Beast and Beauty in Literature.
- Tragically deconstructed in Oscar Wilde's The Birthday of the Infanta. An ugly, naïve, cheerful dwarf is given to the Infanta of Spain in her twelfth birthday. He thinks the adorable girl loves him because she laughs whenever he dances, unaware that she is actually mocking him. He learns the truth in the harshest way possible when he sees himself in a mirror for the first time.
- The Epic of Gilgamesh provides an Older Than Dirt example with Enkidu and Shamhat in the first two tablets. She's a beautiful temple prostitute. He's an unkempt, hairy wild man who lives in the wilderness. Naturally, this experience (together with his first taste of beer) civilizes Enkidu and turns him fully human.
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame has an example of unrequited love, with Quasimodo and Esmeralda.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: Not surprising, as George R. R. Martin wrote for Beauty and the Beast (1987). The series has two prominent examples, although the two couples exist only as subtext and tantalizing hints so far. The series in general is full of Beast and Beauty motifs (including a ribald song entitled "The Bear and the Maiden Fair").
- Sandor Clegane and Sansa Stark's relationship. Sansa loves songs and stories of knights and fair maidens. Sandor was playing with a knight toy when he was burned by his brother and assumed the Hound persona as a defense mechanism. He tells her the Beast's lines, "I am no lord, and I don't love compliments." He slowly changes and becomes Sandor again. She slowly changes and comes to desire him, dreaming of his kiss. The story is full of Beauty and Beast motifs, including the rose (from Loras), the prince (Joffrey), the father (Ned), and much more.
- Jaime Lannister and Brienne's relationship. Jaime is a handsome and irreverent knight with a bad reputation as "the Kingslayer" and Brienne an ugly and stubbornly honourable woman mockingly nicknamed "the Beauty".
- Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf, has experienced the dynamic twice, and both in tragic ways. First with the commoner Tysha, to whom he saved from being raped by soldiers; they eventually became lovers and married. Unfortunately, Tywin, his father, learned about the union and made Jaime lie to Tyrion that Tysha was a prostitute Jaime had paid, so Tyrion would have some happiness. Worse, Tywin had Tysha raped by his soldiers while Tyrion was forced to watch, before she was cast away. After learning the truth, Tyrion avenges her and himself by killing his father.
- The second time happens when he is forced to marry Sansa Stark. He refuses to consummate the marriage because of her visible repulse and shows nothing but kindness to her, but Sansa (who has seen her father executed by Tyrion's family and been put through the emotional wringer for years as a hostage) coldly rejects his efforts and flees the first chance she has.
- I Am Not a Serial Killer has a non-literal example in John and Marci. He has a tendency to scare people and a love for violence; she's the hot, smart Life of the Party. He's drawn to the lightness and ease she brings out in him, and she likes that he's quiet and respectful and unusually interested in what's behind the pretty face.
- The Man Who Laughs is about a circus performer whose face has been carved into a permanent Slasher Smile, who somehow finds himself at the centre of a Betty and Veronica Love Triangle with Dea — his blind childhood friend who doesn't care what he looks like — and Josiane — a sexy duchess who wants his inheritance, but also seems to be genuinely attracted to him. Notably, in the film version, Dea is played by Mary Philbin, the same actress who played Christine in The Phantom of the Opera (1925), and Josiane is played by Olga Baklanova, who played a more outright mercenary take on this trope in Freaks.
- In Red Dragon, Frances Dolarhyde sees his relationship with blind colleague Reba this way, although it's clear that his "ugliness" - a cleft palate - is nowhere near as bad as he thinks it is, and a lot of the women around their workplace seem to find him attractive because he's in great physical shape. What Reba doesn't know, however, is that Frances is a Serial Killer, so he is a monster after all, at least metaphorically, although their relationship does bring out whatever good and humanity remains in him.
- Piers Anthony:
- Apprentice Adept: Trool the Troll (literal troll with a heart of gold) and the vampiress Suchevane (described by more than one character as Sex On Two Legs, who was also inexplicably Unlucky In Love). It might have helped that Trool was both the Red Adept (maker of magic amulets and totems) and caretaker of the local Deus ex Machina, the Book of Magic.
- Ogre, Ogre: Smash the half-ogre and Tandy the half-nymph. Technically it can also apply to Smash's parents, since his mother is a human actress, though she was costumed as an ogress for a play when her husband fell in love with her and stayed in ogress dress for the duration of the marriage.
- Vorkosigan Saga: Played with and gender-switched in the short story "Labyrinth". An eight-foot-tall experimental Super-Soldier complete with fangs and claws can count as 'Beast', but considering that he is a four-foot-nine, fast-talking hunchback, Admiral Naismith does not quite fit most objective standards of 'Beauty'. Touchingly, he comes to consider Taura the 'Beauty', an enchanted princess to be rescued from the real 'Beasts'.
- The Phantom of the Opera: Deconstructed — Christine is horrified when she unmasks her kidnapper, but to gain his trust and increase her odds of escaping, she puts on an I-love-you-for-your-musical-genius-and-don't-care-what-you-look-like act, which successfully convinces him to let her go as long as she promises to come back (which is no problem since she has a good case of Stockholm Syndrome by then). Erik's so hideous that she admits there is no way she can be physically attracted to him, and so insane and controlling that she realizes there's no way she would be happy being his prisoner forever — no matter how guilty those facts make her feel, they're true. The Phantom realizes he's been a murderous Stalker with a Crush and lets Christine go so she can be happy with her handsome Victorious Childhood Friend Raoul, even after Christine has said she'll stay with the Phantom so Raoul's life will be spared.
- Witch World: Kerovan and Joisan from The Crystal Gryphon and its sequels. Although he never gets transformed to be less "different" — they just go to live among people who won't be weirded out by his cloven hooves. For quite a while there, though, he had the attitude that "no fit mate for any human woman am I."
- Quo Vadis: The main plot revolves around Vinicius' transformation from a selfish, violent, lustful man to a devout Christian through his love for Lygia.
- Nightside: Gender-switched, as John Taylor and Shotgun Suzie eventually end up sort of together. This is after half her face is destroyed by a blow from a spiked mace, a disfigurement the bounty huntress chooses to keep because it makes her even more terrifying.
- Darkest Powers: Chloe and Derek. Chloe is a cute little blond with big blue eyes. Derek, on the other hand... Let's just say that puberty has not been kind to him at all. And even if it all clears up perfectly, he'll never be male model material. 'Hulking' has been used to describe him. He is built like a linebacker, though.
- Heart's Blood has Caitrin and Anluan in a surprisingly magic-free version of the myth, considering the amount of magic present elsewhere in the book.
- Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters features a subplot in which beautiful nineteen-year-old Marianne Dashwood gradually comes to love the much older Col. Brandon, who was cursed by a sea witch to have a writhing mass of tentacles hanging from his face, Davy Jones-style. (In the original story, Brandon was simply much older, so this trope doesn't apply there.)
- In "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King", Marie falls in love with the eponymous Nutcracker and declares to him that if he would have her, she would never reject him for how he looks. This is enough to break the curse and turn the Nutcracker back into a human man, as his curse could only be broken when someone loves him regardless of how he looks. Earlier, this trope is subverted when the Nutcracker (who is still human at the time) breaks the curse on a princess and is cursed in return, only for her to scorn him for being ugly.
- Beastly is a modern retelling of "Beauty and the Beast".
- The Fire Rose, being essentially a re-imagining of the fairy tale for which this trope is named, features a pretty female scholar hired by a magician who has been shifted into a half-wolf form. Notably subverted near the end, when the beast chooses the life and love of the protagonist over the information that will allow him to return to human form.
- Robin McKinley rewrote the story twice:
- She first wrote it fairly straightforward in her debut novel, Beauty: A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast, which contains a number of similarities with Disney's animated version that came several years later.
- Some while after that, she reimagined the tale in Rose Daughter, which — among other things — had the Beast not turn back into a prince.
- Ice has Cassie and Bear (not surprising, given that it's a retelling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon). While Bear can turn into a human man, he can only do so when Cassie can't see him, and usually only for the purpose of them sleeping together.
- Animorphs essentially gender flips this with Tobias and Rachel. Rachel is the one who smashed anything that got in the way by turning into a grizzly bear, and Tobias brings out the best in her, despite being trapped as a bird himself.
- Honor Harrington: Alfred Harrington, who is perfectly normal physically but The Berserker and a Blood Knight when in combat, and his eventual wife, Allison Chou. As in, the short story that details their meeting is actually called "Beauty and the Beast".Allison: [The story is] us, Alfred. It's us! Me, running away from home because I need to be myself, and you, terrified of your 'monster,' afraid you're becoming the beast. But you're not. Maybe the beast is inside there, but it isn't you. You control it, and it was the beast that let you save my life. And you didn't come for me because you wanted an excuse to kill other people. You came for me because what you are is a good, caring, decent, gentle man. I know that — I see that — and you know I do. You know it, Alfred, and you've been alone with the beast too long. Trust me. Oh, trust me, my love.
- In Heart of Steel, you have Alistair Mechanus, disfigured Cyborg Mad Scientist with metal plates covering and replacing one entire side of his face. He wants to conquer the world and Julia's heart. On the other hand, you have Julia Parker, troubled ER doctor who starts to see the more vulnerable side of him. He is intelligent but broken by his past, but he will utterly destroy anyone to hurts Julia.
- Journey to Chaos: After Eric mana mutates into a grendel, Kallen fills in the role of the gentle and understanding Beauty. She does this in her combat suit, due to the circumstances, but she had previously been dolled up in a kimono and make up, and Tasio laments the missed opportunity to snap "Beauty and the Beast" photos.
- Harry Potter:
- Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks. He's a thirtysomething man most of the time but turns beastly once a month; she's a cute, quirky woman in her early twenties. Lupin is definitely the "intelligent and tortured" version of this trope: even during the full moon, he takes a potion that allows him to keep his human mind and not become bloodthirsty. And Tonks fits this trope by seeing the good in him and helping him function in the human world.
- Rubeus Hagrid's parents were a gender-inverted version of this trope: his mother was a giantess and his father was a small, meek man. This didn't work out very well once Rubeus was born; his mom left in disappointment after her son didn't turn out as big as other giants.
- The Lunar Chronicles: Scarlet Benoit and Wolf are an example of this, as Scarlet is a human girl and Wolf is a Lunar wolf-human soldier. This is especially the case in Winter, when Wolf is further genetically and surgically modified to be more wolf-like than before.
- The BFG has an entirely platonic Intergenerational Friendship example, with the eponymous character and the plucky orphan Sophie. Sophie is at first (understandably) terrified of him, but the two grow to trust one another very quickly. The giant, for his part, doesn't have a mean bone in his body, and compared to the other giants... suffice to say, he's a lot less ghastly.
- Planet of the Apes: The human Ulysse and his sapient chimpanzee handler Zira gradually fall in love over the course of the story. When they say goodbye, she's the one who tearfully insists it would never have worked out because he's too ugly for her to see past it.
- Downplayed in the film version, where Zira is engaged to another chimpanzee, Cornelius, and her relationship with the Ulysse-equivalent character, Taylor, is more of a strong friendship than a romance. They do share a kiss at the end, much to Cornelius' annoyance and Zira's mild but sporting indignance ("But you're so damned ugly!")
- The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break features you guessed it the Minotaur seeking a relationship with a pretty waitress named Kelly. It's worth noting though that M's uh, appearance doesn't cause quite the stir you would think, possibly due to the existence of other mythological creatures having become a known phenomenon. Throughout the story, M encounters various women who practically throw themselves at him.
- Market of Monsters:
- The Official Couple are Nita — a superpowered but normal looking girl — and Kovit — a zannie, an "unnatural" species that feeds on human pain and is repeatedly called a "monster." Everyone who first sees them together is shocked unless they initially assume she's hired him and promptly tell them it will never work out because "Zannies don't have friends."
- Diana and Adair are the Beta Couple. Diana is a ghoul, but her species is neither considered dangerous nor hunted, and she's sweet and kind, while Adair is a kelpie, notorious for murdering people for food and whose true form beneath the illusion he projects is a fish-reptile-like monster. There's even a scene where Nita's about to shoot Adair, and Diana gets to channel Belle by telling her he's not the monster, Nita is.
- Dragon and Damsel: Azrael the Third, a large, dark male dragon with a bad temper, develops a friendship and romance with Bernadette, a human woman with a slightly less bad temper.
- In Dark Triumph, the second book in the His Fair Assassin trilogy by Robin La Fevers, Sybella and Benebic are this. In the first book, Grave Mercy, another fellow assassin, Ismae, describes her meeting with Benebic, whose nickname is literally Beast due to how fierce a fighter he is on the battlefield: "The largest man I have ever seen steps into the room. Half a head taller than [her traveling companion], he is travel stained and road weary and looks like an ogre who has strayed out of a hearth tale. His face bears the roughened texture of pox scars; his nose—broken at least twice—is a lumpen knob. His hair is shaved close to his head, and his eyes are creased in a permanent squint...His light blue eyes are startling in his scarred face and put me in mind of a wolf. In truth, he may be the ugliest man I have ever seen." It is also revealed that other females have run away from him in terror over his looks. In Dark Triumph, Sybella describes herself like this: "I am beautiful and educated and have all manner of useful—and deadly—skills." In the third book, Mortal Heart, Sybella's fellow assassin, Annith, describes Sybella: "Even with the charcoal smudged on her face, she is beautiful." However, despite their looks, and his almost insane battle rage, other aspects of this trope are not played perfectly straight. Off the battlefield, Beast is gentle and respectful, with a silly sense of humor, a tendency towards rescuing anyody he sees in trouble, and a pleasure in simple things. While he does rescue Sybella a few times, she is an unwilling recipient of two of them, and the third she turns into a team effort to get them both out of a dangerous situation. Sybella is the one who has inner darkness that terrifies her and unhealed trauma, but Beast accepts her darkness, as he has come to terms with his own darkness caused by his battle rage, and can still see the best in her, as he can for the soldiers under his command. Together, they make a powerful team and fight side by side in multiple conflicts.
