Droit du Seigneur

"Le droit du Seigneur" (Vasily Polenov, 1874)

"They take our wives, if they want them, before the first night and say it’s their right. They give them back and tell us they’re better broken in."

— Nolan de Naro, The Victors Project

Droit du seigneur, literally "the lord's right", also known as ius primae noctis ("law of the first night") and other names, is an alleged legal right that a ruler in medieval times had, to take the virginity of his female serfs and/or force them to marry him. It is a popular trope in Historical Fiction or Medieval European Fantasy settings, especially of the Crapsack World flavor. Usually invoked by an evil Feudal Overlord as one of his many Kick the Dog moments.

The historical basis for this "right" is murky, as discussed on the Other Wiki. Though historians have found no evidence that this practice was codified in the law of any country, other historians argue that it was practiced informally and extra-legally as early as in the times of the Roman Empire and as lately as the turn of 'the' century (which century is never really specified). The last reliable records regarding droit du seigneur are from 19th century Imperial Russia, where well-documented criminal cases existed that accused various noblemen of (illegally) practicing this (not trying, but actively practicing for years until someone reported it to the authorities).

It is thought that belief in the existence of droit du seigneur may have come from the practice of lords demanding a cash payment upon the marriage of a subject's daughter.^note Indeed, monarchs sometimes claimed a right to cash payment when their vassals' daughters married. King John's attempts to do this is one of several resentments about feudal dues that led to the Magna Carta and the First Barons' War; a reflection of this is the clauses forbidding the King from forcing noble widows to remarry (while preserving the royal veto on marriages by barons). Of course, in today's world, this could simply be seen as the ancestor of any fees required by governments at modern civil weddings, such as marriage certificate fees. Keep in mind, though, that most lords owned multiple estates scattered throughout their monarch's lands, each of which was the home to dozens, sometimes hundreds, of tenant families; most lords would never have so much as set eyes upon the majority of their lands, so how could they have kept track of all the marriages? For that matter, since when have wealthy, powerful men actually needed a law to get away with rape?

The final nail in the coffin of droit du seigneur (in Western Europe at least) has been genetic genealogy, which has found no evidence for the supposed practice. The most common 'non-parental event' in medieval England seems to have been unofficial adoption, often of siblings' children.

A popular Urban Legend ties it to the origin of the word "fuck," claiming that the word is a long-forgotten medieval abbreviation that stands for "Fornication Under Consent of the King." As the story goes, this was written on signs that a lord exercising droit du seigneur would post outside of a female victim's home to signal his immunity from punishment. Needless to say, this is just a backronym with no historical or etymological basis.

The trope appears as early as the 19th century BCE, when The Epic of Gilgamesh uses it to illustrate Gilgamesh's arrogance, wantonness, and cruelty during his early reign. The trope was popularized and treated as a reality in works written during the Enlightenment (notably in Beaumarchais's and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro), as the droit du seigneur was seen as embodying the abuses of the aristocracy and/or the supposed barbarism of the Middle Ages. To this day there are more examples of backlash against the supposed law than there are chronicled occurrences of it.

Subtrope of I Have You Now, My Pretty and a way to establish that Aristocrats Are Evil. If it's The Dung Ages, expect the lord to say, "Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me." The Scarpia Ultimatum is a related concept, done with less legal backing.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Mentioned by Diodora Astaroth in High School Dx D as he gleefully tells Issei what he plans to do to Asia. Issei quickly makes him eat those words.
• In Rakuin No Monshou Prince Gil, blitzed out of his mind and jealous of a happy newly-wed couple, demands this with the bride. When the father of the bride tries to talk him down, Gil ends up stabbed in the ensuing struggle.
• The plot of Belladonna of Sadness begins with the Baron doing this to the protagonist.
• Discussed in the first episode of Fena: Pirate Princess between a group of sleazy nobles who wonder who'll get the right to bed the title character. Fena, who just wants to be reunited with her lost Childhood Friend Yukimaru, tries to come up with ways to get out of it.

Comic Books

• In the Elseworlds medieval AU one-shot Kal, Lex Luthor (as a local lord) invokes this on - no surprise - Lois Lane. The hero Kal dies avenging her rape and murder (she fought back, by the way). Like almost every usage of this trope that one might see, his underlings warn "That isn't really done anymore" - which he laughs off. Even within the fictional worlds where this holds sway, its a bit confusing, since the Kal story ends with the very elderly James, son of Oll, telling Kal's story to the young Merlin, which means the underlings were telling Lex this ancient right which was no longer invoked was even more ancient than that. Except for stories where it is a current and common practice, no one ever gives a real idea of just when it was common — only that it no longer is.
• One of the Jerk Jock knights in Garulfo apparently engaged in this (though all we get to hear before he's interrupted is that he goes in yelling "Prima noctis!" and backhanding a would-be interferer who was probably the husband).
• This was invoked by Doctor Doom once, in a minor way. He was walking through his kingdom one night, saw a family with a beautiful young woman (the daughter) sitting at the dinner table, and came to the door and informed her father that as ruler of Latveria, he had the right to the woman's company. Her father allowed her to go with Doom, but Doom had no underhanded intentions. He just wanted an audience for one of his boastful monologues.
• In the world of V for Vendetta, certain offences (like prostitution) are designated a "class-H offence". That means the punishment is entirely at the discretion of the arresting officer—which in plain English means the arresting officer can do whatever they want to you. This serves as a Kick the Dog for the Fingermen (and by extension, the government they serve) at the start of the story and ensures we don't feel bad when V shows up to kill them as they're about to rape Evey.
  Evey: Please, mister, it was my first time. I'll do anything you want. Please don't kill me.
  Fingerman: You've got it wrong, miss. You'll do anything we want and then we'll kill you. That's our prerogative.
• Referenced in Larry Gonick's The Cartoon History of the Universe, in telling the story of an Ethiopian general Abraham the Split-Face, so named due to his taking an axe blade in the face during a duel. His servant saved him during the duel and helped him kill the other duelist, and Abraham offered to reward the servant anything he desired. When the servant demanded that he be allowed to exercise The Lord's Right, Abraham reluctantly agreed. However, after an irate husband murdered the servant, Abraham let the killer off and apologized for his servant's actions.
• Requiem Vampire Knight features a vampiric variant: Any blood virgin (victims who haven't been fed on by a vampire yet) in Draconia has to to be taken to the Sisters of Blood first, as King Dracula is supposed to have right of first blood of any virgins in his domain.

Fan Works

• In the Girls und Panzer AU fic Truth, Uncertainty and Tomorrow, it's indicated that Katyusha's father, a Russian aristocrat, uses this right. While he would not do this to his own daughter, he does take Nonna in as a servant when her father miscounts his taxes, and rapes her for overhearing a private conversation. This, of course ignores the fact that there have been no Russian nobles since 1917 because the people got sick of their shit and had them all shot, down to the last man, woman, and child.
• In The Last Spartan, one of N'thos siblings was sired by a wandering swordsman; who are not allowed to marry but are instead expected to sow their oats far and wide. A rare example of everyone being on-board with the idea; it's a great honour to bear and/or raise a swordsman's child.
• Jonnel Stark from A Northern Dragoness is really grateful to know the right of the first night is long dead, as he suspects that King Baelor is gay and is very not keen on discovering if the groom can be bedded instead of the bride.
• The Life and Times of a Winning Pony: Jus primae noctis, the right for nobles to take the virginity of any of their subjects, is mentioned as having been in practice in Unicornia around the time of the Lunar Rebellion, nine hundred years before the show. However, it's noted in-universe that there's no proof that it was ever a real thing beyond anti-nobility propaganda and exaggerated rumors of real events.
• This image. A screen shot from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic timed just right + an out of context caption = Hilarity Ensues.
• Discussed for laughs in the My Little Pony fic By Process of Elimination. Princess Twilight Sparkle explains that Droit du Seigneur has no basis in historical fact—but Fluttershy keeps acting like it's real, or insisting that Twilight could make it real, because she obviously wants Twilight to "droit" her.
• Vow of Nudity: The Genasi king holds a right called nocte regi^note the king's night, where a random slave over the age of 18 spends the night in the palace with him, and afterwards is forbidden to tell anyone what happened. Haara originally assumes it's just this, but finds out there's a lot more to the ordeal when it's finally her turn.

Film

• Braveheart:
  • Edward "Longshanks" grants ius prima noctis to English lords, granting them the sexual right to take any Scottish girl for himself on her wedding night. He figures with this in place, some of his lords will both be more eager to rule in Scotland, and more thoroughly keep the Scots under their thumb. His explicit reasoning, though, is to "breed [the barbarism] out of" the Scots.
  • This is seen happening at one wedding, where Morrison's wife is carried off by Lord Bottoms to be raped. When Morrison comes across Bottoms during William Wallace's attack on the English garrison, Morrison makes his grievance with him felt in no uncertain terms before killing him.
    Morrison: Do ye remember me?
    Lord Bottoms: I never did her any harm. It was my right!
    Morrison: Your right? Well, I am here to claim the right of a HUSBAND!
    *cue Epic Flail, followed by Spiteful Spit*
  • The English lords' practice of ius prima noctis prompts William and Murron to marry in secret. The English soldiers still manage to catch on based on the couple's interactions, and their subsequent attempts to avoid this result in Murron being put to death.
• The War Lord: The Norman feudal lord protagonist played by Charlton Heston falls in love with a peasant woman and uses "droit de seigneur" to claim her on her wedding night, to which the fiancé and fellow villagers don't react well, to the point of siding with the lord's Frisian enemies and helping them besiege his tower (he also holds the son of the Frisians' leader hostage in the tower). It is based on the Leslie Stevens play The Lovers.
• Caligula: The titular character exercises his ius prima noctis by raping both Proculus and his new wife, widely considered his most sickening act of the movie.
• The Postman: General Bethlehem tries to pull this with one of the Pineview women and stabs the husband when he protests.
  Bethlehem: Do you know what system of government we have here, son? (Michael shrugs) We have what known as a feudal system, like in the Middle Ages. That's lords and vassals. That's you and me. Now those lords, they had some ideas. They believed that if a vassal got married, it was the lord's right, his right, to sleep with the bride on the wedding night.
  Michael: Me and Abby have been married for three years.
  Bethlehem: Sorry, but I wasn't invited to the wedding.
• And Now the Screaming Starts! has a family of British nobles suffering from a curse brought about as punishment for an ancestor's presumptuous invocation of prima noctis.
• Robin Hood: Men in Tights: Downplayed. King Richard exercises his right to kiss Maid Marian at her wedding.
  Rabbi Tuckman: It's good to be the king.
• The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982): Mentioned jokingly by the Prince of Wales at Percy's and Margeurite's wedding
• Avengers: Age of Ultron: When Tony Stark jokes about ruling Asgard, he mentions reinstating "prima noctis". This one ruffled a lot of feathers due both to the joke being in very poor taste and the fact that the trailer didn't contain it at all, with the original joke being much more in character for Stark anyways.
• Das Finstere Tal: Brenner, the village patriarch, practices a form of this. But instead of forcing newlywed wives to spent one night with him, they must stay until they are pregnant. So every firstborn is actually his child. The priest justifies this by claiming that Maria's first child wasn't Joseph's, but God's.
• A Knight In Camelot: While Sir Boss (Whoopi Goldberg) is preparing to duel the villainous Sir Sagramore, her friend Clarence eventually reveals the real reason he doesn't want her to fight him: He takes her to six graves set apart from the rest of the cemetery, which are his mother, father, grandfather, his eldest sister, her new husband, and his baby brother. All died on the same day fourteen years ago when their lord, Sir Sagramore, came to claim his right to the bride's virginity, and her husband — a freeman not of that estate — refused him. Six-year-old Clarence escaped into the woods while his whole family was killed, and afterwards Sagramore wouldn't even allow them to be buried on consecrated ground. Ever since, Clarence has dreamed of the day when he would take revenge, and he came to Camelot so that one day he could be a knight and have the right to challenge him. Clarence feels he is the only one who should be allowed to face Sir Sagramore in a Duel to the Death, but when Sir Boss asks him if he wants her to chicken out, he says no: she must fight him to the death. After this, she petitions King Arthur and asks why he can't just arrest Sir Sagramore instead of letting the duel happen, but much to her frustration Arthur replies, for what crime? Even if the testimony of a commoner were to be believed over the word of a knight, Clarence himself admitted that his brother-in-law denied Sir Sagramore his legal right of the bride's first night, and it doesn't matter if Arthur thinks Sagramore's punishment was excessively harsh: it was still lawful punishment and not murder. Sir Boss angrily asks whether he made that law—and when he tells her he didn't, why he can't just change it—but he blithely tells her that the king's duty is to uphold the ancient laws and customs, including this one.
• Tiefland: Justified. Don Sebastian, Marquis de Roccabruna and landowner in Northern Spain, is set to marry a rich woman but does not want to let go of his mistress, the dancer Martha. He contrives to arrange a marriage between Martha and Pedro, one of his shepherds, and sets Pedro up as a miller in a mill close to the castle, calculating that Pedro will not dare to resist him having Martha as his mistress because Pedro is dependent on Don Sebastian. On Pedro's and Martha's wedding night, Don Sebastian turns up at the mill in order to force himself on Martha, who, however, has come to loathe Don Sebastian. Pedro, who now understands Don Sebastian's true intentions, comes to her aid and in the ensuing struggle eventually strangles Don Sebastian.

Literature

• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • The "right of first night" used to be practiced widely across Westeros. While it was banned by one of the first Targaryen monarchs, Jaehaerys I "the Wise" (mostly thanks to dedicated lobbying by his wife, the "Good Queen" Alysanne), some lords still practice it.
  • Roose Bolton acknowledges that he raped a maid who had married without letting him, as her liege lord, invoke his right of first night. In an attempt to present his fellow Northern Lords being similar to him, Bolton claims that Umber lords (staunch allies of the "good guys") also practice it (although Roose is hardly the most truthful Lord). Something of a karmic example, although an innocent was slain in the process: this particular sexual crime bore a fruit named Ramsay Snow, who murdered Roose's rightful son and heir (and, by the limited accounts we receive, the only decent human being in the entire House), and saddled Roose with a psychotic and dangerously reckless illegitimate heir.
  • The late Mad King Aerys II lusted after Joanna Lannister, wife of his Number Two Tywin Lannister. He joked that it was a shame that the practice had been outlawed, antagonizing Tywin. Although he is not known to have raped Joanna, Barristan Selmy does confirm that he took liberties in the bedding ritual, apparently going further than the accepted disrobing of the bride.
  • King Joffrey Baratheon threatens to do this to Sansa Stark on her wedding night in yet another petty torment he inflicts on her, although his uncle Tyrion's threat to geld him if he lays a hand on her appears to frighten him off.
  • An In-Universe example of Deliberate Values Dissonance occurs with the Maester writing/narrating The Princess and the Queen (which takes place not long after that law's abolition) snarking at the irrationally-jealous smallfolk who frequently failed to recognize the "great honor" of letting the local noblemen get their wives and daughters with child.
  • The right was more accepted among the smallfolk of the Crownlands prior to the Dance of the Dragons because having a child of Targaryen or Velaryon blood meant that kid was a "dragonseed" and could potentially become a Dragon Rider- something that naturally meant good things for the dragonseed's family.
  • History reveals abusing this right meant extinction to House Qoherys: Gargon Qoherys was known as the Guest for always inviting himself to the weddings of every peasant in his domain. One of his guards was the father of a maid he deflowered, who allowed bandits to enter the castle, who castrated him and left him to die. His house ended that night, and no one was particularly upset.
• Nineteen Eighty-Four: A rare modern example occurs through one element of the Party's propaganda, which is the claim that before Ingsoc there had existed a law "by which every capitalist had the right to sleep with any woman working in one of his factories".
• Discworld:
  • Wyrd Sisters: Played for laughs. Duke Felmet would like to exercise his Droit du Seigneur, but nobody cares to explain to him what it is. As a result, he imagines it to be some kind of large hairy dog. It is also a plot point that the previous king, King Verence I (murdered by Felmet) was very fond of practicing it (apparently without complaints, and it's mentioned that he would send a bag of silver to the couple the day after), and that while he was out, the Queen took up with the court jester- the product of this match is believed to be Verence's son but abdicates in favor of his half-brother, who is really the legitimate son of the Fool. They are crowned as Verence II and turn out to be a good ruler.
  • Maskerade: This is mentioned by Nanny Ogg. During her youth, she worked as a maid in Lancre Castle. Very briefly, because the King tried to grab her while she was holding a large ham. The encounter "ended her life below stairs, and put a significant crimp in the king's activities above them."
• The Betrothed starts when the priest refuses to let Renzo and Lucia marry because the local nobleman, Don Rodrigo, has his eye on her.
• The Tough Guide to Fantasyland: This is mentioned as one of the things that bad Aristocratic Feudalists like to get up to when oppressing the peasantry.
• Paladin of Shadows: The main character is reluctant to follow through with a tradition that requires the Keldar to deflower a newly married Keldaran woman, with the reasoning that you don't have sex with the brides of men who have guns at your back, but is eventually convinced to accept it by the village elders. A few books later, he figures out the real reason for it and refuses to do it again^note The Keldar community is relatively small and isolated and consequently has a certain amount of inbreeding. Since the main character (and the previous lords) have all been foreigners the Keldar are using the tradition to introduce new genes into the community and reduce the amount of inbreeding..
• Mentioned in Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary and attributed as a common practice of Medieval nobility.
• Played straight in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Arthur, while hearing cases, condemns a peasant girl for marrying without giving her lord his customary rights—even though the girl's lord is a bishop. As Arthur reasonably notes, it might be a sin for the bishop to sleep with a girl, but that's a matter between the bishop and the Pope (and God); it doesn't change the fact that under British law, the bishop was entitled to the girl's virginity if he wanted it.
• In an interesting twist, there is no mention of the farmer-priests in Frostflower and Thorn, who are the equivalent of feudal lords and priests rolled into one, having this kind of right. (Though as Frostflower discovered, they can be very coercive if they see someone they'd like to screw.) However, the warriors of this world—who are all female—have "warrior's privilege" in the form of sexual access to other women's husbands.
• In Leo Frankowski's Conrad Stargard series, the time-traveling protagonist is shocked by this practice, but quickly overcomes his objections. The local lord is a nice chap who ensures all the peasant girls are married off when they become pregnant, and Conrad is such a blatantly perfect man that every girl in the area is all too eager to bed him.
• Machiavelli strongly argued against this practice in The Prince where he essentially said "Peasants will put up with you doing a lot to them and taking a lot from them, but they won't put up with you taking their wives and daughters. It will inevitably cause a revolt."
• In the setting of V. Kamsha's White Pine novel, the lords of the lands are entitled to "buy the gown" of peasant girls. This euphemism arose from the custom of making the groom publicly exhibit the bride's bloodied gown on the morning after the wedding night. Magna, the miller's wife, openly states to her prospective daughter-in-law Barbolka that the mill she brought into the marriage was bought with the price of Magna's gown and that Magna's firstborn is a bastard.
• Malazan Book of the Fallen: Discussed for laughs in the ninth book, Dust of Dreams. Chancellor Bugg claims there used to be a tribe where the chief and his wife had the privilege of bedding imminent brides and grooms the night before the marriage. King Tehol is immediately interested, but Bugg admits he just made that up. Queen Janath, who is incidentally also the court historian, however excitedly exclaims that it's no problem to write such a custom into the histories. The King immediately backpedals.
• The Pillars of the Earth: Earl William invokes this as he starts to rape a miller's wife. The book claims that married couples pay a marriage tax (historically accurate) in lieu of the lord's supposed rights (definitely not accurate), and William claims he hasn't received said tax.
• Tomorrow Town by Kim Newman, which is set in a supposed twenty-first century society as imagined by a group of 1970s futurists, features a (pseudo-)futuristic version. They claim that their Master Computer Big Thinks is so advanced that it can pair individuals up with their most suitable life-partner. In what must surely be nothing more than a coincidence, it has also enabled the community's founder to basically claim another man's wife away from him.
• In the Jules de Grandin story "The Bride of Dewer", a knight made a Deal with the Devil with the old god Dewer. This means that Dewer gets to rape every new bride of all the male descendants that the knight has. Each time this happens, the bride goes mad, and so much of the house is carried on by the female line of the family.
• Raffles: A plot point in the short story "Faustine", set in 19th century Naples: the titular Faustine is to marry a servant to a local lord, with the understanding that the lord then gets to sleep with her.
• The Saint picks the ever-so Affably Evil The Prince of Cherkessia (better known to Europeans as Circassia) as a target in part because he practices The Lord's Right in the 1930s. The Prince, however, is not exactly what or who he seems.
• A rare heroic example in the romance novel Skye O'Malley- while at the wedding of a very reluctant bride, the lord invokes this to get her away from her abusive new husband.
• Safehold:
  • Harchongese nobles are allowed to have sex with any peasant/serf female they want, whenever they want.
  • A minor character in How Firm A Foundation reveals that his mother fled Harchong at age 13 after being raped by the local lord, who then beat her father to death on the church steps (with the local priest's full approval) for the crime of protesting against his daughter's rape.
  • In Through Fiery Trials, "The Rebellion" is set off by a Harchongese sergeant who returned home (against an Imperial edict) to rescue his only surviving daughter from the noble who'd made her a Sex Slave, and decided, why stop there?
• In Edward P. Hughes's science fiction story The Name of the Father, and novel Masters of the Fist, a lord uses this right. It turns out this is the only thing keeping his village going because it is set post-apocalypse and he's the only male not irradiated to the point of infertility.
• Made even bleaker in Mistborn. A nobleman has the right to the body of any skaa (essentially serfs) who dwells on his lands, but the law forbids nobles and skaa to interbreed. The solution? Execute the girl afterwards.
• In the Otto Prohaska series by John Biggins, Otto visits the aristocratic family of his fiancée and is subject to a Fan Disservice version where an unwilling and unattractive girl is forced into his bedroom by a manservant, only for both of them to be thrown out by an outraged Otto.
• A rabbit version in Watership Down. When Bigwig becomes an officer in the Owsla of Efrafa, he's told that all the does in his Mark are under his orders so he can have anyone he wants, provided another officer doesn't want her. Bigwig uses this to have Hyzenthlay, a doe he already knows has expressed a desire to leave the warren, brought to him so he can reveal his secret plan to rescue the does. Hyzenthlay tells Bigwig that she's not in season for mating, so he needs to tell the other officers afterwards that he made a mistake to explain why he sent for her.

Live-Action TV

• Merlin (2008): In "Queen of Hearts", Prince Arthur and Guinevere (the maid of Arthur's stepsister Morgana) tried to keep their romance secret as Uther would not allow such a match to happen. However, he caught them kissing at a secret picnic, but at first assumed Arthur was simply having his way with a serving maid (which he alludes to having done himself), though he still says it can't go on.
• In The Office (US) episode "Ben Franklin," Michael decides to put "prima noctis" into effect, having watched Braveheart. Jim has to explain to him what that means.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Roose Bolton explains to his illegitimate son Ramsay that a peasant couple married on his lands without his permission and that he killed the husband and raped the woman in keeping with his "rights" (it is established that the practice was banned by the Starks in The North). This led to Ramsay's conception.
  • Joffrey threatens Sansa with this during "Second Sons", declaring it doesn't matter which Lannister puts a baby in her.
• Camelot: The episode "Justice" reveals that at least one village's head man enforces this principle on local women before they're married. It results in him being killed by a girl's father after he comes for her (later she's revealed to be the result of such a rape, but considers this man her father anyway). Arthur's forces do end up abolishing the custom in the village, though he speculates that many others may also suffer from it.
• Kaamelott: Subverted for comedy with a Carmelid custom that holds that, during interclan warfare, the victorious chieftain is to have his way with the loser's eldest daughter. Arthur wants no part in it, but Leodagan threatens to secede if he doesn't respect his vassals' customs. Arthur goes in to tell the girl she's safe with him... but it turns out she was actually looking forward to sleeping with pretty much the only man in the British Isles who bathes with some regularity (she isn't even the eldest daughter, she made a deal with her older sister to take her place). Both sides continue arguing until she threatens him with a knife if he doesn't take her then and there.
• According to World's Dumbest..., an Italian noble did claim the rights to one town's virgins. The townsfolk protested by pelting him with rocks. Nowadays, they reenact the incident with oranges.

Music

• "First Kill" by Amon Amarth, the first song of the Jomsviking album, has the album's protagonist flee into exile and eventually join the Jomsvikings after killing an earl's Number Two when he came to take the protagonist's childhood girlfriend away (apparently to his boss). The music video makes the implication more explicit.
• "Sixteenth Century Greensleeves" by Rainbow, which tells the story of a popular uprising among peasants against a tyrant who keeps kidnapping their women to his tower.

Mythology and Folklore

• The Epic of Gilgamesh makes this Older Than Dirt. Gilgamesh declares it his right as the God-Emperor of Uruk to have the first crack at any new bride (or groom) in his realm. When Enkidu hears about this later, he's so angry about it that he travels straight to Uruk to beat some sense into Gilgamesh. The fight ends in a truce of mutual exhaustion and the two become fast friends (with no further word on droit du seigneur).
• Droit du seigneur is brought up in The Wooing of Emer when Bricriu of the Venomous Tongue declares that Conchobar doesn't have the right to sleep with Emer before Cu Chulainn (the guy who killed hundreds of men for the privilege of marrying her) so much as he has a legal obligation to. Being rightfully scared shitless of what Cu Chulainn would do to him if he did but also reluctant to lose his authority if he didn't, Conchobar gets around it by "sleeping with" Emer in only the most literal sense.
• It is said of Axumite^note classical-era Ethiopian general/official Abraham the Scar-faced, Governor of Yemen, that his appellation derived from a time when he was engaged in a fight with a man who wanted his job. After Abraham received a chop to the center of his face, his servant jumped in and killed his challenger. In gratitude, the servant was granted anything he wanted; the servant asked for the right to sleep with every bride on her wedding night, which Abraham disliked but felt honor-bound to allow. So the servant went on sleeping with newlywed women for a while until an aggrieved groom killed him. When the case went before him, Abraham apologized and let the man go free.
• The tribute of a hundred maidens from Spanish legend has elements of this trope. The legend goes that the emir of Córdoba helped the Asturian bastard Mauregatus ascend to the throne on the agreement fifty peasant girls and fifty noblewomen would be given to him and his successors on yearly basis as a sign of submission (unlike other examples of this trope, the implication is that the girls wouldn't simply be deflowered and sent home, but they'd be forced into harems instead). Mauregatus agreed to these conditions, much to the outrage of his fellow Asturians who later had him killed. His successors tried to pay the Moors with money instead of girls until the cycle of demand and refusal led to the Battle of Clavijo. Just like in real life, it's doubtful that such tribute was ever instituted, much less with such specific demands like 50 girls having to be of noble birth.
• A contemporary urban legend claims that the droit du seigneur is the origin of the word "fuck". According to the legend, the word started out as an acronym for "fornication under the consent of the king", who granted people the right to have sex only with his express permission (the implication being that he claimed first dibs). It's obviously not true; for starters, the word "fornication" itself originally referred specifically to sex outside of marriage.

Opera

• This is one of the major plot points in The Marriage of Figaro, with Count Almaviva wanting to seduce Susanna and threatening to reinstate this feudal custom.
• It also appears in Don Giovanni, where Masetto accuses Giovanni of wanting to try this custom out on his bride Zerlina. He's not too far off, in fact.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer Fantasy:
  • The ius primae noctis is in effect in some Bretonnian duchies, although it is considered a rather dated practice even there, with few lords choosing to exercise it even if it were still law in their demesne. It's rather touchingly subverted, however, in the case of Lord Laurent of the Duchy of Artois, who requires any newlyweds in his duchy to both spend their wedding night in his bedchamber. Lord Laurent sleeps outside the door to ensure they aren't disturbed, much to his subjects' surprise.
  • Likely (ab)used by one of the Elector Counts of the Empire: a line in the fluff mentions that on the Count's defeat by a Champion of Chaos, all the womenfolk burst into cheers. Feeling strangely pleased, the Champion left the town unscathed.
• Ravenloft: While even most Darklords won't touch this with a ten-foot pole, this law is in effect in Falkovnia. Falkovnia's Darklord, Vlad Drakov, is a raging misogynist with the opinion that the only thing that women are good for is bearing sons, so he's sired a lot of bastard sons. This is one of the major reasons (along with the constant invasion attempts) that everyone hates Drakov.

Theatre

• The somewhat obscure early modern play The Custom of the Country by Beaumont and Fletcher has this as the initial impetus of the plot.
• The plot of Lope de Vega's Fuenteovejuna begins when the cruel Commander attempts to force the Girl Next Door Laurencia into this and imprisons her and her fiancé Frondoso when they object. Laurencia escapes and tells everyone what happened; they rescue the still captured Frondoso and kill the Commander.

Video Games

• Dragon Age
  • In the series in general, it's mentioned that this practice is popular in Orlais amongst the Nobles and Chevaliers. Liselle, an Orlesian merchant, explains that the reason she fled her home country was to escape retribution after her brother knocked out a Chevalier who attempted to invoke this. It's implied that it is far less common in Ferelden as, for the most part, the nobility tends to hold themselves to the same laws and standards as the ones they impose on the common folk ("The nobles are not so high, and the commoners are not so low" as Liselle herself says). It's a sign of how monstrous Bann Vaughan Kendalls of Dragon Age: Origins is that he is the only Fereldan noble shown to routinely practice this.
  • The City Elf Origin shows Vaughan at his utter worst, bursting in on a wedding to make off with the bride (if you're playing a female City Elf, the bride is you) and several of her bridesmaids, who he and his cronies want to have their way with. The result is a Roaring Rampage of Rescue and Revenge (the latter part more pronounced if you're playing a female City Elf) that more often than not ends with Vaughan and his cronies seven different kinds of dead. Sadly, you're too late to save your cousin Shianni from being raped by Vaughan and possibly his men. Also, if you're playing a female City Elf, your betrothed tries to storm in and save you but is killed doing so.
• In Crusader Kings II a random event might happen, which informs you that the petty nobles in your realm are practicing this. You can then choose to either forbid it (which makes your barons mad) or allow it (which risks a peasant revolt).
• The Genshin Impact prologue webcomic focuses on the start of Vennessa's rebellion, a critical event in Mondstadt's history. Awakening from his centuries' long slumber, Barbatos visits his people in his human guise and learns that the Ludi Harpastum festival is happening. However, the festival has been corrupted by the ruling nobility and the tradition of the festival ending with a maiden tossing the harpastum ball to the crowd is especially tainted. He learns Lord Lawrence's son uses the tradition as an excuse to rape whichever girl catches his interest. No one dares refuse or stand up to the nobility...at least until a certain strange bard steals the harpastum and publicly humiliates the lord's son. For protecting the bard from Barca Lawrence, Vennessa and her clan are sentenced to face Ursa the Drake in combat. Luckily for them, Barbatos arrives to aid her and sparks the beginning of the rebellion that would free Mondstadt and lead to the formation of the Knights of Favonius.

Webcomics

• Mocked in Hark! A Vagrant, in which the nobleman's friend assures the reader that this phenomenon is "100% expected and real".
• In Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal a Barbarian Hero working out how he'll govern after usurping an evil king is surprised the peasants put up with prima nocta, however, who is he to disrespect cultural tradition...

Web Original

• Debunked on The Straight Dope, citing the dubiousness of historical accounts, the absence of proof, and the grim but all-too-plausible argument that no medieval upper-class thug with a sword would need such a legal entitlement to get away with raping peasant women.
• Cracked says that this custom was "always practiced by the other lord down the street"; usually as an excuse to go kill them and take all their stuff by painting them as a monster. Since the winners write the history books...
• In The Grossery Gang webseries episode "Rockyland", one of Rocky's king decrees (flipped and mirrored, but still legible on the scroll) is "Reinstate the Primanocta". This is a kids' webseries, too.

Western Animation

• The Family Guy episode "Brothers & Sisters" has an English "local nobleman" attempting to invoke his right of "prima noctus" on Lois' sister after she agrees to a date with Mayor West.
• The Season 11 episode of American Dad! ("Gifted Me Liberty") involves Stan trying to hide his failure to buy a Christmas gift for the CIA Secret Santa on someone else. He pins it on an agent who recently died, and at the funeral, CIA Deputy Director Bullock grabs the agent's widow screaming "I DECLARE PRIMA NOCTA!" before dragging her away. Bullock obviously is not a lord or nobility by any means, and this instance is a funeral, not a wedding, but this is indicative and typical of Bullock's total disregard for propriety and borderline insanity.

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