The General's Daughter

You've been busted, you lost your qualifications as section leader three times, put in hack twice by me, with a history of high speed passes over five air control towers, and one admiral's daughter!"

—Top Gun

You know how a [British] General's daughter gets back at Daddy? She marries an Australian.

—Proof Of Life.

We all know The Squad: A group of soldiers who are the best in their respective fields despite any psychological quirks. Often, the team is led by an intelligent, inspirational man, who took this Ragtag Bunch of Misfits and made them into a deadly fighting force that would risk their lives for each other in a heartbeat.

But if Colonel Badass is so good, why is he here with these jokers, and not at Headquarters or the Front Line, where a man of his talents really needs to be?

Well you see, a few years back, he got involved with a lovely young woman, whose father just happened to be his superior officer. And boy, was Daddy mad when he found him with his little girl. For this horrible transgression, he was sent to this dumping ground of a unit.

Not to be confused with The President's Daughter who always gets kidnapped, nor with the 1999 film of the same name.

Examples of The General's Daughter include:

Anime and Manga

• In the Southern Cross segment of Robotech, Sean Philips is demoted for making a pass at the general's daughter (clearing the way for Dana to take command). In the novelisation, it also mentions that said general's daughter was herself a captain.
• Completely inverted with Fullmetal Alchemist. General Grumman has a granddaughter, Hawkeye, and rather than opposing a potential hook-up between her and Colonel Mustang, he is the one who suggests it. Mustang respectfully declines (sort of - he says that the suggestion is "premature"), and shortly thereafter is sent to the nation's HQ rather than away from it. And he takes Hawkeye with him, among several others.
  • This is a particularly odd example because it's unclear whether Mustang is aware of the identity of Grumman's granddaughter. Not only that, but it's implied that Hawkeye herself is unaware of her relationship to the General.

Comic Books

• Inverted in Universal War One. The reason why Capt. Williamson leads a squad of 7 people is because she saved the admiral's daughter, not because she screwed her.
• Okay. Okay, this example totally leaves out the "slept with the wrong woman" aspect, but it could fit anyway. In the X Wing Series comics, excellent Imperial pilot Soontir Fel trained some pilots who defected almost en masse to the Rebellion; he was summarily kicked out of the academy and shuffled not back to his old unit, but to a washed-up mess called the 181st Fighter Squadron. He got it into shape and made it one of the most feared squadrons in the Empire, was at the head of the only Imperial victory on the day the Death Star was destroyed, regained all the prestige he'd lost, and fell in love with the holodrama actress Wynessa Starflare. She later told him that she was Syal Antilles, sister and last surviving relative of the famous Rebel ace Wedge Antilles, and if Imperial Intelligence found out, there would be some kind of trap, various careers would be ruined, and her brother and the man she loved would end up flying against each other.

Film

• The Presidio is one example, with the hero cop (a former soldier) fooling around with the daughter of the Presidio's Provost Marshal, a Colonel Badass played by Sean Connery. A Reversed Trope, as he only gets in the relationship a few years after he had been courtmartialled, demoted, and drummed out of the Army by said Colonel.
  • After Sean Connery's character beats a thug senseless using only his thumb, this trope is Lampshaded when the cop remarks "Have I mentioned that my intentions towards your daughter are purely honorable?"
  • Of course, immediately before the thug interrupted, they had been discussing that very topic.
• Shirley Temple in Fort Apache.
• Operation Dumbo Drop (1995). Danny Glover's character blackmails a supply sergeant into coming on the mission by threatening to spill the beans on him sleeping with a general's wife whom he mistook for his daughter. For context, this is a Disney film.
• In Avatar, hero Jake Sully meets and eventually mates with Neytiri, the daughter of the Chief of the Na'vi tribe. This gets him into some hot water when the rest of the tribe finds out.
• In The Hallelujah Trail, Captain Paul Slater and Louise Gearhart were continually trying to get together without the knowledge of Colonel Thaddeus Gearhart (her father and his commanding officer). Captain Slater was then being sent on extended and dangerous missions by the Colonel to try and keep them apart.
• Top Gun presents this as one of the reasons why Military Maverick Ace Pilot "Maverick" has not gotten the promotions that his flying skills would otherwise qualify him for.
• In Battlefield Earth, Terl is assigned to Earth for some incident involving a senator's daughter.
• In Cinema Paradiso Salvatore comes back from the army and tells Afredo this anecdote:

At the Christmas party the lieutenant pinches a girl's ass. The girl turns around: it's the daughter of the commanding officer. The lieutenant is scared to death and says: 'Miss, if your heart is as hard as what I have just touched, I'm done for!"

• Averted in the John Wayne western-comedy McLintock!, when hired hand Devlin ends up sharing some Belligerent Sexual Tension with McLintock's daughter Becky. Devlin is unsure if he should act upon it because McLintock is the wealthiest man in the territory and Devlin's just the "hired hand", prompting McLintock to answer, "Every so often Dev, you spell the strangest ideas. Everybody works for somebody. I work for everybody in the East United States that steps into a butcher shop for a T-Bone steak and you work for me, it's not much difference." With these words, McLintock indicates that he would not be averse to Devlin(whom he respects as a hard worker and a fine young man) and his daughter getting together. Which they do by the end of the movie.
• In Armageddon, Liv Tyler's dad (Bruce Willis) isn't in the military, but he is the boss, and his group does function like the typical Ragtag Bunch of Misfits. And, of course, he's not exactly pleased to discover that Ben Afflec, his #1 employee, is dating her.
• In Battleship (film), Alex Hopper is involved with the Admiral's daughter, and it takes saving the world -- or at least Hawaii -- from aliens before he gets the nod.

Literature

• In the Halo novelization, the Fall of Reach, Ensign William Lovell's record states that he had an affair with a Ms. Gerov, whom Captain Jacob Keyes, viewing Lovell's career service vitae, suspects to be the daughter of Rear Admiral Gerov. Interesting in the fact that, while Lovell turns out to be a very competent navigational officer, it is suggested that he may have made advances on her on purpose, because Lovell has gotten so shaken up from the war that he deliberately had himself demoted to be rotated anywhere but the frontlines.
• Discussed in The Inheritance Cycle; when Murtagh repeatedly refuses to go with Eragon to see the Varden, the latter asks if he "bedded the wrong woman."

Live Action TV

• The Ferengi have rules about this sort of thing. Specifically, Number 112.

Tabletop Games

• In a Rifts sourcebook, one of the commanders of a mercenary company is a man who got kicked out of the military for this. In his opinion, she was well worth it.

Theater

• Josephine, daughter of HMS Pinafore's Captain Corcoran, makes this one Older Than Radio.

Video Games

• In XIII, Four-Star Badass Carrington has this as part of his backstory.

Web Comics

• Played with in Triquetra Cats. One of the squad leaders in the Antreyki military IS the General's daughter, despite being competent as a military leader, she also tends to be a flaky party girl and she was placed there as an attempt to straighten her out

Real Life

• Invoked in Real Life by Romain Gary. His mother, though a Lithuanian Jew, loved France and moved there in 1928. She worked hard and sacrificed much to put her son through college and military academy. Graduating from the academy, due to him being a recent immigrant he was the only one who ended up as an NCO.^[1] Unable to tell his mother how their adopted country had treated him, he went home with a story about how he had seduced the academy commander's daughter and had to wait for the scandal to dissipate before he would get his commission. At least, that's one of the versions he presented later in life: the man was constantly reinventing his past.

1. ↑ which in the end didn't matter, because he escaped to join the Free French forces and was a multiply decorated Captain when the war ended