Incest in literature

There are various forms of incest in literature, from those with a compositional prose as well as those intended for less mature audiences.

Incestual families in fiction

• John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore play (between 1629 and 1633) is one of the earliest examples that generated much controversy.
• The 120 Days of Sodom (1785), Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795), and Juliette (1797), all written by the Marquis de Sade, are all full of detailed descriptions of incest.^[1]
• Samuel R. Delany's novel Hogg, written in 1969, is also full of detailed descriptions of incest. According to Paul Di Filippo, Delany sought to push the boundaries of heteronormative sex.^[2]
• In Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) there are several cases of sex between more or less close relatives, including that which occurs between a nephew and aunt.^[3] Other works of literature show consequences not so grave, such as Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, in which fraternal twins share a cathartic sexual experience.^[4]
• Vladimir Nabokov's novel Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969) deals very heavily with the incestuous relationships in the intricate family tree of the main character, Van Veen. There are explicit moments of sexual relations primarily between Van and his sister, Ada, as well as between Ada and her younger sister, Lucette. Nabokov does not necessarily deal with any complexities or consequences, social or otherwise, which may be inherent to incestuous relationships—outside of the strictly practical concerns of having to hide the taboo relationships from others.^[5] Incest in Ada seems mainly to be a sexual manifestation of the characters' intellectual incestuousness, and operates on a similar plane as do other instances of "sexual transgression" in Nabokov's novels of this period, such as pedophilia in Lolita and homosexuality in Pale Fire.
• In Robert Heinlein's Time Enough for Love (1973) and To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987), characters make pro-incest arguments that reflect Heinlein's libertarian political beliefs.^[6]
• Incest and inbreeding is a frequent theme in the works of V. C. Andrews. Lizzy Goodman of The Guardian cites the incest, among other dark themes, as "a shocking but necessary" way to explore the darker aspects of life.^[7]
• Anne Rice's Mayfair trilogy (1990–94) deals with a family of witches who are heavily inbred. Amid controversy, Rice stated that her novels recognized the agency of young women and their freedom to choose lovers.^[8] One character fathers children with his sister, daughter, and granddaughter.
• V.C. Andrews's (see above) “Dollanganger” novels depict a highly dysfunctional family dynamic with clearly incestuous origins. In Flowers in the Attic, Corrine reveals to her children that their father, Christopher Sr. is her half-uncle. Later, Chris Jr. rapes his sister, Cathy. In the sequel, Petals on the Wind, Cathy is pregnant with Chris's child and has a miscarriage. At the end of the book, they run away together and get married. In the prequel, Garden of Shadows, Malcolm rapes his step-mother, Alicia, resulting in the pregnancy that produced Corrine. Malcolm pays Alicia to move away with her son/his half-brother and leave Corrine. Several years later, Alicia dies, and her son, Christopher Sr. comes to stay. It is then that he meets Corrine, who he thinks is his half-niece but does not know is his half-sister. They fall in love, and later run away together, get married and have four children. To a lesser degree, this dynamic also manifests itself in the remaining two Dollanganger novels, If There Be Thorns and Seeds of Yesterday.
• A Song of Ice and Fire contains numerous examples of this (see also twincest in fiction below):
  • The Targaryen dynasty that ruled the Seven Kingdoms before the series begins often practised incestuous marriages in the tradition of Old Valyria to keep their bloodline pure. These included the first Targaryen King Aegon, who married both his sisters, and the last Targaryen King, Aerys II, the Mad King, who was also the result of a brother-sister marriage between Jaehaerys II and Shaera.
  • In The Rogue Prince and The Princess and the Queen, one of the main characters Aegon II is married to his full sister Helaena. His half-sister Rhaenyra marries her uncle Daemon Targaryen.
  • The Wildling Craster marries his daughters, and even marries the daughters they produce.
  • Euron Greyjoy is revealed to have raped his youngest full brothers, Aeron and Urrigon, when they were children.
• In J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, the main antagonist Lord Voldemort is a descendant of the Gaunt family which is known for marrying their cousins.

Twincest in fiction

• In Donna Tartt's novel 1992 The Secret History, the characters Charles and Camilla Macaulay are fraternal twins who, it is revealed, have a sexual incestuous relationship. Though Charles later becomes abusive towards Camilla, the romantic/sexual side of their relationship is not explicitly condemned by the narrator.
• In Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (1813–83), the hero Siegfried is the son of the incestuous relationship between twins Siegmund and Sieglinde.
• Twincest plays an influential role in George R. R. Martin's bestselling fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire (from 1996). The television adaptation, Game of Thrones, controversially adapted several scenes to be non-consensual, which led some critics to label the changes as overly exploitative and an attempt to court controversy.^[9] The TV show shows Cersei Lannister having sex with her twin brother Jaime Lannister, and they had children together while Cersei Lannister was queen. An investigation brings this to light; however, King Robert Baratheon dies before finding his wife's children are illegitimate, beginning a civil war.

Sibling incest in fiction

Fantasy fiction

• In The Mists of Avalon (1983) by Marion Zimmer Bradley, half siblings Arthur and Morgaine engage in sexual intercourse during a religious ritual and then again the morning afterwards, which leads to the conception of Mordred. After Morgaine finds out that they are siblings, she that during Arthur's wedding ceremony to Gwenhwyfar, that Gwenhwyfar is looking at Lancelet while Arthur is looking at man who claimed to have the same father as her. Morgaine has an unrequited love for Lancelet, her half-first cousin (their mothers are half-sisters) and the two share an intimate moment. Morgaine also has an affair with her stepson Accolon and is almost raped by Accolon's older brother. It is also strongly implied that Lancelet harbors homosexual feelings for Arthur, which he believes may be the reason for his attraction to Arthur's wife. The three of them even share an intimate moment.
• The historical fantasy novel Teito Monogatari (1985–89) by Hiroshi Aramata features a subplot involving incest. The minister of finance copulates with his sister, producing a daughter; an act which foils the efforts of the protagonist Yasunori Kato.
• In the Elenium trilogy (1989–92) by David Eddings, Queen Ehlana's widowed father Aldreas carried on an incestuous affair with his sister, Princess Arissa. She had initially seduced him in their youth with the intent of getting him to marry her, as one of the advisors had found an obscure law which would permit it, but was thwarted by the hero's father. The affair resumed after the death of Ehlana's mother and continued until the King's death, at which time Arissa was confined to a convent.
• In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Children of Húrin (2007), the characters Túrin and Nienor, who are brother and sister, unwittingly enter into an incestuous marriage when they meet for the first time while Nienor has had her memories taken by the dragon Glaurung. After Nienor falls pregnant, Glaurung restores her memory and she and her brother kill themselves in grief. This is a development of the story explored more briefly in Tolkien's The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and Book of Lost Tales, all of which included versions of the tale. The story is based on that of Kullervo from the Kalevala.

Science-fiction

• Incest also appears in the writings of two major authors of science fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin and Robert A. Heinlein. Le Guin's short story "Nine Lives" (1969) features ten clones (five male, five female) of the same person, whose intimate relationship includes incest. Her novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) contains a story of two siblings who mate, despite a taboo against it.
• In Philip K. Dick's novel, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974), Inspector McNulty is in a sexual relationship with his sister.
• In Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant (from 1983), the main character's sister has sex with him when he is 15 and she is 12.

Historic fiction

• Thomas Mann's The Holy Sinner (1951) explores the spiritual consequences of unintentional incest. His short story "The Blood of the Walsungs" also depicts brother-sister incest, drawing explicitly on Wagner's Siegmund and Sieglinde.
• Carolyn Slaughter's 1976 novel The Story of the Weasel (also known as Relations in the US) concerns an incestuous relationship between the protagonist, Cathy, and her older brother Christopher, during the 1880s.
• The novel Aztec (1980) by Gary Jennings contains a subplot that portrays the sexual relationship between the main character Mixtli and his older sister Tzitzitlini, which they manage to keep secret from their parents and the rest of their society- that would have punished them with death- for years, since their late childhood until their adolescence, when circumstances separate them and cause her death. He pines for her for many years afterwards. He later fathers a daughter with his wife and, after the deaths of both his wife and child, he reveals during sexual intercourse with the character Malinche, that his attraction to her was caused by her physical resemblance to his own late daughter, who would have been the same age as Malinche at that point of the story.
• In two books of Philippa Gregory's Wideacre Trilogy, Wideacre (1987) and The Favored Child (1989), the central female character of Wideacre, Beatrice, commits incest with her brother, Harry, and her two children, Julia and Richard, were fathered by Harry. In The Favored Child, Richard rapes Julia and forces her to marry him when she discovers that she is pregnant with his child, Sarah (or Meridon). Philippa Gregory also insinuates incest between siblings in her novel The Other Boleyn Girl. It seems that George Boleyn has had some level of a sexual relationship with both of his sisters, Anne and Mary.
• At the end of A. S. Byatt's novella Morpho Eugenia (1992), a Victorian naturalist—recently married into an aristocratic family—discovers the ongoing affair between his languid, alluring wife and her brother.
• Ken Follett's 1989 novel The Pillars of the Earth and the eventual mini-series with the same title both depict the incestuous relationship between Lady Regan and her son William Hamleigh.

Contemporary fiction

• Liza and Ludwig Pursewarden in Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet (1957–60) are sister and brother. They have a long sexual relationship until she marries a man called David Mountolive.
• In Ian McEwan's 1978 novel The Cement Garden, the tension between the protagonist Jack and his older sister Julie culminates in incest. Also, Donna Tartt's The Secret History contains incest between the twins Charles and Camilla, which is not revealed until the final chapters of the book.
• John Irving's 1981 novel The Hotel New Hampshire chronicles the lives of the Berry family. Two of the Berry siblings, John and Franny, share a closeness that develops into an incestuous encounter when they are adults.
• In Penelope Lively's 1987 novel Moon Tiger, the main character Claudia Hampton reveals to the reader that she had an incestuous relationship with her brother Gordon while both were in their late teens.
• Banana Yoshimoto's 1990 novel NP presents multiple incestuous relationships. The narrator and protagonist, Kazami, attempts a translation to Japanese of a series of many stories written in English by the writer Sarao Takase, who commits suicide after finishing the ninety-eighth story of his volume, after her boyfriend Shouji himself commits suicide after trying to translate the last story himself. Kazami meets the twins brother and sister Otohiko and Saki and their acquaintance Sui. Upon reaching the last story, Kazami discovers that Sui was actually Takase's daughter with a prostitute and he has sexual relations with her, which is the reason he determined him to kill himself. Kazami also discovers that Sui has an incestuous relationship with her step-brother Otohiko, all the while Kazami finds herself irresistibly attracted to Sui.
• The Josephine Hart 1991 novel Damage (and 1992 Louis Malle film) has an implicit depiction of incest. The character Anna (portrayed by Juliette Binoche) alludes to having had an incestuous relationship with her brother, who commits suicide because of his desire for her.
• In James Ellroy's 1992 novel White Jazz, the main character David Klein has an incestuous relationship with his sister Meg.
• Helen Dunmore's A Spell of Winter (1995) centers around the story of orphans Catherine and Rob Allen, who grow up in the bleak, desolate environment of their grandfather's country manor and whose relationship eventually evolves into a sexual one.
• Carlos Ruiz Zafón's novel The Shadow of the Wind (2001) features main characters Julián Carax and Penélope Aldaya who are siblings and also lovers. After a sexual encounter it is revealed that Penelope produces a child later named David. She is callously left to die by her father and mother whilst giving birth to her son due to her parents' disgust and shame.
• The intersex narrator of Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex (2002) traces their condition to a rare recessive gene which they inherited from their grandparents, a brother and sister who fled Greece for Detroit, Michigan when the Turkish army invaded in 1922.

Non-consensual incest

• In Matthew Gregory Lewis's Gothic novel, The Monk, published in 1796, the protagonist, Ambrosio, lusts after and eventually rapes the girl, Antonia, who he later discovers to be his sister.
• Judith Krantz's 1980 novel Princess Daisy contains some rather graphic scenes of a woman being raped by her half-brother.
• In E. Annie Proulx's 1993 novel The Shipping News and the 2001 film adaptation of the same name, it is explained that Agnis Hamm was once raped by her teenage half-brother when she was twelve, resulting in a pregnancy which was terminated.
• In V.C. Andrews's Flowers in the Attic, Chris rapes his sister, Cathy, as noted above. In the sequel, Petals on the Wind, Cathy is pregnant with Chris's child and has a miscarriage. At the end of the book, they run away together and get married.

Young-adult fiction

• In Sonya Hartnett's Sleeping Dogs (1995), a brother and sister's incest is only one symptom of the family's degradation.
• Francesca Lia Block's Wasteland (2003) features the incestuous relationship of a teenage brother and sister.
• In the young-adult series "Blue Bloods" (from 2006) by Melissa de la Cruz, which features vampires reincarnated every lifetime and couples who are "bonded" and find each other every lifetime, two of the semi-main characters, who are a bonded couple, are twins.
• In Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments series, the two main characters Clary and Jace enter into a relationship then realise they are siblings. They are then revealed not to be siblings. Also, Clary's real brother, Sebastian, has sexual feelings for her, they share a kiss and he wants to take the relationship further.

Parent-children incest in fiction

• The 1959 novel The Manchurian Candidate (and less explicitly in the two film adaptations based upon it) portrays incest between Eleanor Iselin and her son Raymond and refers to earlier incest between Eleanor and her own father.

Father/daughter incest

• Incest plays a central role in Theodore Sturgeon's short story "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?" (1967), in which the main character visits a world in which it is actively encouraged, and which is a utopia as a result. Sturgeon's afterword in Dangerous Visions, where it was originally published, indicates that he is not arguing for incest per se, merely demonstrating the manner in which a culture absorbs certain 'truths' without questioning them.
• Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1975 film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, a loose adaptation of the Marquis de Sade's aforementioned The 120 Days of Sodom, is full of father-daughter incest.
• In George Wilkins's and William Shakespeare's plays Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Antiochus, king of Antioch, is engaged in an incestuous relationship with his daughter, a fact correctly interpreted by the play's titular character.
• In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel Tender Is the Night (1934), the character Nicole Diver eventually has a nervous breakdown as a result of an incestuous relationship with her father.
• Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) also deals with incest. The main character, at one point in the novel, comes into contact with a family in which the daughter has been impregnated by the father.
• In Homo Faber (1957) by Max Frisch, the main character Walter Faber falls in love and has a sexual relationship with Sabeth, who he discovers, in the final part of the novel, is his daughter, from his young, witless relationship with art student Hanna.
• Theodore Sturgeon's science fiction 1967 short story "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?" depicts a utopian society based on the absence of an incest taboo.
• The central theme of Deborah Moggach's 1983 novel Porky is the abuse by a father of his daughter from the age of eleven and the impact this has on her later life.
• Dick Crick, one of the main characters in Graham Swift's 1983 novel Waterland is the son of his mother and grandfather.
• In a later novel of Irving, The Cider House Rules (1985), the chief picker of the apple crop, Mr. Rose, has an incestuous relationship with his daughter, Rose Rose, and even makes her pregnant.
• In Poppy Z Brite's 1992 novel Lost Souls there are two incidences of adult/child incest. Wallace Creech sleeps with his young adult daughter Jessy and vampire, Zillah, has a deeply sexual relationship with his son, Nothing.
• The Korean thriller Oldboy has father/daughter incest as one of its main plot points.

Sexual abuse

• In Sidney Sheldon's Tell Me Your Dreams (1998), the central character, Ashley Patterson, had been sexually abused by her father, because of which she develops multiple personality disorder.
• Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (1970) echoes Ellison's work in its portrayal of father-daughter incest, which, like in Invisible Man, is portrayed not as consensual incest but as child molestation.
• Jessie is the central character in Stephen King's 1992 novel Gerald's Game. She is sexually abused by her father at the age of 10.
• In both Sapphire's debut novel Push (1996) and Precious, the film starring Gabourey Sidibe that was based on it, the main character, Precious, has two children with her own father. She is also sexually abused by her mother.
• In Sharon M. Draper's 1997 novel Forged By Fire, a character, Angel, is constantly molested by her father, who is also Gerald's stepfather. Gerald and Angel's mother refuses to listen to them, as she pays more attention to Jordan than her children.
• Edith Wharton's draft for an unpublished short story Beatrice Palmato (c 1919) is an explicitly pornographic account of a father's rape of his daughter.^[10]
• In Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple, a poor African American woman named Celie Harris is sexually abused from a young age by her father, Alphonso "James" Harris. By age 14 this resulted in her having two children by him, both of whom Celie has taken away from her by him at childbirth. Her father eventually forces her to marry a wealthy young local widower named Albert Johnson, known to her only as "Mister," who physically and sexually abuses Celie, treating her like a slave.

Father/son incest

Sexual abuse

• Cameron Miller is aged 14 in Counterfeit Son (2000), written by Elaine Marie Alphin. He has been sexually abused all his life by his father, a serial killer of more than 20 young boys.
• In Jim Grimsley's Dream Boy, the adolescent Nathan is sexually abused by his drunken father and it is clear that his mother knows, but does nothing.

Mother/son incest

• Incest is a major element of the Sophocles play Oedipus the King, based on the story from Greek mythology, in which the title character unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother. This act came to great prominence in the 20th century with Freud's analysis of the Oedipus complex as lying beneath the psychology of all men. Its female counterpart is called the Electra complex. Incest also plays a major role in the sequel to Oedipus, Antigone, which revolves around the lives of the four children produced by Oedipus and his mother. The main figure is their oldest daughter, Antigone, who believes she and her siblings are cursed because of their parents. Also, Antigone is engaged to her first cousin, once removed, Haemon (which was, however, not considered incestuous in the culture of the time nor is today in other parts of the world).
• In One Person (2012) by John Irving has mother-son incest. The mother-son incest was a failed attempt at preventing a genetic male with gender dysphoria from wanting to do a male-to-female gender transition. The son ended up transitioning anyway.
• My Mother (1966) by George Bataille is a coming-of-age story leading to a mother/son relationship. Christophe Honore's Ma Mère movie is loosely based on the book.
• In Chthon, a Nebula and Hugo nominated 1967 sci-fi novel by Piers Anthony, the main character Aton Five falls for and eventually wins the love of Malice, a woman he discovers to be his mother only after she first seduces him, but before they become an item.
• Pete Hamill's 1977 novel Flesh and Blood deals with mother-son incest and its consequences for both. It is believed to have directly inspired the Taboo series of adult films.

Non-consensual incest

• In Incendies, a 2010 French-Canadian film about twin siblings travelling to Lebanon to find their brother and father in obedience to their late mother's will, the twins discover that they are the product of incest between their mother and a son she had in 1970, who raped her aged 18 when she was in prison for murder of a Christian far-right militant. They then give the two envelopes their mother has prepared (labelled "to the father" and "to the son" in French) to the same man after finding him in their own country under an assumed identity.
• In The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2001) by JT LeRoy, five-year-old Jeremiah is physically and sexually abused by his prostitute mother.

Other adult/child incest in fiction

• One of the main plots of Chuck Palahniuk's novel Rant features the possibility of time travel combined with incest. By replacing one's own father, grandfather and great-grandfather by the means of time travel, one might purify one's own genetic material to a great extent. The main character, who is assumably the product of such a process, has for example, a largely extended ability to smell, increased perception and has also an increased ability to deal with pain and poisoning.
• Two of Robert A. Heinlein's novel have incest content. In Time for the Stars, Tom Bartlett returns from his relativistic space travels to marry his great grand niece, having known her telepathically since she was a baby. In Glory Road, a mother and her daughters (18 and 13 years old) offer their sexual favors to the protagonist —the more of them he accepts, by their cultural standards, the more he honors them —but, bound by his own Earthly inhibitions, he does them the dishonor of refusing their offer.
• The novel, First Love: A Gothic Tale by Joyce Carol Oates, portrays the abusive/sexual relationship 11-year-old Josie has with her adult cousin, Jared. The psychological and physical abuse she receives from her mother and aunt makes her believe that Jared's sexual abuse is a form of him expressing his love to her.
• Incest appears in many of William Faulkner's works, either enacted or imagined. Examples include Go Down, Moses, The Sound and the Fury and Sanctuary.

Comic books

• In the Planetary comic book series by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday, Doc Brass was the result of an eugenics experiment that went all the way back to the French revolution. In issue #5, 'The Good Doctor,' it is revealed that his parents were siblings.
• In the Alan Moore graphic novel Lost Girls, incest plays a prominent part in the retelling of the story of Wendy Darling and her brothers from Peter Pan and Dorothy Gale and her "uncle" (actually her father) from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
• In the Marvel book The Ultimates, the characters Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver shared an incestuous relationship together until she was shot by a bullet tracking her D.N.A. in a plot orchestrated by Doctor Doom.

Japanese manga and anime

Incest has been a recurring subject in Japanese manga such as Osamu Tezuka's Ayako (1972–1973). Incest has also been a subject in Japanese anime, dating all the way back to one of the medium's earliest pornographic titles, Cream Lemon. Sibling incest is the most common manifestation.

Cousin coupling is very common, in Japan because cousin marriages are not considered incestuous, but actually have been desirable.^[11]

Several kinds of incest

The popular anime Tenchi Muyo! has several instances of incest, which are seen as normal.

• Ayeka, one of the main characters, was once engaged to her half-brother, Yosho. On Ayeka's planet, such a thing is not considered bad. In fact, she comes to Earth looking for him. She is later shown to have feelings for Yosho's grandson Tenchi, who is technically her nephew.
• On Earth, Yosho had two wives, one of which was her cousin Kasumi (Yosho's mother is an Earth native who married the King of Jurai).
• In the Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki continuity, Tenchi's parents, Nobuyuki and late Kiyone, where also related. Nobuyuki's second wife's Rea is also his distant cousin.
• The great-grandparents of main character Mihoshi Kuramitsu were step-siblings.

Twincest

Certain anime programs, such as Koi Kaze and Please Twins!, are serious, even sympathetic, studies of the characters as they struggle with their emotions and societal taboos. In Please Twins! this is because both girls fell in love with the protagonist, despite knowing that either of them could be his biological twin sister.

In the shojo manga Boku wa Imōto ni Koi o Suru, Yori and Iku are twin brother and sister who have been extremely close all their lives and who now begin to fall in love with each other and have to face the consequences of it. It is later revealed that they are half-twins due to them being the product of a heteropaternal superfecundation (they have different fathers). At the end, Yori attempts to separate from her for 10 years but when he and Iku reunite, he says that he still loves her and it is hinted that they have resumed their relationship.

In the visual novel and anime Yosuga no Sora, Sora has feelings for her twin brother, Haru, ever since they were kids. After their parents died, they moved back to the old house and Sora has been keeping her feelings suppressed while she fantasizes being with him. In episode 11 and 12, they had opened themselves to their feelings and decide to abandon their friends and home to be together. in the manga sequel called Haruka na Sora the twins are living together in Scandinavia and is revealed they got married and are expecting their first child.

In the manga The Flower of Evil, Se-Joon has loved his twin sister, Se-Wan, ever since childhood. They eventually make forbidden love one night, which Se-Joon regrets. They attempt to redeem themselves by running away, during which Se-Wan dies. At the end, despaired over the loss of his beloved sister, Se-Joon commits suicide with a photo of him and her in his arms.

Sibcest

Shojo manga author Kaori Yuki has used this theme twice:

• In Godchild, the protagonist, Cain Hargreaves, is the product of the incestuous union of his father and his father's older sister, inheriting gold-green eyes and the curse of being unable to love anyone who was not blood related to him. Cain also has a love interest in his half-sister/cousin who doesn't return his feelings.
• In Angel Sanctuary, she uses incest as a necessary plot device. Setsuna Mudo is in love with his sister, Sara, who returns his feelings. As it turns out, Setsuna is the reincarnation of the angel Alexiel, who long ago was punished to be reincarnated as a human, while Sara is in fact Jibril, the Angel of Water. They are so determined to stay together that they willingly abandon their family and future without a second thought and Setsuna searches relentlessly in Hell for Sara's soul.

In the anime and manga franchise Vampire Knight, pureblooded vampires often marry siblings to keep their bloodline pure – Yuki Cross's parents were siblings, and it was stated that she was "born" to be Kaname's (her older brother) wife.

In the Maze, Mei and her brother, Akira, had an incestuous encounter when they were young and this led him to being viewed as an outcast by their parents. However, they are still in love with each other and remain together, despite their love being a taboo.

In the light novel, visual novel, and anime Oreimo, siblings Kyosuke and Kirino are a pair of teenage otaku who gradually fall in love with each other and maintain a sexual relationship in secret from their parents, against the objections of all their friends and in defiance of the conventions of society.

In the manga Aki Sora, Aki is in love with her little brother, Sora, and is later able to persuade him into a sexual relationship, though he often considers breaking it off due to the fact he cannot see a future with this relationship. In the final chapter, they compromise and end their forbidden relationship. Later on in the manga he is repeatedly forced to have sex with his twin sister Nami. It is later discovered that their parents had been brother and sister.

Cousincest

In the anime and manga series Elfen Lied, Kohta and his first cousin, Yuka, had been extremely close as children and eventually develop a romantic relationship as teenagers. At the end, they marry and have a daughter, Nyu, who was named after Kohta's first love.

Parental incest

In the series Kaze to Ki no Uta, Gilbert is physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by his father, Auguste, who poses as his uncle. Auguste, who is interested in making Gilbert as his own personal pet, can be kind to Gilbert at one time and then be cruel in another. His influence is so strong that Gilbert actually believes they are in love. This ultimately has tragic consequences for Gilbert's relationship with Serge.

Papa to Kiss in the Dark centers around a 15-year-old boy having an incestuous relationship with his father, who is later revealed to be his uncle.

Song lyrics

One of the first incest lines was a song called "The End" by psychedelic rock band The Doors, in which Jim Morrison sings, "Father/ Yes son?/ I want to kill you/ Mother, I want to... (fuck you)."

British musician Kate Bush's song "The Kick Inside" from her 1978 album of the same name depicts an incestuous relationship, pregnancy and suicide involving a brother and sister.

The German metal band Rammstein touches on incest in "Spiel mit mir", ("Play with me"), featuring an incestuous relationship between brothers. In "Spiel mit mir", the older brother apparently forces himself on his younger brother for sex so he will be able to sleep. Rammstein has written other songs dealing with incest including "Laichzeit" ("Spawn time") and "Tier" ("Animal").

The deathmetalband Cancer has a song on the album Death Shall Rise called "Tasteless Incest", which is a song about an old man raping his own family. It is described that he hopes his children will rape their children as well, which often happens with sexual abuse.

The so-called "Mamasan Trilogy" by Seattle rockers Pearl Jam tells the story of a man's incestuous relationship with his mother and the subsequent unfolding events. The trilogy begins with Alive, which singer Eddie Vedder explains as being part autobiographical and part fiction. When Eddie was a teenager, his mother revealed to him that the man he thought was his father was actually his stepfather, and his biological father was dead. It is the first piece to a trilogy of songs: "Alive", "Once" and "Footsteps." "Alive" tells a story of incest, which leads to the murderous killing spree described in "Once", and eventually looking back from a prison cell in "Footsteps".

The song "This Love is Fucking Right" by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart is about a consensual romantic relationship between a brother and sister.

South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut features the song "Uncle Fucka", in which accusations of incest are levelled by Terrance and Phillip.

Parental lyrics

A thirteen-year-old boy is molested by his mother because he looks like his deceased father in the song "Alive" by Pearl Jam, from the album Ten. Similarly, The Prize Fighter Inferno released a song titled "Our Darling Daughter You Are, Little Cecillia Marie" on the album My Brother's Blood Machine, detailing a case of habitual father/daughter incest/rape, resulting in her attempted murder of her father.

"Embryo" by the Japanese band Dir En Grey is about a mother dying and the father raping the daughter. At the end of the song, the girl kills the father and discovers she is pregnant with his child.

The song Lemon Incest by Charlotte and Serge Gainsbourg is a song and music video about an incestuous relationship between a father and her daughter. The single cover is a picture of the half-clothed father with his daughter lying across his chest. Considering that father/daughter was the same family tie that the singers shared it caused suspicions that the song may be autobiographical. However, the Gainsbourgs denied these allegations and the song became very popular in France.

Gaming storylines

In Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu, the Archbishop Manfloy of the Lopt Sect, attempts to revive the dark dragon lord Loptous by manipulating Duke Arvis of Velthomer and the maiden Deirdre into marrying each other. The two of them are, unbeknownst to each other, half-siblings and the only living carriers of Loptous' blood, and their union will produce a human vessel capable of hosting the consciousness of Loptous. Manfloy kidnaps Deirdre from her husband, Lord Sigurd of Chalphy, and erases her memory and manipulates Arvis into finding and falling in love with her. Arvis, who is in league with Manfloy to overthrow the Granvallean Empire but completely unaware of Manfloy's true intentions, murders Sigurd and his army under the guise of a celebration. Arvis and Deirdre marry and eventually have twins, Julius and Julia, the former becoming the host of Loptous. Julia, however, does not inherit Loptous' blood but instead inherit's the blood of Naga, Loptous' sworn enemy. Years later, after Julius becomes completely possessed by Loptous, attempts to kill his sister but Deirdre sacrifices herself and teleports Julia to safety, at the cost of her own life. Shortly before her death she regains her memories. Julia eventually reunites with her half-brother, Seliph, who is Sigurd and Deirdre's son and the leader of a resistance army against Arvis and Julius. Julia begins to harbor romantic feelings for Seliph but stops after finding out he is her half-brother. Eventually with the help of Julia, Seliph kills Arvis, Julius, and Manfloy. avenging his parents' deaths.

In Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, the two "sisters" Therese and Jeanette Voerman are revealed to be the same person: Therese was the original personality, and Jeanette was a sex-obsessed personality created so that Therese did not have to consciously experience being repeatedly sexually abused by her father. One day, "their" father forced himself on her when Therese was still in control, and she murdered him with a shotgun and was sent to an asylum. There, a Malkavian turned her into a vampire. The resulting supernatural psychosis caused her personality split to worsen, each side becoming a wholly fleshed out consciousness, with "Therese" being cold and repressed, and "Jeanette" getting the hyper-sexuality and Borderline Personality Disorder.

In Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, the main villain, historical figure Cesare Borgia has an incestuous relationship with his younger sister Lucrezia, who it is suggested was also sexually manipulating her father, on the instructions of her brother.

See also

• Incest in film and television

References