Left: smart. Right: pretty. Center: innocent bystander
- One Hundred Years of Solitude: Amaranta Buendia (Smart) and her adopted sister Rebeca (Popular).
- All-American Girl (Meg Cabot) has a set of three sisters where the protagonist has an inferiority complex because her older sister is the Popular One and her younger sister is the Smart One. She herself is Artistic. The main rivalry is between the protagonist and her older, popular sister as they are closer in age and the youngest is so smart she considers rivalries petty.
- The Anderssons: Ida Sofia is a straight-laced intellectual, while Greta is an impulsive The Fashionista.
- Jane Austen:
- Pride and Prejudice examines the trope in some way, before it was even a trope yet. The two eldest Bennet daughters Jane and Lizzie are both smart and pretty, but one trait overshadows the other in each case — Jane being the pretty one of the family but a little too naive and trusting, while Lizzie's Spirited Young Lady-like nature prevents her from being thought as pretty and as conventionally lady-like as Jane but her wit and intelligence make up for it. They embody the positive qualities of the smart and pretty sisters, while their three younger sisters embody the negatives. Mary the wannabe smart sister is actually a Know-Nothing Know-It-All who cares more about forcing her opinions on others and appearing smart than actually cultivating her mind. Lydia and Kitty are the wannabe pretty sisters but are silly vapid boy-crazy idiots who embarrass the family at every possible interval. They're all single at the beginning story and their air-headed mother considers match-making and husband-hunting a competition.
- Elinor and Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility have some elements of this (their younger sister barely has a presence to speak of). They're both beautiful, intelligent, well-read, and proficient artists — Elinor paints and draws while Marianne sings and plays the piano. They're very close and love each other dearly. However, Elinor is slightly less beautiful and way more reasonable, responsible and levelheaded, while Marianne is considered a more striking beauty, and she's also overly passionate and not prudent enough, especially considering her intelligence.
- Persuasion: Anne and Elizabeth Elliot. They have a younger married sister, Mary, who thinks she won, and she did in some ways because of her prosperous marriage at a young age. Elizabeth is the beautiful sister — a vain woman, proud of her beauty and her blue blood, dissatisfied only with the family's debts and her still being single when she's almost thirty. Anne is the smart sister — keenly intelligent, sensitive, selfless, and kind to everyone, even to people who don't deserve it. Elizabeth and Anne are very close in age but their position in society is vastly different. Elizabeth is the mistress of their father's house and one of the most prominent ladies of their social circle (she's second only after Lady Russell, their widowed and titled friend). She's also their father's favourite child. Anne is neglected and overlooked by both Elizabeth and their silly father.
- Mansfield Park: Maria and Julia Bertram. Both are beautiful and bright. Maria is elder and the more beautiful sister. Julia is also attractive, just not as pretty. Also, Maria is coddled more by their aunt Norris. They get on well until Henry Crawford comes to Mansfield. They soon become enamoured with him and compete for his attention and love.
- The Baby-Sitters Club:
- Claudia and Janine, and this is apparently hereditary. Their mother, Rioko, is a librarian, and her sister, nicknamed Peaches, is something of a wild child. (Their mother says she got along beautifully with her sister, however.) Unusually, Claudia (the Popular One) is one of the main characters, whereas Janine (the Smart One) is merely part of the supporting cast.
- Marilyn and Carolyn Arnold, with Marilyn being the Smart One while Carolyn is the Popular One. Although both of them are smart (Carolyn loves science and Marilyn is a talented piano player), Carolyn is more fashion-conscious and sociable than her sister.
- Dawn and Mary Anne exhibit signs of this in the early days of their stepsisterhood. Their case lacks the Popular/Smart dichotomy, instead having more to do with trying to fit their different lifestyles together.
- A version of this appears in the Old Testament Book of Genesis. Jacob falls in love with Rachel, but on their wedding day, her father substitutes her older, less attractive sister Leah as the bride. Jacob subsequently marries Rachel as well, and for some years the two women try to outdo one another in giving him children (apparently, Leah desperately prayed to God to be appreciated by Jacob, so He took pity on her and made her able to bear children, leaving Rachel barren until the last two); they even get their (slave) maids involved.
- The Chronicles of Narnia:
- Lucy and Susan — it's hardly the focus of the books, but there are hints at times. Susan is older and considered more conventionally pretty, often takes a superior Team Mom-type approach to the problems the kids encounter, and of course is the one who ends up "outgrowing" Narnia as a young woman to focus on her social life. Lucy is the youngest of the four and has the closest relationship with Aslan, which Susan sometimes tries to step on, apparently thinking Lucy is acting spoiled or attention-seeking. And when Lucy is in the magician's house in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, for instance, and reads the spell for making yourself beautiful, one of the things she sees in the illustrations is Susan looking plainer than usual and consumed with envy. The unspecified ages of the Pevensies throughout the books make all this a little harder to pin down, though.
- The Magician's Nephew alludes to it in what little backstory we get concerning Jadis and her unnamed sister. Apparently the two started a war over their rights to the throne, one that ended with Jadis speaking the Deplorable Word in order to wipe out everything other than herself. Better that than let her sister take the throne, according to her.
- Invoked in Counting to D by Lissa Banks and her younger sister Kaitlyn. They come from a competitive family, and eventually they decided to stop competing for the same title. Lissa is an overachiever with perfect grades and blue hair. Kaitlyn wears cool clothes, hangs out with her Girl Posse of frenemies, and dates only the most popular boys. Kaitlyn is actually smart too, but she doesn't take advanced classes because it would ruin her image.
- Deenie: Their mother frequently tells people (including complete strangers) that "Deenie's the beauty, Helen's the brain." At one point Helen tells Deenie she doesn't have to fall into the role their mother has chosen for her.
- Discworld: The witch Granny Weatherwax is Genre Savvy. She can recognise when a story is happening around her, and as often as not out of sheer bloody-mindedness will seek to derail it. Or, as in the case of Witches Abroad, she walks through a trail of classic fairy tales, recognises a truly evil witch is at work, and makes it her business to derail every story she enters. The reason is a simple one: Granny has a wealth of resentment against her older sister Lily, who became a witch first and got to leave home and do all the interesting things with Witchcraft that Granny longed to do herself. But Esme was then forced into the role of Good Witch, having to stay at home in Lancre and do all the boring and humdrum everyday "good witch" things. Esmerelda takes a long-awaited vengeance on Lilith — who tries equally hard to thwart and if possible to kill her sister. And does some good as a side-effect.
- In the Disgaea Novels, this occurs between Flonne and her sister Ozonne. Flonne is the older Cloudcuckoolander Love Freak while her little sister is a Brutal Honesty Money Freak.
- The Dresden Files:
- It's revealed in Cold Days that Sarissa and Maeve are an epically deranged and bitter version of this.
- Proven Guilty: the rivalry between Karrin Murphy and her younger sister makes that look fairly mild — especially as the younger sister is about to marry Karrin's ex-husband.
- A very sad case of this appears in a Swedish Romance Novel: Driver dagg, faller regn by Margit Söderholm. Elin is the plain-looking sister, who is clever enough to become the local medicine woman. Gertrud is the beautiful sister, who is more frivolous and sociable than Elin. However, the true conflict only starts when Gertrud runs off with a penniless fiddler and disgraces the family. Elin will never forgive her for this, especially as she's secretly in love with Gertrud's fiancé and sees how he's hurt by her betrayal. It is later revealed that Elin also felt that Gertrud was their mother's favorite even after the scandal, which would make her bitterness if possible even worse. Gertrud meets a tragic death only a year or so after she left with the fiddler, but even that can't make Elin forgive her. And even on her own deathbed years later, Elin is unable to say one positive thing about her sister. And it becomes even sadder when you realize that Gertrud apparently never wanted this poisonous relationship with her sister, but it was all on Elin's side.
- The Falling Kingdoms Series: The goddesses Valoria and Cleiona embodied this, with Valoria being strict, devout, and no-nonsense, while Cleiona is frivolous, social, and self-centered. Valoria instructed a life of discipline to her nation Limeros, while Cleiona bequeathed a life of pleasure to her nation Auranos. Depending on which you ask, this rivalry eventually turned lethal, with one sister becoming evil and murdering the other. The true story is that there were three sisters, with Eva being the object of Valoria and Cleiona's jealousy and that they both turned evil to murder her, steal The Kindred, and eventually destroyed each other. Sister rivalry isn't nearly as glorious when the sisters fighting are immortals who screw up the world as a result.
- The Grey Horse: Eileen Stanton is attractive and popular, but not especially bright; Mary Stanton is an intellectual with political leanings, not so attractive by conventional standards, and not popular. They spend most of the book quarrelling, and when Ruairí starts courting Mary, Eileen attempts (with a complete lack of success) to poach him, but when Eileen gets into real trouble at the end of the book Mary instantly has her back.
- This trope is the reason Harry Potter grew up with Muggle Foster Parents who hated him (well, and that whole Voldemort thing). Harry's treatment by his Aunt Petunia was essentially revenge against his mother/her younger sister Lily for being the better sister (it seems Lily got the looks and the brains and was a witch to boot — no wonder Petunia was so jealous). That's not the reason Vernon abused him, of course, but that's a moot point since Petunia wouldn't be married to someone like Vernon if she hadn't chosen to be like that, not to mention that the rivalry is likely the reason Petunia was content to let Vernon mistreat Harry.
- Hating Alison Ashley: Erica is a smart overachiever who has no friends, while her sister Valjoy is outgoing and boy-crazy, and they never get along. However, neither is portrayed as likable, and Erica herself is an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist, despite being the main character.
- Stephen Colbert references this trope in I Am America (And So Can You!), in the chapter about family (which is appropriately fraught with distressing subtext about the nuclear American family). Discussing non-immediate relatives, it tells you to find out more about your aunt by determining whether your mother was "the one who 'got the looks' or the one who 'got the brains.' Either way, she resents your aunt for getting the other one!"
- In I Capture the Castle, Rose is the beautiful sister and Cassandra is the smart sister.
- Laura and Mary Ingalls have elements of this. Mary is very pretty and perfectly well-behaved, while Laura is active, energetic, and brave. Some subversion in that they're both pretty smart, though. They laugh about it when they're older. (They also have two younger sisters, Carrie and Grace, but Carrie avoids conflict with Laura and Mary due to them being focused on each other, and the age gap between her and Grace (almost seven years), plus the fact that their personalities don't really lend themselves to a conflict, avert a rivalry there as well.)
- Michelle Magorian's A Little Love Song (released as Not a Swan in the U.S.) is about Rose (the smart one) and her big sister Diana (the beautiful one). At first, we only get Rose's side of the story, since she's the main character, which is that everyone likes Diana better because she's prettier, including their recently deceased father. When they finally talk about it, it turns out that Diana herself is convinced that their father liked Rose best because of her intelligence and that he never took anything Diana said seriously. Diana also feels lonely because girls generally don't like her and boys are so mesmerized by her looks that they can't talk to her.
- Little Women has four sisters; among them, Jo and Amy fit the trope. Jo is a brash, bookish, outspoken tomboy, while Amy is an aspiring Proper Lady who loves beauty and refined society. Their differences, combined with the fact that they're not that different in their fiery tempers, leads them to clash with each other much more often than they do with their other sisters, although they really do love each other and learn to disagree more respectfully as they grow up.
- Jo (Smart) and Meg (Beautiful) fit in technically speaking, but end up subverting the trope. Aside from Meg chiding Jo once in a while for being tactless and too outspoken, they get along pretty well and Jo considers Meg her best friend. Jo even shows jealousy towards John Brooke when he's revealed to have feelings for Meg, as she's afraid that she'll lose Meg's emotional support.
- Lisbeth and her sister Camilla Salander in The Millennium Trilogy are so at odds with each other they have been in separate classes their entire life and haven't spoken to each other or even seen each other since they were sixteen when their meeting resulted in a Designated Girl Fight.
- The entire point of Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl is the rivalry between Anne Boleyn and her younger, less famous sister Mary. Interestingly enough, neither of them fit completely into the stereotypes listed. Anne would be the "Popular Sister," yet she is far more intelligent than Mary. Accordingly, Mary would be the "Smart Sister," except she's not as smart as Anne, and is generally considered more beautiful. What it really comes down to is Anne knows how to work the court and has heaping piles of ambition, while Mary just wants to raise her children in the country. The true fit in the types comes in that Anne is far more shallow than Mary.
- The Perilous Gard's Kate, the clever, awkward elder sister, has an inferiority complex about her beautiful, silly, lovable younger sister Alicia so deep-rooted it prevents her from noticing that they aren't romantic rivals.
- Spencer and Melissa in Pretty Little Liars. Melissa is the smart one and Spencer is the pretty one, though both of them are smart.
- Reversed in the television version: Spencer is the smarter one, while Melissa is the favorite one (and ostensibly the prettier, although YMMV on that), although they are both smart and driven.
- Pretty Things by Virginie Despentes is based on this trope, applied to twins. The book plays a lot with the trope, deconstructing it by showing one of them as nearly autistic and the other as totally depressed by the shallowness of her many social relationships. It also goes to great length to justify it by exposing the girls' childhood and relationships with an abusive father and submissive mother as the root of the situation. However, one of the sisters dies early in the story, prompting the other to assume her identity and finally understand her dead sister, ending with her personality balanced between the two extremes and some measure of peace.
- In Prophecy of the Sisters, the main conflict is about moral allegiance, but Alice is more interested in looking good, while Lia prefers to be comfortable. The example given is their nightgowns, Alice has one made of silk, while Lia prefers flannel. Alice is a bit bitter about the fact that Lia was always their bookish father's favourite.
- In Beezus and Ramona, Mrs. Quimby tells Beezus that her childhood relationship with her sister Beatrice (Aunt Bea) has shades of this. Doris is the bookish, indoorsy type, while Beatrice is the more popular, impulsive, and outgoing of the two. The two sisters often fight because of this.
- In Charle's Perrault's tale "Riquet with the Tuft", the ugly but witty and kind protagonist Prince Riquet comes across a princess who is a Dumb Blonde while her younger sister is ugly but charming. The eldest princess, despite her dimness, is painfully aware of the trope and confides in Riquet how unhappy she is for it. Riquet befriends this princess and tells her that a fairy told him that he'd be able to make the person he loves smarter, and the girl promises to marry him. She becomes smarter and refuses to marry Riquet... but on the grounds that she made the promise before becoming wittier, rather than not liking him. It turns out she has a gift of her own — and which makes Riquet handsome, in return for him giving her the smarts she needed.
- Echo and Zoë in Saving Zoë, though it really only starts after Zoë's death. Echo is the smart one and Zoë is the pretty one.
- Shades of Milk and Honey: Jane is plain, but accomplished. She wishes she were as beautiful as her sister Melody. Melody is beautiful. She wishes she were anywhere near as talented in anything as her sister Jane. This causes more than a little conflict between them as they try to settle which one of them is better or worse off in the game of getting a husband.
- Pearl and May in Shanghai Girls. Pearl is the smart one and May is the pretty one, and Pearl feels like she is The Unfavorite.
- The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants has Lena and Effie. Lena is the quiet, socially awkward sister and Effie is the popular, stylish, outgoing sister, but in a slight rearrangement of the usual types, Lena is the one who gets the male attention (at first sight, that is) because of her looks. Lena herself feels that their looks and personalities are mismatched.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: Sansa and Arya Stark have this going on, with added Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling vibes. According to Septa Mordane, Sansa is "the responsible one" and Arya is "the difficult one", and they are each treated accordingly, which doesn't help either interact with the other civilly.
- Sansa is seen as being significantly more beautiful, is popular, and is accomplished in the airs and graces of high society. She's the more indoorsily bookish of the two, if very naïve and fairly sweet with it (despite a tendency to find high horses from which to look down on Arya). Her sister's bluntness, lack of standard graces, manners, polish, and outright preference for the Heartswood, however, constantly embarrasses her, and she always feels the need to call Arya out on any faux pas she makes.
- Arya is more practically minded and Street Smart with a rebellious streak. She prefers maths and histories over Sansa's fairytales. She has a comparatively homely appearance and is highly uninterested in learning the social games of court. Arya is very critical of Sansa's perceived shallowness and unwillingness to get out to smell the wider reality in return for the put-downs Sansa (and her small girl posse) regularly dishes out.
- Both of them are horribly broken upon their being separated. Despite their previous hostility, they actively start missing/ mourning each other greatly (neither knows that the other is alive).
- Sorcery and Cecelia: Georgy is the pretty one. Kate is the smart one (not that Aunt Charlotte acknowledges this). Of course, Kate is perfectly pretty herself, it's only that Georgy is so beautiful as to be the talk of the Ton.
- Southern Sisters Mysteries: Patricia Anne is the quiet, smart one (and a retired schoolteacher!) while Mary Alice is the pretty, popular one. It's made very clear that they actually do care about each other, despite all their differences.
- Appears in Sophie Hannah's Spilling CID series with Charlie and Olivia — they do Snark-to-Snark Combat in almost every installment in the series, but it's clear they do care for each other.
- In The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter despite being raised apart for most of their lives, Mary Jekyll and Diana Hyde quickly fall into this.
- Sweet Valley High has twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield who frequently clashed over boyfriends, schoolwork, and just about everything else. While both are popular and attractive, Elizabeth is more academically minded while Jessica is more into fashion and celebrity.
- Tell the Wolves I'm Home: Shows up with Greta (the pretty, popular older sister who purposely dumbs herself down) and June (plainer, prosaic, critical of Greta's shallowness), although Greta is actually more Book Smart than June (but the latter is more bookish). They used to be extremely close, but grew apart and bitter over the years.
- The Tillerman Family Series installment Sons from Afar has a male example in insecure genius James and popular athlete Sammy, which serves as a major plot point for most of the book. Oddly enough, Dicey and Maybeth have the makings of this (the former being a tough tomboy and the latter being sweet and girly), but subvert this as each sister finds the other's opposite trait from hers to be comforting.
- In both Tipping the Velvet and Affinity by Sarah Waters, the protagonist is the Smart One (and very gay), their sister the better-looking, popular one. Both relationships are problematic- Nan's sister Alice never comes to terms with her sister being gay, Margaret's jealous of Pris for being so normal (though will never own up to this).
- Tamora Pierce's Trickster's Duet has the Balitang sisters: Sarai, the older, beautiful social butterfly, who's by no means stupid (or even Book Dumb) but headstrong and somewhat careless; and Dove, the quiet, observant, bookish, oft-overlooked little sister. A prophecy dictates that one of them will end up queen of their country. Sarai ends up getting well out of the whole plot by running off with a lover, and Dove takes the throne.
- Subversion: In the first book of the War of the Spider Queen hexad, Pharaun's sisters Sabal and Greyanna have one of these... except that they're said to be identical in both looks and personality (not that Sabal gets much personality given to her). We see the whole thing from Pharaun's perspective, in a flashback.
- The Virgin Widow has Anne and Isabel Neville. Anne is the intelligent, Spirited Young Lady who wants to live on her own terms while Isabel is the beautiful, ambitious young woman who burns with resentment at those who she thinks of as less than herself.
- The Westing Game subverts this trope with Turtle and Angela: while on the surface Angela is the Pretty One and Turtle is the Smart One, they are actually much closer to each other and probably understand each other the best of all the characters in the book. It doesn't really hurt the subversion that they seem to really be forced into playing the trope straight by their mother, who's determined to have Angela marry up into wealth, at the cost of ignoring Turtle, nor that both of them have Hidden Depths (it's implied Turtle makes friends more easily than Angela, and Angela, when she finally asserts herself to go on her own path, is smart enough to be accepted to medical school). Their loyalty to each other is so strong that Turtle figures out Angela's the bomber when Angela pulls a bomb away to keep Turtle from getting injured, and she proceeds to take the fall for the crime (not that it didn't take much for people to suspect her) by planting the next one for Angela so no one else figures out it's Angela.
