Basic Trope: A bargain in which one side has no choice.
- Straight:
- Leon, Hesione's wicked stepbrother, offers to allow her some of her own inheritance, which he controls as her guardian, if she agrees to marry him.
- Lysette the Sorceress offers Sir John to display the killing in her Magic Mirror and thus prove it was self-defense and prevent his execution, if he will swear to accompany her on The Quest.
- Two people lost in the wilderness and starving arrive at an isolated village. Their leader agrees to feed them only if they promise not to leave.
- Exaggerated: Leon offers to rescue Hesione from swinging from a cliff-face if she will become his slave for life.
- Downplayed:
- Leon sets some conditions on Hesione's marriage — not an Impossible Task, but enough to keep him controlling her money for a few more years — and gets her to agree by threatening to lower her allowance.
- Hesione has enough money to live comfortably without her inheritance, so instead of only one option, she has two: to take Leon's offer, or to leave it. She still has no bargaining power beyond the ability to walk away.
- Lysette offers some useful evidence if Sir John will agree to listen to an offer after.
- Justified:
- Lysette is just as desperate as Sir John; she just happens to be the one with the bargaining power in this case.
- Inverted: Hesione guilt-trips Leon into marrying her, because she's afraid if he marries someone else he will not protect her properly.
- Subverted:
- He refuses to consummate the marriage, it turns out that the king would have seized her for one of his favorites if she hadn't married him, and once that is cleared up, Leon offers to free her from the marriage.
- The terms of the deal are actually quite equitable.
- Instead of finding for Leon, the courts, rule the contract unenforceable and summarily strip him of his guardianship over Hesione.
- Double Subverted:
- But Leon still manages to hold onto the fortune and pressures her to chose to stay married.
- Leon "offers" a fair deal, but strongarms Hesione into agreeing to it and abiding by it.
- Parodied: Hesione falls in love with every fortune-hunter who comes along, and Leon extorts a promise from her not to marry without his permission about the thirteenth.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: No one tries to exploit positions of weakness.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded:
- "My dear, I have you in my power. Of course I'm going to be monstrously unjust."
- "What kind of a bargain is that?"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: Hesione appears helpless to Leon because she know she can get an Engineered Public Confession and once his manipulations are known, she can get a new guardian.
- Defied:
- Hesione escapes through the window because she knows Leon will make an offer.
- Leon refuses to give Hesione a blatantly unjust bargain, if nothing else because he is pretty sure that he can obtain greater control over her by pretending to be reasonable this early on.
- Even if the alternative is getting injured or even killed, Hesione absolutely refuses to enter a contract with Leon unless the terms are fair, even taking time to Read the Fine Print as she falls down the absurdly deep chasm.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
Back to Leonine Contract. (It's not like I could stop you.)
