Daddy's Girl

"But I loved her first
I held her first
And a place in my heart
Will always be hers"

—Heartland, "I Loved Her First"

We've all seen it. Usually, it's where the daughter utterly adores the father-figure and at times the mother (if there is one) feels completely left out. The daughter, who is usually, but not always, either a single child or the only girl in the family, is likewise the father's favorite. In extreme instances, this can all be part of Wife Husbandry or can result in the daughter becoming obsessed with her father to the point of developing an Electra Complex. Due to their close contact to the male parent, Daddys' Girls can sometimes acquire boyish traits and interests at odds with expected female personality types like One of the Boys. On the opposite end of the spectrum, she might be especially girly like his sweet little princess. The third possibile character is the socially awkward one who gets understanding and encouragement from her father, and of course any girl who looks up to her father so much that she wants to follow in his footsteps like in Never a Self-Made Woman. In the likely chance that she has a younger brother, she is very protective of him.

At times, the girl can also end up as a Bratty Teenage Daughter (or Spoiled Brat if the father is rich).

If the family consists of a girl, a boy, a mother and a father, the girl will most likely be Daddy's Girl and the boy will be a Momma's Boy, causing conflict in the entire family.

It's the flip-side of Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas and Momma's Boy. Often associated with Lineage Comes From the Father.

If the Daddy's Girl acquires a stepmother, there will most likely be tension between the two, as one (or each) will be jealous of the other and the woman will either become or be seen as a Wicked Stepmother.

Compare Daddy's Little Villain.

Examples of Daddy's Girl include:

Anime and Manga

  • April Eagle/Marianne Louvre and Commander Eagle/Charles Louvre from Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs/Sei Juushi Bismarck.
  • From Slayers, there is Princess Amelia, who adores and admires her father Phillionel. It helps that her mother was killed when she was young and her sister ran away because of it.
  • Rally Vincent from Gunsmith Cats. Rally does not fit the trope exactly because she's a Daddy's Girl who's since grown up, although she still keeps the same passions for the things that her father taught her about. However, the character Jeena Smart (introduced in Chapter 44 of the manga) is an entirely conventional Daddy's Girl.
  • Ena Ayase in Yotsuba&!.
  • Reika Tamaki in Ojamajo Doremi.
  • Yuuna from Mahou Sensei Negima, as seen in chapter 174 of the manga. It starts as more of a Father, I Want to Marry My Brother type thing, although a later incident implies that she might be a little too fond of him. Completely Played for Laughs, tho.
  • Akito from Fruits Basket was raised as a boy instead of her born gender because her mother feared her becoming a Daddy's Girl.
  • Karin and Yuzu Kurosaki in Bleach, considering that their and Ichigo's dad is the only family they have (their mom is dead). Though, admittedly, Yuzu bonds more with her father than her other siblings.
    • To an extent, Yachiru Kusajishi.
  • Road Kamelot.
  • Gohan's girlfriend (and later wife) Videl is sort-of like this to her dad, Mr. Satan/Hercule.
    • Don't forget Goku's wife, Chi-Chi with her father, the Ox-King.
    • Bra from GT has her father Vegeta wrapped around her little finger - a stark contrast with how he treats his son Trunks.
  • Although it's actually her step-father, Yukiji of Hayate the Combat Butler has this style of relationship with her father. We don't yet know about Yukiji's relationship with her step-mother, but it's likely not antagonistic.
    • It's hinted rather strongly that Izumi also has this place in her father's heart.
  • Ibuki Momoi, Dai-Guard's navigator, is shown to have been this before her father died during the first Heterodyne attack.
  • ChibiUsa of Sailor Moon is a perfect example, monopolizing her future father Mamoru's time and fighting over him with her future mother Usagi. Her unfortunate transformation into Black Lady even twists her innocent need for approval and love for Mamoru into a vision of her kissing him (anime) and her actually taking him hostage and kissing him (manga). Even in the future, ChibiUsa appears to have a more normal relationship with her father Endymion; while she loves her mother Neo-Queen Serenity dearly, she also idolizes her to the point of an inferiority-complex. Which is really not helped by how Usagi/Serenity got seriously injured and then frozen in crystal in the Bad Future of Crystal Tokyo... by Taking the Bullet for Chibi-Usa during the Black Moon invasion.
    • Usagi herself is very much a Daddy's Girl and one of the things about Mamoru she likes the most is that he reminds her of her father.
    • The album Lunarock has a song called "Daddy's Girl", which could be about either Serena or Rini.
  • Of the three Marui sisters of Mitsudomoe, Futaba is the Daddy's Girl.
  • Elysia Hughes to her father Maes, in Fullmetal Alchemist.
  • Nina Wang in Mai-Otome, although it turns out that her love for Sergay goes beyond daughterly love.
  • From Detective Conan. Kogoro may exasperate his daughter Ran with his constant drinking, womanizing, and over all laziness, but if you call him a lousy detective, or take away his business, she'll do this. On the other hand, Kogoro is pretty much an Overprotective Dad and the best way to make him act competent is to look at his little girl in anything similar to a wrong way.


Comic Books

  • The Golden Age Green Lantern and his daughter Jade. In this case, the excluded figure wasn't a mother (a long dead schizophrenic supervillain) but The Unfavorite twin Obsidian (also a schizophrenic).
  • The Sin City short story "Daddy's Little Girl" takes this to the obvious extreme.
  • Jenny Quantum of The Authority, pretty much by default.
  • In instances where they're actually portrayed as family, Wanda is this to Magneto of the Marvel Universe. Lorna is this in many ways, although it generally seems that she wants to be Daddy's Little Girl, and Wanda is. Reality-warping and alternate universes make it hard to say for certain.
    • The few times Magneto interacts with his granddaughter Luna makes it clear that they love each other—despite the fact that Luna is effectively a normal human just like the ones Magneto despises on principle. Luna's relationship with her father Quicksilver is about as far from this trope as it can get—Luna pretty much disowned him after he lied about his culpability in his past crimes, claiming that a Skrull impersonated him.
  • Panda Delgado and her father Mack in Body Bags. They nearly kill each other at one point, but eventually reconcile, and it's clear that Panda has always idolized her daddy.
  • Valeria Richards for Reed Richards in the Fantastic Four, especially as the two of them share an incredibly advanced intellect.
  • To some extent Mayday Parker aka Spider-Girl. She gets along very well with her mother, but having inherited her father's nerdish propensities and his super-powers, she is clearly following in her father's footsteps, and her web-slinging activities cause Mary Jane to worry a lot about her daughter.
  • More predominately in Teen Titans than in Green Arrow, Lian Harper is this to her dad, Roy. And you will go "aww" because of it.


Fan Works


Film - Animated


Film - Live Action

  • Bonnie Blue has a relationship like this with her father Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Scarlett O'Hara has a somewhat similar relationship with her father, Gerald.
  • In Labyrinth, this dynamic drives Sarah's relationship with her stepmother and half-brother.
  • Especially in Fanon, Princess Leia.

"Listen well, Solo; Hurt my daughter, and I shoot you into the vacuum of space and blast you with lasers.

  • Subverted in The Generals Daughter. We're initially led to believe that Campbell was an archetypal father's daughter military brat who emulated his choosing a career in the army, but as Brenner and Sunhill discover, they viciously hated each other and evolved into mortal enemies because of what happened at West Point.
  • Danielle was very much Daddy's Girl in Ever After, which was the main reason for her stepmother's intense dislike of her.
  • A Truth in Television where King George adores his two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret in The King's Speech and he makes it very clear that he loves them very much, kissing and hugging them when he gets the opportunity to.
  • Lalita and her father are the best of friends in Bride and Prejudice.
  • Kenya is very much this Something New.
  • Bethany Hamilton
  • Annie and later Megan in Father of the Bride.
  • In a change from the Grimm tale and the Disney film, not only does her father feature in the story, but Lilli is his pet in Snow White a Tale of Terror. His not taking action to save his daughter from his wife is thoroughly justified by Claudia's manipulation and a timely injury.


Literature

  • Sara Crewe from A Little Princess.
  • Anne Shirley and Matthew Cuthbert from Anne of Green Gables.
  • A tragic example in Angela's Ashes, In the beginning of the book a daughter is born to the McCourt family. The normally alcoholic father Malachy McCourt dedicates himself to his daughter. A week later the daughter dies sending Malachy back to alcohol.
  • Emily Starr in Emily of New Moon.
  • Merry in Louisa May Alcott's Jack and Jill. Expected, since Merry is the youngest member of the Grant family... and has three much older brothers.
    • Also from Alcott, Rose Campbell is Uncle's Girl in Eight Cousins and its sequel, Rose in Bloom. She was Daddy's Girl until Daddy George died; then, George's bachelor brother Uncle Alec becomes her Parental Substitute as he promised to George before he kicked it and she grows to love him just as much.
  • Eppie in Silas Marner.
  • Lisa in Lottie and Lisa, on which The Parent Trap was based.
  • Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice is her father's favorite daughter and the two are very close. She is coincidentally her mother's least favorite child.
    • Emma Woodhouse is also the apple of her father's eye, being naturally clever and refusing to get married so she won't need to leave him.
  • Maree-Celee from The Princess 99 has a close relationship with her father but no one knows who or where her Mom is.
  • Jessie in Stephen King's novel, Gerald's Game...until her father sexually abuses her.
    • There's a similar situation in Dolores Claiborne.
  • Margaret Hale from North and South is the favorite child of her father, and returns the sentiment. Conversely, her brother is a Momma's Boy and her mother's favored child.
  • Odile in Mercedes Lackey's The Black Swan.
  • Svetlana Borisovna in Tranquilium.
  • Soraya in the Farsala Trilogy.
  • Cleo Judson, the wealthy but insecure socialite from Dorothey West's The Living is Easy, is a rare overtly negative version of this trope. As a child, her father recognizes her manipulative, callous ways, which he admits he cannot bring himself to correct.

"A man who loved his wife couldn't help loving his first-born best, the child of his fiercest passion. When that first-born was a girl, she could trample on his heart, but he would swear on a stack of Bibles that it didn't hurt."

  • Princess Danae is this to Sparhawk in the Elenium and Tamuli trilogies by David Eddings. This isn't playing the trope entirely straight, however; Sparhawk is the only one who knows that Danae is really the Child-Goddess Aphrael, and she became his daughter through sheer self-determination. Doesn't change the fact that they adore one another, though.
  • A few of the Oz books imply this sort of relationship between Dorothy and her beloved Uncle Henry.
  • The title character of Beauty a Retelling of Beauty And The Beast and her two sisters are all Daddy's Girls, although Beauty is his favorite.
  • Meggy and her father Mo from Inkheart are very close, she is everything to him. But no jealous mom, since she is a Missing Mom.
  • A Wrinkle in Time's Meg Murry idolizes her father and misses him very much since he disappeared.
  • Princess Elizabeth in Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the House of Tudor in the historical fiction series The Royal Diaries completely adores her father but she feels that he never notices her. For a moment though she is truly his favorite when she defends her weak brother and he tells her that she is the true Tudor rose. Possibily a Double Subversion as he loved he when she was born and he thought she would have brothers but then he declared her illegitimate but then he saw that his sought after son didn't have the will of a prince. Many other princesses in the series count as well, looking up to their king and father.


Live Action TV

  • The daughters in Full House (having only father figures around makes it sort of hard not to be a Daddy's Girl). Michelle is even gradually getting her father's obsession with cleanliness.
  • Ditto Nicole in My Two Dads.
  • Punky Brewster and Henry.
  • Veronica Mars and her father, Keith Mars. Also Trina Echolls and her father Aaron, made all the more disproportionate because he physically abuses his son/her brother Logan.
  • Richard Castle may be a horndog, an egotist, and a bestselling writer of pulp noir mysteries, but he'd move heaven and earth for his daughter Alexis. For her part, Alexis is (against all odds and most understandings of genetics and environment) a sensible, studious, smart young girl who loves and understands her father. It pretty much gets summed up in their first scene:

Castle: When I was your age... I can't tell that story, it's wildly inappropriate. Which, oddly, is my point--don't you want to have wildly inappropriate stories you can't tell your children when you're older?
Alexis (affectionately): Don't worry, I think you'll have enough for both of us.

    • A later episode opens with them fencing, quoting Robin Hood, and talking about Alexis's new crush (at the same time); another has them playing laser tag. Both times, it's clearly an absolute blast for both. Say what you want about Richard Castle, but he's a great father.
  • Abby Sciuto to Gibbs in NCIS, despite them not actually being related.
  • Rudy in The Cosby Show.
  • In the 2000s Battlestar Galactica Reimagined, Kara Thrace is a Daddy's Girl to Bill Adama, even though they're not related (she was engaged to his son, and he took her under his wing after said son's death). She's also revealed to have been an actual Daddy's Girl as a child before her father Dreilide left her mother Socrata for his musical career.
  • Zoe Bartlet in The West Wing, even moreso than her sisters. Also, since the show takes the True Companions idea very seriously, CJ's relationship with the President qualifies as well.
  • In Firefly River is kind of a big brother's girl. Possibly she always was and in any case the curious situation had led to a Promotion to Parent for her doting big brother.
  • Joanie Cunningham in Happy Days.
  • Delinda Delinda to Ed Deline on Las Vegas.
  • Cal Lightman of Lie to Me is a Bunny Ears Deception Expert who constantly stuns his coworkers with outrageous ways to get people to confess to him. But do not ever ever even appear to threaten his daughter. Emily Lightman is the non-psychotic twinkle in her father's eye, and don't you forget it.
  • Hilary Banks on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
  • Sally Draper on Mad Men. This might at first seem peculiar to those of us who know Don, but Season 4 (for which Kiernan Shipka was Promoted to Opening Titles) reveals that she is like her father in many ways and that Betty has been abusing her physically and emotionally. While Don is a bit distant, he is trying to be a good dad in his own way.
  • Almost once a season, there tends to be a Father-Daughter team on The Amazing Race. Gary and Mallory, from Seasons 17 and 18, are a text book example of this. Heck, Mallory has even stated she's the only girl (has three brothers) and is the youngest.
  • Heroes: Claire ("Claire-Bear") Bennet is the most important person in the world to her completely bad-ass adoptive father, Noah Bennet. It's a double-edged sword, because while Noah would do absolutely anything to protect her, he is also not above lying, manipulating and treating her like a far younger child. Although he's often revealed to be right about whatever point he's trying to make. And Claire has this whole pendulum reaction to her father - she loves him, she hates him, she knows he's right, she'll never trust him again, he's her Daddy, he's the Devil, lather rinse repeat - that can wound him like nothing and no one else.
  • Princess Mary is alternately this and not this to her temperamental father, Henry VIII, in The Tudors. Princess Elizabeth gets the same treatment, but has a smaller role in the series. Truth in Television; see below.
  • Arya Stark from Game of Thrones is very much this. Sansa less so.
  • Scully and her father from The X-Files.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer pines after her Disappeared Dad in the early seasons, but eventually Giles comes to fill this role for her.


Music

  • Ben Folds. Gracie.
    • "There will always be a part of me/no-one else is ever ever gonna see/but Gracie girl/my little girl."
  • "Butterfly Kisses" by Bob Carlisle is all about this.
  • Geri Halliwell of Spice Girls had a song on her "Schizophonic" album, "Someone's Watching Over Me", dedicated to her late father.


Newspaper Comics


Video Games

  • In case 5-4 of the Ace Attorney series, large portions of the case relate directly to how Byrne Faraday dotes over his daughter Kay. Unfortunately that case is his murder. Poor Kay.
    • From the same case, we also have Franziska and Manfred von Karma.
    • One game earlier, there is Trucy Enigmar/Wright, who, prior to her adoption by Phoenix, adored her biological father to a such great degree that she copied his way of speech, moving, his outfit and even designed her puppet, Mr. Hat, to resemble him. She appears to hold a simmilar admiration for Phoenix later on (even though not quite to the same extent), as her signature colored changed from red to blue (mirroring Phoenix' infamous blue suit) over the 7 year time gap.
  • Both Yukari Takeba and Mitsuru Kirijo from Persona 3. Yukari is specifically portrayed as having been much closer to her father than her mother, and Mitsuru's mother is not mentioned, but she's very protective of and devoted to her father.
  • Ina from the Samurai Warriors series. Lampshaded by a few people who interact with either her or her father, Tadakatsu.
  • in Jak X, Keira is irritated by her status as Samos' "little girl" because he won't let her compete in the tournament her life depends on. Of course, she does it anyway.
  • Queen Anora and her father, Lohgain Mac Tir in Dragon Age: Origins. Lohgain has a touching farewell to Anora concerning the trope should you choose to execute him.
    • Though largely identical in dialog to the Male counterpart, Human Noble Female Warden could also be one, considering Dad calls her "pup",[1] lets her play with sharp objects [dead link] , and got his sweet little girl a little mabari puppy some time in the past.
  • From BioShock (series) 2 we have Eleanor Lamb who is practically the queen of this trope. Why? Because no matter what you do, no matter how good OR evil you are, she wants to be JUST LIKE DADDY DELTA.
  • Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Full Stop.

"I love my daddy. I love my daddy. I LOVE MY DADDY!"

  • Midori Komaki from Devil Survivor, which leads to a lot of problems when it comes to her Chronic Hero Syndrome...
  • Flora's backstory in Professor Layton and the Curious Village shows that she was this to her late father, Baron Reinhold. After the events of this game, she's unofficially adopted by Layton himself, and becomes Daddy's Girl all over again; the third game in particular makes this clear, and reveals Layton as a Papa Wolf to boot.
  • Though their interaction is brief, it's evident in The Witcher 2 that between King Foltest's two bastard children, Anais and Boussy, the former is much closer and more accepting of her father than the latter, going so far as to immediately rush out to hug him when he appears, and reaches out for him as she walks away.


Webcomics


Western Animation

  • Pizzazz from the Misfits in Jem and The Holograms.
  • Princess Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender. When the dad is a sociopathic Evil Overlord and the daughter a multitalented Teen Genius who really wants to make him happy, things can get ugly.
  • In the Teen Titans series, the villain Killer Moth had a spoiled brat daughter named Kitten who interrupted his plans to conquer the city to make Robin take her to prom.
    • Trigon tried to hold this over Raven in the 4th season finale, if only to make a cruel point that she's his biological daughter.

Trigon: No matter what you do, you'll always be daddy's little girl.

  • A few in Danny Phantom. Damon Gray's relationship with Valerie is the biggest one in the series; one obviously filled with love and the show emphasizes that to its fullest. Quite heartwarming really. Paulina's father is more straightforward, even giving the If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her... speech to Danny. Considering his BIG build, it's best to stay on his good side. And of course Jack Fenton who has shown several scenes of adoration to his daughter (not that he ignores his son), so much to the point that Jazz's often obsessive personality may have been received by Jack's influence—no matter how much she would deny it.
  • The Simpsons, Lisa may be a more subverted example. While her father is a complete idiot and often manages to embarrass her, she still loves him no matter what. Examples: In Lisa's future episode, she stops her own wedding because her British fiance was disgusted with her family (that, and he wasn't wearing her father's cufflinks. Which look like pigs.) Homer even - not once, twice - sacrificed buying an air conditioner for his family to buy Lisa a new saxophone.
    • Maggie is also an example. In fact, her first (and thus far only) spoken word throughout the series was "daddy."
  • Sasha Caylo from Titan Maximum. Like the Pizzazz example above, her father is also unable to deal with her bullshit and just throws money at her to keep her out of his hair.
  • Karai from the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series has a huge blind spot when it comes to her father, Oroku Saki (a.k.a. series Big Bad the Shredder), which overlaps with My Master, Right or Wrong; even knowing the full extent of his crimes, she'll try her damnedest to keep him from harm, even if that means fighting her friends.
  • Gosalyn has shades of this regarding her father, Darkwing Duck. He's not quite as eager for her to follow in the family business. Notably, her Tomboy traits predate her meeting him; this was greatly appreciated when she was Grandpa's Little Girl.
  • All The Powerpuff Girls, but especially Bubbles.
  • Numbuh 86 from Codename: Kids Next Door despite her father being the villainous Mr. Boss.
  • There are a handful of Phineas and Ferb episodes which suggest that Candace has this relationship with her stepfather, Lawrence. They enter a father-daughter contest together and he teaches her to drive, among other situations. Unlike her mom, he doesn't think Candace is crazy and is actually aware of Phineas and Ferb's antics. He doesn't stop them, but she loves him anyway.
    • Vanessa, to Doofenshmirtz. Their father-daughter relationship is somewhat strained, Doof being an incredibly embarrassing Overprotective Dad who's divorced from Vanessa's mom, but she clearly cares a whole lot about him.
      • Doofenshmirtz goes to crazy lengths to make his daughter happy, even if he's wrong about what would make her happy. The one slam dunk he made was finding a Mary MacGuffin doll for years after Vanessa had given up looking for one and touched her so much she sang a song about how he's "Not so bad a dad after all."
  • Bizarrely enough, the otherwise utterly unloving Gaz from Invader Zim. One day a year, she gets to hang out with her distant father, and she's not going to let Dib's alien-chasing obsession ruin that. For his part, Membrane is a lot closer to Gaz than he is to his "poor, insane son".

Membrane: Sorry about imprisoning you and turning you into a media freak, honey! It was in the name of science and...hey, where's your brother?
Gaz: He's in a pig world netherworld cleaning out toilets with his head.
Membrane: (laughs) You're my funny child!


Real Life

  • Anne Frank said in her diary that she was closer to her father than her mother.
    • She even gave her father a nickname, which she uses to refer to him as in the diary - Pim.
  • An unusual case is Laura Ingalls, who is the second of four daughters. (She is the most active, energetic and willing to help with the work as a son would, though.)
  • Miley Cyrus is probably the most well known real life modern example of a daddy's girl.
  • Catholic scholar Michael Novak shares a great affection with his daughter Jana and they have co-written several books.
  • Journalist Lucinda Franks who wrote a book "My Father's Secret War" researching her father's experience as a spy in World War II. In her case it was the book that made her Daddy's Girl because he had been too much of a Shell Shocked Senior for her to like, and she hadn't understood why until then.
  • While the Gilbreth parents loved all of their twelve children, Cheaper by the Dozen mentions that Frank Gilbreth was very close with their first four daughters, despite his wish for a son, affectionately dubbing them his "harem".
  • King George VI, father to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, had a genuine and well-documented affection for both of his daughters (as shown most touchingly in The King's Speech). Queen Elizabeth also adored her father; she gets her sense of duty from him, in particular, and their monarchies have certain key qualities in common.
  • Henry VIII's daughters, Mary I and Elizabeth I, both desperately wanted to be this. Mary was this for the early portion of her life, when her parents were still happily married and she was her father's only legitimate heir. After Elizabeth was born, she had the spot for a time. Then it went back to Mary again for a while, and so forth and so on. (Of course, Henry's real favorite was his son Edward, but Mary and Elizabeth also both adored their baby brother so there wasn't nearly as much rivalry there.)
  • Underground Comics artist Dori Seda. He influenced her to become an artist herself - whether this was for better or for worse, is another question.
  1. ↑ Fereldans are big on dogs
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