History Main / BestHerToBedHer

* The idea for RedSonja herself was taken from Aoife of [[CelticMythology Irish mythology]] via a WilliamButlerYeats play, though as noted there are examples considerably older with this.

*** Interestingly enough, in a ''WhatIf?'' story where {{Wolverine}} [[WolverinePublicity became lost in time and wound up in Hyboria]] at the same time this story took place, Wolverine was able to beat Sonja in battle and went on to become King of Aquilonia instead of Conan, with Sonja as his queen.

* In ''[[NeToGe Ne.To.Ge]]'', Yamaji says she'll marry Imamichi if he can best her even one time in the MMORPG they play. Since he's a developer for the game (and because this is a {{Hentai}}) he wins by programming in tentacles.

->''"So, the only man that can have you is one who's already tried to kill you. That's logic."''

* [[MoeAnthropomorphism Monaco]] of AxisPowersHetalia demands that [[LatinLover Serborga]] beat her in a game of {{Poker}} if he wants to take her on a date. Although it's hinted that [[TheGambler she may have simply wanted to play a game with someone.]]

Compare AllAmazonsWantHercules. See also SlapSlapKiss. See also SexFaceTurn and HighHeelFaceTurn. See also RedSonja (the character's page). Contrast LoveAtFirstPunch, which lacks the explict requirement either by the character themselves or their society.

* The ''former'' TropeNamer here is RedSonja, originally(-ish) from the ''ConanTheBarbarian'' comics (and later a movie starring Brigitte Nielsen). Red Sonja lived with her family in a humble house in the Western Hyrkanian steppes (modern Ukraine/Russia). When she had just turned 17 years old, a group of mercenaries killed her family and burned down their house. Sonja survived but she had been brutally raped by the leader of the group, leaving her in shame. Answering her cry for revenge, the red goddess Scathach appeared to her, and instilled in her incredible skill in the handling of swords and other weapons on the condition that she would never lie with a man unless he defeated her in fair combat.

* Deconstructed in RecordOfLodossWar. Shiris was bested by Parn in the first episode of the TV series, and after that, she was quite adamant that she was in love with him; however, her partner Orson pointed out that she was really resentful of Parn beating her and desperately wanted to replace that resentment with another emotion, namely "love", in order to regain her lost pride. [[ArmorPiercingslap She was so angry by Orson's remarks that she hit him.]]

* The first ''{{Discworld}}'' game has a Red Sonja {{Expy}}, who had the standard oath regarding laying with a man who could defeat her.

* In ''AGameOfThrones'', Jaime Lannister guesses that boys had tried to force themselves onto the gigantic Brienne of Tarth and suspects that she secretly wanted to find a man who could overpower her. She declines to confirm this, saying only that no one ever could.

* Somewhat for Hinagiku of ''{{Hayate the Combat Butler}}''. Hayate has 'conquered' her, in that he's taught her how to defeat her fears (or at least the knowledge how to), but when admitting it to Ayumu, she still wants Hayate to be the one to start the romance.

* Previous stage decoration [[AzumangaDaioh Tardboy]] and his "sub" [[{{Yotsubato}} Torako]] from ''{{Yukari is Free}}'' might be considered of this type.

Compare AllAmazonsWantHercules. See also SlapSlapKiss. See also SexFaceTurn and HighHeelFaceTurn. See also RedSonja (the character's page) Contrast LoveAtFirstPunch, which lacks the explict requirement either by the character themselves or their society.

* [[JoanOfArc Jeanne]], of ''WorldHeroes'' seems to be of this type, as her endings usually have her lamenting her victories as a still-single woman.

* In Ne.To.Ge, Yamaji says she'll marry Imamichi if he can best her even one time in the MMORPG they play. Since he's a developer for the game (and because this is a {{Hentai}}) he wins by programming in tentacles.

A woman that can/will only fall in love with a man that can "conquer" her. This can be either someone who bests her in combat (this obviously only applies to warrior women), or a man who takes charge and shows her that he is the one who is making decisions. Can cross over into RapeIsLove if she's not consciously aware that this is how she feels. Remember, there ''must'' be some rule or custom for this trope to apply. [[LoveAtFirstPunch Falling in love with your opponent after he defeats/stands up to you]] is another trope.

** [[FrankMiller Frank Miller's]] ''TheDarkKnightStrikesAgain'' had Wonder Woman imply that she hooked up with Superman, [[RapeIsLove after he threw her on the ground and made her his own.]] Miller takes it up a notch in ''AllStarBatmanAndRobin'' with Superman knocking Wonder Woman on to the ground, Wonder Woman calling him a bastard, and then the two start making out.

* A less extreme version of this trope can be found in ''{{Bakuman}}'', where Iwase, the smartest girl in school, believes that she and Takagi are now a couple when he gets better grades than her. Too bad he thinks she was just making a friendly competition out of it.

* Gender-reversed in ''FullmetalAlchemist'' when Barry the Chopper falls for Riza Hawkeye after she calmly kicks his ass.
* In ''OnePiece'' we have a variation with Boa Hancock, one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea. Due to her extreme beauty, everyone falls for her, but she doesn't really fall for anyone at all...until [[ChasteHero a certain rubber pirate with a straw hat]] shows up. [[HilarityEnsues Let the fun begin.]]
** And before Hancock, there was Alvida, who became smitten with Luffy due to the fact that he was the first man to beat her in a fight.
* In ''SaintSeiya'', female saints have to wear a mask as a symbol that they've renounced their femininity. Traditionally, if a man ever sees their face without a mask, their choices are to either kill the man, or fall in love with him. This was evidenced in-story by Ophiuchus Shaina, who was seen without her mask by Pegasus Seiya, early on in the series. At first she tries to kill him out of humiliation... but eventually she falls in love with him, to the point where she risks her life for him several times.
* Deconstructed (or something) in the ''BambooBlade'' manga: Ura's father was going to confess his love to Tsubaki (Tamaki's mother) once he beat her at kendo, but he [[CantCatchUp Couldn't Catch Up]], never managed to win, and therefore never confessed his love.

* Possibly [[spoiler:Grell Sutcliff]] from ''{{Kuroshitsuji}}''. The men she falls the hardest for are the men who have beaten her in a fight. Incidentally, guess what her favorite color is?

* The TropeNamer here is RedSonja, originally(-ish) from the ''ConanTheBarbarian'' comics (and later a movie starring Brigitte Nielsen). Red Sonja lived with her family in a humble house in the Western Hyrkanian steppes (modern Ukraine/Russia). When she had just turned 17 years old, a group of mercenaries killed her family and burned down their house. Sonja survived but she had been brutally raped by the leader of the group, leaving her in shame. Answering her cry for revenge, the red goddess Scathach appeared to her, and instilled in her incredible skill in the handling of swords and other weapons on the condition that she would never lie with a man unless he defeated her in fair combat.

* ''TheQuietMan'': Mary Kate refuses to consummate her marriage to Sean until he literally drags her off a train and makes her walk five miles home.
* In the {{Wuxia}} take on ''TheKalevala'', ''JadeWarrior'', Pin Yu doesn't even consider Sentai's advances until he easily turns away her attacks. Only afterwards (with a bit of soul-searching) does she return his love. Also a subversion, [[spoiler:Sentai's companion Cho turns out to be her long-lost lover, and she returns to him with only a token display of kung-fu]].
* Gender inversion in the 2009 ''Film/SherlockHolmes'' movie with Holmes and Irene Adler. Apparently she's the only woman who's ever been able to outsmart him. Twice.

* There is a PGWodehouse short golf story parodying this, where a timid young man falls for a brash, strong willed female explorer who has never married because she wants the type of man who'll drag women around by their hair. He can't bring himself to act like that and gives up all hope of winning her and focuses on golf. When he's in some tournament she stops on the fairway to tie her shoe and he strikes her with the ball. This causes him to tie rather than win and when he find out it was her and not a sheep (his glasses were missing) he throws his putter in a fit of anger. It hits her on the shin quite by chance and as she rushes to kill him he rushes forward to apologize and winds up biffing her in the eye on accident. She's now convinced that they can't both have been coincidences and falls into his arms. He has the sense not to correct her and she ends up his doting and submissive wife.
* AynRand is well known for this trope, as it falls in line with her [[AuthorAppeal personal fetishes]]. Rand liked strong, take-charge men and bodice-ripping, ravishment-type sex. Her works are sometimes accused of containing RapeIsLove, though it is a debatable matter.
** Dagny Taggart from ''AtlasShrugged'' is a modernized version of this.
** Dominique from ''The Fountainhead''.
** Parodied in ''The {{Illuminatus}}! Trilogy'''s Rand parody ''Telemachus Sneezed''.
** Rand also wrote an essay arguing that no rational woman would ever want to be president because "the essence of femininity is hero worship — the desire to look up to man." A woman president, being the supreme authority of the land, would have no superior man to admire.
* Gender-swapped in the ''StarWars'' ExpandedUniverse, maybe: One character notes that the only person AcePilot Jag Fel would ever have a relationship with would be one who could out-fly him. [[WillTheyOrWontThey The jury's still out]] on whether he'll ever, ''ever'' get with the girl who did, much as he might want to.
** Given that they're currently engaged, and a comic book series set a century later strongly implies that he founded a new Imperial dynasty with her, it seems that the jury has delivered its verdict.
* The {{Dragaera}} book ''Five Hundred Years After'' mentions a gender inversion (which makes sense since most female Dragaeran characters are Action Girls). Rollondar e'Drien, who was the Warlord (commander of all military forces) fell in love with his wife after she defeated him in combat. It's noted that he receives a lot of ribbing in the barracks because of this.
* Somewhat implied with Malta Vestrit in RobinHobb's ''Literature/LiveshipTraders'' cycle, with her subconscious view of herself and Reyn showing an ancient kidnapping marriage.
** And explicitly stated with her aunt Althea, who apparently could never fall in love with a man who asks permission before kissing her.
* The plot of ''TheSheik'' by Edith Maude Hull is all about this trope. A sheik "tames" a woman who doesn't believe in marriage by very questionable means. There's also a movie adaptation which is apparently considered rather romantic.
** The movie is notable in that the eponymous Sheik [[spoiler:never actually rapes Diana, unlike the one in the book. As a result he comes off rather more sympathetic, even if he's still a {{Jerkass}} for kidnapping her in the first place]].
* Played straight in Robert E. Howard's ConanTheBarbarian story ''Queen of the Black Coast''. The pirate princess Belit becomes Conan's lover after witnessing him singlehandedly slay hordes of her crew.
* Used, averted, inverted, and subverted with virtually every romance novel out there, from the old-fashioned bodice rippers to the modern-day Harlequin's--the hero or heroine always needs the later to either tame their wild ways, or in an inversion, to UNLEASH the "hidden passions within."

* This trope is subverted in AgathaChristie's ''Appointment with Death'', in which the protagonist Sarah has broken off her engagement with her strong-willed fiancé :
--> Sarah admired strength, and she thought she had wanted to be mastered. But once she met a man capable of taming her, she didn't like it at all. A high-spirited woman secretly wants a man that needs looking after.
** She ends up with a rather hen-pecked momma's boy, and with Sarah wearing the pants in the relationship, the two are perfectly happy together.
* ''{{Gor}}'' infamously applies this idea to ''all'' women. In the first book Tarl doesn't rape the woman he kidnaps; at first she is [[ArentYouGoingToRavishMe offended]], then she decides he isn't a real man and nearly manages to kill him. Once she does get enslaved she's totally into him after some token complaints.

* Played with in RogerZelazny's ''Creatures of Light and Darkness'': Megra insists on fighting the hero--because she has genetic SuperStrength, and wants to make sure she doesn't break him accidentally.
* Another male version of this is Peaceable Drummond Sherwood from ''TheSherwoodRing.'' His response to a woman who manages to outsmart him (something he's never seen before) is to propose to her. Before passing out from the drug she just convinced him to drink.
* The ancient chinese tale ''Hua Guan Suo Zhuan'' speaks of a Bao Sanniang, a young girl who was both immensely beautiful, and immensely strong. With countless suitors, she declared taht she'd only marry the one who could beat her in a duel, and proceeded to beat up every last man who came for her hand. Eventually, Guan Suo - third son of the incomparable Guan [[RedBaron 'The God Of War']] Yu - heard of this, and went to challenge her. He beat her, and she instantly fell in love with him. (By all accounts, he was quite the {{Bishonen}}, and known to wear flowers in his hair even upon the battlefield, so that probably helped too...) From then on, she followed him everywhere, and even fought alongside him in his remaining campaigns.

* ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' dabbled in this trope with its eponymous heroine. Buffy's three major romantic interests in the series - Angel, Riley and Spike - were all hardcore superhuman fighters, and two of them actively tried to kill her at least once. Whilst each of these characters had many other facets to them, its notable that the otherwise-progressive series ''never'' considered pairing Buffy with someone who was perfectly comfortable supporting her.
** Spike was a LUST interest not a romantic interest.
** Only originally - later episodes saw the two of them develop a genuine, meaningful friendship that seemed more important to them than romance. Many of the things Spike did after realising he was attracted to Buffy ''were'' more selfless than lustful anyway (eg: willing to die being tortured by Glory rather than reveal that [[spoiler: Buffy's sister was the MacGuffinGirl the BigBad was seeking]], being protective of Buffy's family, [[spoiler: getting his soul back for her]]) ... also played with in that he disliked his feelings for her at first, then succumbed to the lustful aspects, and ''then'' proved more meaningful interesting in her ... Even then, he rarely came close to beating her.
** Subverted, however, in that Buffy's boyfriends never defeated her. Spike came the closest in their first clash, when he nearly bashed her brains out and only failed because [[spoiler:[[MamaBear Buffy's mother hit him with a fire axe]]]]. By the time they got romantically involved, however, he was suffering from an advanced case of BadassDecay. Angel gave her a run for her money on several occasions but always lost in the end. Riley's occasional sparring matches with Buffy made it very clear that Riley, for all his fancy SuperSoldier augmentations, was nowhere ''close'' to her level.
*** Once the SuperSoldier program shut down and Riley began to lose those augmentations, though, it was also very clear that he was terrified that this trope would come into effect and Buffy would lose interest in him.

[[folder:Music]]
* The title character in Marian Call's {{Firefly}}-inspired ballad "Vera Flew The Coop."
--> "The man who shot her through was the only man she could admire...and as she died she said 'I love you,' and Vera always told the truth."
[[/folder]]

* Juhani from''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' can only be painstakingly romanced after a female PC wins a vicious fight to the death against her.

* In ''{{Policenauts}}'', if you're able to beat Meryl's high score on the shooting range, she'll let you [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVMtdboa3bs grope her boobs]]. Kind of subverted in that the person she eventually reveals real interest in is her friend Dave, who could never outshoot her. Plus, her breasts make an [[FanDisservice elephant trumpet sound effect]] when grabbed.

* Male example: Brock Samson from ''TheVentureBrothers'' fell in love with Molotov Cocktease when, the first time they met, she tied him to the bed and set the building on fire.
* Queen Hippsodeth in the Disney/{{Aladdin}} series, with the unexpected result that she falls in love with ''[[CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass the Sultan of Agrabah]]'' after he defeats her for kidnapping Jasmine.

Always a HotAmazon. Compare AllAmazonsWantHercules. See also SlapSlapKiss. See also SexFaceTurn and HighHeelFaceTurn. See also RedSonja (the character's page) Contrast LoveAtFirstPunch, which lacks the explict requirement either by the character themselves or their society.

* According to [[UnreliableNarrator Marco Polo]], Aiyaruk, the daughter of a nephew of Kublai Khan, said that she'd only marry a man who could defeat her in a wrestling match. She never did find a husband. Demanding that every suitor bring her one hundred horses that would be forfeit if he lost, Aiyaruk came to own ten thousand steeds. Eventually, a handsome and especially strong prince came and offered a thousand horses instead of a hundred, to show his confidence. Aiyaruk's parents begged her to let him win, but she refused. In the Hollywood version, he'd probably have been the one to get the girl -- but according to Polo's account, after an especially long and difficult match, she was able to defeat ''him'', too. Aiyaruk never did find her match, and instead became a [[LadyOfWar skilled warrior]] (which was not unheard of amongst Mongolian women, regardless of the accuracy of Polo's specific account).

* Played straight in The ''{{Literature/Nibelungenlied}}'', a 12th-13th century example. The Icelandic queen Brunhilde declared that she would only marry the man who could defeat her in three contests of strength, one of them direct combat with her. Only one man alive was capable of this, the protagonist Siegfried; however, Siegfried had his eye on Kriemhild, sister of King Gunther, and so he agreed to aid Gunther using his incredible strength and magical artifacts, one of which let him become invisible so he could create the illusion that Gunther won the contests while Siegfried did the hard work.

* Britomart (an {{expy}} of Bradamante) in Edmund Spenser's poem ''TheFaerieQueene'' is another example, with pretty much the same vow as Red Sonja's if for completely different reasons. She is an allegorical figure of the virgin Knight of Chastity.

** The movie is notable in that the titular Sheik [[spoiler:never actually rapes Diana, unlike the one in the book. As a result he comes off rather more sympathetic, even if he's still a {{Jerkass}} for kidnapping her in the first place]].

* Implied with Bellatrix from ''Literature/HarryPotter'', who seems to have/want a relationship with Voldemort out of something more than FantasticRacism or fear.

** Rand also wrote an essay arguing that no rational woman would ever want to be president because "the essence of femininity is hero worship — the desire to look up to man." A woman president, being the supreme authority of the land, would have no superior man to admire.

* Konami's dating sim ''VideoGame/MitsumeteKnight'' has a variation of this trope. When you first meet the tough-as-nails [[OreOnna Gene Petromolla]] as [[DrivesLikeCrazy she has nearly ran over you with her stagecoach]] and yells at you for being on the way, choose to violently retort back and [[WhatTheHellHero call her on her driving]], and she'll be so impressed by your guts she'll befriend you instantly (and eventually fall in love with you if you target her).