Which of these premises has the strongest potential for a good gender swap story?
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2
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5
1.
Helena hates her fiancé because he is arrogant and treats women as inferior. To escape the arranged marriage, she asks a witch to transform her into a man. When Alistair Vance learns that his future bride has become a man, he is furious and feels publicly humiliated. He believes Helena changed her gender to escape the marriage. To restore his honor, he challenges her to a duel, but Helena, who has never held a sword, is quickly defeated. He spares her life but threatens to cancel the financial agreement, ruining her family, if she does not 'return to her true body.' Faced with this situation, her father has no choice but to send his younger daughter to marry Alistair in her place. Helena - now named Henry - feels guilty, because his sister ended up bearing that burden in his place. He trains with his friend Kael to face Alistair in a second duel to save his younger sister from the marriage. Kael is in love with Helena even after she becomes a man, but he represses his feelings and settles for being Henry's loyal friend. At one point in the story, he dies sacrificing himself for him, and Henry honors his memory by marrying Kael’s sister, vowing to always watch over her and protect her.
2.
A rich and powerful woman, recently widowed, could no longer bear her loneliness. She hired a witch to transform her devoted young servant into the physical replica of her late husband. At first, the woman had asked the witch to bring her husband back from the dead.
The witch told her that was impossible, but offered to shape a copy of him instead. The flesh, she said, can be shaped into anything - it is malleable, from her perspective.
The servant, who had been in love with her mistress for years, accepted out of devotion. She could not stand to see her sad; she wished she could make her as happy as she deserved.
After the transformation, the woman asked not to be called « madame » anymore, but by her first name. It was herself who taught her how to play the part.
She corrected her posture, her gait, the way she held her glass at dinner. She showed her which shirts he had preferred and how he knotted his tie.
The lessons were patient, meticulous, almost tender - and yet each one whispered the same unspoken truth: You are not him. But you can learn to resemble him.
The former servant knew she was only a substitute, that the woman would always prefer the original. So she tried to be a better husband than he had ever been, hoping the woman might one day love her more than she had ever loved him.
Sometimes, in secret, the woman still weeps for the man she lost. For though the shell is the same, the soul within it is not.
3.
This fantastic idea comes from @dualumina
The servant was accidentally responsible for the husband's death. A freak accident, the stairs had been recently mopped. But it was the servant who caused it, as she forgot to warn anyone not to use the stairs. No one can deny she isn't at fault.
The new widow, in her shock at the loss, gives the young servant an ultimatum - either replace the husband she just lost, or be reported to the authorities.
The servant, ridden with guilt and knowing she'd likely rot away in a prison, agrees to the transformation. And she couldn't bear to see her mistress in distress.
She's a servant, so no one asks any questions when she disappears. Maybe the widow needs the former servant to play the part for the sake of keeping both her composure and the estate.
The husband's body is quietly buried in the rose garden.
The other servants are forbidden from discussing the matter, but why would they? If the widow loses the estate they lose their jobs.
So the secret is buried as deep as the husband's body.
"That's what it all boils down to, isn't it?" The servant thinks. "This household needs his body to survive."
"Then I must become the husband this house needs."
4.
This fantastic idea comes from @xenocenecomic
Or an alternative to the third one where the servant does not tell the mistress/wife for fear of her life, instead she disposes of the body, keeps one hair for the spell/potion and asks a witch to turn her into the husband such that it seems the death had never really happened? Perhaps the mistress begins to suspect something as her “husband” becomes avoidant out of guilt, perhaps to the point of madness.
5.
A witch seizes her husband's murderer, and, instead of killing her, transforms her into an exact copy of him. She also erases all traces of this woman's past existence, definitively wiping her from collective memory. No administrative record bears her name any longer. It is as if she never was.
She teaches her to be him and threatens that if she refuses to play the role, she will turn her into a toad and boil her alive.
He has nothing left: no one, no past, no escape. Only her. His sole point of reference, his only reality. At first, he played the role to escape the pain. Now he plays it because her satisfaction has become his only worth. He cannot even completely hate her, because without her, he has nothing left.
