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6[[quoteright:300:[[WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndTheFrog https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/potf_rr.png]]]]
7
8->''"To what a bad choice is many a worthy woman betrayed, by that false and inconsiderate notion, that a reformed rake makes the best husband!"''
9-->-- '''Samuel Richardson'''
10
11"Reformed rakes make the best husbands," was a StockPhrase in RegencyEngland, commonly found in {{period|piece}} romances.
12
13A Reformed Rake is what happens when the heroine of a romance story wants to [[AllGirlsWantBadBoys eat her cake]] and [[SingleWomanSeeksGoodMan matrimonially have it too]]. She ends up with a former womanizer with a penchant for criminal activity who doesn't just accept monogamy but thrives in it. Rakes--[[TheCasanova men famous for cutting a swathe through the wives and mistresses of the town]]--not only know how to please a lady and protect her from harm, but they are only waiting for that one special woman who will cause them to reform and turn into the perfect husband and {{family man}}. The converse is that any man [[VirginShaming who didn't sleep around as a bachelor]] is [[LousyLoversAreLosers bad in bed]] and will be a boring wimp as a husband.
14
15An UndeadHorseTrope, it has been mocked and deconstructed since the 1700s and 1800s, is still mocked and deconstructed today, but the played straight version has never fallen out of favor either.
16
17Sub-trope to ICanChangeMyBeloved and NotLikeOtherGirls, it's actually often the result of the combination of these two tropes. A very common RelationshipSue plotline.
18
19Compare to AllGirlsWantBadBoys, but here the trope is not just that the bad boy is attractive, but that [[LoveRedeems the heroine's love fixes his worst traits]], so you can have both that trope and SingleWomanSeeksGoodMan simultaneously. Also compare LadykillerInLove, a more realistic take on this issue, and FemaleAngelMaleDemon for a metaphor of this trope when the two aforementioned characters are in love.
20
21----
22!!Examples:
23
24[[foldercontrol]]
25
26[[folder:FanWorks]]
27* In ''Fanfic/TheBerserkersBride'', Dagur is ''so'' devoted to his wife that she is the only person he actually listens to, her influence having prevented various acts of murder, violence, and war.
28[[/folder]]
29
30[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
31* Naveen from ''WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndTheFrog'' is a rich prince who claims to have dated thousands of women (and is indeed seen flirting with three in his introductory scene). One RoadTripRomance culminating in marriage with Tiana later, he's a loving husband who helps her start her new restaurant.
32* Tramp from ''WesternAnimation/LadyAndTheTramp''. Falling in love, being adopted into a family, and becoming a father will do that to a dog.
33[[/folder]]
34
35[[folder:Films -- Live Action]]
36* ''Film/CrazyStupidLove'': Dating Hannah causes Jacob to grow from a cad who sleeps with a different woman every night to a devoted partner.
37[[/folder]]
38
39[[folder:Literature]]
40* It all started [[OlderThanRadio in 1740]] with ''Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded'' where the eponymous character overcomes Mr. B's rakishness with her IncorruptiblePurePureness. Wildly popular to the point where it alarmed the author, Samuel Richardson: "To what a bad choice is many a worthy woman betrayed, by that false and inconsiderate notion, That a reformed rake makes the best husband!" It also annoyed Henry Fielding, another author of the time, who wrote ''Shamela'' as a rather obvious TakeThat to the first book. Challenging this dubious trope is not a modern idea.
41* Seth from ''Literature/WickedLovely''. He has piercings, lives in a train, and has a reputation for getting around... Yet he truly loves Aislinn to the point of [[spoiler:sacrificing his mortality to be with her for eternity]].
42* There's a romance novel titled ''Stranger In My Arms'' that actually {{deconstruct|ion}}s this trope: The heroine's husband has been presumed dead for years, and she isn't too sad about it because he was unfaithful to her and never seemed to enjoy having sex with her. Then, out of the blue, he comes BackFromTheDead, says that he's a changed man, and proceeds to be passionate and devoted to her in a way he never was before. The heroine is pleasantly surprised, but can't shake off the feeling that rakes don't reform ''that'' thoroughly, and gets uneasy when her friend uses her husband's changed behavior to justify [[LoveMartyr her staying with her own physically abusive husband in the hope that he'll change eventually]]. It turns out that [[spoiler:the heroine's husband ''did'' die all these years ago, and her current "husband" is actually her husband's half-brother who [[LoveBeforeFirstSight learned about her through diaries her husband left behind]] and decided to [[DeadPersonImpersonation use his impersonation abilities to be the loving husband she never had]]]].
43* In ''Literature/YouthInSexualEcstasy'', the protagonist after being an [[TheCasanova expert womanizer]], ends up settling down with a more prudish and conservative girl. It is stated that his past sexual experiences still do some harm to the sex with his wife, however, despite this with ThePowerOfLove they are able to overcome them and become HappilyMarried.
44* Deconstructed in ''Literature/ADangerousCompromise'' by Shannon Donnelly, in which the heroine thoroughly believes this trope, and her (decidedly not a rake) love interest decides to pose as a reformed rake to win her over while battling for her affections with an actual rake who has absolutely no intentions of reforming.
45* Howl of ''Literature/HowlsMovingCastle'', sort of. His heart was [[spoiler:literally missing]] and Sophie had to reform him by [[spoiler:finding it]]. He's still a snarky, cowardly, overdramatic peacock of a wizard, he just doesn't chase every girl in Ingary anymore.
46* Creator/JaneAusten, who inspired a lot of Regency Romance though she didn't exactly write it, liked to {{Deconstruct|ion}} the idea that people could reform their spouses, and used the ReformedRake variant specifically in ''Literature/MansfieldPark''. Fanny Price's AbhorrentAdmirer Henry Crawford boasts that he will be the first person to ever treat her as well as she deserves, and the narrator agrees in the epilogue that he would have been successful...if he'd only had enough principle to stop [[IntentionalHeartbreaker trifling with other women's feelings to gratify his vanity]]. Instead, he is forced to acknowledge that Fanny's harsh evaluation of his character -- that he lacks 'constancy' -- was completely accurate.
47* Creator/GeorgetteHeyer, the [[TropeCodifier Genre Codifier]] of the Regency Romance, had a fondness for [[TheJerkIndex characters of questionable character]]. The anti-heroes of ''These Old Shades'', ''Devil's Cub'', ''Frederica'', and ''Black Sheep'', among others, are rakes and libertines (and jerks) until they meet their matches, while ''Cotillion'' and ''Venetia'' are subversions.
48* Marcus Flutie from the ''Literature/JessicaDarling'' series is this, which Jessica notes but [[{{Deconstruction}} isn't too happy about]] -- being the first girl who he was willing to change for puts altogether too much pressure on her for her taste, and his extensive sexual history partly skeeves her out, partly makes her feel insecure about her own inexperience.
49* ''Literature/TalesOfTheFiveHundredKingdoms'': A story in the universe, as said in "Beauty and the Werewolf": "The Rake's Reward.":
50--> The poor misunderstood rakehell… the man who was a rogue because he was deep inside he was still a lonely, neglected little boy… the good girl who would redeem him with her love and help him become the gentle man he was meant to be…\
51…\
52Except, […] that was seldom how the scenario played out, once the rake got what he wanted. The habits of a lifetime are very hard to break, and The Tradition was perfectly happy to perpetuate those habits, so that the ''The Rake's Reward'' generally turned into ''[[Theatre/TheMusicMan The Sadder but Wider Girl]]''.
53* ''Literature/ParkerPyneInvestigates'': Pyne recommends that one milquetoast man play this role towards his wife as the only way he'll be interesting to her (he was being blackmailed by a HoneyTrap like a chump and stole her jewels to pay them off, Pyne tells him to confess the whole story minus the chump part).
54* A disturbingly large number of women in Creator/AgathaChristie novels have this opinion of the otherwise no-good man in their lives (and sometimes said man corrupts ''them'' into crime). The usual response is to leave them to their delusions.
55* A number of Creator/ArthurConanDoyle's short stories (and even some Literature/SherlockHolmes stories) feature this kind of character (in one case, the wife's positive influence was so great that her widower [[spoiler:listens to her exhortations not to fall back into drink on gramophone and says it's the only thing keeping him going]]).
56[[/folder]]
57
58[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
59* ''Series/{{Bridgerton}}'':
60** Simon is a rake by reputation. His potential for this trope is lampshaded in the very first episode. It's shown to be true as he becomes taken with Daphne through their fake courtship.
61--->'''Anthony:''' Even if he were in want of a wife, you would most certainly not have the Duke anywhere near Daphne.\
62'''Violet:''' I fully subscribe to the belief that reformed rakes make the very best of husbands.
63** Anthony is also something of a rake. His mistress Siena is an open secret. In season 2, he interviews nearly every eligible young woman in town while in search of a wife, but once he sets his eyes on Kate, there's only her.
64* One episode of ''Series/{{Castle|2009}}'', "[[spoiler:Food To Die For]]", has a victim that was trying to ''become'' this. [[spoiler:After he got his foster brother's girlfriend pregnant, she rejected him, telling him that she couldn't rely on a man that slept around. However, he was honestly in love with her, to the point where he planned to quit his promising career as a chef and spent two weeks going to a cafe near her job, trying to get up the nerve to propose to her. Unfortunately, the foster brother found out and killed him]].
65** The entire series is this. Castle starts off as a wealthy playboy man child who has been married and divorced twice. His initial interest in Detective Beckett is solely because of her looks and the fact that their work together helps him get over a case of writers block. By season 5 [[spoiler: he has matured significantly and proposed to her and by the series finale, it’s revealed they are a happily married couple and family.]]
66* According to WordOfGod, Patrick Maitland from ''Series/{{Coupling}}''. The final episode of the series showed him awkwardly proposing to his girlfriend Sally, but the scene ended with a stunned Sally babbling an incoherent string of F-Bombs. Some time later, creator Creator/StevenMoffat was asked what happened to the characters after the end of the show on a forum. To quote him:
67-->'''Creator/StevenMoffat:''' Sally said yes to Patrick, they got married and are very happy... especially as Sally beat Susan to the altar, and finally did something first. Patrick is now a completely devoted husband, who lives in total denial that he was anything other than an upstanding member of the community. Or possibly he's actually forgotten. He doesn't like remembering things because it's a bit like thinking.
68[[/folder]]
69
70[[folder:Music]]
71* Subverted in "The Rake's Song" by Music/TheDecemberists. The Rake gets married, is ''apparently'' reformed, "no more a rake and no more a bachelor"... but then he realizes that sex leads to babies and discovers that the married life really isn't for him. Cue [[OffingTheOffspring infanticide]]!
72* In the ''Reincarnation'' version of "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-sjAqB-twc Deep Breath, Deep Breath]]" (a remix of a song from ''VideoGame/Persona3'' that has no resemblance to the original other than the chorus' lyrics), Lotus Juice raps about how he used to be a pimp who'd sleep with multiple women and who's "done things that I can't even say", until he met a woman he truly falls in love with, which made him clean up his act, settle down, and is now planning on starting a family with her.
73[[/folder]]
74
75[[folder:Theatre]]
76* ''Love's Last Shift'' by Creator/ColleyCibber has something of an {{Unbuilt|Trope}} instance of the trope, appearing in 1696, a time when bawdy RestorationComedy was changing into something more moralistic. Its central character is a rake who remains completely unreformed despite being married, thus being a lousy husband. His resourceful wife tricks him into reform, making him good. Notably, the trope was then promptly {{Deconstructed|Trope}} before it had fully formed by rival playwright John Vanbrugh, whose ''The Relapse'' (also from 1696) borrows the characters of the previous play and shows the rake relapsing, to his wife’s distress. Funnily enough, ''The Relapse'' has remained much more popular and successful than ''Love's Last Shift''.
77[[/folder]]
78
79[[folder:Web Original]]
80* Rod of ''Webcomic/OutThere'' [[http://outthere.keenspot.com/d/20090326.html offers this.]]
81** And Wally ''does'' it...[[http://outthere.keenspot.com/d/20070427.html after being married a while.]]
82[[/folder]]
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