Runaway Fiance/Playing With

Basic Trope: A character runs away to escape an Arranged Marriage or otherwise undesirable would-be mate, before they can get to the altar.

• Straight: Maybelle is stuck in an Arranged Marriage; however, she doesn't like her would-be husband, so she runs away.
• Exaggerated: Maybelle's control-freak parents set her up with Leonard, son of Duke Dorsely and a completely self-absorbed prat. Faced with the possibility of having to spend the rest of her life with such a complete loser, Maybelle decides to cut her losses and runs off.
• Justified: The guy she's supposed to marry is a complete Jerkass who's more interested in what he can get from the deal than anything as "silly" as real, romantic love.
• Inverted: Maybelle has no fiance at the moment, and runs away so that she can get engaged to her secret lover.
• Subverted: While she isn't pleased with the arrangement, Maybelle chooses to stick it out -- after all, at least he's rich, right?
• Double Subverted: However, as the wedding date nears, she decides that money won't make up for having a douchebag for her husband and books it out of there.
• Parodied: Maybelle bolts as soon as Leonard hands her the ring.
• Deconstructed: By running away, Maybelle leaves her parents mortified and struggling to find some way to make it up to the other family, particularly her embarrassed would-be husband. They cut all ties to each other, and she has to figure out how to support herself. Made much worse if in a setting where she's too young to have control of her own assets before taking off on her own.
• Reconstructed: Maybelle doesn't mourn the loss of her overbearing folks, learns to stand on her own two feet, and finds happiness in the life she carves out for herself.
• Zig Zagged: When Maybelle attempts to sneak out, her mother catches her and forces her to come back home. The two have a heart-to-heart, and Maybelle is convinced that it won't be so bad... or so it seems. Later she makes another attempt, and while caught again and nearly dragged home by her folks, she manages to fight her way free and escapes.
• Averted: Maybelle sits down with everyone involved and explains that she's unhappy about the engagement.
• Enforced: The writer wants to introduce a form of tension with an obviously undesirable Fake Love Interest for Maybelle; having her flee an Arranged Marriage also brings in some obvious familial tension.
• Lampshaded: "You should have suspected something when she pawned the ring to buy running shoes.."
• Invoked: Duke Dorsely has the marriage arranged because he suspects Maybelle is rebellious enough to run away from his loathsome son; he plans to take advantage of this to seize her parents' assets afterwards as remuneration for the embarrassment his family suffered.
• Defied: "Running away won't solve anything!"
• Discussed: "Hey, Alex, what happened to your fiancée?" "What fiancée?"
• Conversed: ???
• Played For Laughs: Maybelle's parents were expecting her to take off, and her mother scolds her for not waiting until their wedding day because "a Runaway Bride is so much more romantic!"
• Played For Drama: Maybelle is being railroaded into the marriage; when she takes off, the parents of her would-be husband send bounty hunters after her, intending to haul her back and force her to go through with it.

---

Back to Runaway Fiance.