Basic Trope: A character marries the sibling of their unrequited Love Interest.
- Straight: Bob falls in love with Alice, but Alice does not reciprocate. Bob eventually marries Alice's sister, Carol.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice, Brittany, and Carol are Same-Sex Triplets. Bob, Brittany, and Carol become a Sibling Triangle after Alice dumps Bob.
- A Love Dodecahedron involves several pairs of siblings.
- Every case of unrequited love in the work is resolved this way.
- Downplayed:
- Alice and Carol are cousins, and in a small society where everyone's connected to everyone else (however distantly) by marriage or blood.
- Prince David must marry, and so his parents arrange for him to meet Princess Eleanora and Princess Francine, of the neighboring kingdom. Briefly, he finds Francine more attractive, but soon settles on Eleanora.
- Justified: Carol closely resembles Alice, at least to Bob.
- Inverted:
- After Alice and Bob break up, Bob makes an effort to find a woman who is as different from Alice as possible.
- Georgiana, twelve years old, has a Precocious Crush on Hendrik, twenty years old, and an older sister Irene, also twenty. One day she hears Hendrik professing his love for Irene, and immediately helps him court her.
- John meets Katherine and finds her attractive, asking her to marry him. Then he meets her sister Lily. They rapidly fall in love, but engagements are serious commitments, and Katherine is oblivious to his being more in love with Lily than with her — or doesn't care, she wants him.
- Subverted:
- Don fell in love with Ellen. When she rejects him, he courts and wins her sister Flora — and jilts her for revenge.
- Great-Aunt Marjorie left her estate to her grand-niece Marjorie when she marries; until then the income keeps her family in luxurious life. Her sisters Nora, Odile, and Petronilla, therefore, take care to seduce any wooer away from Marjorie — but never marry them, because they have yet to offer a better life than they can on Marjorie's money.
- Double Subverted:
- But Flora had been in on it, knowing that Ellen would hate the disgrace it brought on the family. Afterwards, Don and Flora elope.
- Parodied: Jack attempts to woo every daughter, stepdaughter, foster daughter, or cousin of a large family, finally succeeding with the last.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted:
- Bob never shows feelings for Carol.
- None of the characters have any siblings of the same sex.
- None of the characters have any siblings, period.
- Enforced: "We need a Happy Ending for every character. Let's reveal that Alice has a sister, and pair her up with Bob while Alice stays with Ed."
- Lampshaded: "So I didn't get Alice. Big deal. Her sister Carol is just as pretty."
- Invoked: Carol asks Bob out.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Bob believes it's wrong to get with Carol because he was previously attracted to her sister.
- Discussed: "Sorry, Carol. My heart still belongs to Alice, and you're too different from her."
- Conversed: "Why is Bob so happy with Carol? She's nothing like Alice!"
- Implied: Alice and Bob break up, and Bob is later shown dating another woman who resembles Alice.
- Deconstructed: It's made abundantly clear that Bob only married Carol because of the fact that she was Alice's sister. As a result, he's completely unable to handle things when she turns out to be completely different.
- Reconstructed: But he's eventually able to look past that and love her for her.
- Played For Laughs: Bob frequently slips up and calls Carol "Alice", but she doesn't seem to mind.
- Played For Drama: Carol dies three months after her first date with Bob, and by then, Alice and Ed are married.
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