Seduction as One-Upmanship

"After dealing with [Lord Grathan's] son, I stayed to socialize with Lady Grathan. An added humiliation for him."

— the Sith Warrior, Star Wars: The Old Republic

Alice seduces Bob's lover Charlie as an act of one-upmanship over Bob.

If it's done non-consensually, it's Revenge by Proxy. In this trope, however, Charlie is a willing party, and that's the particular sting — that Charlie was more than happy to cheat on Bob. This is an Invoked Trope version of Emasculated Cuckold, although it's not gender-specific. Occasionally Charlie is not Bob's lover, merely his crush, but Alice wants to "steal" Charlie from Bob nonetheless.

Alice's feelings toward Charlie may vary, but the key to this trope is that Alice's relationship with Bob is more important that her relationship with Charlie. In an odd way, she cares more about Bob—and hurting him—than she does about Charlie.

This could also be considered the Inverted Trope of Love Triangle. Rather than conflict caused by competing over a lover, competing over a lover is the manifestation of an existing conflict.

A subtrope of Relationship Sabotage. When it's in the context of Japanese porn, it's Netorare. Compare Better Partner Assertion. Also see Foe Cooties and Sleeping with the Boss's Wife. See also Seduction-Proof Marriage for cases where the seduction attempt fails.

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Examples

Comic Books

• Seven Soldiers: In Seven Soldiers: Bulleteer, Sara doesn't particularly care for any of the individuals involved in her relationships but targets married men specifically to mess with their wives. When the wife of her latest fling, a man Sara goaded into killing himself, doesn't wallow in self-pity and becomes a superhero due to the side effects of the lab incident that killed her husband Sara turns full-on super-villain to try and kill her in retaliation.

Fan Works

• Inter Nos: Shizuma has slept with half the married women of Hime, and only because she hasn't gotten to the other half yet. Her favorite targets of seduction are the wives of senators of the arch-conservatives, who stand in opposition to her cousin, Shizuru.

Film — Animated

• The Last: Naruto the Movie: It's revealed that Naruto's infatuation with Sakura was actually his attempt at one-upping his rival Sasuke, whom Sakura herself was actually in love with.

Film — Live-Action

• Barely Lethal: Megan falls for two boys, Cash and Roger, while at high school. Heather, Megan's rival when she was a Teen Superspy, shows up at her school. She tries seducing Cash, and according to her makes out with him, in order to irritate Megan. Cash ends up asking Megan to homecoming, but Megan realizes she really likes Roger. When she goes to confess her feelings to him, she sees that Heather took him to the dance.
• Butter: Brooke sleeps with the daughter of her rival, Bob Pickler, as part of her revenge scheme against him.
• The Campaign, among its bizarre Escalating War of an election, has Cam Brady sleep with Marty Huggins' wife and film it for his campaign as payback for Huggins using his son as part of his own.
  Brady: Marty Huggins can't even take care of his own wife, so I did...
• Closer: During a confrontation, Larry explicitly tells Dan that he extorted sex from Anna specifically to "fuck with you", wanting Dan to experience the pain he felt.(The backstory on this moment being that Anna left Larry for Dan, but Larry refused to sign their divorce papers unless they had sex one last time). Now that Anna has returned to Larry, Larry suggests that Dan reconcile with his previous girlfriend Alice. Just as Dan agrees and goes to leave, Larry can't resist informing him that he slept with Alice as well.

Literature

• Dollanganger Series
  • Petals on the Wind: Cathy spends over a decade planning her Roaring Rampage of Revenge against her mother, the capstone of which is seducing her mother's husband and Baby Trapping him.
  • Roughly twenty years later in Seeds of Yesterday, Cathy's son Bart — the very result of that affair — proves how like his mother he is by seducing his sister-in-law Melodie, his brother Jory's wife. Jory has never done anything to hurt Bart, but he's the family favorite while Bart has always been The Unfavorite. When Jory is in a paralyzing accident, Bart seizes the opportunity to provide the sexual satisfaction that Jory now can't.
• Eugene Onegin: Onegin got angry at Lensky for the boring time spent at a party, and flirted with his beloved Olga all evening to annoy him. As a result, Lensky challenged him to a Duel to the Death, where Onegin killed him — and regretted it all his life.
• Casteel Series: Heaven's trampy sister Fanny repeatedly makes advances to her boyfriend Logan, eventually not only outright seducing him after they've gotten married, but getting pregnant as well—this is the key thing that she taunts Heaven about when she tells her about it.
• Kushiel's Legacy: When the young Alban witch Moirin mac Fanche arrives in Terre d'Ange in Naamah's Kiss, she becomes inadvertently caught in the stormy relationship between Queen Jehanne de la Courcel and her lover, the physician Raphael de Mereliot; unusually (though not for Terre d'Ange), Moirin is seduced by both Raphael and Jehanne as a way to punish the other at different times.
• In C. S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity, he cites this as evidence that Pride is an inherently competitive thing. Sexual feelings might put two men in conflict if they're both in love with the same woman, but they could just as easily have fallen in love with two different women. However, a proud man will seduce a woman for whom he cares nothing merely to prove himself superior to the other man.
• Monster Girl Doctor: Arahnia the Arachne has a habit of wanting what other women have, as the drama and stimulation inspire her artistry. As such, she seduces other women's husbands and boyfriends, only to dump them before the relationship turns intimate. At the start of the series, she turns her attention to the protagonist, Glenn Litbeit, the crush of her best friend, Saphentite. Despite her unwillingness to be intimate with other men, when she captures Glenn in a web trap, she considers raping him before Saphee can have him both to see how Saphee reacts and under the logic that she and her friend will "share" something and grow closer. However, over time, she genuinely falls in love with Glenn herself.
• My Sweet Audrina's evil cousin Vera spends most of the book tormenting her, including repeatedly seducing her boyfriend and later husband Arden, all for revenge for being The Unfavorite and also as a means of taunting Audrina about her Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality and subsequent inability to have a normal sex life with him.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades:
  • Tullio Rossi, who sees himself as a class rival to main character Oliver Horn, makes several passes at Oliver's Love Interest Nanao Hibiya. He has absolutely no success at this because Nanao only has eyes for Oliver.
  • In volume 6, during a confrontation between the two parties in the election for Student Council President, Khiirgi Albschuch from Echevalria's group mocks Lesedi Ingwe from Godfrey's group about having repeatedly cucked her. She repeats this to goad Lesedi in volume 10 when they fight in the tournament arc; in reply, Lesedi says she's going to beat Khiirgi not just for seducing her girlfriends, but for making them cry.

Live-Action TV

• Attempted by Dick in the 3rd Rock from the Sun episode "Dick for Tat." After finding out that his beloved Mary slept with Strudwick years ago, Dick decides to get back at him by sleeping with Strudwick's wife. Although she's outraged, Strudwick's wife refuses to sleep with Dick. Instead, she gets back at her husband by sleeping with their pool guy.
  Dick: Oh my god... you have a pool!
  • Dick then tries to seduce the pool guy's wife in a desperate effort to even the scales... only to find that Strudwick got there first.
• Played for Laughs in Arrested Development when Gob — who is still angry at Michael for trying to pursue a relationship with his girlfriend — tries to get back at him by seducing a trans woman with whom Michael was having a friendly conversation because Gob can't conceive of a man being polite to a woman unless he's planning to sleep with her. Naturally, Michael has no reaction to Gob seducing the trans woman.
  Narrator: But Gob mistook Michael's basic human decency for romantic interest, and felt a competitive urge to step in.
• Boardwalk Empire: In season 1, "Lucky" Luciano develops a feud with rival gangster Jimmy Darmody, then decides to seduce Gillian Darmody in the belief that she's Jimmy's wife. His boss Arnold Rothstein has to inform him that she's Jimmy's mother (she had him when she was 14). Not only that, she's completely loyal to her son and later helps him lure Luciano into a trap.
• Borgia: Discussed by Rodrigo, in a lecture to his sons:
  Rodrigo: Sleeping with another man's wife must be based on the husband's lack of character, not the woman's lust.
• An episode of Charmed (1998) featuring a unique type of siren employees this trope on a massive scale. The siren in question was originally a human woman who was seduced by a married man, but when their affair was discovered, she was the only one punished with a sentence of burning at the stake. She then returned from the dead and decided to get vengeance against humanity by specifically seducing married men with her newfound Compelling Voice, which also hypnotizes the men's wives to force them to watch as she makes love to their husbands and fatally burns them with a literal Kiss of Death (after the murder, she kills the wives with her fire powers as well). The siren explains that takes special pleasure in watching the wives see their supposedly-faithful husbands fall under her spell and give up their lives because she's just that powerful.
• Woody from Cheers gets into an argument with a wealthy man while bartending at a party and agrees to settle it with a fistfight. The fight ends with Woody getting knocked out with one punch. When the man's girlfriend Kelly comes by, Woody decides to get revenge by taking her out on a date. The end result: Kelly breaks up with the guy and starts dating Woody, Kelly and Woody eventually get married, and they are expecting their first child when the series ends.
• Dexter: After Lieutenant LaGuerta is demoted, she strikes up an affair with her replacement's fiance, thereby driving said replacement to paranoid outbursts that get her deposed and let LaGuerta reclaim her position.
• When General Hospital's Carly came to town, she quickly set about seducing her stepfather Tony in order to get back at her mother Bobbie for giving her up for adoption. Once the affair was discovered, Carly took much pleasure in constantly throwing it in her face, leaving Bobbie completely bewildered as to why Carly hated her so much, unaware of her true identity.
• ER. Doug hooks up with an associate of his estranged father. While she's vague about the exact status of their relationship, she at one point angrily asks if getting back as his father for abusing and ultimately abandoning him and his mother is the reason for their relationship.
• Roseanne: One episode has David strike up a romance with a new friend, only for Mark—who is married to Becky—to swoop in and start flirting with her to show David up. David promptly chews Mark out for this, pointing out that he was willing to risk his own marriage just to humiliate him, which makes Mark the truly pathetic one. Mark realizes David is right and cancels his plans with the woman.
• Sunset Beach's Ben's jealous Evil Twin Derek not only kidnaps him in order to take over his life, he forces him to watch via a two-way mirror as he makes love to his fiancée Meg (or rather, essentially rapes her, since this is a Bed Trick and she thinks it's Ben shes having sex with.)
• The White Lotus: Ethan's resentment towards his supposed friend, the unapologetic playboy Cameron, is a running theme in their party's subplot. It is later revealed that Cameron used to go after the girls Ethan liked in college seemingly to assert his dominance over the nerdy Ethan. When Cameron flirts with and potentially sleeps with Ethan's wife Harper, Ethan is furious. When taking it out on Cameron through violence doesn't work, it's then implied that Ethan has a dalliance with Cameron's wife Daphne in turn.

Tabletop Games

• The Republic of Rome has an Intrigue card named "Seduction", whose Flavor Text describes how the player's faction leader seduces another senator's wife. Gameplay-wise, this gives you an attempt to persuade any one other senator (except rival faction leaders) to immediately join your faction, weakening your rivals'.

Theatre

• Così Fan Tutte: The plot involves two lovey-dovey couples, Gugliemo and Fiordiligi, and Ferrando and Dorabella, the two men leaving their beloveds and returning in disguise attempting to seduce the other's betrothed at the urging of Don Alfonso. Gugliemo very quickly succeeds in sweeping Dorabella off her feet, while Ferrando encounters no success. When a triumphant Ferrando arrives expecting that his own fiancée was just as faithful to him, Gugliemo corrects him rather tactlessly, leading Ferrando to go after Fiordiligi again, succeeding this time (and proving Don Alfonso right: the opera's title means "Thus do women all act").

Video Games

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All: The final episode, "Farewell, My Turnabout", involves a feud between two actors (one is accused of murdering the other) and the two being romantically involved with the same women is but one of the many dirty deeds in the conflict. Turns out to be inverted; Juan Corrida dumped his fiancee Celeste Inpax after his rival Matt Engarde told him he used to date her.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic:
  • One stage of the Sith Warrior's story on Dromund Kaas has them sent to assassinate the son of Grathan, a renegade Sith Lord whom their master, Darth Baras, views as an obstacle. One option is to make a secret deal with his wife Lady Grathan to instead help her son Kill and Replace her husband; male Warriors then get the option to have sex with the grateful Lady Grathan. Darth Baras, who isn't aware of the agreement, is very amused when the Warrior tells him he killed Lord Grathan's son and then slept with his wife; not so much Lord Grathan the Younger, who tries to have the Warrior assassinated later.
  • Defied in the Sith Inquisitor story on Tatooine. Andronikos Revel's mutinous ex-first mate Sylas Wilkes has been trying to get Andronikos's ex-girlfriend Casey Rix to become his mistress, and when confronted, he brags to Andronikos about having taken his ship, his cargo, his blasters, and now his girl. He's completely unaware that Rix still has a significantly better opinion of Andronikos than of him, and Honey Trapped him into staying put long enough for Andronikos and the Inquisitor to reach his hideout and kill him so she could take his job.

Webcomics

• Something*Positive: Ollie sleeps with several of Davan's ex-girlfriends to get back at him, but Davan genuinely doesn't care which only pisses Ollie off further.

Web Original

• In Jerusalem's Let's Play of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Catalina calls CJ to tell him how much more sex she's having with Claude than with him. Some he ignores, but when she does it during a race he nearly crashes the car.

Western Animation

• DuckTales (2017): Flintheart Glomgold tries to hit on Goldie O'Gilt just for the pleasure of taking something that once belonged to Scrooge. Goldie O'Gilt barely tolerates him and only agrees to work with him to double-cross him.
• Family Guy: This is the centre of the episode "Tiegs for Two". To get one over on Quagmire, Brian starts dating his "one that got away", Cheryl Tiegs, whose breakup with Quagmire inspired him to give up on romance and become a rakish sex-seeker. Quagmire also tries this himself, hooking up with Brian's ex Jillian.

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