Altar Diplomacy / Literature

• Angel in the Whirlwind: Among Commonwealth nobles, the first few children can expect to be married off for political reasons (the "heir and a spare" phrase is used), but as the youngest of ten children of Duke Lucas Falcone, protagonist Captain Kat Falcone is essentially free to date whomever and do whatever she likes (respectively Major Pat Davidson and join the Navy).
• In Apparatus Infernum, this is the explanation for how some humans have magical abilities. A long time before the main story, war between humans and the magical Ferishers ended in a treaty that saw mass intermarriage between the ruling families of each side. Over the years, the magical heritage so gained has gradually filtered into the general population, so it's not uncommon for people with no apparent connection to the nobility to have a bit of Ferisher ancestry (and therefore a bit of magic). One of the protagonists, Mikani, is such a person.
• In The Arts of Dark and Light, young noblewoman Severa ends up in an arranged marriage to shore up her family's relations with another noble house as a civil war draws near. Fortunately, it turns out that her husband is not that much older than herself, and they get along rather well once they get to know each other.
• The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga: Subverted in Ice Forged: the concept is mentioned and it's a Medieval European Fantasy setting where you'd expect this, but the network of alliances between the Ascendant Kingdoms were apparently created with pure ambassadorial diplomacy and actually defy the familial connections. King Merrill of Donderath is married to a princess of Meroven but is at war with her father King Edgar, while Merrill's ally the King of Tarrant married his daughter to the King of Vellanaj, who is allied to Meroven and using his navy to blockade Donderath. Lesser nobles seem to have a mix of both political or economic Arranged Marriages and love matches.
• The Beast Player: Shunan wants to unite the two conflicting territories of Lyoza through his marriage to Princess Seimiya. Although they're attracted to each other, she and many other people find his idea outrageous because the Aluhan is meant to accept the defilement of killing for the Yojeh. She ultimately accepts his proposal for the good of the kingdom.
• Garion and Ce'Nedra in The Belgariad are betrothed by a five-hundred-year-old treaty between their countries, not to mention that prophecy thing. True to the trope, they engage in quite a bit of Slap-Slap-Kiss, but also played with in that neither knew about the arrangement^note Ce'Nedra knew she had to be presented as the bride of the Rivan King on her sixteenth birthday, but not that said King would actually show up or that Garion was he. Garion, for his part, knew absolutely nothing, which was quite intentional. until after they'd gotten acquainted and fallen in love anyway. This also happens for some background characters like Barak and his wife, but that's what you get when most of the characters belong to the aristocratic class in a medieval fantasy book.
• In the Belisarius Series:
  • The marriage of Photius and Tahmina, to cement an alliance between Rome and Persia.
  • The marriage of Eon and Rukaiya, to strengthen the political ties between Ethiopia and Arabia.
• In Birthright (2017), Taurau is in Vikaasthan, officially, to negotiate a trade agreement between Vikaasthan and Kainga-o-Whenua. Unofficially, it's implied that both he and Sabrina are being pushed together in the hopes they'll begin courting one another. There's no indication of an officially arranged marriage yet, but it's clear that neither Taurau nor Sabrina are against the notion.
• Blindfold: In a minor subplot, two neighboring landholders have recently gotten engaged and while the falling in love part came first, they are planning on a merger of their territories. One of the Big Bad's many plans involves making them suspicious of each other through acts of sabotage to ruin their romance and keep them from joining their holdings so they'll be weaker once his Evil Plan is at hand.
• In The Bridge Kingdom Archives the marriage of king Aren of Ithicana and princess Lara of Maridrina is part of the peace treaty between their two nations. At least that's what people are led to believe, since Lara's father, king Silas, has other plans.
• The villain family in A Brother's Price tries this in two stages. Legally, they're sisters-in-law to the princesses, whose late husband was brother to the villains and married the princesses to gain that connection for his family. Under their country's inheritance laws, if all the princesses were to die, without any having had a child to inherit the crown, the villains have claim to the thrones as heirs to their sisters-in-law. When the princesses find a new husband, the villains decide to kidnap and forcibly marry him, since his royal blood would strengthen his wives' claim to the thrones.
• Governor Dragna in Caraval is a wealthy rum merchant, but feels as though he doesn't get as much respect as other aristocrats because he rules over one of the Conquered Isles. He arranges for his daughter Scarlett to marry a count from one of the more well-known parts of the Meridian Empire to bring him more status.
• In The Curse of Chalion, Royesse (Princess) Iselle arranges her own marriage—for rather urgent political reasons—to the crown prince of a neighboring kingdom whom she's never seen, pausing briefly to collect the rumor that he is "well-favored" (which she cynically says people will say about any prince who isn't a perfect fright), before returning to more important practical considerations. When she finally meets him, they've practically already bonded over their shared love and admiration for the main character, Iselle's heroic secretary, and by the morning after the wedding, he observes that they look like a couple madly in love.
• The Daevabad Trilogy has an Arranged Marriage between Nahri and Muntadhir, the heirs of two rival houses, set up by Muntadhir's father in an attempt to unite politically volatile Daevabad. Both partners are in love with other people, neither has much choice in the matter, and it makes both of them fairly miserable. (Though as Muntadhir Really Gets Around, Nahri notes the sex is excellent.) At the end of the series, the two cheerfully burn their marriage contract.
• Deryni:
  • The last independent Prince of Meara negotiated a marriage between his eldest daughter and the Haldane king of Gwynedd, in hopes that his principality would be protected from rivals. Others among his nobility (including his wife) valued Meara's independence more than any hoped-for security, and decades of intermittent rebellion followed. Kelson attempted to solve this problem by "marrying Meara" with disastrous results; he later arranged two other marriages with descendants of the old Mearan royal line with better success.
  • Kelson is also said to have arranged a pair of marriages between members of his family and those of the Torenthi royal family. The Codex notes that Liam-Lajos and his sister marry a couple of Kelson's near relatives. This seems to be part of his long-term plan to resolve the long-standing conflict between Gwynedd and Torenth.
  • King Donal Haldane himself twice married princesses from neighboring kingdoms, and he arranged the marriage of Alyce de Corwyn with Kenneth Morgan. Kenneth was loyal to Donal and "a safe pair of hands" to protect the wealthy and strategically-placed Duchy of Corwyn. Alyce herself knew and understood the king would decide her choice of husband, especially after deaths in the ducal family line left her the only heir. That said, the marriage did become a love match.
• The Dresden Files: Around the end of Battle Ground, Mab decides that in light of the instability in the supernatural world following the Fomor invasion of Chicago, the Winter and White Courts will solidify their alliance by having Harry and Lara get married. She initially wants to do this immediately after making the announcement, but after everyone protests, she agrees to wait a year in order to give the couple in question time to mourn their losses and properly court.
• The YA historical dramatization The Edge On The Sword deals with Æthelflæd, the daughter of King Alfred the Great of Wessex, journeying to Mercia for an alliance marriage with King Aethelred at the age of fifteen. In the book, a Danish warlord who refused to lay down arms and convert to Christianity after Alfred's coalition defeated them tries to kill her to foil the match.
• The Fall of Númenor: Númenor's princess Ancalimë initially likes the shepherd boy Mámandil, but he botches it when she demurs from his proposal and he reveals that he's actually the son of a nobleman to make himself more suitable. She instead becomes angry that he's been lying to her, but she eventually marries him anyway so she can keep the throne away from her cousin (as, had she not had a heir, the throne would pass to her cousin, who she hated).
• In The Fire's Stone, Chandra and Darvish's marriage is arranged to ally their two countries and conveniently spirit Darvish away from his loving populace at home.
• In The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, the protagonist decides to marry Csethiro Ceredin because his father insulted her family by divorcing a relative of hers, and it is diplomatically desirable to make amends for that.
• The Guardian by Angus Wells goes five for five here: all the marriages existing or spoken of in the novel are at least partly political in nature.
  • Gailard, one of the trio of protagonists, is a Rebel Prince of a Highlander tribe who ran away to join Chaldor's army rather than marry Rytha, a princess of another clan. He didn't hate her, but he didn't love her either. His father retaliated by exiling him on pain of death, and Gailard's brother took Rytha in Unholy Matrimony instead (which had the same result politically).
  • King Andur of Chaldor is married to Ryadne, the daughter of the chief of the Dur, another Highlander clan. Their marriage appears to be partially a love match (at the least, Ryadne respects Andur), but the fact that it gained Chaldor the loyalty of the Dur isn't lost on anyone.
  • Talan Kedassian, the Evil Overlord of Danant, spends most of the book hunting Gailard and his ward Princess Ellyn of Chaldor (Andur and Ryadne's daughter) in hopes of either marrying her to legitimize his conquest of Chaldor, or killing her to end the royal line, a source of rebellion.
  • For her part, Ellyn falls in love with and marries Roark, the prince of yet another Highlander clan. It's mentioned in the epilogue that this more or less makes the Highlanders part of Chaldor for good and that they were always part of Ellyn's royal guard.
  • Meanwhile in a variant, Kerid, a Chaldorian riverboat captain, starts sleeping with the Mother of Hel's Town in order to gain her support for his campaign of piracy against Danant's shipping. They appear to have fallen in love by the end of the book.
• In Heralds Of Rhimn, the uneasy peace between Gadhi and Ullua was brokered this way; a previous Matrius married an Irongardhe noble, formally establishing a treaty between the two countries.
• Heralds of Valdemar:
  • Queen Selenay's first marriage is to Prince Karathanelan of Rethwellen, cementing Valdemar's longstanding alliance with its southern neighbor. Unfortunately, Thanel turns out to be The Evil Prince who shortly attempts to usurp the throne for himself and is killed by Selenay's bodyguards. Their daughter Elspeth grows up with her father's crimes hanging over her head. Later, however, Selenay falls in Love at First Sight with Prince Darenthallis of Rethwellen, Thanel's brother, so that works out.
  • Princess Elspeth herself is resigned to a political marriage as part of her duties as Heir... until she thinks about the neighboring kingdoms and realizes that all are either in stable alliances or are Valdemar's enemies, and none really have good candidates for her anyway. Her eventual love-match with Darkwind does help establish a new alliance with the Hawkbrothers, but only informally, as she abdicates as Heir to focus on combat magic, and the Hawkbrothers don't have a hereditary authority anyway.
  • Runs all the way through the Last Herald-Mage trilogy, where Valdemar's shaky situation requires alliance marriages with its neighbors. Queen Elspeth had several loveless marriages, and her son Randale had to stay officially single to keep a possible alliance open, though he was Lifebonded to Shavri and dearly wanted to marry her. Vanyel even fathered a child with Shavri once it was clear Randi was sterile, because no one would make an alliance with an impotent king. In the third book, Randi's heir eloped with his Lifebonded lover and caused a minor scandal. He had to explain that it was a rational choice: there weren't any good candidates for an alliance marriage at the time, nor would there be in the foreseeable future.
  • The reasons and political maneuvering behind the various forms of Arranged Marriage among the nobility are a theme of Closer to Home. Near the end of the book, two Feuding Families are ordered by the Crown to resolve their differences with a marriage of their heirs, only son to oldest daughter. When the son seduces the youngest daughter and dies in an attempt to murder everyone else, the survivors put aside their fighting and pledge to attempt to find other, better matches for marriage.
• In How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, two of King Souma's marriages (Liscia and Roroa) were for explicitly political purposes. The other three, while not politically motivated, incidentally serve good political purposes.
• In That Irresistible Poison by Alessandra Hazard, Seyn and Ksar will be married for political reasons.
• In the Island in the Sea of Time (Series), the Republic of Nantucket reluctantly allows Kathryn Hollard to marry King Kashtiliash of Babylonia and her brother Kyle to marry Princess Raupasha of Mitanni, in order to create ties between their republic and those two nations.
• The Kharkanas Trilogy: Although both Arranged Marriages and love marriages occur among the nobility of Kurald Galain, the entire plot of the trilogy basically hinges on the nobility's wish for one particular Arranged Marriage to happen, namely one between the reigning queen and living goddess known as Mother Dark and the commoner's war hero Vatha Urusander. The latter, however, just wants his peace and Mother Dark has other amorous ambitions. This riles the nobility up so badly they split into two factions (each centered around one of the unwilling spouses-to-be) and start a civil war, creating a situation where the marriage is not only desirable but necessary to bring back peace. To add insult to injury, all of this happens before the backdrop of a culture where it's perfectly normal for nobles to marry for love.
• In the Kushiel's Legacy series, Ysandre de la Courcel, then the Crown Princess of Terre d'Ange, was betrothed to the Cruarch of Alba as a teenager on political grounds, though it turned into a Perfectly Arranged Marriage when the two actually met. Notably, d'Angelines generally disapprove of this trope as a violation of Blessed Elua's commandment to "Love as thou wilt" (though they recognize its occasional necessity), and d'Angeline law requires the consent of those taking part in the marriage in order for a non-love match to go forward. (For context, this is a country that considers rape a form of heresy.)
• Level 1 Strongest Sage has the crown princess of Alheim, Leyfa, asked by her father to marry a very, very powerful individual to prevent war and bloodshed. She was resigned to this fate since she was old enough to walk and talk. Fortunately, her future husband turns out to be the sweet and sensitive Haruto, who is not only a classmate but treats her kindly like an equal. Which is a much better fate than she was initially expecting considering her home country's strained relations with a nearby human empire that isn't so well regarded.
• In Maiden Crown, Princess Sophie's betrothal and subsequent marriage to Valdemar are to consolidate his alliance with her half-brother, Knud, with whom he shares a joint kingship over Denmark. Knud is killed in an attack by his and Valdemar's mutual enemy, Svend Eriksen, almost immediately after Sophie's arrival in Denmark, which leaves Valdemar as the sole king.
• In Mermaid (2011), the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom have been at war on and off for decades. The Northern princess Margrethe plans to marry the Southern prince Christopher in order to unite the kingdoms and stop the fighting.
• Mob boss Mario Vella from Naked Came the Stranger married Donna Marie to cement the alliance between his organization and that of her father, Septimo Caggiano.
• In The Princess Bride, the ailing King and Queen of Florin want to marry Prince Humperdinck to the Princess of Guilder to forge an alliance between the two rival countries. Humperdinck breaks off the engagement when it turns out during a banquet that his fiancée is congenitally bald, and comments that he'd always planned to just conquer Guilder instead. He then arranges his own match with the beautiful commoner Buttercup to curry favor with the citizenry so that he can then frame Guilder for assassinating her to create a Pretext for War. (It's implied that murdering Buttercup isn't originally his intention — he wants to be married to the World's Most Beautiful Woman, which is what she is, and the offer of marriage is initially genuine. However, sometime during the three years she spends attending royalty school to become a princess, he conceives of the plot to frame Guilder.)
• The Queen of Ieflaria: Princess Esofi of Rhodia was betrothed to Prince Albion of Ieflaria since they were children, for securing the alliance between their two countries. However, after Albion suddenly dies, Esofi's betrothed to his sister Adale to keep the arrangement.
• The Queen's Thief
  • Eddis has a potential marriage to Sounis hanging over her head. The first book is about the magus (Sounis' smartest advisor) trying to obtain a sacred artifact that would force her into it and dragooning Gen, the protagonist, into the scheme. Even after Gen—actually her cousin, who got himself in the position to get dragooned on purpose—foils the plan, Eddis often has to reflect that she may have to anyway for the stability of the region.
  • This is how Gen plots to end the war between Eddis and and the Queen of Attolia: become King of Attolia. However, it's a subversion—he doesn't marry her to become king, he becomes king to marry her. Eddis privately tells Attolia that they could hammer out a treaty without the marriage if Attolia doesn't want it, but Attolia realizes that Eugenides is actually someone she could love back.
• Railhead: Enforced at a grand scale in the Network Empire: agreements between the Corporate Families are always sealed by marriage, a hold-over from the earliest days of expansion on the Network, when something more permanent than a contract was needed to secure cooperation on a centuries-long terraforming project. As such, the scions of the Families are destined to become bargaining chips as soon as they come of age.
• Occurs twice in the Realm of the Elderlings series by Robin Hobb; in both cases, a Farseer prince was engaged to a foreign princess to secure an alliance and the couple ended up falling in love. The second one ended quite well, the first one less so.
• Safehold, By Schism Rent Asunder:
  • King Cayleb of Charis marries Queen Sharleyan of Chisholm in what was originally a cold-blooded political move to unite their kingdoms. When they finally meet, it is Love at First Sight.
  • Prince Nahrmahn of Emerald and his wife Princess Ohlyvya were betrothed at a young age and eventually ended up falling in love, much to their mutual surprise. (And benefit, as the practically-minded Ohlyvya tempers some of Nahrmahn's... more volatile characteristics.)
  • Done deliberately with Irys and Hektor. They clearly like each other, but both are unwilling to make a move due to the circumstances. Sharleyan decides to deal with it by making their arranged marriage a condition of the peace treaty between Charis and Corisande.
  • Played with regarding Cayleb and Sharleyan's daughter, Alahnah. By the time she's of age to consider marriage, the Empire of Charis is well established and most of its member nations are already bound by marriages or oaths of fealty. As a result, she has a lot more freedom to choose who she marries and ultimately chooses Lywys Whytmyn, a Dohlaran and grandson of the Earl of Thirsk, though they initially need to keep their relationship a secret. The main reason for this secrecy is because their marriage will be inevitably result in closer ties between Dohlar and Charis, and that threatens to disrupt the already fragile alliance between Charis and Dohlar's traditional arch-rival, Siddarmark.
  • Like Alahnah, Daivyn Daikyn, Prince of Corisande, doesn't have any special need to marry for diplomacy's sake, as his sister is already married to Cayleb and Sharleyan's stepson. However, he ends up making such a match anyway when he enters into a Childhood Friend Romance with Francheska Chermyn, daughter of the Grand Duke of Zebediah. Zebediah as a nation hated Daivyn's father and, by association, Daivyn himself, so a proper courtship between the two eases a lot of ruffled feathers on the Zebediahan side.
• In the Saga Of The Borderlands, by Liliana Bodoc, the husihuilkes are a warrior people who live in the extreme south of the fertile lands and are divided into lineages that are often at war with each other. However, when the Sideresians invade the mainland, the tribal elders decide that the danger is too great to remain divided, and to ensure peace, several marriages are performed between men and women of rival lineages.
• In the backstory of Shadow of the Conqueror, Queen Quallandra tried this on Dayless the Conqueror, but didn't exactly get the result she wanted: he seduced her, changed his mind about going through with the marriage, and revealed the affair to damage her standing among her people before conquering her country.
• Sing the Four Quarters:
  • In the Backstory, then-Crown Prince Theron wanted to marry off his younger sister Princess Annice to the heir of neighboring Cemandia, but she managed to get their father King Maric to let her join the Magic Music bards on his deathbed instead. Theron reacted by ordering Annice to relinquish any claim to the succession and banning her on pain of death from having children. This is the source of their current estrangement. We learn later that Annice's gift for bardic Singing would have been fatal in Cemandia, which considers the kigh to be unholy.
  • One of Annice's sisters is in a Perfectly Arranged Marriage with a Shkoder duc. Their nuptials were intended to bind the duc's line closer to the royal family, but it ended up as a love match.
• This is the default expectation for marriages among the nobility in A Song of Ice and Fire, to the point where it's considered an oddity that King Aegon "Egg" Targaryen in the backstory allowed all of his children to marry for love (with both short-term and long-term consequences). Specific examples from the main story:
  • Catelyn Tully of Riverrun was betrothed to Brandon, the heir-apparent of House Stark. Brandon was executed by Mad King Aerys in the miscarriage of justice that caused the eruption of Robert's Rebellion, making the alliance all the more necessary, so Catelyn had to Settle for Sibling with Brandon's younger brother (and new Lord of Winterfell) Eddard, which luckily turned out to be a Perfectly Arranged Marriage.
  • At the same time, Catelyn's younger sister Lysa was married to Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon's foster father, Jon Arryn of the Vale. This was mutually very politically beneficial: Arryn was already elderly and had been married and widowed twice without producing living children and his heir had been his nephew Elbert, who was also executed by Aerys, so he badly needed a young and fertile wife to provide an heir; Lysa was known to be fertile, having already been pregnant with foster brother Petyr Baelish's bastard before being forced to abort the child, so the Tullys got to marry off a "soiled" daughter for whom it otherwise would have been difficult to arrange a match. Unfortunately, their marriage wound up less perfectly arranged.
  • Robert Baratheon, heir-apparent to Storm's End and House Baratheon, had been betrothed to Brandon and Eddard's sister Lyanna Stark so as to ally the Stormlands with the North, the Riverlands and the Vale. Lyanna died before the match could be consummated and left no other female Stark of a proper age for Robert to marry, but the alliance continued. This is because Robert was absolutely in love with Lyanna, even after her death, though it's unknown whether the feelings were reciprocated.
  • After the war that put him on the throne, now-King Robert Baratheon married Cersei Lannister, the daughter of a rich and powerful family, on the advice of his foster father Jon Arryn. The Lannisters were a late addition to the alliance that put Robert on the throne, and the hope was that this would cement their loyalty. The Lannisters, for their part, are only too willing to milk the match for political influence. The only person who is truly happy with this marriage is Cersei's father Tywin, and neither Cersei nor Robert has ever forgiven the other for not being someone else (Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, respectively.)
  • Much later, Robert attempts once again to formally ally Baratheon with Stark by formally betrothing his eldest "son" Joffrey to Eddard's eldest daughter Sansa, and informally implying that younger siblings Tommen "Baratheon" and Arya Stark and Myrcella "Baratheon" and Bran Stark might someday be betrothed as well. This is largely to sweeten his offer to name Eddard Stark his new Hand of the King following Jon Arryn's death and have him do the hard work of ruling the realm.
  • Across the Narrow Sea, the exiled Viserys Targaryen marries his sister Daenerys to Khal Drogo of the Dothraki in exchange for the use of Drogo's barbarian horde in retaking the Seven Kingdoms. His reward is meant to be assistance in securing a golden crown, but when his constant demands that Drogo hold up his end of the bargain and invade the Seven Kingdoms become threats to the lives of Daenerys and her unborn child, the Khal gives him a molten crown instead.
  • Daenerys tries again later with Hizdahr zo Loraq in Meereen. He fares better than his show counterpart in survival if not romance, but he's implied to be involved with the Sons of the Harpy and it isn't likely to end well for him.
  • In the early days of the War of the Five Kings, King Robert's younger brother Renly, Lord of Storm's End, marries Margaery Tyrell to secure the wealthy and powerful Tyrell family's support in pressing his claim to the throne. Margaery is only The Beard; it is an Open Secret that Renly is already quite literally in bed with the Tyrells in the person of Margaery's brother Loras. In fact, Renly had originally hoped to convince Robert to set Cersei aside and marry Margaery, only marrying her himself after Robert dies prematurely.
  • Renly's well-known proclivities mean that after his death, Margaery could be remarried to Joffrey and, later, Tommen "Baratheon" as part of the Tyrells' shift of allegiance to the Lannisters.
  • Around this same time, Myrcella "Baratheon" is engaged to Prince Trystane Martell of Dorne in order to keep Dorne allied with the crown. Although they are both still pre-pubescent, they appear to enjoy each other's company.
  • Subverted by Stannis Baratheon; it's never mentioned what the original political advantage of his marriage to Selyse Florent was, but during the War of the Five Kings it doesn't even get him the support of her entire House, many of whom stay loyal to their liege lords the Tyrells.
  • Stannis's first Hand of the King, Alester Florent, plots to betroth Stannis's daughter and heir Shireen Baratheon to her "cousin" Tommen in exchange for peace with the Lannisters. Stannis executes him for treason instead.
  • Stannis and his court are hoping to employ this method with the Wildlings/Free Folk, even though Jon Snow repeatedly tells them it won't work. The Westerosi lords regard Val as a 'princess' because she's the sister-in-law of the King-Beyond-the-Wall, but to the Free Folk it simply doesn't matter who your relatives are, so this doesn't afford Val any special status amongst them; while she's respected as a good fighter, none of her people will care about or follow whoever she marries — besides which, if Val is forced to marry someone she doesn't like, she'll probably kill him.
  • Walder Frey, lord of the Twins, a strategic river crossing, agrees to join King in the North Robb Stark's rebellion against the Iron Throne in exchange for betrothing Robb to a daughter or granddaughter (Frey has plenty) of Robb's choosing and Robb's sister Arya to his youngest son Elmar, among other concessions. The alliance is broken when Robb breaks his betrothal in order to Marry for Love, or honor as the case may be (he has a one-night stand with Jeyne Westerling and is unwilling to stain the girl's honor by setting her aside). It is renewed when Robb's bannerman and uncle Edmure Tully agrees to marry Frey's daughter Roslin ...except not really; the wedding is real but also a pretext to lure Robb and his followers to the Twins, where they are slaughtered; Edmure is being kept alive until such time as he and Roslin produce a son who will be heir to Riverrun.
  • Tyrion Lannister is arranged to marry Sansa Stark so that he will produce a Lannister heir who would have a claim to Winterfell. Tyrion, to his credit, sees that the pre-teen Sansa is not ready, and refuses to consummate the marriage.
  • Arianne Martell is afraid her father Prince Doran is trying to force her into this with someone old and abhorrent since he has yet to present her with a match she approves. He reveals only after she has plotted to rebel against his interests that he was giving her poor choices as a stalling tactic—he actually wanted to marry her to Viserys Targaryen and support the return of the old regime, and after Viserys's death he sent her brother Quentyn to Essos to attempt the same alliance with Daenerys instead. Unfortunately, that doesn't work out so well for them either.
  • The Boltons attempt this without even having the right person—they tell everyone the poor girl Ramsay is marrying is Arya Stark, when in fact it's Jeyne Poole (not to confused with Jeyne Westerling). By this point, everyone in Winterfell who would have known the difference is dead or brainwashed.
  • Dorne is the only kingdom (well, principality) in Westeros which was not subjugated by the Targaryens through military strength. Instead, King Daeron II gave his sister, Princess Daenerys Targaryen (not the present-day one), in marriage to Prince Maron Martell of Dorne, while he himself married Maron's sister, Princess Myriah, uniting the two polities.
  • In the distant past, the Targaryens used to have a sort of political marriage pact with the Velaryons, a fellow descendant of Valyrians in Westeros (but not dragonlords, although some were able to ride dragons because they had a Targaryen parent). After the Targaryens pissed off the Velaryons by rejecting Laenor Valeryon's candidacy to the Iron Throne (he was grandson of the firstborn son of then-King Jaehaerys I Targaryen, so technically he preceded all potential heirs born by his younger children), they appeased them by marrying him off to Rhaenyra, daughter of the chosen heir-turned-king Viserys I, even though Laenor was gay, while Rhaenyra loved her uncle Daemon more. They ostensibly conceived three sons, but it's rumored that they were actually fathered by Rhaenyra's paramour Ser Harwin Strong. Nevertheless, this enabled Rhaenyra to secure much-needed assistance from the Velaryons during the Dance of the Dragons.
• Irina's story in Spinning Silver revolves around this. She is aware that she's probably going to be married to someone she dislikes because she's too plain and her dowry is too small to attract anyone good, and father views giving her to a troublesome and unpleasant husband no differently than the troublesome and unpleasant battles he fought to become duke. In fact, she winds up as tsarina of the acerbic and demon-possessed tsar. Once she gets the upper hand in the marriage, she immediately sets about becoming a matchmaker herself in order to both prevent civil war and deal with the threat of the Staryk and their Endless Winter.
• The StarCraft Expanded Universe novel StarCraft Ghost: Nova establishes that members of upper-class families on Tarsonis invariably marry for political reasons, and often only have children with each other by artificial insemination. It's an accepted fact that the husband will have a long-term mistress and the wife a jig, both of whom are viewed as essential to the harmony of the household.
• The Star Wars Legends novel The Courtship of Princess Leia has the New Republic trying to convince the Hapes Consortium, a mid-tier power that managed to remain independent of Palpatine's Empire, to form an alliance with them against the remaining Imperial Remnant forces. The Hapans try to seal the deal by marrying Crown Prince Isolder to Princess Leia, who of course has been in a relationship with Han Solo since Return of the Jedi. This conflict drives the A-plot, though the outcome is a Foregone Conclusion since the earlier-published Thrawn Trilogy showed Han and Leia married and expecting twins. As for Isolder, he marries a Force adept from Dathomir and forces the Hapan Queen Mother to abdicate so he can unilaterally have Hapes join the Republic.
• In Tamora Pierce's medieval fantasy Tortall Universe:
  • Song of the Lioness: Prince Jonathan is slated to marry a princess from the Copper Isles in whom he has little interest. Fortunately for him, she goes (literally) Axe-Crazy and takes herself out of the running, freeing him up to make a love match with the newly arrived Princess-in-exile Thayet of Sarain.
  • The Immortals: Part of the reason the negotiations between the Carthaki Empire and the Tortallan delegation in Emperor Mage go sour because Emperor Ozorne tries to secure a marriage between his nephew Prince Kaddar and the Tortallan Princess Kalasin, who's only ten years old at the time. King Jonathan and Queen Thayet do expect her to marry for the benefit of Tortall, but are averse to arranging such a match before their daughter could be reasonably expected to have any marital preferences. Kaddar and Kalasin actually do get married eventually, but only after Ozorne is dead, Kalasin is older, and Kaddar is running the country on his own terms.
  • Protector of the Small: Kalasin's brother Roald, the crown prince of Tortall, is engaged to a minor Yamani princess in the first book, a marriage negotiated by protagonist Kel's diplomat parents. In the second book, Princess Chisakami dies in an earthquake before even meeting her intended, and the marriage has to be renegotiated from scratch. Much of the third book deals with the arrival of the new Yamani princess and her delegation. Kel notes that Princess Shinkokami is of a much higher rank than Princess Chisakami was, which means that the Yamanis must be placing a lot of importance on their alliance with the Tortallans. Fortunately, Roald and Shinkokami end up with a Perfectly Arranged Marriage after Kel cleverly gets them talking about military strategy.
  • Trickster's Duet: This duology about a carefully orchestrated rebellion spends quite a bit more time on alliances among the nobility than Pierce's other books. Lady Saraiyu Balitang of the Copper Isles carries the blood of the old raka monarchs as well as the white luarin conquerors currently ruling the country and is believed to be the prophesied "Twice-Royal" queen who will restore the raka to glory. Reacting to her growing popularity with the public, the iron-fisted regents begin pressuring her into a marriage with the five-year-old boy-king (who is also her cousin). Sarai, completely unaware of the rebellion brewing on her behalf, doesn't see any way out of the marriage and decides to elope to Carthak. The conspiracy is suddenly without a figurehead. Lucky thing she has a little sister, isn't it?
• The Alternate History novel Triumph of a Tsar has several, as expected for royalty:
  • Tsar Alexei marries his childhood friend Princess Ileana of Romania for love, but likely wouldn't have been able to do so if she hadn't been an Orthodox princess who also provided an alliance with Romania. Fortunately, the only woman he wants to marry is also a perfectly acceptable bride from a political and dynastic perspective.
  • Alexei's sisters, Grand Duchesses Olga (who becomes Queen of Yugoslavia), Tatiana (who becomes Tsarina of Bulgaria), and Anastasia (who becomes a British princess), all marry to diplomatic advantage, as is expected of them, but they do also love their husbands and would not have been forced to marry without affection.
• The Witcher:
  • In "A Question of Price", the fifth Short Story in The Last Wish, Queen Calanthe of Cintra wants to ensure a good political marriage for her daughter Princess Pavetta, and entertains suitors at Pavetta's fifteenth birthday celebration. She specifically wants Pavetta to marry into the royal house of the Viking-like Skellige Islands to make Cintra a less attractive target for Skellige pirates, and contracts Geralt of Rivia to help ensure Pavetta a good marriage. In the end, Pavetta is in a Perfectly Arranged Marriage with Duny, a lord formerly under Forced Transformation to whom Calanthe's deceased husband had promised Pavetta in exchange for saving his life, while Calanthe herself ends up in a love match with Eist Tuirseach, a knight of Skellige with whom it's implied she was having a covert affair offscreen.
  • In Blood of Elves Emhyr var Emreis, the Emperor of Nilfgaard, is hunting Pavetta's daughter and Geralt's ward Ciri in hopes of taking her as a wife to legitimize his conquest of Cintra. At least, that's what the rulers of the Northern Kingdoms think, and they plan to have her assassinated or married off in order to foil it. In Lady of the Lake Geralt discovers that Duny was an alias: Ciri is Emhyr's daughter after he ended up on the wrong side of a power struggle in Nilfgaard's court, got cursed, and fled for his life.
• In the Tales of the Otori sequel The Harsh Cry of the Heron, after Takeo's death, General Saga offers Takeo's daughter Shigeko a marriage proposal to forge peace between their respective nations, which she counters with the stipulation that they be equals as a Ruling Couple. He accepts, not least because she already shot out his eye from across a battlefield and routed his army.
• In Dune, this trope is the reason that Duke Leto has not married Lady Jessica (she is technically his concubine), even though they have a son and have been exclusively with each other for over 15 years. Leto has to stay unmarried so that other houses will cozy up to House Atreides, hoping for a marriage pact. Slightly played with, as all the other houses are perfectly aware that Leto has no intention of marrying anyone else, but as long as he is technically single, they have to behave as if he were available.
• The Naruto light novel Gaara Hiden: A Sandstorm Mirage reveals that the marriage between Shikamaru and Temari has spades of this. While they’re mainly getting married out of love, their marriage has political implications, as the people involved are the Fourth Kazekage's daughter and a Hokage's advisor (who also happens to be a clan head).
• In The Kingston Cycle by C.L. Polk, this is the default for marriage among the noble houses of Aeland; Avia and Grace commiserate over having formerly been "engaged to a corporation" and to a parliamentary voting bloc, respectively. Defied when Grace refuses to marry the new King to her father's horror, promising to remain his Honest Advisor instead.
• The Sunne in Splendour: A major theme in the book, as it deals with the history of the Wars of the Roses. The York King Edward IV's aversion of this trope to marry a commoner instead of a French princess causes much strife. One consequence is that Anne Neville's betrothal to her childhood sweetheart Richard is broken so she can marry the Lancastrian heir Edouard and cement an alliance with her father. The book ends with Edward IV's daughter Bess marrying Henry Tudor to unite Lancaster and York.