Basic Trope: A woman either declares by oath, or is forced by law, to marry/have sex with someone that defeats her.
- Straight: Action Girl Alice has to/will only marry an Action Hero. Enter Bob, the only man who is stronger, faster, and all around more capable than her, and who bests her in combat. She marries him.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice, a Superpower Lottery winner, meets Bob, who is a Physical God, and who not only defeats her in combat but rapes her. Her magic vow makes her fall in love with him.
- Alice and Bob fight for their lives and have rough sex at the same time.
- Downplayed: Bob only has to show his best without any quitting attitude; it does not matter whether he defeats Alice or not.
- Justified:
- Alice has realized the implications of orgasm in those with Super-Strength, and is using 'able to beat me' as a rough way to determine if a potential love interest could survive sex with her. For greater awkwardness, her invulnerability also means that her 'nice tender lovemaking' is a normal person's 'rough sex.'
- Lovers usually share a lot of common interest, and for Alice, bodybuilding and martial artist are two of her greatest passions, so she will only marry a man who is related to those things. Being that so, if a man wants to have anything with her, he must be up to the challenge and prove himself worthy, and besides, the part after the defeat open up the possibility for many kinds of kinky followup roleplays.
- Alice is from a culture that values martial prowess and physical ability. A strong and mighty father is surely going to give her strong and mighty children.
- It's a Secret Test of Character: If they really love each other, they'll hold back enough that neither is seriously injured.
- Alice's clan insists on this rule for all its members, in hopes that their scions become ever stronger.
- Alice's thirst for combat is almost as infamous as her skills with a sword: as a result, no one dared to accept her challenges. Bored out of her skull and looking for someone, ANYONE to fight, Alice offers this, and started getting challengers again... all of whom fail.
- Alice likes guys that she can't control.
- Inverted:
- Unassuming Distressed Damsel Alice may only marry someone that is more helpless and danger prone than she is. She meets Bob, a Distressed Dude.
- After Bob bests her in combat, Alice must kill him to reclaim her honor or her clan will shun her.
- Alice defeats Bob, but falls in love with him due to his character and personality, not his combat ability.
- Weakness Turns Her On
- Gender Inverted: Action Hero Bob vows to marry the one woman who will best him in combat. Action Girl Alice faces off against him in combat and beats Bob. They both get married.
- Subverted:
- Action Girl Alice meets Bob, the only man who is stronger, faster, and all around more capable than her, and who bests her in combat. She refuses to obey the rule/oath and runs away from him.
- Alice is part of an Amazon Brigade clan that states that should one of them fall to a man (Bob), she's dishonored and must kill said man to restore her glory.
- Alice acts like one, but is actually a Black Widow who uses it as a way of weeding out men who might be a danger to her and killing them at their most vulnerable.
- Alice defeats Bob… and tells him that as a consequence of being defeated, he has to marry her anyway.
- Double Subverted:
- …because she was disappointed that he refused to marry her.
- However, Alice grew attached to Bob, and cannot bring herself to kill him. Fortunately the clan law has an escape clause stating she can reclaim her honor by bringing him back alive and as her husband.
- Similar to above, but Alice instead reveals to Bob her Freudian Excuse and expresses regret, stating how she genuinely cared for him, starting a new life with him after getting proper help and making amends for her crimes.
- But only if he defeats her in a rematch.
- Parodied:
- Alice can only have sex with men who defeat her… at strip poker!
- Alice and Bob are now a Happily Married Battle Couple, but Alice still insists on challenging Bob to ritual combat every time they want to have sex. This becomes a Running Gag.
- Zig Zagged: Alice had a number of paramours over her lifetime, some who beat her in combat, some who didn't, and at least one who did defeat her but was so Gonk Alice refused him.
- Averted:
- Alice and Bob are equally strong.
- Alice has no love interest.
- Alice falls in love with a quiet, sensitive Non-Action Guy.
- Enforced: The author has a thing for this kind of character.
- Lampshaded: "You bested me in combat, so you can have my heart!"
- Invoked:
- A curse is placed on Alice so that she can only be with a man if he bests her in combat first.
- Alice challenges Bob to defeat her in combat to see if he's worthy of her.
- Exploited:
- Bob deliberately challenges Alice or sets up a conflict with her because he knows it's the only way of winning her.
- Bob wins through trickery and subterfuge, not because he wants to take advantage of her, but because he would probably die in straight combat.
- As this is the general rule of her homeland, Alice deliberately throws a match to the man she loves in order to trap him into an acceptable marriage with her.
- Billy becomes the World's Strongest Man knowing that this is the one way to ask Alice to marry him that Alice cannot decline.
- Defied:
- Alice outright refuses to do her dating based on trial by combat.
- Bob is uninterested in sex and only wants the fighting part of this trope, and states so loudly before engaging in battle with Alice.
- Discussed: "I don't think martial combat is a healthy basis for a relationship…"
- Conversed: Two feminists talk about the misogynist implications of the trope.
- Deconstructed:
- Alice is in love with Bob. Bob is in love with Alice. They can't get married because the law says she can only marry a man who defeats her: he's a wimpy Muggle and she has Full-Contact Magic.
- Bob defeats Alice, but had no idea about the whole "she marries whoever defeats her in combat" and isn't willing to go along when he learns about it.
- Reconstructed:
- The law doesn't say what he has to defeat her in. They agree on Tic-Tac-Toe.
- Alice is in love with Jim, who is wimpier than Bob, and Bob knows it. One secret meeting later, Bob, Jim and Alice arrange a faked battle in which Jim "defeats" Bob in a convincing enough fashion that Alice's society does not questions when he "demands" Alice to marry him.
- Bob and Alice figure out that this is a stupid law that has come to do more harm than good and, even if they do not love each other, make an acceptable needs-based Battle Couple as they best the everliving crap out of the society's lawmakers and having proven that they are stronger demand the law to be changed.
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