Twin Switch / Literature

Literature examples of twins switching places.

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• In Cynthia Blair's Pratt Twins series, twins Susan and Christine Pratt switch places for various reasons.
• In the fifth book of the Anne of Green Gables series, Anne's House of Dreams, the titular Anne meets a woman named Leslie, whose past is a tragic one. To make it worse, her once cruel husband, Dick, is now a helpless, brain-damaged man after coming home from a sea voyage, forcing her to have to take care of him for 11 years. You learn later in the book that he has a cousin named George that he looks exactly the same as, because their parents had been two sets of twins who married one another...
• The Baby-Sitters Club:
  • Marilyn and Carolyn Arnold swap places while Mallory is babysitting, with the wrong twin going to piano lessons (to the teacher's annoyance). The goal was to get back at Mallory, who once called them "Marilyn-or-Carolyn". When Mallory explains that she didn't mean they were interchangeable to her, she just didn't know which twin she was talking to, they explain how to tell them apart.
  • In the Little Sister book "Karen's Twin", Terri and Tammy, the twins in Karen's class, start doing this. Unlike the Arnold twins, who are implied to do this on a fairly regular basis, Karen mentions that they don't normally even dress alike, though they start doing so in order to pull this off.
• Both Can Be True: Mitch has a crush on Fiona, but Fiona is only friends with Mitch's identical twin Daniel. Mitch comes up with a plan for Daniel to ask Fiona to meet him so Mitch can show up instead and woo her. Daniel protests that she already has a boyfriend, but when Mitch threatens to tell their mom that Daniel has been sneaking in late at night smelling like urine, he agrees to do it. Fiona sees right through the deception and is furious at both of them.
• Ulf and Wulf of The Brotherband Chronicles do this regularly for fun. It's reached the point where nobody is ever quite certain which is Wulf and which is Ulf...including the narrator.
• The Cat Who... Series: In book #8 (The Cat Who Sniffed Glue), this is central to the resolution. A couple has adult twin sons, David and Harley. One night, Harley and his wife Belle are murdered when someone breaks into their home. It's eventually revealed that it was actually David and Belle who were murdered; Harley and David's wife Jill, who were having an affair, had planned the whole thing so they could be together without anyone realizing. The twins' parents figured it out and were utterly destroyed — the mother had a stroke over it and the father shot himself because he was unable to choose between informing the police what had happened or becoming an accessory after the fact by hiding the truth.
• One of the CHERUB Series bonus stories, aptly named "The Switch", has nearly identical twins Connor and Callum switch places as part of a mission. The fact that Real Life twins are rarely perfectly identical is acknowledged, and a makeup artist is used to make the two boys look even more alike.
• In Courtship Rite the Liethe clan is composed of clones, and the personas they show outsiders are just roles that they can teach their sisters so they can switch when needed. I.e. if the clan decides that a particular priest needs to die one of his consorts can be switched for an assassin from the same clone-line.
• In Dido And Pa by Joan Aiken, aristocratic siblings Simon and Sophie swap places so the latter can politely attend a meeting with an advisor while the former hunts wolves. It's never made quite clear whether the two are twins, and even if they were they couldn't be identical. The ruse only works in any case so long as the person they're fooling isn't really paying attention, and Sophie gets into hot water when her disguise is rumbled.
• Don't Care High: Or rather triplet switch, the LaPaz's sometimes switch classes with each other to do better on tests in subjects where one of them is stronger than the others. They are impressed when Mike (or rather Paul pretending that Mike told him) figures this out.
• The book series Double Trouble is all about this trope with twin sisters Sandi and Randi, usually with the switch being imperfect and them being found out. It gets cranked up a notch with the Triple Trouble books that feature their identical cousin Mandi.
• In Dragon Bones the outgoing ladies' man Beckram frequently gets his bookish, rather shy twin brother Erdrick to pretend to be him at boring formal occasions so that he can go partying elsewhere. Much to Erdrick's embarrassment, Beckram's lady love tends to get very familiar with him in public. It all ends badly when an assassin gunning for Beckram kills Erdrick instead.
• In False Colours by Georgette Heyer, protagonist Kit Fancot is persuaded by his mother to take the place of his missing twin, Lord Denville, at a very important social engagement. Hilarity Ensues.
• Downplayed in Harry Potter, but Fred and George did a quick one for their Establishing Character Moment.
  Mrs. Weasley: Fred, you next.
  Twin #1: I'm not Fred, I'm George. Honestly, woman, you call yourself our mother? Can't you tell I'm George?
  Mrs. Weasley: Sorry, George, dear.
  Twin #1: Only joking, I am Fred.
• The Twin Switch plot was used in one of the Hercule Poirot novels, more exactly Elephants Can Remember: the mentally broken Dorothea/Dolly fatally wounds her twin sister Margaret/Molly, and in her last words Molly convinces her husband to keep the secret of her death and make Dolly (who loved him) pass as her. He does, but some time later, he goes the Murder-Suicide way on Dolly and himself.
• Howl's Moving Castle has a subplot about two sisters, Martha and Lettie, who are apprenticed by their mother to a sorceress and a bakery respectively, but switch places because each would prefer what the other's been given. They're not identical, but Martha concentrates on learning enough magic to disguise herself as Lettie and vice versa, and then they switch. (After the deception is revealed, the sorceress admits that the disguise never fooled her since it was based on one of her own spells, but she let it pass because she figured a girl that determined to learn should be given the chance.)
• In Identical, the leads are identical twins that share a wardrobe, making it easy enough for one of them to take the other's place. Eventually subverted; the twins are actually the same girl with multiple personality disorder, which she developed after her twin died in a car accident and her father began sexually abusing her.
• James Bond
  • In Never Send Flowers, David Dragonpol has an identical brother, whom he switches places with when his insanity takes hold on him. He uses this switch to delude authorities to think that he's dead.
  • The Taunt twins from DoubleShot share the identity of the CIA agent Hillary Taunt, going out one at the time to keep their status as twins a secret.
• Lottie and Lisa is a novel by Erich Kästner. The twins in it don't switch for fun or mischief but out of a serious fear that they will never get to know their mother and father, respectively, since they were Separated at Birth and only met by coincidence. The switch going unnoticed is facilitated by the parents being distant in case of the father and constantly working in case of the mother.
• The Miss Nelson series of picture books, written by Harry Allard and illustrated by James Marshall, is about a schoolteacher named Miss Nelson who has to take time off from class and when she finds out that the kids of her class are acting up in her absence returns dressed up as a mean substitute named Viola Swamp, a black-haired, no-nonsense teacher who is known for "getting results." The book Miss Nelson Has a Field Day has a new twist. In this one, the school's football team, the Smedley Tornadoes, is rubbish and acting out, and Miss Nelson overhears a kid suggesting that Viola Swamp ought to coach the team because she "gets results." However, she still has her class to teach this time. How does she do it? Well, given the trope page you're at, you probably already guessed. The ending of the book shows her at home, thanking her identical twin sister Barbara for filling in for her classes.
• The 'one twin dies and the other takes up their life' variant is actually fairly common in mystery novels. A brilliant usage appears for example in Agatha Christie's A Murder Is Announced. There were twins involved, but the Dead Person Impersonation plot was done by a lady who was a younger sister of the deceased.
• In one case in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Mma Ramotswe investigates a doctor who sometimes seems to be very competent, and sometimes seems to have no idea what he's doing. She discovers the doctor is routinely switching places with his twin brother (who definitely isn't a qualified doctor), so they can run two offices in separate cities at the same time, and make twice as much money.
• In One Hundred Years of Solitude, the twins Aureliano Segundo and Jose Arcadio Segundo swap themselves around constantly during childhood, resisting all attempts to distinguish them, because they find others' dismayed reactions to be amusing. Their family has two traditional male names which are used repeatedly down through generations, each of which comes to imply a different set of personality traits; of course, Jose Arcadio becomes more like an Aureliano (silent, disconnected from reality, embittered, a fighter for lost causes) and vice versa (Aureliano is cheerful, charismatic, generous, an epically Big Eater), until both the audience and the members of their family are led to believe that they swapped permanently at some point. They both seduce the same woman; one ends up keeping her as a concubine. During adulthood, they grow VERY dissimilar, but slowly return to their former state until they die at the exact same time, upon which the bodies are mixed up and accidentally buried in the wrong graves.
• Pretty Little Liars had a very plot important twin switch. Local Alpha Bitch Alison disappears and when a body is later found everyone assumes that it's her. Later books reveal that Alison had/has a twin named Courtney who was institutionalized. The end of the second arc reveals that the Alison the liars knew was actually Courtney (whom Ali claims was violent and malicious), who pulled off a twin switch by herself and ended up getting Ali sent back to the mental hospital in her place (it should be noted that Ali is strongly implied to have purposely set her sister up to look crazy in the first place). Ali attempted to switch back by killing Courtney (it failed)so Courtney is buried under her sister's name.
• The Prince and the Pauper, by Mark Twain. It's essentially what happens, although it's combined with an Identical Stranger. Those who switch places are Street Urchin named Tom Canty and Prince Edward VI of England.
• The Prisoner of Zenda uses a variant with a distant cousin of the Crown Prince of Ruritania, a descendant of said Crown Prince's illegitimate son.
• Halt from Ranger's Apprentice switches places with his twin in book eight of the series.
• The Railway Series:
  • In "The Missing Coach", Donald and Douglas swap tenders (Donald is No. 9 and Douglas No. 10) to avoid getting discovered by the Fat Controller after Douglas misplaced Thomas' Special Coach. Unfortunately for the twins, the Fat Controller isn't fooled and rounds on Douglas for masquerading with Donald's tender.
  • In "The Diseasal", Bill and Ben do this to play a trick on BoCo by pretending to be the same engine, after removing their nameplates and numbers.
• David Eddings' story Regina's Song has, as part of the backstory, a pair of twins who pull this so regularly that they themselves have no real sense of "I", only "We". When one of the twins is murdered and the other left incoherent from witnessing it, nobody, including their parents, is able to tell whether the dead girl is Regina or Renata.
• Castor and Pollux from Robert A. Heinlein's The Rolling Stones (1952) took each other's places in one semester of high school. Instead of each being burdened with two time-consuming classes, they split it up to each take one class twice. A lesson occurred in deep space, when the twin who'd taken history instead of advanced math had to spend all his leisure time playing catch-up in that essential spaceman's discipline.
• In The Roman Mysteries, Gaius poses as his twin brother Marcus (who has been shipwrecked), in order to convince the bankers who want to foreclose on Marcus's home that Marcus is in good health and should get more time to pay off his loan.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Cersei Lannister recalls how she used to switch places with her twin brother Jaime Lannister when they were children, often for a whole day. This basically was just Crossdressing—they're Half-Identical Twins, and they were prepubescent at the time. Living in a world of strict gender roles, taking on the trappings of gender was enough; people saw that they expected to see. And now you may imagine Jaime Lannister in skirts.
    Cersei: When we were little, Jaime and I were so much alike that even our lord father could not tell us apart. Sometimes as a lark we would dress in each other's clothes and spend a whole day each as the other.
  • The Back Story/Worldbuilding book Fire & Blood has an Ambiguous Situation example. After the coronation of King Jaehaerys in Oldtown, it was noted that the twins Aerea and Rhaella had suddenly switched personalities, leading some to believe that the twins had been switched during the wedding by either their mother Rhaena or their grandmother Alyssa. It's never confirmed, however.
• Variation in the Song of the Lioness books: Alanna is to be sent to the convent to receive instruction in the proper behavior of a noblewoman and wants to be a knight; her twin Thom is supposed to go to the palace to be a page, but wants to learn magic (taught at the convent). Instead of switching identities, Alanna dresses as a boy and the two switch destinations.
• Split Heirs: Arbol and Wulfrith are switched multiple times once they meet, usually without them meaning to (they're half identical).
• Sweet & Bitter Magic: Tamsin and her twin Marlena used to fool people doing this as a joke. Once their magic manifested, it no longer became possible.
• This was done an insane number of times in the Sweet Valley High series and its various spin-offs. In one book, an Identical Stranger tries to pose as Elizabeth, but Elizabeth's best friend doesn't believe it for a second and thinks that Jessica, Elizabeth's twin sister, is the one pretending to be her.
• Invoked in A Tale of Two Cities to get Charles Darnay out of prison. Sydney Carton (not actually his twin but a look-alike) forces Charles' accusors to admit they can't identify him since he looks identical to Sydney. Sydney later exploits this resemblance to take his place and die on the guillotine so Darnay can escape France.
• The Thinking Machine: In "Convict #97", a convict escapes by forcing his twin brother to take his place on the cell. Van Dusen works out what has happened because the brothers have different shoe sizes.

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