Basic Trope: A character is opposed to the spouse their parents picked for them.
- Straight: Alice's parents have arranged for her to marry Bob, but she can't stand him and refuses to go through with the wedding.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice's parents present her with heaps of suitors and she refuses every one of them... without even getting to know them.
- Alice tries to kill Bob to avoid marrying him.
- Both Alice and Bob are being forced into the marriage by their parents and both refuse to go through with it.
- Downplayed: Alice's parents set her up on a date with Bob, which she refuses to go on.
- Justified:
- Bob is a sleazy Jerkass whom Alice knows would make a horrible husband.
- Alice is in love with Dave and wants to marry him instead.
- Alice simply doesn't want to get married at the moment.
- Alice and Bob's families are involved in a feud, which the marriage is supposed to end, but Alice and Bob are too entrenched in the "us against them" mentality to even consider it, except maybe as a pretense to end the feud.
- Inverted: Parental Marriage Veto.
- Subverted: Alice is opposed to marrying Bob, but gradually warms up him and falls in love.
- Double Subverted: But then she changes her mind, realising Bob may not be a suitable husband after all and cancels the wedding.
- Parodied: Alice's father suggests spouses for her by reading the names of random men within five miles of her house. She vetoes all of them.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice agrees to marry Bob, but when her parents arrange for the marriage of her sister Diana, the latter refuses and runs away. Then Alice realizes she isn't happy and runs away too, just as Diana changes her mind and comes back in time for her wedding.
- Averted:
- Alice has no problem with marrying Bob.
- Alice's parents let her choose her own husband.
- Enforced: The writer wants to portray independent characters in a medieval setting.
- Lampshaded: "You can't force me to marry that guy! I won't do it!"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Shotgun Wedding
- Alice refuses to marry Bob, but goes through it anyway becuase she doesn't actually have a say over who she can or can not marry.
- Discussed: "What will you do if they force you to marry Bob!" "Only run away as fast as possible!"
- Conversed: "It's easy to figure these plots out. If parents are forcing the daughter to marry, the bridegroom is the Big Bad. If they're against her marriage, here's The Hero."
- Played for Laughs: The parents of two Feuding Families are happy that they have come to an arrangement that will finally bring peace through a marriage, and can only imagine how pleased the soon-to-be bride and groom will be once they hear the news. Meanwhile Alice and Bob are in the middle of a protracted fight that causes an absurd level of destruction around them.
- Played for Drama: Alice's parents threaten to disown her unless she marries Bob.
Back to Child Marriage Veto
