Hikaru Genji Plan - Television Tropes & Idioms

The trope namer is indirectly the Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari) from Japan, where Hikaru Genji raises the 10 year old girl Murasaki to be his wife. This makes the trope Older Than Print.
- It should be noted that, at the time the Tale of Genji was created, this was not in and of itself strange or noteworthy.

Rurouni Kenshin has teenage ninja Misao devotedly obsessed in love with her sempai Aoshi (who is at least a decade older than her) who was a surrogate father/older brother figure to her when she was orphaned as a young child, before his faction later broke away from the main group and became mercenaries. When they are reunited years later, he is initially absolutely apathetic to her affections at first, but he gradually learns to realize (with Kenshin's intervention) that she now become a young lady and view her as more than just his surrogate younger sister/daughter.
Otaku no Musume-san has a very literal instance in which the landlady, Taeko, was raised since elementary school by Sousuke, an aspiring manga artist, after her grandfather, her previous guardian, died. To solve an inheritance dispute when Taeko turned 16, the two get married, but the story makes it clear that love for each other strongly influenced the decision.
Zero No Tsukaima: Wardes is Louise's fiance. She is in her second year of high school and he is at least 30. The Squick factor is increased in that she and him fell in love when she was around five.
Initially averted in Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water between a then-teenage Electra and Nemo, when she decides to keep her feelings for him a secret after accidentally overhearing that he viewed her as a surrogate daughter to replace his own children who he believed had both been killed (ironically she was on her way to confess her love to him at that time). They later get together anyway though when she finally manages to reveal her true feelings (and how) after his real daughter Nadia turns up again years later.
- The Distant Finale is narrated by Marie (age 4 during the main story) and reveals she grew up to marry and is pregnant by Sanson, one of the members of the series's Heel Face Turned Team Rocket.
More directly from City Hunter II episode 39-41, where Umibozu had taught the girl Miki to fight when she was a child, and protected her for a while. When she's grown up she appears, wanting to marry him. Umibozu doesn't, but they end up running a restaurant together; exactly how close they are stays vague. Ryo Saeba refers to this as the Hikaru Genji plan.
Also called by that name in Mahou Sensei Negima where, in a gender inversion, Misa Kakizaki wants to do a "reverse Hikaru Genji plan" by making a good impression on the boy Negi, thus putting herself in a favorable position (er, no pun intended) when he grows up. After all, the age difference is really no more than five years. The reaction of the other girls? "Genius!"
- She has the same idea, in more detail, in Negima!? Neo.
- Unfortunately, the Standard Creepiness Rule requires that they wait until he's nineteen, rather than the fifteen she suggested.
- Asuna has a thing for "older" men, especially her foster father, Takahata-sensei, and probably Nagi, Negi's father. This is made much less creepy by the fact that her feelings are not requited. Even less so now that some evidence has cropped up in the manga suggests that she may be older than she looks and believes herself to be.
  - An interesting note on the Asuna-Takamichi relationship: His reaction wasn't Squick, but rather "I don't deserve to be loved by anyone." Hmmm... (to be fair, he's known her since they were both little kids (or at least Asuna looked like one))
The relationship between Hagu and Shuji in Honey and Clover can be seen as such. Hagu chooses Shuji to the exclusion of one of the younger boys who are in love with her.
Reiji from Kodomo No Jikan sees his ward Rin as a replacement of her mother *and* his dead lover, Aki, and is counting down the days until she's of marriageable age. Rin herself is quite aware of this but remains loyal to him regardless, despite Aoki's efforts.
- Aoki did earn himself a Crowning Moment Of Awesome by calling Reiji out on it. Reiji's defense is that none of his advances so far were illegal — to which Aoki points out that by that logic, it's all right if he does the same. Reiji blanches.
A great many Inuyasha fans like to think that this will be the ultimate result of Defrosting Ice King Sesshoumaru's relationship with his Morality Pet Rin, although the series itself gives no indication of it since Rin is still only about nine years old at the finale.
- The age thing doesn't really pose a problem since Sesshomaru is ageless. Inuyasha's dad is probably hundreds of times older than his mom. P.S. I knew this idea had to be popular, it even came to me and I usually avoid fanfics and these kinds of things.
  - The problem isn't the age difference in years-it's the fact that she's a CHILD that he is RAISING and has power over. Izayoi was not a child when she met the Inu no Taisho, they were both grown and consenting adults, and he did not raise her like a daughter the way Sesshomaru did with Rin. Remember-the key to this trope is to have a pre-existing parental relationship with the child and use/take advantage of it during their adolescence to brainwash them into having a romantic relationship with you as soon as they're at a socially acceptable age. Also, Sesshomaru is not ageless. Demons do age much slower than humans, but they're not ageless. He just has a longer lifespan. Thankfully it never happens.
In Desert Punk, the title character takes on little Kosuna as an apprentice for this very reason. It's notable that this was actually her suggestion, which she supported by providing a picture of what she (falsely) claims is her Hot Mom.
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). Then again, considering Murasaki's Big Screwed Up Family, this can be seen as played straight from their part.
Amaterasu & Lachesis' relationship in The Five Star Stories is like this, but since they're more or less the only two Physical Gods in their universe it's excusable. Who else are they gonna be with?
Gender-swapped in Shakugan No Shana where a female Crimson Lord by the name of Pheles raises a boy named Johan and the two later fall in love after Johan was grown up.
Utilized in Count Cain with Oscar (19) and Merryweather (10 or so). Initially, Merry finds him creepy and annoying but she likes him much better after he nearly dies protecting her from a bomb blast, and they're married in the epilouge. Oscar's Freudian Excuse ...sort of: Oscar has a complex about his neglected fiance who died in a carriage accident while tying to attact his attention. He claims that Mary reminds him of her. Known only to Oscar, the audience, and Riff, Cain's Battle Butler is that Cain could be the Half Identical Twin of Oscar's dead fiance.
At the end of Kare Kano, Hideaki Asaba takes this to its perverted apex: he decides his true love will be Yukino and Souichiro's daughter... while Yukino is still pregnant with her. As shown in the Distant Finale, it is pretty much set up, although he and Sakura haven't gotten together yet. And IIRC, Asaba did try to sneak out, but Sakura had nothing of it.
In the Bastard! manga, Dark Schneider rescues a dark elf girl named Arshes Nei and then pursues a sexual relationship with her once she comes of age. (Of course, Dark Schneider isn't exactly meant to be a paragon of moral behavior...)
Everything short of explicitly stated to have been successfully executed by Gauron in Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid with the twins Yu Fang and Yu Lan. The twins are so completely heartbroken by the fact that he's on the verge of death that they willingly undertake a suicide mission at Gauron's behest, rather than outlive him, and Melissa Mao at one point notes that they seem to be devoid of any emotion other than total despair. Being able to see him again is the only thing that brings them a shred of happiness. In fact, their grief over Gauron's impending death is used as a narrative counterpoint and equivalent of Sousuke's sadness at being separated from Kaname (as Mao notices that Sousuke's eyes and expression are exactly the same as Yu Lan's).
- Apparently, as clarified further in the novels, he tried to execute a Hikaru Genji Plan with the young Sousuke, but failed completely. He pretty much told 12-year-old Sousuke, "Why don't you come to my camp? There's food, ammunition, and AS parts there." (Which sounds suspiciously like a "There's candy over in my van, little boy" scenario.) Knowing Gauron, it's highly doubtful that his plans were anything pure and kindhearted. Of course, Sousuke refuses, and Gauron spends the next five years unable to forget "beautiful" Sousuke.
It is mentioned by Ranmaru's parents in The Wallflower anime as a way that Ranmaru can capitalize on his arranged marriage to Tamao... by the end of the episode they have a Hikaru Genji moment... which is quickly ruined. I can't remember if the same is done in the manga.
The handler of Naomi Umegae in Zettai Karen Children attempted to raise Naomi (age 16) into his own ideal bride. The training was sufficient that Naomi found it difficult to outright say she hated it, but an encounter with Kaoru awoke her resistance and she began making him pay. She also soon after changed her codename from "Kittycat" to "Wildcat." In what may be a Shout Out to another entry on this page, the manga chapter this took place in was titled "Princess Maker."
- The director of BABEL wants this to happen with The Children (age 10) and their handler Minamoto (age 20), as it's the best way to make sure they won't become evil. Yes, all three of them. Weirdly enough, Minamoto's mother also wants this as well. This could happen, at least with Kaoru.
In the manga Franken Fran, Fran is asked by a patient to impregnate her with the DNA of her dead best friend and love interest after it's revealed her friend sabotaged her marriage because she wanted her for herself. The patient specifically requests that the resulting baby be male, since, as Fran puts it, the patient "finds men easier to love".
This might be the central plot in the 2009 anime adaptation of Tale of Genji (see Literature example below), the currently-airing Genji Monogatari Sennenki.
In Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix: Life, Aoi falls in love with the girl he adopted when she comes of age, but she only thinks of him as a father. This ultimately leads to his Heroic Sacrifice, as he feels he has nothing left to live for.
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 waiting 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 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.
Inverted in the manga Until Death Do Us Part, where the heroine who ran up to the protagonist for rescue early on for help later revealed that she's staying with him not only to be rescued, but also because he's her future husband. The two she told this to was shocked on finding out about that and told her not to tell the protagonist about it, though she seems set on making said prediction come true.
- The heroine is twelve, which would make this a lot more squicky if not for the fact that there is no romance to speak of at this point and she is a powerful precognitive, so the foretold marriage could be decades off.
Arguably used in Appleseed (the manga, at least — the movies are rather vague about the whole affair). Deunan is nine years younger than Briareos. She was eleven when they first met, and flashbacks have her father already aware of Bri's feelings for her when she was only seventeen. Averted slightly in that if either of them is forcing themselves on the other due to a past close relationship, it's Deunan.
In the manga Ardashan no Hanayone, the main character, Prince Alexid is forced into a political marriage with the youngest princess of a conquered nation (a nation Alexid was largely in charge of conquering). How young? Ten. To the story's credit, this is treated as pure politics, even as Alexid and Justinia do grow closer to each other, with Alexid taking on a Guardian/Big Brother role towards her. And the story clearly implies that that will mature into something real by the time Justinia comes of age, assuming they survive the political shenanigans around them.
Axis Powers Hetalia has the Spain/Romano pairing. Romano used to be under Spain's care as a kid, with Spain doting on him and Romano getting jealous whenever Spain paid more attention to his brother than to him. In modern times, Spain's still very affectionate towards the grown-up Romano, and Romano still has his Tsundere streak. They're not quite an Official Couple, but the subtext is definitely there.
- The America/England pairing, actually called the "Reverse Hikaru Genji Plan" in Japanese fandom, is a more complicated example: England and America used to be in a happy big brother-little brother relationship. Then America grew up, decided he didn't want that kind of relationship with England anymore, and broke away from him. It's implied that the two still care about each other after that event, but that the nature of their affections has changed, with England going from Parental Substitute to blushing Tsundere and America from adoring little brother to an equal who enjoys riling England up. Not an Official Couple either, but the subtext is heavy.
- While they haven't had half the subtext these two other couple had (at least in the strips), a potential relationship between France and Seychelles could certainly be seen as an example. The Gakuen Hetalia game (written by and illustrated by Himaruya himself) shows a younger France playing with a child Seychelles in a beach as he helps raise her and then bringing her to the High School AU where the "story" sets in, and one of the game's endings has him hugging a blushing Seychelles and being snarked at by her.
- Of course, the squick factor is lessened because by the time of the actual comic, there is a two-year age difference between Antonio and Romano, and a four-year difference between Alfred and Arthur. Seychelles' age is unknown.
  - It's not so much unknown as it just changes slightly depending on what you're reading. Some scans have Seychelles significantly younger than France, while other sketches have her in her twenties. And then there's Gakuen Hetalia, where everyone is meant to be in their teens, but Seychelles still notes that France looks too old to be in high school.
- Let's not forget Korea being very affectionate toward his 'aniki' China. China, however, wants nothing to do with it and seems to think of him as more of an Annoying Younger Sibling than anything else.
In the Peacemaker Kurogane manga, this was what the old merchant Yamatoya does with Suzu after Suzu's master was killed and he was left all alone starving in the streets. Although he's old enough to easily be his grandfather, he apparently picked up Suzu entirely for the purpose of raping him and making him his "pet". Suzu wasn't the only one, however — two twin kitty boys were also picked up by him for this purpose. Suzu does end up getting revenge on him, however. To put it in Suzu's words:
Suzu: Thank you for picking me up from the streets. Unfortunately, your enjoyment is based on another's tears.
In D Grayman, the Noah Sheryl can be viewed as this. He's... a bit too affectionate towards Road, his adopted daughter. Not to mention that it's pretty much stated outright that the only reason why he got married was just so he could get Road as his daughter. Hum.
- Although to make matters more confusing, she's Older Than They Look and at least 45 years old. She might well be older than him.
In Berserk, this is very disturbingly done with Princess Charlotte and the King of Midland. She grew up to look exactly like her mother, the Queen of Midland. Unfortunately, this also caused her father to go from being a Papa Wolf to an out-and-out attempted rapist. Very, very disturbing indeed.
In the Gankutsuou manga (which should be noted for veering far, far away from the anime, and containing a thousand times more depraved Nightmare Fuel) Villefort is revealed to have made his daughter Valentine into a replacement for his first wife. He made her wear the same clothes her mother wore, and... did stuff to her that a father shouldn't do to his daughter. Of course, this change seems to have been made to erase any doubt that Villefort is a depraved villain that deserves what's coming to him. Let's just say that even with all that, the Count's punishment for him still seems overboard and insanely gruesome.
Inverted in the manga version of Hayate No Gotoku, as far as Athena goes. When she and Hayate were both around 6-7 years old, she took him in as her live-in butler, but she was also grooming him to be a gentleman.... a fitting 'life companion'. That is, until the whole End Of The World Story Arc, at any rate.
Vampire Knight has this between Kaname and Yuuki. Your Mileage May Vary, but later on it becomes Squick when it's revealed that Yuuki is actually Kaname's (also pureblood) sister
In Mai Otome, Nina is desperate for the love of her adoptive father Sergay Wong. Her friend Arika also falls for him, and that's almost as awkward for Sergay since he suspects (correctly) that Arika is the daughter of his former love, Lena Sayers. Sergay doesn't find out Nina's feelings until late in the series, shortly before he loses his memory — a situation Nina takes full advantage of. That girl is a piece of work...
In the Card Captor Sakura manga, 10-year-old Rika agrees to marry her teacher when she is of age (he even gives her an engagement ring).
Gender Flip version in Code Geass, where Mao chases CC relentlessly to make her his own. The reason? When he was six years old she gave him a power that isolated him from everyone else except her, and then for years she was the only person in his life, and the only one he thought counted as a person. Made worse by the fact that when CC gives Lelouch his Geass, she interacts with him on some occasions as though she was his lover; and later when she asks Emperor Charles to remove her Geass and kill her, the position they get in is pretty sexual.

Averted in "That Yellow Bastard" in Sin City; Nancy Callahan develops such feelings towards John Hartigan, but while Hartigan is protective enough of her, his sense of right and wrong will not allow him to take advantage — in his mind, taking advantage would make him no better than Junior, the sick paedophilic bastard he rescued her from eight years ago (not to mention the fact that he had to serve eight years of prison time on false charges of raping her because Junior's father, Senator Roark, wanted to make him pay for trying to bring down his son).
One of the outright weirdest examples of this trope happened in — where else? — a Silver Age issue of Superman's Girl Friend 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 — because this is actually a Superman from an alternate universe where bigamy is legal.
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.
What rabid fans of AoA Sabretooth and Blink wish he had actually done to her in canon (supposedly, since they're still both currently single though separated, hope springs eternal) .

Apparently there is a camp of fanfiction writers for Fate Stay Night that use this angle on Archer and Rin.
- Specifically, these fanfics follow on (sort of) from the "Childcare is War/Together with House Husband" doujins where Archer is summoned by the Tohsaka sisters (Sakura and Rin) prior to the fourth war.
There are some Axis Powers Hetalia fanworks where either Japan or China (specially the first) have these plans towards their adoptive sister, Taiwan.
- Many Turkey/Greece fanworks have Turkey developing an unexpected attraction to his charge after he hits puberty, and Greece unwittingly doing the same thanks to teenage hormones. Of course, it's Turkey and Greece, so things can't really go smoothly for them...
- And let's not forget that Canada is often paired up with France, who's said in canon to have taken care of him as a child, or England, who took him under his wing after he won him in a war against France.

In "The Professional/Leon" Natalie Portman's 13 yr old character Matilda asks a hitman named Leon to train her to be a hitperson, to revenge her younger brother killed in a drug deal gone wrong. He reluctantly takes her under his wing and she grows to have sexual feelings for him, which he never returns, but she does confess her love to him as he does. Leon goes from being teacher and protector to a love interest for the young girl. Averted by the ending
Happens in the French movie Le Bossu (a.k.a. On Guard), with the girl having fallen in love with her guardian and him initially resisting. It still fails not to seem creepy, mostly because he became her unofficial adoptive father sometime when she was one year old, and she went with unnerving speed from regarding him as "Papa" to thinking of him as "husband on the hoof" once she learned he wasn't any blood relation.
- In the latest adaptation, Lagardère (2003), he marries her widowed mother instead.
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 travelling 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.
This is basically the exact romantic subplot of Memoirs of a Geisha, wherein Sayuri falls for The Chairman, who buys her shaved ice when she is a little girl and he is in his forties. They wind up together in the end, and this is made to seem right and happy. The aforesaid old guy may be portrayed by Ken Watanabe, but still...
- If you read the book, you find out the Chairman is in his twenties when they first meet.
  - To be fair, he's probably supposed to be in his twenties or so in the movie too - it's just that he doesn't show any visible aging throughout the film (unlike Sayuri, he's played by the same actor the entire time). He still looks like he's in his forties when they're married. Nonetheless, this still has the same Values Dissonance as it's still a twenty-plus guy becoming the obsessive object of affection of a little girl who later grows up to fall in love with him decades later.
Inverted in Merlins Shop Of Mystical Wonders, when a man accidentally turns himself into a baby, and his wife is left to raise him.
The movie/play Gigi is about an adolescent girl raised to be a wealthy man's ideal mistress (not wife, just mistress), but he ends up falling in love with her and marrying her.
Inverted in the 2009 movie Orphan- the titular character is actually a thirty-something year old adult who tries to come on to her legal guardians, and kills them when they refuse.
Narrowly averted at the end of An American In Paris.
The film (and presumably the literature it's based on) Portrait of Jennie does an odd variation on this when an artist meets a mysterious, too-young girl. Jennie promises him that they are meant to be together and that she will grow up for him... and does. Very quickly. Of course, she's already dead. Despite this description, it's a beautiful film.

Averted in the early 19th century novel Belinda. Clarence Hervey raises Virginia St. Pierre and gives her an education ala Rousseau's Emile. Then, after some particularly contrived coincidences, he figures out that she is incredibly insipid, due to his teaching, and instead falls for the titular Belinda
Robert Heinlein did this a lot:
- Played disturbingly straight in Time Enough for Love. Lazarus Long ends up not only marrying his adopted daughter Dora, whom he raised from a very young age, but naming his spaceship's ridiculously human AI after her, and giving it a young child's personality. Then again, the second part of that may be read as him missing her, and keeping the ship at a young age so it WOULDN'T grow up and fall in love with him.
- Dan in The Door Into Summer marries Ricky, who said she wanted to marry him ever since she was ten years old. She becomes aged to maturity while Dan's in Cold Sleep.
- Lazarus Long has sex with his Opposite Sex Clones, also in Time Enough For Love. Uses the version where the girls initiate it. This one really is incest, by many definitions, and it's not the most incestuous thing he does in the story, either.
  - How is it not?
  - Wasn't Time Enough For Love the one where Woodrow Wilson Smith went back in time and had an affair with his own unsuspecting mother? (Yes, it is. We find out in a subsequent book that the notion of incest does not trouble Maureen in the least. One of her few admitted regrets is failing to seduce her own father.)
- The romance is in the future (it is a kid's book), but Have Space Suit Will Travel sets up a similar situation with 18-year old Clifford "Kip" Russell and 12-year-old genius Patricia Wynant "Peewee" Reisfeld.
- Time for the Stars ends with the spacefaring Tom Bartlett returning to earth to marry his great-grandniece, whom he's been in telepathic contact with since she was a toddler. What's more, she's descended from Tom's identical twin brother, so in genetic terms Tom is marrying his own great-granddaughter.
In the novel (and anime, and films) Daddy Long Legs, the main character Judy ends up marrying her patron. At least in the novel, Judy's interaction with the titular Daddy-Long-Legs ( aka the eccentric millionaire Jervis Pendelton, her roommate Julia's uncle) is limited to the letters she send to him, so they don't really have an actual relationship until she meets him in person (not realizing he's her patron) and they begin a romance. On the other hand, he does occasionally abuse his authority as her patron to interfere with her relationships with other young men, particularly her best friend Sallie's older brother, Jimmy McBride.
Subverted in Charles Dickens' Bleak House; while really grateful to him, the heroine essentially tells her guardian that she loves him as a daughter and not as a wife.
Happens via time travel in The Time Traveler's Wife in a Stable Time Loop: When the Time Traveler Henry meets Clare for the first time, she immediately starts a relationship with him. Only after this does he begin to time travel to various points in Clare's childhood. Henry doesn't really have much choice in the matter, though...
In David Eddings's Elenium, the queen Ehlana browbeats her protector, Sparhawk, who practically raised her, into marrying her in the third book. Sparhawk seems to realize the inappropriateness of it, as he tries to back out of it several times and feels guilty about it when she's kidnapped in the Tamuli to get at him, but she outranks him, and overrules his objections.
- There's actually a line of dialogue about how she's carrying a Prince Consort coronet for him "around with her like a coil of fishing line."
- Their daughter, age 6, tells her father who she's going to marry; as she's the incarnation of a god, if the prospective husband disagrees, he better have started running right then.
In the alternate history novel Fortune's Stroke by Eric Flint and David Drake, Rome's spymaster has to bully an Indian Empress into marrying the great warrior assassin who raised her and trained her, even though they both want it.
Occurs in Emma and, arguably, in Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.
He doesn't raise her, but Drizzt Do'Urden from the The Dark Elf Trilogy clearly thinks of the human girl Catti-brie, whom he met when she was about ten, as something like a little sister. However, as she grows up, she seems to have fallen for him, and he doesn't even notice until she's already involved with someone else... at which point, with some more overt hinting from her, he finds himself very attracted to her. Some years later, they finally connect.
- Even more Squicky than a normal Hikaru Genji Plan, on the other hand, is Drizzt's relationship with his sister (though they are actual siblings). She seemed taken with him from the time he was an infant, and did most of the work in raising him. At his graduation from the warriors' academy, he is repulsed by the drug-fueled demon orgy and leaves. His sister follows him, and tries to seduce him. He is about as repulsed as ever, thankfully... kee-rist, drow are messed up.
  - Being raised in a culture where your goddess is the ultimate Demonic Spider, you're encouraged to get ahead by murdering people, and your general life is a heady cocktail of fear, arrogance, and raw animal cunning, this is hardly surprising.
Happens in Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo between the titular character and his young charge, Haydée. He even has the line, I paraphrase: "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, and the Count is usually paired off with Mercedes Interestingly, the anime adaptation Gankutsuou (in space!) presents a familial love between the two, without romantic overtones.
In the Twilight series, male werewolves sometimes "imprint" (a sort of one-way soulmate-recognition thing) on girls while the girls are still toddlers or even infants (as Jacob does on Bella's baby daughter Nessie). In such cases, the male werewolf becomes a sort of uncle/older brother figure, or even a father figure, to the child, and it's assumed that of course she'll want to marry him once she's of age. To quote the series, "why would she say no?"
- And to quote the series again, describing how sad it is that the relevant werewolf is going to have to wait fourteen years to have sex with his adopted daughter.
  "You never saw a real parent so jazzed to play whatever stupid kiddie sport their rugrat could think up. I'd seen Quil play peekaboo for an hour straight without getting bored. [...] Though I did think it sucked that he had a good fourteen years of monk-i-tude ahead of him until Claire was his age."
- Just to increase the creepiness factor, Jacob had previously been in a semi-relationship with Bella. That not enough? Edward implicitly asks Jacob to have sex with Bella so he can impregnate her with a baby less likely to cause damage than Nessie.
  - It's implied in the series that Jacob imprinted on an egg in Bella, which is why he was attracted to her at all. Hikaru Genji, indeed!
- Slightly subverted because the "werewolves" won't age until the girl they imprinted on does so the relationship would appear normal to an outsider once the girl grows up.
The legendary King Cophetua had no interest in women until he fell in love with a beggar child and decided to raise her to be his queen. This story is best known through Lord Tennyson's poem The Beggar Maid.
This was Humbert Humbert's motivation for marrying Charlotte in Lolita. Of course, he wasn't really planning to wait that long... And didn't have to, thanks to Charlotte's fortuitously timed death.
- Taken even further when it's revealed that he was planning on impregnating Lolita so that by the time she's aged beyond his interest, he will already have the next Lolita.
Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now plays this realistically and tragically: Roger's love for Hetta (who has the added bonus of being his cousin) is portrayed as more pitiable than creepy. She isn't into it, though.
Shows up repeatedly in One Hundred Years of Solitude. The major case is the future Colonel Aureliano Buendía, who falls for Remedios, the major's youngest daughter — who was around 10 years old, while he was in his early 20's. She was wise beyond her years, yeah, but even then...
- It pops up in other books by Gabriel García Marquez. One case was in Chronicle of a Foretold Death, where the narrator affirms that during a wedding party he proposed marriage to a girl who was still in Elementary school; he did not raise her, but they eventually married. By the way, the girl has the same name than García Márquez's wife...
Played somewhat worryingly straight in Mercedes Lackey's and James Mallory's The Obsidian Trilogy. The human Wild Mage Idalia and the elven warrior/Dragon Mage Jermayan are in love. Elves, however, marry for life, and only once, and like most elves, Jermayan's people can live for much longer than the healthiest human. After they reconcile themselves to this, Idalia dies as part of a price for a powerful spell she cast. Then the queen of the elves has a child...and the child has most of Idalia's features; apparently reincarnation is something elves believe in. He notes that now they're both elves, "eighteen years is not so long to wait".
One of the creepier subplots in Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth involves the male protagonist's relationship with Pear Blossom, a girl he allowed into his household as a servant. When they consummate a relationship, she's still jailbait by modern standards and he's at least old enough to be her grandfather. I'm not sure if this counts because the man didn't directly raise the girl as a daughter but took her in as a servant out of pity.
How has The Thorn Birds not yet been mentioned? It's the sole plot of the book. Especially awkward since the man in question is a Catholic priest.
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 — he tried to force her so he can inherit her and her siblings' money.
The novel Fire and Hemlock has a variation: while Tom is not involved in raising Polly per se, he is her moral support when her parents aren't there for her. She befriends his at age eleven or so and when they discuss what she should call him, she suggests "Uncle Tom." It also stresses the angle that she is the insistent partner, writing what amounts to a self-insert romance novel about them as a tween, while he tries to distance himself by dating a woman his age.
An odd version occurs in Kushiel's Dart: Anafiel Delaunay adopts two children and believes that both will eventually come to see him as a father/mentor figure. Both of them, however, fall in love with him, and one of them eventually finds the courage to make a move.
In Tamora Pierce's Immortals Quartet, Numair is Daine's teacher and while not exactly a father figure, certainly a much older man who is in a position of power over Daine. It's made pretty clear that he fancies her in Emperor Mage and in Realms of the Gods, they kiss. Numair then tries to explain all the reasons why they shouldn't be together but Daine isn't worried by any of them and they (eventually) get married.
In Anne McCaffrey's "Damia", the titular character falls in love with Afra, her mother's best friend and advisor, who is thirty years older than she is and literally helped raise her from the day she was born. McCaffrey's a good enough writer that, at first, you think it's really sweet... and then, if you're like me, about a week after you've read the book, you think about it, and the eeeeeeeeewwwwww hits ya right in the face.
- Twice in the same series: In the prequel Pegasus books, Tirla marries Sascha (thirty-something) on her sixteenth birthday, or pretty much the instant she was legally allowed to. Although he hadn't raised her since birth, he had taken on a protective, father-figure role in her life since she was about age twelve.
The plan of the Duke in James Thurber's The 13 Clocks, having kidnapped the Princess Saralinda as child and raised her. He's under a curse, but on her birthday, he will be able to force her to marry him.
The story "The Education of Betty" from L.M. Montgomery's 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.
In P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles of the Kencyrath, villain Gerridon takes in the abandoned Jame at age seven with the express plan of bringing her up to be his replacement bride and replacement sorceress. Unfortunately for him, his retainers subvert his brainwashing intentions ... Made somewhat more squicky by the fact that Jame's mother is Gerridon's sister, Jamethiel and that Gerridon sent her there explicitly to ensure the birth of his future bride. Of course, Jamethiel is also Gerridon's wife... the Kencyrath have no problems with incest. In fact, due to their magically robust genes, incest is a good way to create more powerful children.
In one of the later Oz stories by Mr. Baum, a bit of backstory (about the enslavement of the Winged Monkeys) mentions this trope. In the past, the Witch of the North couldn't find a suitable husband, so she picked an attractive little boy and had him raised to be her ideal husband.
Robin McKinley has so many May December Romances that it was inevitable that a few would fit this category. Notably Aerin/Tor, and 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. But it works anyway.
In The Last of the Mohicans, Nathaniel tries this with Alice Munro, a girl he essentially raised, but it backfires.
The villain in Sandra Brown's novel Fat Tuesday. And after his bride figured out just how crooked he was, he threatened to replace her with her little sister.
In S.L. Viehl's StarDoc series, this turns out to be exactly why Grey Veil created Cherijo in the first place.
The second book in the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant nearly goes there - Covenant's daughter (from his rape of Lena in the first book), Elena, repeatedly makes advances at him; he refuses, because... well... squick.
- As I recall it she doesn't tell him she's his daughter until after they have sex. From her viewpoint it's okay because she was raised by another man and so doesn't think of him as her father.
  - So really, it's the reverse of a Hikaru Genji Plan, since he's her father but not a father figure - and what with the screwy time stuff, the age gap ceases to be an issue - and it's not exactly a plan. Still squicky, but not for quite the same reasons.
  - Not only does the novel not avoid the squickiness of the situation, it uses the relationship to demonstrate just how messed-up Elena is before she really screws the pooch by breaking the Law of Death; and along with the decline of the Ranyhyn, how deep and far-reading the consequences of Covenant's actions really were.
In Junichiro Tanizaki's Naomi, Joji tries this with the fifteen-year-old of the title, rationalizing that it gives him time to scope out his potential bride.
In A Song of Ice and Fire, Jorah Mormont feels this way about Daenerys Targaryen. Dany only loves Jorah platonically, and she eventually ends up banishing him from her presence when he admits he was spying on her for Robert Baratheon, the man who usurped her father's throne, and he will not concede that he was wrong for deceiving her.
Something akin to this happens in Sundays at Tiffany's by James Patterson. The main character, Jane, had an imaginary friend named Michael when she was eight. He was much older than her, and it's established that he doesn't know how he came to exist, just that he takes care of children by being their imaginary friend and has been doing this for quite some time now. As the story progresses, they eventually meet again when Jane grows up and fall in love. Toward the end Michael gives up his immortality to be with Jane. A bit disturbing, considering Michael is, in all probability, extremely old.
In PG Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster novels, Roderick Spode and Madeline Basset come close to this sort of relationship, although Spode was merely a friend of her family's, and not her actual guardian.
When Sarek appears on Star Trek The Next Generation, Picard mentions in passing that he had attended "your son's wedding" some two decades earlier. So...whom did Spock marry? The EU novels come to the rescue: Spock married Saavik, to whom he had been a surrogate parent.
In Ezekiel 16:8, God himself uses this as a metaphor for how His relationship with the Israelites was supposed to work out.
A series of '70s spy/mystery stories had Jeff Pride become the guardian for Anglo-Japanese Cherry Kobayashi when she was six. The stories are set somewhere between ten and twelve years later, she's grown to be very beautiful and sexy, and he's horrified at her romantic feelings toward him. One of the funnier parts is his outrage when told that the counsellor at her school approves of her intentions because he's not blood-related. The series ends with the situation unresolved.
In G. K. Chesterton's story "The Vanishing of Vaudrey", this is Vaudrey's motivation for adopting Sybil Rye. She's horrified when he proposes to her, and her refusal is what motivates him to plot the revenge that leads to his own death.
In Sidney Sheldon's Master of the Game, as a child Kate MacGregor vows to marry David Blackwell (who is about twenty years older than her); as her father died while she was a baby, he's one of the few adult men in her life and by far the nicest to her. She eventually succeeds at this plan once she's an adult, even though he does all he can to discourage it.
Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar series has a particularly odious variant of this as a character's MO, as Hulda raises Prince Ancar of Hardorn to not only be her lover but her catspaw in an usurpation of his own nation, and then tries a variant of this on Elspeth (though planning to hand her off to Ancar in a kind of Xanatos Gambit, expecting either Elspeth to take the throne (not quite getting it through her head that in the state Hulda's training put her in, no Companion would even touch her, therefore disqualifying her for the throne), or removing her from the line of succession, therefore putting said line in doubt. It takes the already inherent Squick and ramps it up to eleven, considering how much the two's tastes into the perverse were.
In Cold Copper Tears, thirty-plus Garrett teams up with street kid Maya, whom he'd saved from her stepfather's molestation as a young girl. Now eighteen, she repeatedly declares her intention to marry him. They do hook up, but she eventually married someone else because Garrett was too immature about commitment. Not as creepy as most, as he was never actually her guardian and she always saw him as more hero than parent.

Doctor Who, episode "The Girl in the Fireplace". The Doctor saves Madame de Pompadour when she's a child, and meets her when she's all grown up via time travel. She's been expecting him all her life, and they "dance", which has been used as a euphemism for sex in the series.
- Please note the similarity of this to The Time Travelers Wife, which Steven Moffat has acknowledged.
A gender inversion occurred on Angel, between Conner and Cordelia; later lampshaded in the comics with Conner's line about "My first time was with a woman who changed my diapers?!" (Though she didn't actually raise him.)
- Also lampshaded in the series:
"Angelus: She's practically your mother. There should be a play."
- It is partially averted when it is later revealed, that Cordelia had died/ascended and not been resurrected/returned as they thought. It was actually an ancient Lovecraftian terror inhabiting Cordelia's body. This doesn't keep it from being any less creepy, but it's not Cordy's fault.
If you think about it, eventually inverted on Farscape: In the time-travel episode "Kansas", 16-year-old John Crichton loses his virginity to Chiana, and gets his memory of the event muddled. Years later, he meets her for, from her point of view, the first time and rather quickly takes her as a little sister or occasionally even daughter figure, which works really well to her benefit, considering he has little reason to trust her at their first meeting otherwise. Yeah.
One sided version: In the Murder She Wrote episode A Murderous Muse, the manager Byron has been pressuring his student Leslie to marry him, the twist is that she isn't quite 18 yet and Byron has raised her like a father since she was 8 years old.
In an episode of Friends, Monica dated an avuncular (read: like an uncle) former neighbor.
In Carnivale, Jonesy was a surrogate father/uncle figure to Sofie when she joined the troupe at a young age, and by the time the series is set (where she is around 18 or 19) it's quite clear he has feelings for her.
The relationship between the immortal vampire Mick St. John and the girl he saved from a fire as a child looked quite a bit like this.

Judge Turpin tries to pull this with his ward Johanna Barker in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, since she reminds him so much of her mother Lucy, whom he had a major lust for and eventually raped. It doesn't work because Johanna hates him and seeks to elope with Anthony the sailor. When Turpin finds this out, he is furious enough to have Johanna thrown into a madhouse, where she is eventually rescued by Anthony. And her real father, the title character, eventually catches up to Judge Turpin and takes very bloody revenge upon him.
In Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, Ko-Ko attempts to marry his ward, Yum-Yum, though by the end he's paired off with Katisha, a woman closer to his age.
- They do it again in Iolanthe, where the Lord Chancellor eventually convinces himself that he can marry his ward Phyllis. He doesn't get to, though.
  - The weird version, deliberately contrasting with the authors' other "straight" examples. The Chancellor is portrayed as a sympathetic rather than manipulative figure, didn't exactly raise Phyllis (being the legal guardian for orphans in the region is part of his government position), isn't specifically interested in her, and has to be convinced by the indifferent Phyllis and the rest of the House of Peers to marry her to prevent violence. Even his self-stated "susceptibility" to teenage girls ends up oddly justified... he's unwittingly been married all this time to an immortal who's physically a teenager and whom he's reunited with at the close. (And becomes Phyllis's father-in-law, incidentally.)
- And in The Pirates of Penzance (notice a trend here?), Frederic's onetime nursemaid Ruth, who is the only woman he has seen in 13 years, convinces him that she is a beautiful woman, and that he should marry her. This plan falls apart the second he sees a group of girls his own age.
- In HMS Pinafore, little Buttercup, the captain's nursemaid, ends up marrying him.
- In The Sorcerer, the middle-aged vicar Dr Daly considers himself too old to interest the 18-year-old Constance — though her mother doesn't think so, and Constance secretly loves him. In the next act Constance is enchanted to fall in love with a very old man, which is again presented as unsuitable. In the end, however, she marries Daly.
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".
- Ironically, while the husbands are the butt of the comedy in both plays, Molière himself did end up marrying a girl who had been a young member of his theatre company, and was rumoured to be the daughter of his long-term mistress (scholars now think she was probably her niece).
This plot is lampshaded and averted in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, as while Jack/Ernest has his excessively pretty ward Cecily being raised in the countryside like male characters in similar comedies, he is not interested in a romantic relationship with her. His best friend, however, is.
In Beaumarchais' play The Barber of Seville (and the operas based on it, of which Rossini's is the most famous), Doctor Bartholo plots to marry his ward Rosine (Bartolo and Rosina in Rossini). Count Almaviva and Figaro foil the plot.
The plot to Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge. However, Eddie Carbone cannot admit to himself or anyone else that he has romantic feelings towards Catherine, his wife's sister's daughter. Every time someone hints he might have "too much love" for Catherine, he says he isn't that kind of person. Tragedy results.
Done in Sondheim's A Little Night Music, but partially averted. One of my favorite lines {paraphrased}: "Just imagine, a few years ago, you were Uncle Frederick. And now, you're Darling Frederick." *Giggle* *Cue squirming and uncomfortable audience.* The girl discovered that it was just a crush and Frederic discovered his true love in a former mistress. His 18-year-old ex-wife ran off with his son, who was the same age.)
In the 17th-century play The London Cuckolds, one of the title characters has a girl raised in the country to be so much of an idiot that she'll believe just about anything anyone tells her(except that she does know trees don't have rats on them), and when he brings her to town to be his wife, Hilarity Ensues (no, really). Though initially he doesn't plan to consummate the marriage, telling her instead her "wifely duties" are to guard his nightcap in full armor, but the two main characters of the play end up interfering with that plan.
In most of the renditions of the Phantom of the Opera, the Phantom is depicted as being several decades Christine's senior, and has been her voice instructor for most of her life.

Bakumatsu Renka Karyuu Kenshi Den. Heroine Shizuki Rin is adopted by male lead Iori, who was in love with Rin's mother.
The Princess Maker series of video games have this trope as a possible ending if you develop a close enough relationship with the girl you raise from age 10 on, sometimes if she also has a low moral score.
- This is also somewhat of a subversion. Unlike many other examples, it is very frowned upon in the game itself, and only allowed by the Gods because other than that, the girl has been raised quite well.)
In Soul Nomad and the World Eaters, Hawthorne is revealed to be a serial perpetrator of raising, sexually abusing and 'disposing of' female children, his daughter Tricia being the latest victim. Although he is killed before this happens in the normal storyline, in the Demon Path, he succeeds and breaks her utterly. The Nereids' plan for Penn is similar to this since due to their status as a One Gender Race they need a male from another race in order to breed.
- The Nereids' plan is slightly less squicky since its clear that they care dearly about him as a person and not just as breeding stock. With this example, Penn is in for an... interesting life.
It's quite possible in The Sims 2. Basically, it involves taking a child-Sim away from its parents, and sending it to live in the same house as an adult Sim, who from then on takes care of it and acts as a surrogate parent. When the child grows to be an adult, the relationship score should be high enough for them to fall in love and marry.
Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni: Irie and Satoko. Irie is the closest thing Satoko has to a guardian after she was orphaned and he said that he wanted to marry her after she's grown up. He may not be serious about it but I'll vote that he was.
- I always thought he was joking by that and only said that to freak out Keiichii, due to how he laughed at his reaction afterwards and never actually showed that kind of affection towards Satoko in any other circumstance.
A gender-reversed variant in Chrono Trigger - talking to the right people reveals that caveman Kino was found as a child by nubile savage Ayla, who raised him. They end up marrying after the credits. Ayla's somewhere in her twenties at the time, Kino in his late teens.

The Dr. Steve/Oasis relationship from Sluggy Freelance has a few overtones of this. After raising Oasis to adulthood and taking control of her brain, Steve's plans include having her give him firsthand accounts of a lesbian date and wearing skimpy clothes while she serves him food.
In Daily Grind between Howlett and Jolene. Even with as many mitigating circumstances thrown in as one can possibly imagine, it is still creepy. A ~~man~~ serpent of Howlett's obvious moral qualities ought to have rejected Jolene's advances rather than declare that reaching a certain chronological age magically makes her able to make her own decision. To his credit, it seems that he is creeped out a bit by the whole thing too, but just hasn't figured out how to defuse it without someone getting hurt.

Filmmaker Woody Allen and Soon-Yi, the adopted daughter of his then-girlfriend Mia Farrow. Cue MASSIVE wank and squick in the media.
- Incidentally, Frank Sinatra was Mia's friendly ex-husband and offered to have a few associates... talk to Woody. When Mia was asked about the rumor on a talk show, she smiled and said, "Frank is so sweet."
U.S. President Grover Cleveland took a major role in raising his goddaughter Frances after her father died. During his administration, rumors abounded that the bachelor president was going to marry Frances' mother. Those rumors turned out to be a generation off.
Adolf Hitler's alleged relationship with his own half-niece, Angelika Maria "Geli" Raubal, which led to a massive underground conspiracy theory after her demise under suspicious circumstances. In some versions of the story, she had become less enamoured with him due to his interest in politics superseding time spent with her.
The notorious Chinese pirate Ching Shih took over the pirating business after her husband died, and then married her adopted son Cheung Po Tsai. Supposedly, Cheung Po Tsai was also the lover of both Ching Shih and her husband after they adopted him at the age of 15.
Due to the infamous one-child policy in China, there are now people who do this so their sons can have wives. It's pervasive enough that there are now detectives whose entire careers are dedicated to finding people's daughters and bringing them back... just as there are people who make livings kidnapping and selling girls for wives.
- The funny/sad part about this? It doesn't work like that. Children raised in close proximity to one another before they are six tend to view each other as family, not partners.
Charlie Chaplin often "mentored" very young actresses and later began relationships with them. He met Lita Grey when he was 26 and she was 13, and impregnated and married her when she was 16.
Muhammad married his best friend Abu Bakr's daughter, Aïcha, after his first wife, Khadija, died. Aïcha was six years old at the time, and the marriage was consummated two years later. Khadija herself was a reverse Hikaru Genji: she took Muhammad as a subordinate in her trade business (caravans, shipping, import-export), developed a deep and trusting relationship with the 20 year old man and ended up marriying him. The fact that he was orphaned at an early age makes it even more likely that she was something of a mother figure to him. This is incontrovertible, historical, documented fact, not flame fuel.
- Interesting fact: recently, in Morocco, an Islamic scholar stirred up a spiky debate when he used the aforementioned precedent to justify the marriage of a child (I don't quite remember if it was a marriage between teenagers or one between an adult and a child). This raised quite the scandal, since, after a century-long exposition to Western values, most Moroccans found the idea absolutely repulsive. The most entertaining part is how difficult it was for His Majesty's appointed official state Islamic counsel to counter that declaration: the precedent was so incontrovertibly clear they had to use every rhetorical trick in their repertoire to justify the negation, in a fashion even the Hassidim would be proud of!
- "Incontrovertible, historical, [and] documented"? No - at least not in the sense we usually use those words. The historicity of all accounts of Muhammad's life has been called deeply into question, with traditional Muslim scholars unable to offer anything better than circular reasoning in their defense. What is incontrovertible, however, is that this story comes not from someone trying to discredit Muhammad, but from his own followers.
- Although not "incontrovertible", the documentation is stronger than most events from that period, including independent writings by several members of Muhammad's household and inner circle; including Aïcha herself as an adult. This fact of their marriage and pre-pubescent sexual contact has never been denied by the vast majority Islamic scholars; only the nature of the sexual contact has been disputed (whether or not it involved actual intercourse, or just frottage). It is only with the recent resurgence of Islam in the international political arena that scholars have begun to deny any sexual contact, and claim that the marriage was politically motivated and in-name-only.
Singer Céline Dion met her future husband René Angelil at the tender age of 12. He was 38 and put a mortgage on his house to finance her first album. They married in 1994. She was 26, he was twice her age.
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 awaits her reproductive maturity.
The legal age of consent in Romania is 15 excluding several special cases, when it becomes 18. This is one of them.

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