Basic Trope: The princess's love interest, whom she is forbidden to marry because he isn't a suitable match for her, suddenly is revealed as an eminently suitable match.
- Straight: The princess's love interest, apparently a commoner, is actually a prince who was hidden at birth.
- Exaggerated: The princess's love interest was the lowest of the low, a beggar in rags, but upon the discovery of his real parentage, he suddenly becomes a handsome, well-dressed, socially-polished prince.
- Downplayed: The princess's love interest is given a minor noble rank so that he’s no longer a commoner, and is not a wholly unsuitable husband for the princess.
- Justified: The princess and her love interest were deliberately guided into a relationship by people who knew the suitor's secret parentage and that he would end up being a suitable match, possibly even a Perfectly Arranged Marriage.
- Inverted: The princess is required to marry a commoner, and falls in love with a prince. It is revealed that is her love interest is not, in fact, a prince, or he abdicates. They marry.
- Subverted
- The princess falls in love with a commoner, but is required to marry a prince. The king decides this is a stupid law and repeals it.
- The princess falls in love with a commoner. Realizing that he isn’t acceptable, she breaks it off with him, finds a prince to fall in love with, and marries the prince.
- The commoner turns out to be the prince...of a country that's far more significant than the princess's, and now the princess has to court the prince; she might even be considered an unsuitable suitor herself.
- Double Subverted: The princess falls in love with a commoner, but is required to marry a prince. The king decides this is a stupid law and repeals it, but then the suitor turns out to be a prince anyway.
- Parodied: Newborn princes are sent off to live as commoners. When a princess comes of age, she is sent out on an adventure, secure in the knowledge that the commoner she falls in love with during her adventure will turn out to be a prince.
- Zig Zagged: The princess falls in love with a commoner, but documents are found proving that he is actually a prince. Then it is discovered that the documents were forged. But it turns out the forgery points them toward the real documents that prove is is a prince after all.
- Un-Twisted: The princess falls in love with a commoner. Her father offers to repeal the law, but the princess decides she doesn't want to marry him that much.
- Averted
- The princess goes on an adventure and meets a dashing commoner. They become good friends but there is no romantic relationship between them.
- The princess falls in love with a dashing commoner. There is no law restricting who she can marry, so they wed without objections.
- Enforced: A male character is named a prince so he can marry the princess, despite having no chemistry with her, because the story has to end with a prince and princess getting married.
- Lampshaded: A character notes that it’s awfully convenient that so-and-so just happens to be a prince.
- Invoked: A princess goes out into the world looking for someone to fall in love with, hoping that he will turn out to be a prince in disguise.
- Exploited: Someone looking for the lost prince sends a princess out on a quest, knowing that the person she falls in love with is likely to be the prince in disguise.
- Defied: The princess's love interest, realizing his real parentage, destroys the evidence so that he cannot become a prince.
- Discussed: "If this were a story, then the princess's love interest would turn out to be a hidden prince."
- Conversed: "Isn't it weird how the princess's love interest always turns out to be a prince in disguise. I mean, how many hidden princes can there really be out there? And what are the odds that the princess would run into one who happens to be unmarried and about the right age?"
- Implied: The princess’s love interest is suddenly referred to as a prince, with mention that the issue has been cleared up.
- Deconstructed
- The princess marries the newly-discovered prince, then realizes that much of the appeal was that he was forbidden fruit, and now that he’s a prince, she’s not really interested in him any more.
- The princess still can't marry the newly-discovered prince because he's prince of a far-away country that her father the king doesn't care about; she still needs to marry the prince of the next kingdom over instead to cement an important alliance.
- Reconstructed:
- The princess and newly-discovered prince, whose forbidden love has turned into a politically-important but loveless marriage, decide to work on their relationship and fall back in love with each other.
- The newly-discovered prince of a far-away country finds a way to justify a marital alliance to the princess's father, allowing the couple to wed.
- Played for Laughs: The newly-discovered prince shows up at the princess’s wedding to another prince and announces his desire to marry the princess. She shoves her fiancé aside and marries her love interest.
- Played for Drama: The princess's love interest is thrown in prison by the king for dallying with the princess, but is freed after the sudden reveal that he is actually a prince.
Back to [Suddenly Suitable Suitor]
