Brainwashed Bride

♫ Here comes the bride, her brain completely fried. ♫

"The Ice King cursed me! You've gotta set me free. I would rather die than marry the Ice King!"

— Old Lady Princess, Adventure Time, "When Wedding Bells Thaw"

Through hypnosis, brainwashing, or other mind-altering means, a character (typically female) is coerced into participating in a wedding against their will. Often requiring other characters to intervene in the ceremony, they might uncover the manipulation and work to break the enchantment or free the character from the forced union. Expect the wedding to be interrupted in the nick of time, as heroes, friends, or even the intended spouse race against the clock until their "I do."

Sub-trope of Brainwashed and And Now You Must Marry Me. May overlap with Hypnotize the Captive. Closely related to Love Potion, which need not result in marriage. If the person brainwashing the bride continues to be married to them after the wedding, then expect them to have an Awful Wedded Life together.

As this trope is often used as a plot twist, beware of spoilers!

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The Adventures of Mini-Goddess: Gan-chan intends to propose to his love interest, but the enchanted rose he planned to give her accidentally ends up in Urd's hands. Urd, under the love spell placed on the rose, accepts his accidental proposal, which leads to their unexpected marriage as long as the enchantment lasts.
• The Castle of Cagliostro: After an effort to run away by the bride, and a failed rescue attempt by Lupin and co., Count Cagliostro has Clarisse drugged so that she cannot object to the wedding, as silence grants assent in the Duchy of Cagliostro for a wedding ceremony. Believing that she saw Lupin killed snaps her out of it.
• Dragon Quest: Your Story: Luca does not hesitate to choose to marry Nera over Bianca because he is in a VR game, and the player had applied self-suggestion to choose Nera beforehand, influencing Luca's decision within the virtual reality setting.
• The Familiar of Zero: When Louise refuses to marry Wardes, Mazarin uses magic to put her in a trance, and the wedding ceremony begins. However, just as Louise is almost compelled to say "I do," Saito arrives to rescue her and brings her back to her senses.
• Jack and the Beanstalk (1974): Princess Margaret is hypnotized for a lot of the movie, thinking Tulip (the giant she is to marry) is a beautiful prince.
• Jewelpet (2009): When Prince Andy (actually Dian in disguise) proposes to Rinko, and she says "yes," he magically renders her unconscious and kidnaps her, proceeding with the wedding. He then conducts a ritual during the wedding to take the Jewel Stick from Rinko.
• The Last: Naruto the Movie: Hinata reluctantly agrees to Toneri's proposal and sneaks into his place with a plan. But he figures out what she's up to and, feeling jealous because Hinata loves Naruto, he uses a mind-control technique on her to make her obey him, both as his bride and as a weapon against Naruto.
• Ranma ½: Ranma suddenly falls head over heels in love with Shampoo after she ties the magical Red String of Fate around his finger, leading to a marriage proposal. Akane, not finding this situation amusing, foils Shampoo's plan by cutting the thread while pretending to be a helpful witness at their wedding.
• Tanken Driland: When Alvida puts on Bacchus's Crown, she starts acting completely different and even proposes to Mikoto (who eventually falls under the influence of the crown too). They almost have a wedding ceremony, but as soon as the crown is shattered, they return to their senses.
• Vampire Hunter D: In the 1985 movie, Count Magnus Lee bites Doris Lang, the daughter of a deceased werewolf hunter, after the Count defeats the Vampire Hunter known as D, he eventually hypnotizes her into becoming his bride. It's only when D kills the Count that the hypnosis is undone and D, Doris, and her brother Dan escape the castle.

Comic Books

• Daredevil: Zebediah Killgrave, better known as the Purple Man, was introduced as a villain with a Compelling Voice. It's revealed later that he brainwashed a woman into marrying him. He later relinquished his power over her, wondering if he could have a normal relationship, but naturally, she fled in horror when she realized who he really was and what he had done.
• Excalibur: A variation occurs in issues #6-7, when during the Inferno (1988) crossover, Rachel Summers gets a telepathic distress call from baby Nathan (the present version of Cable) and flies from England to New York to help him. She is caught in a storm of demons and changes into a mannequin from a bridal boutique. A lesser demon from Limbo, under Madelyne Pryor (The Goblin Queen)'s command, finds the Rachel mannequin wearing a bridal dress and takes her to their "wedding", which is officiated by another demon. Being a mannequin, Rachel is actually immobile and cannot move, nor speak.
• Mortal Kombat (Malibu Comics): In Mortal Kombat: Battlewave issues #5-6, Reptile hypnotizes Sonya Blade into marrying Shao Kahn, which will allow Outworld's emperor to "break down the barriers between Earth and Outworld".
• Super Mario Adventures: After Bowser captures Princess Peach and sends Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi into a haunted house he makes preparations to marry her. Back at Bowser's palace, Princess Peach is adamant that she will not marry him, which cause Bowser to bring in a magikoopa hypnotist, who after casting a spell on Princess Peach, causes her to fall madly in love with Bowser and agrees to marry him. The spell is only broken when Luigi, Yoshi, and an army recently liberated Yoshis crash the wedding and trample on the magikoopa.
• X-Men: In Uncanny X-Men, Jean Grey is hypnotized by Jason Wyngarde (aka Mastermind) into believing that she is actually living back in the age of sail and that he rescued her. Mastermind may be good at mind control, but he wants to manipulate Jean's wider range of powers for his own gain. Part of that is tricking her into marrying him (while she's still in the world of hundreds of years ago and thinks that he's a romantic hero). This whole thing led to The Dark Phoenix Saga.
• Zatanna: In Zatanna (2010), Benjamin Raymond drugged and hypnotized Zatanna into marrying him as part of his scheme to give her soul to Mammon to pay off the debt that would otherwise cause his own soul to be forfeited. When the plan fails, he has the gall to beg Zatanna to save him; she takes pity on him by transforming him into a lump of gold and obliterating his soul before Mammon could claim it.

Film — Animated

• Aladdin: Jafar wants to marry Jasmine so that he can become the next Sultan through marriage. It initially doesn't work, but eventually, once he finally gets his hands on Genie's lamp, he wishes for Jasmine to fall in love with him. Since Genie isn't allowed to force love, the wish cannot be granted. Somehow, though, it works, and Jasmine falls in love with Jafar. Subverted, since she was just faking the whole thing to distract him.
• The Little Mermaid (1989): Prince Eric hears an enchanting voice on the seacoast, and goes to look. There strides Vanessa, the disguised form of Ursula, using Ariel's voice, plus her wicked magic. A mist enters Eric's eyes and clouds his irises. Suddenly, he and Vanessa are ordering Grimsby to prepare the wedding ship, insisting on being wed that evening. He remains adamant about marrying Vanessa until Scuttle pulls the amulet off her, breaking it. Once Ariel's voice returns to Ariel herself, the spell is broken, and Prince Eric forgets all about Vanessa.
• Shrek 2: Subverted. Fairy Godmother blackmails King Harold into slipping a Love Potion into Fiona's tea so that when she is kissed by Prince Charming (who pretends to be a human-turned Shrek), she will permanently fall in love with him. But when Charming does kiss her, Fiona responds with a headbutt — Harold smugly "guesses" that he "gave her the wrong tea."

Film — Live-Action

• Big Trouble in Little China (1986): Big Bad David Lo Pan has to find a green-eyed Chinese girl to marry so he can be restored to his full power instead of the decrepit human form he appears in. On finding two women, Miao Yin and lawyer Gracie Law, he decides to marry them both in a ceremony to appease his master and god, by killing one and sparing the other as his true earthly bride. Both women are clad in gorgeous red dresses and guided to the ceremony, but both are clearly brainwashed since their eyes are blank and milky-white.
• Flash Gordon (serial): Ming the Merciless uses his hypnotic ray machine on Dale Arden to keep her docile during the marriage ceremony. Flash must stop the ceremony before the gong is sounded the requisite 13 times.
• Mahou Sentai Magiranger the Movie: Groom Do Bridon kidnaps Yuka Yamazaki with the intention of making her his bride, but she rejects him due to his ugly appearance. So, he decides to place a ring on Yuka that has the power to manipulate people's hearts and proceeds with a wedding ceremony. However, just as they are about to exchange vows with a kiss, MagiRed intervenes and destroys the ring.
• Road To Rio has the villains hypnotize the heroine into getting married, but the ceremony gets interrupted by the heroes, even as Dorothy Lamour robotically chants "I do."

Literature

• The Belgariad:
  • Discussed regarding the Mad God Torak's obsession with marrying Polgara the Sorceress. She says that if she ever fell under his will, he'd see to it that she was deliriously happy to become his bride — except for the part deep down that would be screaming in horror forever.
  • Polgara is famous in history for having rejected Torak's command to come marry him during the battle of Vo Mimbre. The prequel eventually reveals how she resisted: She didn't. Her secretly-not-dead mother was possessing her at the time, specifically to protect her from mind control, and did the rejecting for her.
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Merope Gaunt, the abused daughter of an impoverished wizard house, had an unrequited crush on Tom Riddle, a local Muggle aristocrat. She either drugged him with a love potion or cast a Mind Control spell on him and made him marry her, then, while pregnant with his child, lifted the mind control in the vain hope he might have fallen in love with her for real. He instead promptly dumped her and went back to his ex-fiancee, and she died of childbirth complications. Their child, incidentally, was Tom Marvolo Riddle, i.e. Lord Voldemort.
• Kushiel's Mercy: The Arc Villain casts a Mind Control spell across the City of Elua that convinces everybody that Princess Sidonie de la Courcel agreed to marry him, including Sidonie herself. Protagonist Imriel is immunized by an agent of his exiled biological mother, who got wind of the plot and hoped to foil it.
• Downplayed in Little Zaches, Great Zinnober by E. T. A. Hoffmann. The titular character's ability to enchant others allows him to win over the beautiful beloved of the main hero, but he is stopped during the official engagement party.

Live-Action TV

• In the "Armageddon" arc of The Flash (2014), the Reverse-Flash uses time travel to rewrite the memories of every character except Barry. Among other things, he tries to marry Iris, who is unaware of his actual identity or her own marriage to Barry.
• Galavant: Downplayed in that Isabella did already agree to wed her cousin (though she did so under duress), but Wormwood the evil wedding planner slips a mind-controlling tiara onto her head that turns her from a foot-dragging fiancée to a girlishly enthusiastic one. After the wedding she's now eager to have, he plans to depose the prince and rule Hortensia through her.
• Haven: In season 5's "Enter Sandman," a Dream Weaver sets his sites on Audrey, putting her into a coma and inducing a dream sequence in which she (and he) are preparing for their wedding. In his dream, she is hopelessly in love with him. The gang must race against the clock to get into his mind and through to Audrey before she marries him, accepting the fake reality and getting trapped within it forever.
• Malcolm in the Middle: Ida tried to marry a rich old man by using drugs to keep him dazed and delirious. When Lois and Malcolm figure out what she's doing, she drugs them so they can't interfere before the wedding. Her plan is foiled when the drugs wear off just before he says "I do."
• Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Rita Repulsa uses a love potion to trick Lord Zedd into marrying her, with the plan to take control. Once married to Lord Zedd, Rita eventually gives up her magic practices and teams up with Lord Zedd in their villainous pursuits. Even though the love potion's effects are ultimately undone, Zedd has genuinely fallen in love with Rita on his own.
• Supernatural: In the episode "Season Seven, Time for a Wedding!", Becky uses a Love Potion she got from a demon to make Sam fall in love with and marry her. However, the spell wears off because the demon deliberately gave her a limited amount of the potion.

Video Games

• Midway through Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War's first act, Big Bad Manfroy abducts The Hero Sigurd's wife Deirdre and brainwashes her into marrying Arvis, The Heavy for the villains' plot (and her maternal half-brother). Unusually for the trope, it works, and Arvis makes sure to flaunt it in Sigurd's face before murdering him and his entire squad in the game's Wham Episode. They spend about nine years together before their son Julius is possessed by the Greater-Scope Villain and kills her.
• Magical Tetris Challenge: Pete uses the magic from a powerful gemstone to hypnotize Minnie into wanting to marry him. The spell works, although Mickey rescues and de-hypnotizes Minnie before Pete begins any kind of ceremony.
• In the first two Mortal Kombat timelines, when Shao Khan conquered Edenia and killed their king, Sindel, the queen, killed herself out of grief. However, Shao later used dark magic to revive and brainwash her to be his bride and lethal weapon in his conquest of Earthrealm. As a result, she became completely loyal to her "husband" and became the biggest hero killers in the franchise. However, in MK11, it was retconned that she was not actually brainwashed by Shao Kahn, and she betrayed her first husband to retain her rule. She simply allowed the story of her being bewitched to spread in order to hide her true intentions from the Edenian people who still looked up to her.
• The pre-title cutscene of Super Paper Mario shows Count Bleck forcing Bowser and Princess Peach to marry to fulfill the requirements for summoning the Chaos Heart. While Bowser, with his longtime Villainous Crush, is eager to go along with this, Peach is not, so she is magically made to say "I do."

Web Original

• Sword Art Online Abridged: In season 2, Sugou plans to do this to Asuna using the NerveGear. He and his team discovered a way to abuse the game's built-in "charisma" stat as a form of compulsion and plan to use it on her the day of the wedding. Asuna is obviously horrified when he explains this all to her.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: In "When Wedding Bells Thaw", Finn is confused that Ice King is getting married to Old Lady Princess, who appears to be doing so willingly, instead of being kidnapped as he does with other princesses. Then Finn discovers that Old Lady Princess has been hypnotized by the engagement ring; once she's freed, she says that she'd rather die than marry Ice King.
• American Dad!: In "Haylias", Stan activates long-dormant brainwashing in Hayley, in order to get her "on the road to happiness" by marrying a friend's son. Unfortunately for Stan, the brainwashing procedure had been discontinued due to the victims turning on their handlers after a couple of days, and Hayley quickly shifts from mindlessly obedient to relentlessly homicidal immediately after the wedding.
• The Fairly OddParents!: The episode "Truth Or Cosmoquences" has Cosmo attending a high school reunion and bringing pop-diva Britney Britney as his "clearly not hypnotized" trophy wife.
• In King Arthur's Disasters, Arthur tries to use a potion created by Merlin to make Guinevere marry him, but accidentally enchants Petal instead.
• In The Legend of Zelda (1989), Ganon tries to use a Hypno Trinket to make Princess Zelda marry him so that he can be King of Hyrule. Link arrives in the nick of time to stop the wedding.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: A gender-flipped version occurs in "A Canterlot Wedding". The Changeling queen, Chrysalis, shapeshifts into the bride, Cadance, and brainwashes the groom to keep him from figuring out.

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