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Yes, he's checking out his cousin's breasts. Check out this picture that was found a few weeks back:
[1] ◊
Romantic/sexual relationships between cousins is a phenomenon that varies in its acceptance from culture to culture, as well as over time. It is widely accepted in many cultures today, including most of the industrialized world. The modern U.S. considers it completely taboo, so Hilarity Ensues at the very idea of it. As a result there are a lot of bad jokes about backwoods Appalachians being Kissing Cousins. Despite the taboo, cousin marriages are still legal in (most of) those same places, though of course it's not common.
For the most part, this isn't based on religion; the ancient Hebrew patriarchs like Isaac married his cousin, Rebekah and the biggest Christian denomination, the Catholic church, does allow even first cousins to marry if they ask for a dispensation. In most parts of the world, it's allowed for cousins to marry, not encouraged but still allowed.
One culture in which it was widely tabooed was medieval Europe, and that prohibition was not to prevent inbreeding but to force people to forge family bonds outside their close relatives; it extended to third cousins and included in-laws. In cultures that put a far higher value on family bonds and were far more violent than modern ones, this was an effort to mitigate warfare. Royal or noble families who needed to forge alliances to end feuds often needed a dispensation to marry — as, for instance, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York.
This is also the case in China—in the historical period similar to feudal Europe, the noble are explicitly banned from marrying any person that can trace their paternal lineage to the same historical tribe. This is then extended to all people after the unification of the Chinese empire; people bearing the same surname cannot marry even they are not related at all.
The idea of sex between first cousins being incestuous might have to do with the rise of the science of genetics which might label such unions as inbreeding with the increased risk of having children with recessive trait diseases like hemophilia. Particularly in cultures where the first cousin is the preferred spouse, so that the couples' parents were also Kissing Cousins, and then their parents, etc. A recent study in Western Australia discovered that while the chances of defects do rise, the actual numbers aren't high at all (ex: a 4% chance of birth defects over a 2% chance) [2].
Expect some strong Values Dissonance as a result, both from media from other countries like Japan, or simply from the nineteenth century, where/when the taboo is non-existent or inverted. Scholarly debate on why some cultures would forbid cousins, or even specific types of cousins, to marry, while others ignore or even encourage it, rages on, and lies beyond the scope of this wiki.
When cultures insist that Royal Blood is necessary for a monarch's consort, expect Kissing Cousins. May be a short route to Royally Screwed Up.
It should be noted that the actual term "kissing cousins" means almost the opposite. It means they are distantly related, but there's enough distance to make a romantic relationship acceptable.
Brother Sister Incest and Parental Incest are more closely related tropes.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Ayano and Kazuma from Kaze No Stigma are this, and what seems even weirder to American audiences is that Ayano's father is trying to set them up together.
- Elfen Lied has Yuuka and Kouta, complicated by a Love Triangle with a girl who alternates between homicidal and amnesiac.
- Shiratori and Kozue-chan, the Official Couple of the heartwarming romantic-comedy Mahoraba are actually second-cousins; a fact that is mentioned once in the begining but quickly forgotten, making the ending of the manga wherein they marry and have four adorable daughters rather Squick if you do remember.
- The mention at the beginning comes with a bit of lampshading with Shiratori noting that second-cousins can be legally married.
- Given the popularity of certain other kinds of relationships in anime, this troper wasn't very bothered.
- In The Shinji Ikari Raising Project manga (a much lighter, happier and less Angel-focused alternate universe version of Neon Genesis Evangelion), Shinji and Rei are distant relatives. That doesn't get in the way of attraction, though.
- The original Evangelion had a Shinji/Rei subtext too (especially in the manga). When you consider that Rei is Shinji's half-sister (in the sense that she's a clone formed from DNA taken from both Shinji's mother and Lilith) then yeah.
- Nerima Daikon Brothers - played for laugh and drama at the SAME TIME
- This Ugly Yet Beautiful World
- In Blade Of The Immortal, Anotsu Kagehisa's true love is the swordswoman Makie Otonotachibana. Her grandmother was the younger sister of Anotsu's grandfather, which makes them second cousins.
- A lot of Unwanted Harem series have a cousin among the haremettes, but they tend not to win:
- Hanamori Pink did a short story called Cherry ♥ Blossom where the main couple were cousins. In fact, it's because they're cousins that they're able to save (the love lives of) their entire school by calling on the powers of their ancestors. It was published with other short manga in Japan, but the only official English translation is as an extra in the last volume of Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch.
- Amusingly when Sailor Moon S was Macekred in its English dub, Cloveryway turned Haruka and Michiru into cousins to try and eliminate the lesbian content. Unfortunately (for them) they didn't remove the subtext successfully, rendering them lesbian kissing cousins.
- Likewise when Nelvana Macekred Cardcaptor Sakura into Cardcaptors they made two of Sakura's classmates who were clearly fond of each other, with a snarky, cute relationship, into cousins. Whereas they removed the fact that Meiling and Syaoran were cousins by changing Meiling's surname to Rae.
- Sakura and Tomoyo are second cousins, although their mothers, Nadeshiko and Sonomi (respectively), definitely fell into this trope. Or at least Sonomi wished they did.
- In 1/2 Prince, Rose kisses Prince in the game. Eventually it's revealed that Rose's player is actually her cousin.
- Several of the couples and/or onesided crushes in Fruits Basket include cousins from the Sohma clan. Kana and Hatori, Kagura and Kyo (VERY reluctant from him), Haru and Rin (and maybe Yuki), Kisa and Hiro, Akito and Shigure.
- Although admittedly these are not first cousins, since it's pretty clear that the Sohma family is a vast one and none of the parents seem to be closely related (as siblings).
- Neji and Hinata from Naruto. There were attempted jokes about how Neji likes to grope his innocent, younger cousin. Plus, his arrogant smiles didn't back him up.
- The Sasuke/Hinata ship, which has some popularity despite the two never interacting in canon, is also between two characters who are rumored to be distant relatives, as the Uchiha clan's Sharingan is believed to have been derived from the Hyuga clan's Byakugan.
- Even if that were true, they aren't first cousins or even CLOSE cousins, but rather very distantly related. And the manga has completely invalidated this claim anyway by explaining EXACTLY where the Sharingan came from.
- Recent developments may place a damper on one of the main ships of Mahou Sensei Negima—namely, that Asuna appears to be Negi's aunt, in what is possibly the only usage of that variant not to be some sort of May December Romance.
- Of course, there's also some subtext involving his actual cousin. In fact a lot of the subtext between Negi and Asuna stems from the fact that she reminds him of his cousin.
- No, the cousin in question is almost certainly not the daughter of the aunt in question.
- Angel Densetsu subverts this in a Flashback arc that details how Kitano's parents met. Midori is involved with her cousin and childhood friend, Chuji, who has a one-sided rivalry/obsession with Ryuichiro, and is most definitely Ax Crazy. She insists that Chuji isn't evil, and asks Ryuichiro to defeat him in order to open his eyes. That really won't work, since he is evil now, and even considers Midori as just another easy girl. After he tells Ryuichiro this, Ryuichiro angrily lays him out in one attack, after being repeatedly struck with bronze knuckles and shrugging them off. Midori overhears and realizes the truth, culminating in the more heartwarming relationship between her and Ryuchiro.
- In Narutaru, Shouko Fukuyama has these feelings for her cousin Kyouji. Hell, she has it bad for him; She's about 13 years old and wants to bear his child. She has an Its All Junk hissy fit after being told off by his old crush Jyun. Eventually, Kyouji, who had been comatose for years, dies, and Shouko is all alone... until she sees him after he turned into a... "Virgin Princess" and vows to keep on loving him.
- This is also the entire plot of the manga Sakura Tsuushin, where the main character Tohma's younger cousin, Urara, is constantly trying to sleep with him and keep him away from other women.
- By a similar token, much the same happens in the manga Gakuen Heaven... except there, the cousin isn't the Designated Love Interest and doesn't factor into the series' Betty And Veronica equation at all.
- It's been mentioned in a Code Geass Sound Episode that Suzaku Kururugi was engaged to his cousin Kaguya Sumeragi when they were children. Kaguya later decides that she is married to Zero, Suzaku's mortal enemy. What makes it particularly funny is that Suzaku eventually becomes Zero, though we don't know if Kaguya knows that.
- In one of the earlier cases of Detective Conan, the killer's motive for killing his grandfather, etc, was he fell in love with his cousin, and the older man forbid them to marry. The killer's parents were also cousins, and the patriarch reluctantly agreed their marriage. Note that Japanese culture consider cousin marriages as acceptable.
- Suzuho in Macademi Wasshoi is Takuto's cousin, and naturally one of the haremettes fighting for his affection.
- Macross/Robotech gets a little weird for Western viewers when
Kyle Kaifun, Minmei's cousin, is introduced and becomes a romantic rival for her affections.
- In Kuroshitsuji, Ciel is engaged to his cousin, Elizabeth. Even more interesting is how they're only 12 years old.
- Tenchi Muyo. Canonically, Princesses Ayeka and Sasami Jurai are Tenchi's great aunts. Canonically, he marries both of them, among others.
- Which one of the girls in Onegai Twins is related to Maiku? In the manga, both of them. The one who isn't his sister turns out to be his cousin. They still get together, and if being cousins is an issue, they never say so.
- In Venus Versus Virus, Sumire's male cousin, Riku, likes her. He's like ten years old, and she's fourteen.
- Rei and Yoshino from Maria-Sama Ga Miteru are a bit too close, don't you think? They even treat, Yoshino giving back her rosary like a divorce.
- This is parodied, and lampshaded, in "Maria-sama ni wa Naisho".
- In a filler episode of Shugo Chara, Amu admits that her cousin Shuu was her first real crush.
Comic Books
- Marvel superhero Black Bolt, the king of the Inhumans, is married to his cousin Medusa.
- Due to the limited gene pool of the Inhumans, just about every two-Inhuman marriage involves cousins.
- Mark Millar's post apocalyptic Wolverine story "Old Man Logan" features a future were Hulk and cousin She-Hulk have bred and produced inbred offspring. Hulk and She-Hulk are both radioactive too, which probably didn't help...
- Superman's future daughter engages in a literal example for some cover.
- The Man of Steel himself apparently had such feelings for his cousin Kara (Supergirl)◊.
- Ultraman (Superman's evil counterpart from the Mirror Universe) and Supergirl were once brainwashed into getting married by Saturn Queen, a telepathic control freak who turned Utraman into her son, and decided to do a little matchmaking. Since Ultraman and Superman are identical, it counts.
- The ultimate desire of Marvel Comics superhero Namora has been shown to be her cousin Namor.
- MAD Magazine's Monroe was once visited by his punky Scottish cousin, and they made out a few times. She decided she didn't want to see him anymore because of he was freaky with his "finger-skateboards", but as he said, at least he got to "make oot" that summer.
- In the X Wing Series, Plourr Illo was engaged to her cousin since childhood. In the arc where she returns to her homeworld and takes up the reins, she's shown resisting the idea of marrying him, but since he shows a number of her traits - lots of courage, love of fighting and freedom, disdain for tradition for tradition's sake - she warms up to him. It's never shown whether they actually get married at some point.
Film
- One of the funniest scenes in Mean Girls:
Karen: You know who's looking fine tonight? Seth Mosakowski.
Gretchen: Okay, you did not just say that.
Karen: What? He's a good kisser.
Gretchen: He's your cousin.
Karen: Yeah, but he's my first cousin.
Gretchen: Right.
Karen: So, you have your cousins, and then you have your first cousins, and then you have your second cousins...
Gretchen: No, honey, uh-uh.
Karen: That's not right, is it?
Gretchen: That is so not right.
- Colin, in The Secret Garden, wants to marry his cousin Mary when they grow up so that they can always be together. Mary is amused but uninterested. Colin's response is a jealous loathing of Dickon, the servant boy who helps them in the titular garden, with whom he suspects Mary of falling in love.
- Mary and Vincent in The Godfather Part III.
- In the Victorian farce The Wrong Box, Michael tries to resist his attraction to his cousin Julia:
Michael: We both know what kissing leads to, and if I may be blunt, our children would be idiots."
Julia: Why, is there insanity in your family?
It turns out they were both adopted; her parents were missionaries and were eaten by their congregation.
Literature
- JRR Tolkien examples: When Túrin married his sister, it was a huge disaster. Both the Elves and the Númenóreans have laws or customs against marrying your first cousin, but when Ar-Pharazôn broke that one, it seemed to be more a symptom than a cause of how messed up Númenor was. Galadriel married her second cousin and Elrond married his first cousin twice removed to no bad effect. There are several more distant cousins who marry scattered through the backstory. The fact that Arwen and Aragorn are first cousins fifty or sixty times removed is pretty much irrelevant.
- There's also stuff that looks incestuous but isn't, when people marry their in-laws, producing children who are related in several ways. Bilbo and Frodo Baggins are an example—Frodo's mother was Bilbo's mother's niece, and their fathers were both Bagginses, so they're first and second cousins once removed. In The Silmarillion, there are a few others—Húrin and Handir are first cousins twice, and Túrin and Tuor are both first and second cousins.
- Merry's wife Estella is often stated as being his first cousin. This troper hasn't been able to find any proof of that in the official family tree, although a look at Pippin's family tree shows that Merry and Estella are at least second cousins.
- Jane Austen includes a couple in Mansfield Park that are cousins, and another heroine in Persuasion who is wooed by her cousin (and her older sister wants to marry that same cousin). Cousin marriage was in fact common among the elite at the time, and Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride And Prejudice wants her nephew to marry her daughter.
- Even besides the Not Blood Siblings romance in Wuthering Heights, there's, not coincidentally, two subsequent cousin-cousin relationships.
- In 1879, Cyrano and Roxanne from Cyrano DeBergerac are cousins. Although they don't actually end up together, their familial connection is never presented as Squicky or an obstacle in their relationship.
- In the 1818 version of Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein and his fiancée, Elizabeth Lavenza, are cousins who also happen to have been raised in the same household. In the 1831 version, Elizabeth was adopted rather than being related to Victor, but the two were still raised as siblings.
- A central part of the plot in One Hundred Years Of Solitude is the fact that the founders of the Buendía clan were cousins, and therefore they feared the family would sooner or later breed monsters if they ever in-bred from that point on. Depite all efforts, it happens anyway.
- In Louisa May Alcott's Rose in Bloom, written around the 1860s, the only people that the heroine Rose even considers marrying are three of her seven male cousins, Archie (who falls for Rose's lady-in-waiting Phebe), Charlie "the Handsome" and Mackenzie aka Mac. After Charlie dies, Rose falls for Mac and marries him.
- In another of Alcott's books Jo's Boys, Jo's teenaged son Teddy mentions he wants "a sweetheart" like all his friends, and that "I asked Josie first" — Meg's daughter and his first-cousin. It probably means he wanted her opinion on whether or not he needed a sweetheart, but... he plays her admirer in a School Play, is the only one who can comfort her when their cousin is Mistaken For Dead, and the two do have that same Slap Slap Kiss chemistry that attracts Ben/Gwen shippers...
- Wilkie Collins' heroine in 'The Moonstone' also fails to consider any man but her two cousins as a future husband. Somebody should have taken the girl aside and explained that there are other men in the world.... Of course the rules of propriety being what they were it was petty hard to get to know young men outside the family.
- In the Kushiel's Legacy series by Jacqueline Carey, distant royal cousins (his father is her great-grandfather's brother) Imriel and Sidonie fall for each other. Hard. However, their relatives (and the nation at large) aren't so much annoyed at the idea of relatives marrying so much as they are annoyed that Imriel's mother tried to take over the kingdom (twice, orchestrating an invasion the first time around) and at least some of the populace (mostly the ones still healing the scars from the invasion) thinks Imriel would do the same.
- Mercedes and Fernand in The Count Of Monte Cristo.
- The protagonist of the novel Kung Fu High School is also a literal example of this.
- Somewhat averted in the Wheel Of Time series: Although Rand's mother Tigraine and Elayne's mother Morgase are distant cousins, they are so distantly related that if they were commoners, they wouldn't be considered cousins at all. Thus, the relationship between Rand and Elayne is not considered incestuous.
- Rebecca: The titular dead wife and her cousin, Jack Favell, were lovers. The way the relationship is presented seems to further underline Rebecca's depravity.
- The Wilkes and Hamilton families in Gone With The Wind have the tradition of cousins marrying each other. Which is pretty squicky, considering that these two families keep intermarrying for generations. The text makes it clear that the inbreeding is the main reason for Melly's frail health and physique.
- The 1632 series has fun with this trope. The locals see nothing wrong with cousin marriage. The transplanted Americans are a lot more sensitive about this sort of thing (being from West Virginia, they've heard ALL the jokes).
- In Ann Rice's Mayfair Witches trilogy 13-year old Mona Mayfair has an actual list of the male cousins she intends to sleep with and gets a considerable way down it before going on to other things.
- In The Book of Tobit, it's not clear exactly how closely Tobias and Sarah are related, but their marriage is not only allowed but considered obligatory.
Eat and drink and be merry tonight, for no man is more entitled to marry my daughter Sarah than you, brother. Besides, not even I have the right to give her to anyone but you, because you are my closest relative.
- In How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff, teenage cousins Daisy and Edmond fall passionately in love (after she wonders uneasily for a while "if that's the feeling your supposed to have when your cousin touches a perfectly innocent part of your anatomy that's even fully clothed"). While American Daisy worries somewhat about the taboo, Edmond seems not to and the book treats their romance sympthetically.
- By the middle of the book, she doesn't care.
- Harry Potter: Sirius and Regulus Black's parents Orion and Walburga were second cousins. Mrs. Black didn't have to change her name when she got married. It's implied that purebloodism leads to frequent inbreeding. Even Teddy Lupin and Victoire Weasley are fourth cousins once removed.
- Also referenced more obviously than the above examples when after Tonks' patronus turns into into a type of canine, Harry wonders if she had been in love with Sirius, her cousin, before he died. It turned out to be Lupin, however.
- To be fair, Tonk's mother is a pureblood and Lupin is a half-blood, meaning that in all likelyhood, they were related, too.
- Let's not forget The Gaunts, accurately described in HP Lexicon as "An ancient, in-bred, pure-blood wizarding family living in slovenly conditions in a shack in Little Hangleton." This is supposedly the main cause of poor Merope's "cross-eyed" appearance.
- The corrupt churchman Annias tries to persuade Queen Ehlana to marry her cousin, Prince Lycheas, in the David Eddings Elenium trilogy. She refuses, mostly on the grounds that she can't stand him but also on the grounds that he might actually be her half-brother, given that her father and his mother were a little closer than siblings ought to be. He isn't. Lycheas was actually the son of Annias, which was part of why he was pushing the marriage.
- In the King Arthur trilogy that begins with The Seeing Stone, the narrator is a medieval teenager (named Arthur) whose family circumstances parallel King Arthur's. He and his first cousin Grace are pretty much planning on a betrothal when they find out that Arthur's parents are really his foster parents and that he's actually the son of Grace's father by a peasant woman — so they're half-siblings, not cousins, and any thoughts of marriage have to be dismissed immediately. There's close and then there's too close.
- In Christopher Moore's Fool Pocket has running on/off affairs with both Goneril and Regan, unaware that they're both his first cousins by way of rape. Probably wouldn't have stopped any of them if they did know though. He certainly doesn't seem horrified by it when he does find out. In fact he winds up marrying the youngest sister Cordelia. Whether she knows about the family connection or not isn't revealed
- Skinflick in Josh Bazell's Beat the Reaper is a young mafioso in love with his cousin. The narrator is non-judgmental about this, despite Skinflick's eventual descent into Complete Monster.
- In Tanya Huff's The Enchantment Emporium Gales, a clan of witches usually (though not always) marry their cousins to keep from diluting the magic inherent in their genes and to keep said magic secret. Furthermore because there are far more more female Gales than male the boys usually "make the rounds" of their age group cousins before settling down. This imbalance between the sexes also leads to a lot of "close" relationships between the Gale girls. One of these, between main character Alysha and her cousin Charlie is particularly focused on in the book.
- The Official Couple in Percy Jackson And The Olympians, both being children of the gods, are technically cousins, but this is Hand Waved by stating that the gods don't have DNA (and drawing a distinction between dating a child of another god and dating a child of the same god).
- In the Lois Duncan book Stranger With My Face, the "cousin" made the protagonist's brother and father fall in love with her. (But she turned out to not be the cousin, so it was okay-ish then.)
Live Action TV
- The second verse of Weird Al's Avril Lavigne parody "A Complicated Song" has the protagonist alone with his girlfriend for the first time, presumably about to engage in a little Angry White Boy Polka, when:
"Who would have guessed
Her family crest
I'd suddenly spy
Tattooed on her thigh?
And son of a gun
It's just like the one on me..."
Real Life
- Eleanor Roosevelt didn't have to change her name when she married Franklin — they were fifth cousins. Her Uncle Teddy stole the show at the wedding by commenting to FDR that there's "nothing like keeping the family name in the family."
- Just to point out, second cousins (who have one pair of great-grandparents in common) are so far removed that they are legal to marry in all states and have virtually no genetic material in common (beyond what any two random individuals would). Fifth cousins share only one pair of their great-great-great-great-grandparents.
- On average, two random people have about the genetic similarity of fourth cousins.
- Other Real Life examples with royal families, who tended to marry with cousins simply because nobody else was noble enough. The resulting repetitive inbreeding did have some disastrous results.
- Charles Darwin married his cousin. Think about that for a minute.
- I see your Charles Darwin and raise you Albert Einstein. To be fair, neither was of child-bearing age at the time.
- Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein were once able to bear children?
- Men can still have children at any age, health risks be damned.
- Anyway, it's not true, at least for Darwin, who had ten children by his cousin-wife. Three of their children died young, common enough for the time period, but the survivors were known as distinguished intellectuals.
- Maybe rather unsurprising, Edgar Allan Poe married his 13-year-old cousin.
- This isn't that strange or even as counter-evolutionary as some would assume. Moderate levels of consanguinity can increase the prevalence of beneficial gene complexes as well as deleterious genes, resulting in enhanced traits just as much as harmful ones. The More You Know!
- Jerry Lee Lewis ("Great Balls of Fire") married his 13-year old cousin Myra, and his career was subsequently ruined once the news came out. Myra later remarked she could have prevented the loss of her husband's career if "She had kept her mouth shut about their relationship".
- Specifically, at some point soon after they were married, Myra was traveling with Lewis' entourage while on tour. While he and other band members were conducting interviews, a random reporter came up to her and asked her what her relationship to Lewis was; i.e., what was she doing there touring with the band? Having not been instructed to do otherwise, she replied, "Oh, I'm his wife". Reportedly, the reporter stood there shocked for a moment before replying, "You're his what?!"
- One would think her age was the squick factor, since she looked like her actual age, and that would certainly have been more noticeable to a stranger than the cousin relationship.
- Speaking of; despite the long-standing stereotype, it is illegal to marry one's first cousin in many of the Appalachian states, including West Virginia, Arkansas, and Kentucky. New York and California, on the other hand, have no prohibitions.
- In other words, to paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy, they need laws to prohibit something that's common sense in the rest of the country.
- It's probably because rural areas are more inclined to have cousin intermarriage across several generations. It's not intermarriage, but habitual intermarriage that causes problems.
- And actually in W. Virgina at least, it's "double cousins" (ie the couple are cousins on both maternal and paternal branches) that are prohibited from marrying, not simple first cousins.
- Of course, many countries have no laws against it, such as the UK and Japan.
- Tsarina Alexandra, (Anastasia's mom,) was pushed towards marrying her first cousin by her grandmother, Queen Victoria, but she ended up marrying her second cousin, Tsar Nicholas II
- There was so much intermarriage between the royal families of Europe that by the time of WWI pretty much everyone considered socially acceptable for wedlock was related to some degree. Blame the Hapsburgs. "Let others wage war. You, happy Hapsburg wage marriage." (inexact quote).
- In many long-ago civilizations, there is evidence that only "close-cousins" were not allowed to mate. A close-cousin is one who is your cousin through siblings of the same sex, ie your mother's sister's child or your father's brother's child, even though the relationship is no closer genetically than that of your father's sister's child or your mother's brother's child.
- This may be more sociological than genetic in nature. Parallel cousin marriages tend to strenghten and isolate clans, where cross cousin marriages tend to bring clans closer together.
- There's also the fact that there is at least a small chance that your father's brother's child or your mother's sister's child will turn out to actually be your half-sibling (i.e. one of your parent's was boning their sibling's spouse). This risk is even greater in societies that encourage more than two generations to live in one house-hold. Barring Brother Sister Incest, this is unlikely to happen with your father's sister's children.
Theater
- It's easy to miss, but at the end of The Importance Of Being Earnest, The Reveal that frees Jack/Ernest to marry Gwendolen also makes them first cousins.
- His last line in the play addresses Gwendolen's mother as "my dear Aunt Augusta." It's not that easy to miss.
Video Games
- As an extension for its love of the sibling version Fire Emblem has plenty of this, several preexisting relationships in 4s 2nd generation take on this form, and by selective pairing of characters in the first generation it is possible to make a vast number of such pairings.
- Two particularly noteworthy incidents in FE 4's second generation are the predestined couples of Lana/Faval and Lester/Patty. Because their mothers were identical twins, IS pulled off the impressive feat of doing this and Brother Sister Incest at the same time.
- It is possible to make Roy and Lilina from the 6th game cousins... by pairing Eliwood with Fiora and Hector with either Florina or Farina in the 7th game (which is a prequel to 6). Since 7 was not released yet (and the pairings involved exist among other possible pairings), the 6th game never makes any mention of the possibility.
- Is it wrong to be thinking, "Okay, I'm so doing that next time" right now?
- An ill-fated romance between two Kissing Cousins forms part of the plot of the adventure game The Dark Eye.
- Though nothing ever comes of it, Brother in Final Fantasy X-2 has a noticeable (and one-sided) crush on Yuna. Brother's father and Yuna's mother were siblings.
- In Visual Novel Heart De Roommate the main character's nympho older cousin traps him in her room for some ''education'' about women. A jump cut later and he's pushed staggering out of her door as she calls out a list of people he might like to try that stuff on. It's argueable that the Values Dissonance actually makes the scene funnier.
- That's not counting the side story where they actually do get together...
- In Tales Of The Abyss, Luke Von Fabre is betrothed to princess Natalia, his cousin, due to a Childhood Marriage Promise. In addition to the fact that Luke has no romantic interest in her whatsoever because he's not the same person who made the promise, the trope is also subverted by Natalia not being related to him by blood because she was exchanged for the king's stillborn daughter shortly after birth.
- At the end of Persona 4, if you maxed out your social link with your little cousin Nanako, she tells you that she wants to marry you when she grows up, and apparently won't take "no" for an answer. Granted, she's only seven years old, but your uncle Dojima takes her remark quite seriously.
- Not quite. She'll say that whether you max the Link or not. If you didn't max the link, Dojima won't allow it. If you did, he's gonna hold you to it.
- In the Girls Love Visual Novel series Sono Hanabira Ni Kuchizuke Wo, one of the Official Couples, Kaede and Sara are cousins.
- In Bully, the Preppies are the kids of a bunch of inbred rich people. When Gary gets them to attack you with his old trick of insulting them and saying you did it, the "inbred" insult is met with indignation and the phrase "And first cousins is legal anyway!"
- One of the routes in the Visual Novel Aoi Shiro pairs the main character up with her cousin Kaya.
- The H-Game Do You Like Horny Bunnies? also features this option, with one of the main character Yukari's possible romantic interests being his cousin Sae.
- The entire Nanaya clan, with the exception of Shiki due to his situation. They only breed within the clan to sustain and increase the demonic power within their bloodline.
Western Animation
- Many Ben 10 fans have fun poking at the seeming incestuous subtext in Ben and Gwen's relationship, citing how their love-hate relationship mirrors children who have crushes on each other as well as certain scenes like Gwen teaching Ben how to dance and subsequently blushing.
- And who can forget the I Know You Are In There Somewhere Fight moment in the live action movie where Gwen actually says "I love you!" and "I need you!" to a Not Himself Ben. No doubt meant by creators to be a declaration not of romantic love but of familial love, but nonetheless sounded a lot like many a dramatic lover's plea to the beloved.
- If Gwen's speech in the Alien Force episode "Pier Pressure" is any indication, Ben is actually more her type than her canonical love interest: "You're funny, sensitive, and well-mannered... unlike some people I know."
- In Monster Buster Club, Cathy's big secret is that she kissed her cousin Elton, but only on the cheek, and only on a dare.
- Apparently the motivation for the founding of Shelbyville in The Simpsons. At one point Bart escapes a bunch of Shelbyville kids by pointing and shouting "Look! Somebody's attractive cousin!"
- Kim from Kim Possible has a younger cousin that is quite obsessed with her.
- But said cousin was over her obsession with Kim by the time the episode ended. Plus, she'd do better to date one of Kim's brothers anyway.
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Romantic/sexual relationships between cousins is a phenomenon that varies in its acceptance from culture to culture, as well as over time. It is widely accepted in many cultures today, including most of the industrialized world. The modern U.S. considers it completely taboo, so Hilarity Ensues at the very idea of it. As a result there are a lot of bad jokes about backwoods Appalachians being Kissing Cousins. Despite the taboo, cousin marriages are still legal in (most of) those same places, though of course it's not common.
For the most part, this isn't based on religion; the ancient Hebrew patriarchs like Isaac married his cousin, Rebekah and the biggest Christian denomination, the Catholic church, does allow even first cousins to marry if they ask for a dispensation. In most parts of the world, it's allowed for cousins to marry, not encouraged but still allowed.
One culture in which it was widely tabooed was medieval Europe, and that prohibition was not to prevent inbreeding but to force people to forge family bonds outside their close relatives; it extended to third cousins and included in-laws. In cultures that put a far higher value on family bonds and were far more violent than modern ones, this was an effort to mitigate warfare. Royal or noble families who needed to forge alliances to end feuds often needed a dispensation to marry — as, for instance, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York.
This is also the case in China—in the historical period similar to feudal Europe, the noble are explicitly banned from marrying any person that can trace their paternal lineage to the same historical tribe. This is then extended to all people after the unification of the Chinese empire; people bearing the same surname cannot marry even they are not related at all.
The idea of sex between first cousins being incestuous might have to do with the rise of the science of genetics which might label such unions as inbreeding with the increased risk of having children with recessive trait diseases like hemophilia. Particularly in cultures where the first cousin is the preferred spouse, so that the couples' parents were also Kissing Cousins, and then their parents, etc. A recent study in Western Australia discovered that while the chances of defects do rise, the actual numbers aren't high at all (ex: a 4% chance of birth defects over a 2% chance)[2]
