Basic Trope: The Hero is given a challenge they must pass before they can get married.
- Straight: Bob has to slay a dragon before he can marry Alice.
- Exaggerated: Bob has to slay 200 dragons before he and Alice can go on a date.
- Downplayed: Bob has to slay a troll before he can marry Alice.
- Justified: Alice's tribe believes that a man must be strong enough to protect his wife.
- The only way to propose in Alice's culture is to give your fiancé a dragon scale.
- Inverted:
- Alice has to slay a dragon before Bob can marry her.
- Bob has to slay a dragon or else be forced to marry Alice.
- Subverted:
- Alice and Bob decide "screw it" and elope.
- Alice's father tells Bob to slay a dragon for Alice's hand, but stops him as soon as he knows Bob is serious. He never intended for Bob to get hurt or killed fighting a dragon, just wanted to make sure that his son-in-law loves his daughter enough to try. Alternately, if Bob refused, it's a test to see if Bob is reckless enough to get himself killed and leave Alice heartbroken.
- Alice doesn't want to marry Bob but can't outright reject him for some reason, so her challenge was intended to either get him killed or make him give up. When Bob succeeds, she rejects him anyway.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice decides to date Charles, in a foreign country. And, in that foreign country, you have to do an Engagement Challenge.
- Parodied: Charlie, Alice's father angrily responds to asking for terms with "Go fuck yourself." Bob takes it as a challenge and suffers Amusing Injuries.
- Zig Zagged:???
- Averted: Bob doesn't have to do anything to earn Alice's hand in marriage.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Wedding dresses in Alice's culture are made of dragonhide, and the proposer has to acquire the material him/herself.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: ???
- Discussed:???
- Conversed:???
- Deconstructed: Bob is unable to slay the dragon, and becomes despaired that he failed to win Alice's hand in marriage.
- Reconstructed: With some convincing from Alice, the challenge is changed so that Bob must slay a giant instead, which he finds far easier.
- Played For Laughs: The dragon in question is just a baby.
- Played For Drama: Bob is grievously wounded after slaying the dragon, and has to limp back to Alice while slowly bleeding to death.
To marry this person, you have to go back to Engagement Challenge.
