| abstract | - Alice is dating or married to Bob. Alice finds out that Bob is sleeping with Carol. Alice then kills Bob for cheating on her. This may be presented as a justified act, even if it is a serious crime. He done her wrong. While the same scenario is a common dramatic plot with both genders, modern depictions are often more sympathetic to Alice shooting Bob-the-cheater than Bob shooting Alice-the-cheater. In Real Life many cultures have tended to go easy on the husband's killing either a cheating wife and/or the man she was cheating with. Not so much in the modern Western world, though, and stories produced from that perspective don't usually treat it as justified in anything more than a passing reference/joke, which is why most examples here come from songs. A full story involving someone killing their straying lover usually has to admit that this is a bad thing to do. See also Woman Scorned, If I Can't Have You, Yandere, and Murder the Hypotenuse. See also Manslaughter Provocation -- until 2009, in Britain, killing your wife for infidelity was manslaughter, not murder. Examples of Death by Woman Scorned include:
* A common theme in country music.
* A common plot element in crime television dramas, although the murderers are less likely to be seen sympathetically in such stories.
* Played with in a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where the plot goes both ways - a male character sees himself cheated on, murders both parties, and commits suicide, then a female character goes through the exact same scenario and reacts the same way. In actuality, both characters were being caught up in the psychic playback of events that happened to someone else in the past. And that someone else was not presented as justified, but as disturbed.
* Unpleasantly required as part of the Goblin newbie zone in World of Warcraft regardless of gender - you have a romantic partner, that romantic partner then leaves you for someone else, and you have to hunt them down and rip out their cheating heart.
* Mind you, the one they've left you for is also trying to sell you into slavery, so it's a bit more understandable.
* The School Days media series of games, anime and manga have this going on in some of the bad endings, when it's not Murder the Hypotenuse.
* In Vorkosigan Saga there is an example of Death by Man Scorned where Aral kills two men who had seduced his first wife. It is presented more sympathetically because it was in a Duel to the Death.
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