History Main / StandardHeroReward

* ''VideoGame/{{Terranigma}}'' plays this trope in a dark manner. King Henri openly proposes a competition that anyone who manages to cure Princess Elle's muteness will earn her hand in marriage. [[spoiler:While Royd has his own intentions which are not revealed at this juncture and have nothing to do with harming the princess, Ark manages to win her hand courtesy of using Meilin's illusion powers to conjure images of Elle's parents to assuage her of any guilt she carries. The "dark" part comes from the fact that Henri only wanted Elle to talk because he covets the treasure of Storkolm, and Elle was the only survivor of a massacre he ordered in an attempt to get that treasure. Unfortunately for him, said muteness was due to the amnesia-inducing trauma of the massacre, and when she gets her memory back along with her voice, she knifes him the following night and flees the castle, leaving Loire without a ruler.]]

* In "Fairy Story" (which I've found recorded by Molly & the Tinker and the Brobdingnagian Bards), the hero is rewarded with the choice to sleep with one of the King's two beautiful daughters. His preference? [[spoiler: He sleeps with the King instead; after all, it is a ''fairy'' story!]]

* Spoofed in ''Literature/TheDragonSlayers'' by Creator/BruceCoville. The king offers half his kingdom and his daughter's hand in marriage to whoever slays the dragon. No sooner does he give the dragon slayer his reward than it's revealed that the slayer is his own daughter, having pulled a SweetPollyOliver.

** "Literature/TheTwelveDancingPrincesses" plays this perfectly straight, though most of them don't feature ''quite'' so many possible spouses to pick from. And usually the youngest princess is the choice--but not here; the soldier declares that since he's not young himself, he will marry the oldest. Other variants of this tale type soften things by having the youngest princess fall in love with the hero herself and saves him from being tricked into drinking a love potion by her sisters.

* Subverted and played with in ''Dragon Princess'' by S. Andrew Swann. Main character Frank is offered the hand of the princess if he can [[DragonsPreferPrincesses rescue her from the dragon]], but it turns out to be a trap by the Royal Wizard who intends to use a FreakyFridayFlip spell to steal Frank's body and marry the princess himself. Only the spell goes wrong and [[GenderBender Frank ends up in the princess's body]], the dragon ends up in the wizard's body, and the princess ends up in the ''dragon's'' body! After the dust clears, [[spoiler:Frank had to kill the wizard (in his old body, so Frank could never return to it) to save the princess (in the dragon's body), while the dragon (in the wizard's body) was forced into servitude for TheFairFolk to cover his enormous gambling debt (which was why he'd kidnapped the princess in the first place). And thanks to the ExactWords of the kingdom's law, the princess (in the dragon's body) is forced to marry Frank (who's in her old body)]].
* Spoofed in ''Literature/TheDragonSlayers'' by Creator/BruceCoville. The king offers half his kingdom and his daughter's hand in marriage to whoever slays the dragon. No sooner does he give the dragon slayer his reward than it's revealed that the slayer was his own daughter, having pulled a SweetPollyOliver.

** The princess rushes to him and suggests that they flee incognito before someone forces her to marry someone else as a standard reward. And everyone thinks this is actually a very neat solution: Simon is the rightful heir from a long-dead royal line, his new wife is the closest thing to an heir to the most recent royal line (that trashed the kingdom, so it's a bit suspect on its own), they're both heroes, and the majority of the nobility is dead anyway. In fact, other characters point out that if Simon weren't royalty all along, they'd make it up as a rumor, and the princess's involvement is nice but strictly irrelevant to his ascension to the throne.

** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'', there's a near-example: The MacGuffin owned by Princess Ruto is actually a sign of engagement, and her giving it to Link at the end of this part of the game means he's required to marry her at some point. So though it wasn't a reward from the king, he did get a fiancée as a direct result of saving the day in this situation. And yes, she ''does'' remember seven years later.

*** To say nothing of what the Watch hero who actually ''defeated'' the dragon got out of the deal: [[spoiler:he '''married the dragon'''. The King was bested by Errol the swamp dragon in air-to-air combat, and turned out to be a female for whom LoveAtFirstPunch evidently applied]].

** [[Theatre/OedipusTheKing Oedipus]] saves Thebes from the Sphinx by correctly answering the RiddleOfTheSphinx. As a reward, he is given the crown of Thebes and the hand of Queen Jocasta in marriage. [[ParentalIncest It goes horribly wrong.]]

--->'''Governor''': It ''is'' kind of a backhanded reward, which was why I was hoping Ponsonby would get it.\\

[[caption-width-right:240:And all the hero had to do was [[NintendoHard die three hundred times]].]]

** In ''The Greek Princess and the Young Gardener'', the king makes the offer, but the young gardener carries off a princess from elsewhere on his journey. At the end, his TalkingAnimal companion, a fox, demands that his head be cut off, and when it is done, becomes a prince, and indeed the brother of the princess who was carried off. The king marries his daughter to this prince, and his sister marries the young gardener.