History Main / ArrangedMarriage

* KatherineKerr's DeverryCycle features this for Deverrian nobles. It's extremely significant at several points across the books, although unusually it's presented as neither wholy good or bad. Both male and female characters comment on it, knowing full well that marriages are for political alliances, not love. There's even an in-universe saying about it; "Men like me marry to please our clans, not ourselves".

* This is the entire concept of the book ''Matched''. The government chooses your job and who you marry, and you're not supposed to refuse (though sometimes the couples don't work out and are allowed to be rematched, IIRC)

* OlderThanFeudalism: Zeus arranged the marriage between Aphrodite, the Goddess of love and beauty to the deformed Hephaestos -- apparently to stop the other gods from squabbling about her. Although that did not stop Aphrodite from dallying around in any way...

* ''ImperiumNova'' allows you to arrange marriages between members of your house and those from others. The lower status house gains status from the marriage and the higher status house often loses status but dowrys can be offered to soften the blow. It also decreases feud score.

* A game mechanic in ''ImperiumNova'', mostly serves to increase a lower ranking house's status and produce heirs for one or both houses involved.

* In ''WebOriginal/MotherOfLearning'', [[spoiler:Kirielle]]'s marriage six years in the future has already been planned out.

* [[VideoGame/SuperPaperMario The Chaos Heart]] can only be awakened to its full, [[ApocalypseHow reality-sundering]] power by the marriage of two individuals never meant to be together. Count Bleck invades Mario's reality to abduct Peach and Bowser for his attempt to DivideByZero, and Nastasia is forced to [[MindControl take control of Peach]] to get the doom train out of the station (Peach, naturally, would never agree to wedding Bowser).

* In ''DragonQuestVIII'', Princess Medea and Prince Charmles have an arranged marriage. When the heroes (with Medea [[BalefulPolymorph transformed into a horse]] pulling their cart) go on a mission with Charmles, she sees firsthand that his name [[PrinceCharmless may as well have an extra "S" at the end]]. [[spoiler: In the end, with her own father's blessing (and even ''Charmles's'' father going along with it, though how strongly depends on which ending you earned), Medea runs off with the hero instead.]]

** In a flashback arc, it's revealed that [[GenkiGirl Masaki]] was originally adopted [[spoiler:into the Ishida family]] as part of the [[TheMatchmaker matriarch's plan]] to set up an ArrangedMarriage between Masaki and her son [[spoiler:[[TheStoic Ryuuken]]]]. A confession is made to the family's maid, Katagiri, that the reason the ArrangedMarriage will never work as the matriarch hopes is because they will never be HappilyMarried. Katagiri is told that the best future [[spoiler: for the [[ArcherArchetype Quincies]]]] is to MarryForLove instead of blood purity or status. While it's clear that Masaki is unhappy with the situation, the twist is that the desire to marry for love is not her confession, [[spoiler:it's Ryuuken's]].

* Arranged marriages were fairly common right up to the 20th century in many western countries and still fairly common in African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries even today.

* In ''TheSwanPrincess'', Derek and Odette are betrothed as children by their parents, and forced to spent every summer together. This leads to a musical montage of them growing up hating each other, until one summer (having grown up), they realise that they've actually fallen in love.

** Aphrodite and Ares (illegitimate) daughter Harmonia was given away in an arranged marriage to the mortal Cadmus. Apparently they were happy but what happened to their kids!

* ''{{Otoyomegatari}}'' starts with one between the two main characters. They get along pretty well despite the fact she's from another culture, making her a {{tomboy}} compared to the other women, and there being an eight year age gap between them (she' 20, he's 12).

* In AxisPowersHetalia, Lithuania and Poland meet for the first time when Liet's boss [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jogaila Duke Wladislaw Jagiello]] and Poland's boss [[SheIsTheKing King]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadwiga_of_Poland Jadwiga]] go through this [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Krewo to forge an alliance]]. As to whether Poland and Lithuania ''themselves'' were "married" or not, there's much discussion in the fandom.

* ''Marriage à la mode'', a series of six paintings by William Hogarth, depicts the arranged marriage between the son of the [[ImpoverishedPatrician bankrupt Earl of]] [[MeaningfulName Squanderfield]] and the daughter of a [[NouveauRiche wealthy bourgeois alderman]]. The marriage is a disaster almost from the start; the couple are completely uninterested in each other, with Viscount (later Earl of) Squanderfield bedding a young girl and the Countess carrying on an affair with [[MeaningfulName Silvertongue]], one of the lawyers who arranged the paperwork for her marriage. Ultimately, the Earl is [[DuelToTheDeath killed in a duel]] with Silvertongue when he discovers the affair, while the Countess [[DrivenToSuicide poisons herself]] after Silvertongue is hanged for her husband's murder.

* In the MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic fanfiction ''[[http://www.fimfiction.net/story/66500/maternal-instinct Maternal Instinct]]'', Queen Chrysalis' daughter, Crown Princess Pupa is arranged to be married to her first cousin, Prince Morphin. It is evidently a common practice in Changeling society, as well as [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KissingCousins marriage within the family]], though the latter is particularly attributed to the royal family and other nobility.

* ''BubblegumCrisis''. Lenna's parents arrange for her to meet a prospective suitor, and she is surprised to find that she actually likes him. But she decides to return to Tokyo to rejoin the Knight Sabers anyway.

* Many of the works of YasujiroOzu, considered to be one of the three undisputed masters of Japanese Cinema, deal with this, including his famed "Noriko" trilogy: ''LateSpring'', ''EarlySummer'', ''TokyoStory''.