Rescue Romance / Literature

• Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest: Hajime has rescued most of his harem members at least once at some point, causing them all to fall in love with him. Shizuku also falls in love with him after he constantly comes to her rescue.
• Senjogahara and Koyomi in Bakemonogatari plays this in a few odd ways.
  • First, Senjogahara obviously does like Koyomi after he helped her, but she's especially attracted to him because she meant nothing to him when he volunteered to help. He wanted nothing from her but the chance to help someone. She believes that if she'd seen him do the same for someone else that she'd have fallen for him just as easily.
  • At another point she notes with some frustration that she probably would have fallen for anyone who helped her in that situation. She's glad that it was Koyomi since she'd like him anyway, but her complicated relationship with Kaiki shows that she's probably right. It's strongly implied that she fell in love with him briefly because he at least understood her. In the present, it makes their relationship quite complex because she can't bring herself to hate him, no matter what she says to the contrary.
  • In the prequel novels, Naiz saves Susha and Yunfa, causing both of them to develop a crush on him.
• In the I, Richard Plantagenet Series, Richard's romance with his wife Anne counts as this. They were childhood companions and the idea of a marriage was even floated, but they are too young to get involved before her father switches sides and marries her to the Lancastrian prince. Richard is instrumental in defeating the Lancastrians, and along the way, becomes haunted by the pretty little girl he knew married to a Royal Brat. The prince is killed, and the disgraced Anne is given into the care of her sister, who is married to Richard's brother George. George wants Anne's fortune for himself, so he dresses her as a servant and forces her to work in a tavern to prevent Richard Romancing the Widow. Richard spends weeks searching for her, brings her to sanctuary and proposes. She says yes.
• In Fate/Zero, Kiritsugu wasn't exactly impressed with his future wife Irisviel at first sight since she was an Artificial Human yet didn't seem to have self-defense skills, but when her creator/father Jubstacheit threw her into a forest during a blizzard as a test, he changed his opinion and went to rescue her. They bonded further as he stayed by her side through her recovery, and they ultimately got married.
• Edgar Rice Burroughs. All the time. Some of the more notable ones:
  • In A Princess of Mars, Dejah Thoris doesn't admit to her attraction until John Carter rescues her.
  • In The Chessman of Mars, Gahan finds and rescues Tara when her shipwreck had ended with her prisoner.
  • In A Fighting Man of Mars, Tan Handron stumbles across Tavia and rescues her. It takes him a while to figure out the romance part, though.
  • In The Monster Men, Bulan and Virginia met when he rescues her from the title monsters.
• In Around the World in Eighty Days, Phileas Fogg rescues the Indian noblewoman Aouda from death by suttee. She falls in love with him almost immediately, despite their differences and how he's hinted to be quite older than her. Because Phileas Fogg has such an unemotional exterior, we don't find out that he loves her until the end of the novel.
• In The Ballad of Dinadan everyone who knows Dinadan and Brangienne and how they met thinks that they should be this. Instead they are each other's Not Love Interests, fully admitting that they would probably make each other miserable.
• The Honor Harrington short story "Beauty and the Beast" (from the anthology Beginnings) reveals that Honor Harrington's parents, Alfred Harrington and Allison Chou, got together this way. Both were attending medical school on Beowulf, met, and instantly became desperately infatuated with each other. Then Allison got kidnapped by enemies of her very prominent family, and thanks to the empathic link they turned out to share, Alfred was able to track her down and rescue her. Their romance progressed rather rapidly after that.
• A lesbian variant occurs in Beauty Queens: Jennifer rescues Sosie from a giant snake. Later they become a couple.
• Black Summoner: After Kelvin cures Efil of her curse, she devotes herself to him.
• The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons. Tatiana and Alexander fall in Love at First Sight, but she breaks off the relationship before it goes anywhere because Alexander is dating her sister Dasha at the time. Furious, Alexander breaks up with Dasha as well. Tatiana then runs off to the front line to find her twin brother, and Dasha pleads with Alexander to bring her back. Alexander eventually finds Tatiana in the rubble of a bombed train station, digs her out, and treats her injuries, and they First Kiss not long after.
• In A Brother's Price Jerin does carry the wounded Princess Odelia home, since their mothers and oldest sisters aren't home, the middle sister who found her can't carry her back and defend against possible attackers at the same time, and to have the other middle sisters go fetch her would leave the little sisters and the boys without much defense. Odelia finds Jerin handsome and plays up her injuries in the hopes of stealing a kiss, but it's her sister Ren, come to find her, who Jerin falls for first.
• Parodied by Agatha Christie in "The Case of the Discontented Soldier". The title character rescues a young woman who has been kidnapped by criminals who think she holds the key to a lost treasure, they fall in love and live a long and contented life together—and unbeknownst to either of them, the whole thing was a set-up to bring them together. There's a scene where the two architects of the scenario are discussing its progress, and one wonders if they're laying on the adventure clichés too thick; the other assures him that the clichés serve to unconsciously reassure the targets because events are proceeding as fiction has taught them to expect.
• A Certain Magical Index:
  • Subverted at the beginning. Touma tries to get a delinquent hitting on Mikoto in a diner to leave her alone—saying that he's troubling her—and winds up getting chased off when the delinquent's friends return from the bathroom. When he finally seems to lose them and stops to rest, Mikoto walks up and admits to frying them to save trouble. Turns out Touma had known she was a powerful lightning esper the entire time and had been trying to protect the delinquents. She then tries to blast him, and her determination as the Unknown Rival is increased.
  • Played with in their first chronological meeting depicted in Railgun. Touma saves her from a group of delinquents and chastises them for hitting on a little girl. Predictably, Misaka doesn't take it well and fries the lot of them. However, due to Touma's right hand he is completely unharmed. It was only because of this immunity that she became interested in him, declaring him her rival.
  • And played straight in the Sister arc. When Misaka is at the edge of despair and literally willing to die in the pathetic hope that it will save her clones...Touma shows up and saves all 9939 of her clones. That's where he went from (in Misaka's eyes) The Rival to an actual love interest. And at least one (likely far more) of those clones is also attracted to him, for similar reasons.
  • Several other girls in Touma's Unwanted Harem fell for him or solidified their love for him after he rescued them from various dangers, such as Index, Orsola, Agnese (she was the danger he rescued Orsola from before this point, ironically), and Lessar.
  • For an example not related to Touma, Third Princess Vivian fell in love with the mercenary William Orville, also known as Acqua of the Back after he saved her life during an attempted kidnapping/execution ten years before the start of the series. He gets to pull a repeat of the experience to save her from being executed during the British Halloween.
  • Kakeru Kamisato causes several girls to fall in love with him by saving them. However, he really hates this because he believes the girls wouldn't care about him if it wasn't for the power he suddenly gained.
• Played straight, lampshaded, invoked, and all-around played with in Stephanie Laurens' Cynster Sisters trilogy^note Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue, In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster, and The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae. It fits since they're set in the late 1820s.
• In the sequel to Daddy-Long-Legs, My Dear Enemy, this is twisted on its head when Sallie McBride and Dr. Robin McRae's Belligerent Sexual Tension starts "properly" turning into love when Sallie witnesses Robin saving other people. First, he brings an alcoholic teenager back from the brink of death with Sallie's help, and she almost has a Love Epiphany; later, he almost dies rescuing a little girl from a Hollywood Fire and she realizes where her feelings lie.
• Played with throughout the Carlos Tejada novels. In Death of a Nationalist, Tejada realizes that a woman he finds attractive is starving due to being on the losing side of the Spanish Civil War. He gives her food and later rescues her from a group of drunken would-be rapists. He backs off when she points out that he's basically expecting Rescue Sex as a reward. But she's sufficiently impressed by his disinterestedness that they get a Relationship Upgrade in the second book after he lampshades yet another rescue by saying "I don't spend all my time chasing after you to see you don't get in trouble."
• This turns out to be what the Leptoceratops admirers who abduct Candacye in Dinoverse were trying for. They thought she was addled and being kept for food, and also she was hot. She thought at first they were trying for A Match Made in Stockholm.
• Discworld:
  • Teased, but ultimately subverted in Mort. "We talked about it. Then we thought, just because you happen to rescue a princess, you shouldn't rush into things." Death specifically refers to the Snow White/Sleeping Beauty version as a bad idea.
  • Similarly deconstructed in when Granny Weatherwax wakes up a Sleeping Beauty counterpart and Magrat says it was a job for a handsome prince. Granny doesn't see how waking the princess would have been evidence he'd make a good husband.
  • Lampshaded, mocked, sent up and played straight with Trevor and Juliet in Unseen Academicals. Although Juliet was already a bit partial to Trev before he saved her life, he reflects that having done so is "solid gold in the romance bank". Juliet's friend Glenda sees it differently:
    Juliet: He saved my life!
    Glenda: That's no basis for a relationship! A polite thank you would have sufficed!
  • Frequently teased, but ultimately averted, between Tiffany Aching and Roland de Chumsfanleigh^*  pronounced Chuffley — it's not his fault after she rescues him from imprisonment by the Queen of the Fairies. This happens when she's nine and he's thirteen, and for the next few books there are hints that there's something between them, but by I Shall Wear Midnight they've both realized that their lives are going in different directions and that they don't actually have a lot in common besides not fitting in with the other kids. They do remain friends, and she marries him to his fiancée, Letitia.
• Dolphin Trilogy: In Dolphin Boy, John rescues Della Lord, a young woman who has been washed overboard from a yacht, and carries her to Crab Island on his back. She is the first human woman he's ever met, and he is instantly entranced. After she teaches him basic English, the two have sex. Then John has to spend several days in the ocean to care for the dolphin who raised him as she dies, and by the time he returns, Della is gone, leaving only a note he can't read. It takes him months to find her again.
• In Drawing A Blank, Carlton is introduced to Aileen when she tackles him out of the way of a speeding van. It was a setup to get her in with him, but nonetheless, it kickstarts their romance.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Charity's Back Story is that her future husband Michael rescued her from a dragon.
  • Harry assumes that their daughter Molly's crush on him is due to a combination of this and Like Parent, Like Spouse.
    Harry: Your dad fights monsters. I fight monsters. Your dad rescued your mom from a dragon. I rescued you from Arctis Tor. Seeing the pattern here?
• Invoked in Emma. Emma is sure that Harriet and Frank Churchill will fall in love after Frank rescues Harriet from the gypsies. Instead, Harriet falls for Knightly, who "rescues" her by dancing with her after she was snubbed by another man.
• Played with in Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Many princes attempt to rescue Cimorene, who doesn't want to be rescued. Cimorene says that if a princess wanted to make a good match, a good way would be to get kidnapped by a dragon. The other princesses kidnapped by dragons compete for who has the most princes attempting to rescue them. Princesses sometimes arrange to get kidnapped by giants and other creatures in order to get rescued by eligible princes (although the process more often happens spontaneously), suggesting that rescue romance is a codified form of arranged marriage in the fairy tale universe.
• Subverted in Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Two Fisted Poet - Sally's already interested in Percy to begin with, but he knows she's a Cute Bruiser and pre-arranges a mock battle with an older boy so he can show off when he takes her on a date. Sally's dizzy with delight until Encyclopedia whispers the give-away clue into her ear: Percy's glasses, which he'd put in his shirt pocket, are intact despite multiple body blows.
  Sally: W... why Percy! That wasn't a real fight at all! It was a fake! You fixed it!
  Percy: Upon my honour, if you were a boy I'd bash you good and proper!
  Sally: Forget I'm a girl.
  Percy: [snarls]
  [He goes down three times and gets up twice.]
  • The trope is subverted a second time in the same story: despite the fact that he's rescued her from having a misguided crush on a lying jerk, Encyclopedia and Sally never seem to be anything other than close friends.
• The Faerie Queene:
  • Subverted in Book 1: The Red Cross Knight kind of fails at the whole "rescue" thing, leaving his charge at the mercy of church robbers, rapists, and Loony Fan forest critters. Those Masters of Illusion are just so great at the whole "illusions" thing...
  • Gender inverted in Book 3: Arthur's squire, Timias, falls in love with the huntress Belphoebe after she finds him injured in the woods and nurses him back to health.
  • In Book 6, Pastorella falls in love with Calidore when he saves her from a tiger.
• Played with in Goodbye, Mr. Chips. On a mountain climbing holiday, Chips sees a young woman "waving excitedly from a dangerous-looking ledge" and goes to see if she needs help. He slips and sprains his ankle, and she has to help him down the mountain. She comes to visit him while he's recuperating, and they fall in love and get married.
• In Gosick, Avril falls in love with Kazuya because he's the one who finds her after she's been kidnapped and replaced by a Phantom Thief.
• Harry Potter:
  • Granted their Relationship Upgrade doesn't happen for another four books, but the first major interaction Harry has with Ginny Weasley is to rescue her from the Big Bad and his giant snake. While Ginny already had a crush on him before that, her feelings grew stronger after this event.
  • Hermione becomes friends with Harry and Ron after the boys team up to save her from a mountain troll. She and Ron later become a couple and go on to get married.
  • Gabrielle Delacour also gets a crush on Harry after he rescues her from the Black Lake, even though she wasn't actually in danger.
• In John C. Wright's The Hermetic Millennia, one Chimera comments on how the lower class had cheap literature concentrating on Rags to Royalty Rescue Romance.
• In The House of Night, Rephaim and Stevie Rae's relationship is entirely built on this. First Stevie Rae finds Rephaim almost dying from being shot out of the sky, hides him in a garden shed, patches him up, then lets him go. An I Owe You My Life moment is exchanged between them, which comes in handy when Stevie Rae is then later trapped on the roof of a building. Rephaim rescues her and an Imprint is formed between them. Then when Stevie Rae summons Darkness, it's none other than Rephaim who rescues her from Darkness. When Stevie Rae sees Darkness hurting Rephaim, she summons Light to help rescue Rephaim. When Dallas finds out that Stevie Rae's been lying about knowing Rephaim, and plans to "knock some sense" into Stevie Rae, Rephaim's the one that steps up and protects Stevie Rae. Then Stevie Rae protects them both when Dallas embraces Darkness and tries to kill them both.
• Deconstructed in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Esmeralda falls for Phoebus instantly after he saves her from Quasimodo and Frollo's kidnapping attempt. But since she doesn't really know him, she sees him as a Knight in Shining Armor, instead of the cynical, selfish jerk that he really is, which allows him to take advantage of her.
• Peter David's novel Imzadi uses this for the romance between Riker and Troi. Troi spends several weeks resisting Riker's advances until she's abducted by the Sindareen and starts fantasizing about him rescuing her—which he does. Rescue Sex ensues.
• INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!?: Harumi falls in love with Koutarou after he saves her from a student who was trying to force her to date him, then joins the knitting club to save it from being disbanded.
  • Maki falls in love with Koutarou after he saves her from a demon.
  • Alaia fell in love with the Blue Knight when he saved her from ten soldiers of the Coup Faction.
• In Island in the Sea of Time, Swindapa falls for Marian Alston after the latter liberates her from slavery and teaches her how to fight. Luckily for her, Alston is a closeted lesbian, though it does take them a while to admit their feelings for each other.
• Jane Eyre's romance with Mr. Rochester begins with her rescuing him after he's injured himself in a fall from his horse.
• Journey to Chaos:
  • Siron plays along when his dad wants to invoke this for him and Kasile as part of his Evil Plan. He later does it for real when his dad springs his coup and Kasile warms up to him as a result.
  • Eric saving Annala from Tahart is where their UST begins.
• Zig-zagged a bit in King's Quest: The Floating Castle. Princess Lydia, who has been held captive to marry someone she doesn't want to, originally thinks that Prince Alexander is invoking this trope when he rescues her, and likes the thought because she both thinks it's fairy-tale romantic and that Alexander is rather attractive. But it turns out that Alexander really just needs her help for his real quest, and isn't actually interested in her that way, which disappoints her. But then she ends up bonding with Alexander's sidekick wizard Cyril, who was also helping with the quest.
• The Lois McMaster Bujold short story "Labyrinth" turns out to be a classical example... aside from the rescuee being an eight-foot-tall experimental Super-Soldier and the rescuer being the sort of scrawny runt that makes an Air Vent Escape feasible.
• The Last Days of Krypton: Lara meets Jor-El while rescuing him from the Phantom Zone projector he accidentally sealed himself in. A loving relationship quickly develops.
• The Laundry Files:
  • The protagonist saves Mo from a blood sacrifice in The Atrocity Archives. She's seeing someone else at the time so he doesn't follow it up, but he saves her life two more times during the course of the novel, so at the end, she decides to move in with him of her own accord.
  • In the second book she ends up saving the protagonist from a horrific death trap. This leads to him proposing to her.
• A Little Bush Maid: In Billabong's Daughter Norah is trapped in a certain-death situation after being caught unawares by an angry bull. Wally sees what is going on and charges in on horseback, only just saving her life. They're both quite traumatised by this event and struggle to reconcile themselves with their feelings.
• Examined with some care in the Lord Peter Wimsey series; Lord Peter falls in Love at First Sight with Harriet Vane, rescues her from wrongful imprisonment and hanging...and she bluntly declines his proposal. It takes four years before she's ready to have a relationship with him.
  • Subverted in Have His Carcase there's this gem of an ugly scene: "I know I'm being horribly ungrateful—-" "Hell!" All endurance has its limits and Wimsey had reached his. "Grateful! Good God, am I never to get away from the bleat of that filthy adjective? I don't want gratitude. I don't want kindness. I don't want sentimentality. I don't even want love— I could make you give me that— of a sort. I want common honesty."
• In Mermaid (2011), the mermaid Lenia rescues Prince Christopher from a shipwreck and carries him to shore. The human princess Margrethe wraps Christopher in furs and runs to summon help. Both Lenia and Margrethe fall in love with him.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!:
  • In the Fortune Lover timeline, Maria falls in love with Keith after he saves her from Catarina and her clique.
  • In the main canon, Maria starts to fall in love with Catarina after she rescues her twice from bullies at the Magic Academy and helps her reconcile with her mother.
• The Neverending Story: Subverted with Hero Hynreck, who saved his one true love Princess Oglamar but decided he no longer wanted to marry her.
• In No. 6, Shion and Nezumi first meet when a fugitive Nezumi is looking for shelter in a storm after being shot. Shion stitches him up, gives him food, and lets him hide in his room. Nezumi repays the favor 4 years later when he busts Shion out of police custody after Shion is framed for murder.
• This ends badly in the Jack Vance series Planet of Adventure. In the first novel, the hero Adam Reith rescues Ylin-Ylan from being dragged off by various villains, and she takes him as her lover. In the second novel, however, they're returning Ylin-Ylan to her people the Yao, who have an extraordinarily strict code of pride and etiquette. Reith however does not fit into this society as a suitable rescuer (he's from another planet, so has no defined role). She tries to arrange for Dordolio to kill Reith in a duel so she can present him as her saviour, but when Reith wins the duel and humiliates him in the process, she snaps and tries to kill everyone in a Murder-Suicide.
• In the Priscilla Hutchins novel Chindi, Hutch's shy ex-boyfriend Tor tags along on a mission with her because he's hoping to rekindle their relationship. She ends up saving him twice (though her rescue plan fails the second time, and it's Tor who realizes how to save them both), and the epilogue implies they've got back together again, mainly because Tor has an epiphany about his life after facing his death on two separate occasions.
• In G. K. Chesterton's The Return Of Don Quixote, Monkey is in fact reluctant to press his suit because he rescued the father of a very loyal daughter, and feels it's taking advantage of it. (They do end up married.)
• In Right Ho, Jeeves, Jeeves suggests this as a plan, if Bertie sets off the fire alarm then the disentangled couples will rush to each others' aid and re-entangle, dis-entangling Bertie and saving Aunt Dahlia's magazine. His actual plan is somewhat more complex however, involving making an ass of Bertie as a key step.
• Fumi from Rising × Rydeen goes from trying to make Takara her servant to falling in love with him after he buys time for her and her underlings to escape some really powerful enemies.
• A Yuri example in Roll Over and Die: The former slave Milkit's feelings for her 'Master' Flum develop and evolve over time due to how she has consistently protected and saved her from danger, which causes her to develop an Undying Loyalty to Flum. Milkit eventually returns the favor by playing a role in saving Flum's life during Volume 3 (episode 4 of the anime adaptation).
• In the fifth and sixth books of Safehold, Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk plays a critical role in rescuing Corisande's princess and Crown Prince and delivering them to safety. On the trip back to Charis, Hektor and Princess Irys begin to get close. Close enough that, when Sharleyan insists on an arranged marriage between the two as part of an alliance, neither of them particularly mind. Sharleyan took this into account in making her decision.
• Readers are teased somewhat with an averted Rescue Romance in The Sarantine Mosaic duology: early in the first book, Crispin rescues a woman from her life as an inn prostitute slated to be sacrificed to an ancient god. She falls in love with him, but he's quickly drawn away from her by the intrigues of the emperor's court, and she ends up marrying someone else entirely. She spends a little time picking apart the Rescue Romance in her head, deciding that she's been rescued from "being rescued" by marrying someone else.
• The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong: Liu Qingge is rescued from qi deviation by Shen Yuan, so Liu Qingge chooses to devote his life to protecting Shen Yuan. It's hinted at in the "Succubus" extra that his feelings for Shen Yuan are romantic.
• Second Apocalypse subverts this twice in two different yet nasty ways with two Distressed Damsels.
  • We meet Serwe for the first time when she is rescued by Cnaiür, who then proceeds to rape her. Cnaiür develops a strictly one-sided, insane obsession with her while not treating her any better because of it.
  • Esmenet is rescued by a seeming Knight in Shining Armor and they engage in a romance, but the man turns out to be a sadistic, inhuman monster disguised as a man who is keeping track of Esmenet for his evil masters' benefit. No hearts are broken, though, as she was staying with him only for the free food and protection.
• In Jennifer Fallon's Second Sons trilogy: Sort of when Dirk rescues Tia from a drunken sailor who thinks she is a prostitute (though her original plan was to get him into a more private place so she could beat him up, it doesn't quite work out that way). The resulting affair is very temporary, however.
  • Tia and Mischa, when the former aids the latter in breaking the opium addiction he didn't know he had (it's complicated), may be a better example. Though an attraction did exist earlier.
• Between Marianne and Willougby in Sense and Sensibility. He carries her home in the rain after she sprains her ankle, kickstarting their passionate romance. Later, of course, he turns out to be a cad.
• The 1934 C. L. Moore story "Shambleau"—generally acknowledged as epoch-making in the history of Science Fiction—turns this trope upside down. The story begins when space adventurer Northwest Smith sees a "sweetly-made girl" pursued by a lynch mob, intent on killing her. He intervenes to save her. This seems an obvious prelude to a Rescue Romance—but it turns out that she was not a girl nor a human being at all, but a disguised alien creature, predatory and highly dangerous. Soon, Smith himself needs rescuing and barely escapes with his life. The mob which wanted to lynch her had a point, after all...
• The central relationship in The Sharing Knife starts out as a mutual example of this. Unarmed, sawed-off muggle Fawn was at the feet of the Malice; while experienced monster hunter Dag was well out of reach and moments from being torn apart by the Malice's creatures. Dag managed to get his hand free and toss his enchanted blades to Fawn, who caught them and slew the Malice causing its guards to scatter.
• In Sirena, the human Philoctetes is bitten on the leg by a snake controlled by Hera, which inflicts a Wound That Will Not Heal. His friends abandon him on the Deserted Island of Lemnos so as not to attract Hera's wrath. The mermaid Sirena sees him lying on the beach, too ill to take care of himself. She tends his wound and brings him fresh water, fruit, nuts, and fish until he's well enough to get food for himself. Even after he's otherwise recovered, she still has to drain pus from his wound and bathe it in seawater every morning. The two fall in love and spend ten years together on the island.
• In Skin of the Sea, Simi meets her love interest Kola after he's thrown alive off of a slave ship, and she rescues him from the ocean.
• Both gender inverted and lampshaded in the Smoke and Shadows trilogy. Tony saves Lee's life multiple times, and when Lee finally comes out of the closet, Tony remarks, "I never thought of you as a damsel."
• Played with in A Song of Ice and Fire with Tyrion's first wife, Tysha. It's first played straight with a slight twist: she falls in love, not with the dashing knight who most directly and physically rescued her from a group of bandits and implied would-be rapists (older brother Jaime), but the malformed midget who comforted her afterward (younger brother Tyrion). Then it's subverted when it turns out that Tysha was a prostitute and the whole thing was staged for Tyrion's benefit by Jaime, who thought it was about time his little brother had a woman. then it's doubly subverted when it turns out that their father Tywin, incensed at his son's marriage to a commoner, forced Jaime to tell Tyrion she was a prostitute when she actually wasn't. (Or at least, she wasn't hired by Jaime; Tywin considered her a whore because he believed that her only motivation for marrying Tyrion was his family's money. How pure her motives actually were is unknown.)
  • Although nothing has come of it yet, Sandor Clegane has rescued or protected Sansa Stark several times, most notably during a riot where she was dragged off and nearly raped.
  • Jaime Lannister leaps into a bear pit to save Brienne of Tarth, who despised him up to this point. Suffice it to say that she most definitely no longer despises him, though they aren't official yet.
• In Star Wars: Kenobi, Ben Kenobi saves Annileen Calwell and her daughter from a runaway dewback in their first meeting. They also happen to get along quite well, especially since neither of them has allowed him/herself to have much fun in the past. They naturally grow closer over the course of the book, Big Damn Heroes introduction aside. Alas, it's not to be—Ben, besides holding to Jedi tenets of nonattachment, can't allow his secret guardianship of Luke Skywalker to be revealed to anyone, so he arranges to send her and her family off-planet.
• Pufftail from Stray falls for Tammy after he rescues her from a King Charle's spaniel that is bullying her.
• Used in the backstory of A Study in Scarlet, where it already seems like a cliche being pulled off the shelf, if a fairly well-executed one. A hunter and miner named Jefferson Hope finds a Mormon farm girl named Lucy Terrier, who is trying to control her horse and avert causing a stampede; with kind words and a firm touch, he calms her down and they're soon safe. Doesn't end well.
• Most of Kirito's "harem" in Sword Art Online start to fall for him after he saves their lives, which is usually right after he's met them. The sole exception is Asuna, who he actually marries before the end of the first book. They met before raiding the first-floor boss, and she fell for him some fifty floors later, when he was outside sleeping (instead of helping plan the next raid) because it was such a nice day.
  • Somewhat played straighter in the Aria of a Starless Night movie, as Kirito ends up meeting Asuna by saving her when she's about to be killed by a monster right after her friend had abandoned her. She doesn't immediately warm up to him, but they slowly grow close over the course of the movie, and at the end it's implied she's fallen for him.
• Lampshaded and played with, along with most other fairy tale tropes, in Mercedes Lackey's Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, where the Tradition ensures that any imprisoned princess will fall in love with the man who rescues her — regardless of any complications that would cause.
  • In The Fairy Godmother, the titular heroine is obliged to rescue an imprisoned princess herself because if a man did it, the Tradition would force the princess to fall in love with him... and she's already married. And her husband is someone who she intentionally let herself be rescued by precisely to invoke this trope. (And no, she didn't know who would be the rescuer. She and her father worked up the plan, and sent out a message to all nearby eligible princes, knowing she would fall in love with whoever succeeded.)
  • One Good Knight features a chapter in which the princess thinks over the basic rules of the Tradition in search of a way to avoid falling in love with the Champion who saved her from the dragon (who isn't looking for a bride at the moment for a variety of reason, the most significant being that Sir George's real name is Georgina — circumstances required her order to send in a female Champion).
• Twilight (2005): Bella and Edward were already secretly interested in each other, but it took Edward saving her from Tyler's out-of-control van to get their relationship going.
• In Unlimited Fafnir, Tear is rescued by Yuu from some gangsters in a Flash Back shown during episode 4. When she sees him again, a few months or years later, she immediately declares herself to be his wife.
• Warrior Cats: Silverstream rescues Graystripe from drowning, and he's barely out of the water before he's flirting with her. Bonus points for being Star-Crossed Lovers.
  • An Firestar stopped Sandstorm from falling off a gorge, and Crowfeather managed to save Leafpool from falling off a cliff, and... Never mind. If one character saves another, they're probably going to end up in a relationship at some point.
• While My Pretty One Sleeps:
  • A long-winded example occurred between Myles and Renata. While fighting in Northern Italy during World War Two, Myles was injured and discovered by a young local girl, Renata Rossetti. She guided him to her family's house to get treatment and shelter. Long after the war was over, Myles sought out the Rossetti family to thank them and was reacquainted with the now-grown Renata, with the pair quickly falling in love.
  • Although her father ends up being the one to save her from the killer, Neeve clearly appreciates that Jack came to her rescue when he realised she was in danger and it's treated as a given that they will begin a relationship, with Neeve even believing he's 'the one'.
• In With a Tangled Skein, Niobe has an Arranged Marriage to Cedric, a handsome, highly intelligent man. He loves her for her beauty, but she views him as a young boy (he was a few years younger than she). Only when he rescues her from rape at the hands of some drunk college students does she truly love him.

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