordinate Excuse.
    • Eirin Yagokoro/Kaguya Houraisan also falls into this, but not the way most expect. While Kaguya does have authority over Eirin, Eirin is actually far more powerful than Kaguya and the arrangement is entirely at Eirin's discretion (she could leave whenever she wants, she just doesn't want to).
  • Gears of War 2 rather strongly implies that Sergeant Marcus Fenix and Lieutenant Anya Stroud have a relationship that goes past the professional.
  • Nowel and her loyal servant Ruru in Magical Battle Arena. The prologue of Ruru's scenario outright states that the only wish in Ruru's heart is to be with Nowel. As a fan-translator put it, Ruru almost out-gays the Lyrical Nanoha cast.
  • Gumshoe/Edgeworth has a small but loyal following in Ace Attorney fandom, even though Edgeworth has reduced Gumshoe's pay so much that he's forced to subsist on a diet of instant noodles.
  • Implied in Knights of the Old Republic if your character is male, has a relationship with Bastila and chooses to fall to The Dark Side at her prompting. She becomes both "your lover and apprentice", in her words.
  • Confirmed in Star Wars: The Old Republic: at least one love interest each for the Jedi Consular, Jedi Knight, and Sith Warrior is the player's padawan. For the Trooper the love interest is a lower ranked member of your squad.
  • Just about any pairing involving Shepard in the Mass Effect series, because of the fact that (s)he's the captain of the Normandy and all of the squad members are his/her subordinates, but especially Shepard/Ashley and Shepard/Kaidan; all three of them are in the Alliance navy and Shepard outranks both Ash and Kaidan. As Shepard points out, though, what with the Saren and the Reapers and all, being caught fraternizing is the least of their problems.
    • Although officially, fraternization regs no longer apply to Shepard once they become a Spectre. And in the third game, the Virmire Survivor also becomes a Spectre, meaning they don't even have differing seniority between them any longer.
    • Ashley touches on this trope in an e-mail to one of her sisters, says that she would never get together with one of her subordinates because if she has to decide who lives and who dies, she doesn't want love to factor into her decision. This becomes Harsher in Hindsight when you consider that on Virmire, Shepard has to choose between her and Kaidan, both of whom can be romanced. Ashley can, depending on the player's choices, be sacrificed for a romanced Kaidan or saved because Shepard is in a romance with her..
  • In The Orion Conspiracy, Devlin finds out early on that Captain LaPaz and Lowe (who is on a lower rank than LaPaz) are married. This becomes a plot point later on when Devlin finds out that LaPaz is eight weeks pregnant and has to use this information to blackmail her into giving him the keys to his son Danny's cupboard.

Webcomics

  • In Angels2200, this is an issue for Kid and her friend and squad leader Hammer. As time goes on and the Icebreakers start heading into battle, forcing Hammer to take on the responsibilities of a leader (including reprimanding Kid for not taking a shot against an enemy and almost getting Bubblegum killed), Hammer tries to distance herself from Kid in spite of her feelings, but is told that it may not be the best way to go about it. Hammer ends up falling short of telling Kid how she feels during the mission on the Ellie Arroway, and seemingly dies, only to be captured by the colonials, unbeknownst to Kid.
  • Freefall is very blunt at times about the implications of an artificial being dating a member of the species that created her (particularly since she's still legally considered property.) Granted, later strips mitigate this somewhat . . .
  • Pairing any of the Trolls in Homestuck is bound to lead to this, because they're all at different levels on their Fantastic Caste System. Equius/Aradia is the only one brought up in canon, because he's very proud of his noble status and she's about as common as it's possible to be.
  • In Girl Genius, Violeta point out to Tarvek that he may have his chance with Agatha because Agatha/Gil is an unequal pairing which can burst into flames (which is true, but it means there is no possible equal pairing for Gil), while Agatha/Tarvek is an equal pairing.


Western Animation

  • Principal Brown and the teacher Miss Simian have a romantic relationship in The Amazing World of Gumball.
  • The Simpsons has Burns/Smithers.
  • Kim Possible fans who 'ship Drakken/Shego tend to ignore the fact that Drakken is Shego's boss. But to be fair, so does Shego most of the time.
  • Canonically occurs twice in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), first between Karai, second-in-command (and later, head) of the Foot Clan, and Dr. Chaplin, the company's head scientist; and, to a lesser extent, between Starlee Hambrath—a Teen Genius interning for O'Neil Tech—and Cody Jones, O'Neil Tech's owner.
  • Most pairings involving Megatron and his subordinates in Transformers involve this. A bit less so with Optimus Prime, but the power difference is still there.
  • Batman: The Animated Series (technically, Batman Beyond) gave us Batman/Batgirl. It's long over by the time we and Terry learn of it. His reaction can be summed up as "Wait, what? Whoa."
    • Nightwing's was worse, as he appeared to cut off all ties with both of them.
  • The semi-common Avatar Zhao/Azula Crack Pairing takes this from two angles. On one hand we have a middle-aged man and a fourteen year old girl, on the other we have a naval officer with more ego than sense and the Evil Overlord's favorite (not to mention freakishly skilled and terrifyingly cunning) daughter.
    • There's also Azula/Ty-Lee, Azula/Suki, and even Aang/Katara. There's also the very canon couple of Zuko/Mai, considering Zuko is heir to the throne. (Not to suggest in any way that Mai is any way less competant than Zu-Zu... just less in the "Inheriting the throne" way).
      • As previously mentioned, Zuko is heir to the throne. Unless he's going to date his sister there are no women in the Fire Nation of equal seniority to Zuko. And as the eldest daughter of a provincial governor, Mai would be of the next-highest social stratum below the royal family and thus at least equal in seniority to any other possible suitor for Zuko from the Fire Nation. Add in that Mai is mentally tough as nails and has never hesitated to call Zuko out on his bullshit and make him like it, and she's pretty much the least unequal relationship he could have.
      • Aang/Katara is hardly unequal by the time they get together in canon. It would be unequal if they had gotten together any earlier.
        • There is also that Katara is still the daughter of a head of state, even if the Southern Water Tribe is notably smaller and less powerful than any other of the world's functioning governments at that time. Short of courting Fire Nation or Earth Kingdom royalty, Aang really couldn't find any more highly placed young women to date.
    • There's a really great fanfic that plays with the power dynamics involved in shipping Zuko and Lt. Jee. On one hand, you have Prince/Commoner. On the other, you have middle-aged man/16-year-old boy. On still another hand, you have legitimate ship captain/his superior who holds no actual rank. Both are stubborn and neither of them really likes the other. Conflict ensues.
  • A common pairing in Danny Phantom is Vlad/Danny. Vlad is literally old enough to be Danny's dad (Vlad and Jack went to college together). In canon, he actually wants to make Danny his son, which is kinda creepy. And then you have Vlad's general Magnificent Bastard-ness. This one is fetishized to the point that rapefic is practically the norm. Don't believe me? Here's an example.
    • This is frequently compared to Slade/Robin, which is like Batman/Batgirl combined with the above.
  • My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic fandom has the relatively common shipping of Princess Celestia, a multi-thousand-year-old Physical Goddess who controls the rising and setting of the Sun and is the unquestioned diarch of Equestria, with Twilight Sparkle, a young unicorn who is Celestia's student, surrogate daughter, and #1 fangirl -- and who is socially naïve and inexperienced, to boot. Other fanfics ship Celestia's sister Luna with Twilight Sparkle, Trixie, or Fluttershy.
    • And now that Princess Twilight Sparkle has ascended to alicorn, she faces this trope from the other end of the equation regarding having vastly more physical, magical, and social power than most of her possible life partners - although she can at least avoid the 'thousands of years older and more life experience' factors, re: her peer group.

Real Life

  • The US Armed Forces actually have regulations in place to prevent this sort of thing (particularly between enlisted personnel and officers).
    • At least within their own commands. Military personnel of different ranks in different commands or branches are allowed to have personal relationships.
      • Not quite. Officer/enlisted or even junior enlisted/NCO pairs are frowned upon, and can still be a court-martial offense.
    • Corporations and universities often have similar rules. Some (militaries included) even have rules preventing already-married spouses from being placed in positions where one would be the superior of the other.
  • Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.
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