One story element I’d like to see more of is the targeted bride-price
Something like: the newly-widowed queen knows she and her daughter won’t be allowed to rule their country themselves, so she has to agree that her daughter be married. But she wants to ensure that her daughter gets a husband who will treat her well and that her land gets a ruler who will treat it well, so she rigs the game.
Mercedes Lackey did a most excellent job of this in her 500 Kingdoms book The Sleeping Beauty, where the final challenge of the tournament to win the princess’ hand is to find a way to permanently protect their small but rich country from their many greedy neighbors (the winning concept is brilliant, btw, I grin every time)
I’m thinking also of that neat comic with the witch who says she’ll marry whoever gets the key from around her cat’s neck–but she is also the cat, and the only way to get the key is to befriend her. that’s a really great example and also one of the few I can think of where the person is setting their own bride-price, double credit.
any of those ‘the youngest/weakest wins by being clever’ or ‘the kind one wins by getting help from allies they helped along the way’ stories have potential to qualify, but I want specifically the ones where the person setting the bride-price did it that way on purpose to ensure a clever or kind winner
same for any of those stories where the thing which must be retrieved is incredibly fragile and only a careful, gentle person could retrieve it
or it’s worth a fortune and only an honest, selfless person could pass it up for the quest, y’all get the idea
or, genre-swap: the mob boss has a handsome, powerful son, and all the other mob leaders keep trying to arrange for their beautiful eligible daughters to cross his path, and the mob boss says instead that the one who brings the most to the table will be allowed to marry their son
this phrasing I like because it’s got two possible subversions!
1) all the mob-parents keep trying to show off their resources and the boss gets to say ‘no, none of these count unless you’re trying to marry my son. what do your kids have to offer him’ and then whoever’s the most badass all on their own gets to win
or 2) mob-son is actually in love with a nice straight-arrow baker from down the road, who comes and brings a brace of pies literally to the table, and wins on a proper fairytale technicality
I just super dig the idea of taking the big heavy traditional concept of a bride-price (and the ensuant actual selling of a bride) and turning it instead into the mechanism by which a clever and caring person makes sure that they/their kid/their country will be safe and happy in the future