…whoever can string his bow/defeat the dragon/retrieve the heirloom.
I imagine that it’s just a wish-fulfillment story–I’m strong and clever, so I might be royalty someday! But has any historical ruler offered to marry one of their children to whoever (whether a noble or a commoner) could complete some task? If so, did they follow through?
However, the person receiving the princess isn’t some random dude off the street, rather a powerful warlord or king/duke/etc.
In the Bible, King Saul promised his daughter to whomever could defeat Goliath, and David won the prize.
Back in the day, daughters were bargaining chips: they could be married off to create or cement alliances, traded as hostages, or possibly offered as a reward for some service. Daughters did not inherit although in some societies they came with a dowry. A King might well have a surfeit of daughters anyway.
Which just shows how old this trope is in fiction. It also shows up in Greek mythology from roughly the same era (Oedipus & Jocasta, for example).
TvTropes has a page on this trope (well, of course it does). It does have a couple examples of Real Life instances (look near the bottom of the page for them). They aren’t really the same as the trope in fiction.
Thanks! This one is pretty darn close (though it wasn’t an open call):
Although that’s still a challenge issued to a specific individual. And it’s also remarkably non-specific on just what Harald needed to do to succeed at it. It’s not like Yarosalav (sic?) said that anyone who managed to conquer Norway would get to marry Elisaveta.
Nitpick: “To whoever could defeat Goliath”—it’s the subject of the clause.
Not sure how historically certain it is, but Khutulun, the daughter of a Mongol lord who was a cousin of Kublai Khan, is said to have stipulated that any man who wanted to marry her must defeat her in wrestling. She allegedly accumulated 10,000 horses as forfeits from defeated suitors and from wagers on her competitions.
If true, it’s a real-life example of an open challenge for the hand of the princess, although the princess in this case is playing a much more active role in the challenge (in more senses than one) than she does in the familiar fairy-tale version.
And it’s also the indirect object of “promised”, which makes “whomever” permissible. Fused relative clauses in English are funny this way, and there is no one agreed-upon way of marking the case. You might prefer to do it one way, but that doesn’t mean that people who do it the other way are wrong. (For a linguist’s perspective on the whoever/whomever conundrum, you might want to check out this old Language Log post by Arnold Zwicky.)
The language log article doesn’t actually seem to reach the conclusion you reach here.
That’s because the Language Log article does not present my claim about there being two standard systems as its conclusion, but rather as its premise. It then spends several paragraphs discussing some of their history and their (mis)applications.
Sorry, I’m dumb, but how tf is that the subject? Do I need to go back to school?
“Whoever” is the person who’s defeating Goliath. In the sentence “David could defeat Goliath”, David is the subject.
On the other hand, it’s also the one who’s being given the hand of Saul’s daughter. In the sentence “Saul promised his daugter’s hand to David”, David is the indirect object.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cmkeller
In the Bible, King Saul promised his daughter to whomever could defeat Goliath, and David won the prize.
It also appears in the ancient Sanskrit Ramayana, composed 7th to 4th centuries BCE; Prince Rama wins Sita by being the only one strong enough to handle the bow of King Janaka, her father. However the aspect of its being a “wish-fulfillment story (I’m strong and clever, so I might be royalty someday!)” isn’t really there since Rama is not only the son of king himself; he’s also an incarnation/avatar of the god Vishnu.
Can’t find out whether it’s true or not, but that’s an awesome story. Thanks!
It’s the other way around, (at least for more popular versions of the Ramayana). Sita (the princess) selects Rama (the prince) based on him passing the test she had setup. The practice used to be called Swayamvara.
“On the appointed day and venue, the girl chooses from an assembly of suitors, or the suitors by completing a task. When the girl identifies the husband of her choice, she garlands him and a marriage ceremony is held immediately.”
Pre-Islamic Iran also has this practice.
At the risk of continuing this hijack.
In the larger sentence, the entire clause is the object of “to” or the indirect object of the verb. But “whoever” by itself is the subject of the clause it’s in.