Wife Husbandry: Difference between revisions

Known in Japan (and untilfor recentlysome years on this[[The wikiOther Tropes Wiki]]) as the Hikaru Genji Plan, after the main character in ''[[The Tale of Genji]]'', who kidnapped a young girl named Murasaki from a life of poverty for the purpose of marrying her once she grew up. [[Don't Explain the Joke|The current name is a pun,]]: as Husbandryhusbandry is the act of raising something (animal husbandry, plant husbandry, etc.), and [[Captain Obvious|also contains the word Husband"husband"]].

This is by definition a subtrope of [[May–DecemberMay-December Romance]] or in supernatural settings [[Mayfly-December Romance]], but not ''every'' romance with a significant age gap falls under this. Compare [[Pygmalion Plot]], [[The Jailbait Wait]], [[Teacher-Student Romance]], [[Parental Incest]] and [[Incest Is Relative]]. See also [[Father, I Want to Marry My Brother]].

* Inverted in ''[[Kure-nai]]'': while Shinkurou is very protective of the little girl he's caring for, any romantic affection seems to occur solely on Murasaki's side (notice her [[Meaningful Name]]). {{spoiler|Then again, considering Murasaki's [[Big Screwed-Up Family]], this can be seen as played straight from ''their'' part.}}

* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'': Poor Rei has certain... issues with Gendo, that's for sure. First off, {{spoiler|Gendo cloned her from his dead wife in order to trigger a controlled [[Assimilation Plot]] with him as God, then raised her in place of Shinji, causing him to develop his laundry-list of psychological problems (well, develop them further anyway); she is suicidally loyal, moreso because she knows very well that when she dies, Gendo has a few dozen fresh clones in the basement she can possess (which results in her [[Catch Phrase]]: "If I die, I can be replaced"). In the original episode 25, it is revealed that Rei will "return to nothingness" if she fulfills her purpose, something she looks forward to. She likes Gendo because he gave her said purpose and the means to carry it out. At the same time, she dislikes Gendo because he's the one who decides when she can do so.}} She has issues.

* This is pretty much the relationship between Moeko and Mariya in the shoujo manga series ''Kindan'' (by Osakabe Mashin). Not that Mariya even really ''bothered'' [[JailThe BaitJailbait Wait|waiting]] [[Lolicon|until Moeko grew up]]. A ''lot'' of people were unnerved by how he raped her when she was ''really'' young (around maybe six years old?), and used his status as her guardian to take advantage of her. Yes, it was all played as [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|being romantic]]. It's especially creepy when it shows how he actually planned to do a Hikaru Genji Plan with her the moment he saw her in the orphanage.

* [[Gender Flip]]ped in ''[[Code Geass]],'' where C.C., an [[Mysterious Waif|immortal woman]], bestows [[Telepathy]] on a Chinese street urchin named Mao. However, he [[Blessed with Suck|loses control of it, profoundly affecting his sanity]], and the pair move into the wild where she practically raises him, during which time [[Freud Was Right|he falls in love with her]]. Thing is, C.C. never intended anything romantic to come from the relationship; it was all in Mao's mind.

* In ''[[Hana to Akuma]]'', the entire plot is centered around Hana and Vivi falling in love with each other after he raised her as a foundling, despite the fact that most of the story happens when Hana is 10 and Vivi is a centuries old demon. Vivi attempts to resist this attraction by going to the demon world for awhile in a [[JailThe BaitJailbait Wait|Jailbait Wait]].

* Implied in ''[[Saber Marionette J]]'' in the very final last episode, where a young elementary-age Cherry is still in love—andlove —and [[Fille Fatale|lust]]—with— 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.

* During a flashback in ''[[Fairy Tail]]'', Markarov takes the then eight-year-old Erza to [[Dr. Jerk|Porlyusica]] for treatment. Markarov comments that Erza will be very beautiful when she grows up. Porlyusica, who knows very well that Markarov is a [[Dirty Old Man]], asks if he's [[JailThe BaitJailbait Wait|planning on seducing Erza later]]. Markarov nervously replies that he wasn't.

* One of the outright weirdest examples of this trope happened in a [[Silver Age]] issue of ''[[Superman]]'s Girl FriendGirlfriend [[Lois Lane]]''. You see, Superman is turned into a baby by some Red Kryptonite, and both Lois and Lana try to get him to promise to marry them once it wears off. Ultimately they both hypnotize him into marrying them. But it works out fine for Superman—though not our universe's Lois or Lana—becauseLana —because this is actually a Superman from an alternate universe where bigamy is legal.

* [[X-Men]]: According to rabid anti-fans of Magneto, he apparently did this to Rogue in the Age of Apocalypse, as they initially had a surrogate father-daughter relationship when he mentored her after she accidentally permanently absorbed the powers and part of the psyche of his own secretly long-lost biological daughter Polaris , who was even older than her.

* It happens in ''[[Lex Luthor: Man of Steel]]'' when Lex Luthor creates the superheroine Hope to serve as his own private Superman as well as concubine. He {{spoiler|sacrifices her to discredit Superman}}.

* In ''[[Captain Atom]]'', the hero's daughter, Margaret, begins a relationship with Jeff Goslin, her godfather. Not her father, but the implications are the same. The subtext, incidentally, was that she really did have [[Freud Was Right|romantic feelings for her father]], and was (barely) sublimating them by dating Goslin, who was her father's best friend in addition to being her godfather.

* In the ''[[Oneiroi Series]]'' (an ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'' fanfiction series), [[Complete Monster|Xykon]] practically raised [[Split Personality|Tiasal/Deirdre]], and he has this weird thing going on where he's almost but not quite started a sexual relationship with her. Unlike the other examples, he never exactly planned on it and she's the only one who's actually interested in the sex, but he uses it to manipulate her. (And [[Word of God]] says that he gets enjoyment out of it despite being [[Dem Bones|a walking skeleton]] because it gives him a power trip.) {{spoiler|The trope is also inverted with Deirdre as she actually [[Rape as Drama|forces]] her [[Oedipus Complex|father]] (who also practically raised her [[Disappeared Dad|after a while]]) into sleeping with her. And she's implied to be planning on doing the same to her uncle (who raised her while her dad didn't), and [[Word of God]] says that she wants to do it to all the men who were involved in raising her. She has issues.}}

* Mao and C.C.'s [[Mayfly-December Romance|relationship]] is explored in-depth in ''[[Code Geass: Mao of the Deliverance]]'', with plenty of backstory and [[Flash Back]], including the implication that C.C. {{spoiler|had sex with him}} when he became a teenager, increasing his [[:Category:Yandere|Yandere]] [[Fan Boy]] treatment of her [[Up to Eleven]].

* Inverted and most likely played for [[Squick]] in the ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'' fanfic ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20120408051936/http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4567400/1/Seven Seven]'', when {{spoiler|Jacob proceeds to strip Renesmee (who looks eighteen but is only seven, thus the title), and she is both frightened and unwilling.}}

* This seems to be at least partly atin play in the relationship between [[The Avengers (2012 film)|Loki]] and [[Harry Potter|Hermione Granger]] -- which started when she was 11 and came upon him in the Hogwarts library --— in ''[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8188379/1/Aphelion Aphelion]'' by "Dresden Blue".

* There are overtones of this in the 1989 Canadian film ''Cold Comfort'' (not to be confused with the better-known ''[[Cold Comfort Farm]]''). Floyd, who lives in a remote rural cabin, tries to set up traveling salesman Stephen with his innocent-but-willing eighteen-year-old daughter Dolores. Complicating this situation is that Floyd is a mood-swinging psychotic who himself has lustful feelings for Dolores. He has her do a strip-tease for Stephen, then nearly kills him for looking at her topless, then calmly praises her "perfect" breasts. It all goes downhill from there.

* Inverted in the 2009 movie ''Orphan''- — the titular character is {{spoiler|actually a thirty-something year old adult who tries to come on to her legal guardians, and kills them when they refuse.}}

* This sort of thing happens a lot in Hollywood films—Thefilms —The main characters are an older, middle aged (but still handsome) man and a very young girl whom the man feels very protective of, leading the audience to think that their relationship might end up being like a father and daughter. But since the film producers felt the need to shoehorn in a romance, the old man and young girl shack up by the end leading to [[Squick]]. (Examples of this can be seen in the movies ''Halloween 3'' and ''Looker''.)

* In [[The Bible|Ezekiel 16:8]], God Himself uses this as a metaphor for how His relationship with the Israelites was ''supposed to work out''.

* Happens in Dumas' ''[[The Count of Monte Cristo]]'' between the titular character and his young charge, Haydée. He even has the line: "Youth is the flower and love is its fruit... happy is the gardener who has seen it grow ripe before picking it." There's also a scene where he worries that in ten years' time he'll be an old man and Haydée will still be young, to which she answers (paraphrased again): "My father was sixty years old but I thought he was more beautiful than any young man I have ever seen." And this is supposed to be ''romantic'' and not creepy. Adaptations have steered clear of this subplot, usually either marrying Haydée off to someone else or just writing her out of the story, {{spoiler|and the Count is usually paired off with Mercedes}}. Interestingly, the anime adaptation ''[[Gankutsuou]]'' ({{smallcapssmall-caps|[[Recycled in Space|in space]]}}!) presents a familial love between the two, without romantic overtones.

* The story "The Education of Betty" from [[L.Lucy M.Maud Montgomery]]'s ''[[Anne of Green Gables|Further Chronicles of Avonlea]].'' Best friends fight over girl. The one who marries her quickly dies, so the other becomes a sort of unofficial godfather to his best friend's daughter. He falls in love with her, but knows how inappropriate it is, so he tries fixing her up with his nephew. She'll have nothing of it, and marries him anyway.

** Their daughter, age 6, tells her father who she's going to marry; {{spoiler|as she's the incarnation of a god}}, if the prospective husband disagrees, he better have started running ''right then''.

* [[Robin McKinley]] has so many [[May–December Romance|May -December RomancesRomance]]s that it was inevitable that a few would fit this category. Notably Aerin/Tor, and {{spoiler|Rosie/Narl}} from ''Spindle's End'', but the most straightforward example of this trope is in "Touk's House", a modification of the Rapunzel story. After a woodcutter steals herbs from a witch's garden, the witch Maugie requests a baby girl in exchange. But in this case, it's so she can raise a wife for her half-troll son. (Who is, yes, around, older, and helping to raise the child.) Needless to say, Erana's not too happy when she grows up and figures it out. {{spoiler|But it works anyway.}}

* In the first book in ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'', Count Olaf tries to marry his young ward Violet. He didn't use a "position of trust", though—hethough — he tried to force her so he can inherit her and her siblings' money.

* In ''[[Emily of New Moon]]'' and its sequels, by L.M. Montgomery, this is what Dean Priest plans for Emily. Yes, he saves her life the first time they meet. Yes, he's the only adult who understands Emily and she's the only person (other than her now-dead father) who was ever his real friend. But he's old enough to be her father, and at their first meeting he's saying things like "Your life belongs to me, now," and "[[JailThe BaitJailbait Wait|I'll wait for you]]," and "One day I'll teach you all about lovers' talk." In the third book they actually get engaged, {{spoiler|but Emily breaks it off. Eventually Dean is able to be reconciled to her as a friend.}}

* 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'''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.

** Don't forget about Claudia (though perhaps to a lesser extent) as it's implied that she and Louis (one of her 'vampire fathers') have romantic feelings for each other, which is a source of [[Squick]] when you remember that Claudia has the body of a six -year -old and Louis was in his twenties when he became a vampire.

* The world of ''[[Dragonlance]]'' has a race of [[Lizard Folk]] called "draconians", all of whom are the result of the eggs of good dragons being stolen and subjected to evil magics which transform what's inside of them; instead of baby dragons hatching from them, multiple draconians hatch from a single egg. Draconians were created to be reliable soldiers for the [[Big Bad]] of the story. However, only ''male'' draconians were ever hatched. Eventually, after thirty-some years pass in [[The Verse]], readers learn that eggs containing female draconians ''do'' exist; they were never hatched because there was concern that if draconians reproduced, then they would become too numerous to control. The adult male draconians embark on a quest to find the female eggs and hatch them, in an effort to keep their race from dying out one by one. They succeed, and find themselves in the position of raising twenty baby females to adulthood. No matter who these females conceive children with, it will end up being somebody who remembers them as babies.

** InDuring the mostEleventh recentDocor's seasontenure, the Doctor meets a young Amelia Pond when she's 7, and makes such a huge impression on her that she goes through four psychologists (she bit them - and I'm assuming when she did they quit...). When he leaves her as a young girl he intends to make a 5 minute jump into the future but instead makes a 12 year jump, then another 2-year jump. She then leaves with him to have wacky adventures on the night before her wedding with Rory. When they later return to the night of her wedding she tries to seduce him. By the end of the series the triangle is resolved, though, as it's revealed that {{spoiler|Amy would rather ''die'' than live without Rory.}} Then the thing becomes more convoluted with the relationship between the Doctor and {{spoiler|River Song}}, his wife, who happens to be {{spoiler|Amy and Rory's daughter Melody, conceived in the Tardis}} and while he didn't raise her he was quite close during several formative moments of her life.

* Used in [[Moliere]]'s comedies ''School for Wives'' and ''School for Husbands'', where in both cases a male character has a female ward they plan to marry—this doesn't end up working in either case, as the girls confront their patrons and earn their freedoms. By the way, in ''School for Wives'', the man's definition of "perfect" is "as idiot as possible".

** Leonis from ''[[Agarest Senki]] Zero'' also fall under this. Most of the women he can romance has raised him as a baby. (He even considers Alice as his surrogative mother and Mimel as his older sister)

* Inverted in ''[[Fire Emblem Tellius|Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn]]''. Micaiah found Sothe as a child and raised him but due to her long lifespan, she looks younger than Sothe in the current game. However, they are so far ahead of everyone else as a canon couple that they start out with max support for each other. You HAVE to go out of your way to make them not end marrying each other.

* In Koei's renderizations of the Sengoku Era of Japan (''[[Samurai Warriors]]'', ''[[Kassen]]'', etc), Hideyoshi Toyotomi is constantly courting Oda Oichi, a girl 11 years younger than he is. She always rejects him and even calls him a persistantly annoying monkey in the ''[[Samurai Warriors]]'' series. She later marries the young pretty boy lord Nagamasa Azai and has a daughter who is later known as Lady Yodo. After Nagamasa is killed in a battle against Oichi's brother Nobunaga, Hideyoshi helps raise the young Yodo and she eventually becomes his concubine, producing a son name Toyotomi Hideyori. Hideyoshi is more than 30 years older than Yodo. Yeah... couldn't get the girl so went for brain-washing the daughter huh? Nice!

* Adult male baboons sometimes abduct subadult females from their mothers and raise them apart from the troop, as a safer alternative to fighting over potential mates. The male grooms and guards his captive like a protective father while he [[JailThe BaitJailbait Wait|awaits her reproductive maturity]].

* Chinese man Deng Jianguo [https://web.archive.org/web/20121201023132/http://www.chinawhisper.com/deng-jianguo-marries-his-goddaughter-huang-ziqi-what-is-the-ethics married] his goddaughter Huang Ziqi. The writer of the article asks "What is the ethics?"