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, Claire.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice, Brittany, and Claire are Same-Sex Triplets. Bob, Brittany, and Claire 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 Claire are cousins, and in a small society where everyone's connected to everyone else (however distantly) by marriage or blood.
- Prince Bob must marry, and so his parents arrange for him to meet Princess Alice and Princess Claire, of the neighboring kingdom. Briefly, he finds Claire more attractive, but soon settles on Alice.
- Justified:
- Claire closely resembles Alice, at least to Bob.
- Bob moves on with Alice because Claire turned out to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
- Inverted:
- After Alice and Bob break up, Bob makes an effort to find a woman who is as different from Alice as possible.
- Bob meets Claire and finds her attractive, asking her to marry him. Then he meets her sister Alice. They rapidly fall in love, but engagements are serious commitments, and Claire is oblivious to his being more in love with Alice than with her — or doesn't care, she wants him.
- Subverted: Bob fell in love with Alice. When she rejects him, he courts and wins her sister Claire — and jilts her for revenge.
- Double Subverted: But Claire had been in on it, knowing that Alice would hate the disgrace it brought on the family. Afterwards, Bob and Claire elope.
- Parodied: Bob 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 Claire.
- None of the characters have any siblings of the same sex.
- None of the characters have any siblings, period.
- Lampshaded: "So I didn't get Alice. Big deal. Her sister Claire is just as, if not way more pretty."
- Invoked: Claire asks Bob out.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- Bob believes it's wrong to get with Claire because he was previously attracted to her sister.
- "Go fuck yourself, Bob. I don't want you near any of my relatives, no matter how distant they are. I don't give a fuck if you take my great-great-second-removed-grand-cousin, they're still my family member and the last thing I want before I leave this sorry excuse of a fucking planet is to see my blood tainted with yours. I'll even see to it that you won't get ANY hope for ANYONE to love you, and God help if you somehow do, because you can expect to wake up next to their bloodied, rotting corpse regardless of their gender, let alone a woman who somehow finds you attractive, before they can even tell you that you got them pregnant and it's your child. Do you fucking get that?"
- Discussed: "I've been having thoughts of trying to get Alice, but she's unfortunately with Ed." "Why not take Alice's sister Claire then?"
- Conversed: "Why is Bob so happy with Claire? 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 Claire 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 Claire "Alice", but she doesn't seem to mind.
- Played For Drama: Claire dies three months after her first date with Bob, and by then, Alice and Ed are married.
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