Markup View

Author: Aielyn

Jul 2nd 2011 at 6:52:12 AM

I think the idea behind this trope is that the sidekick or secondary protagonist ends up getting the girl (or guy), where traditionally it's the hero or main protagonist that gets the girl/guy. In the case of Harry Potter, you have the protagonist, the secondary protagonist (Ron), and the female counterpart to the protagonist (Hermione). If Harry Potter followed the normal path, Harry and Hermione would have been paired off, with Ron, being the secondary protagonist, either remaining unpaired or connected to a minor character. Instead, Harry is the one that gets paired to a minor character, with Ron and Hermione paired together.

This would be akin to a Superman story where it's Jimmy Olsen that gets Lois Lane, rather than Superman himself.

I can think of another example...

* In StarWars, episodes 4-6, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia are the primary male and female characters. However, Leia is instead paired off with Han Solo (very much {{Justified}}).

And another thing to note - there are three distinct categories of "getting the girl". There's the "male protagonist, female protagonist" pairing, like in Harry Potter (both characters are key to the work), there's the plot-driven pairing, where one of the whole points of the story is where the protagonist is trying to get the girl, and the girl is there for the plot (Peach in the earlier entries in the Mario series), and there's the GirlOfTheWeek pairing, where a character "gets the girl" repeatedly.