Feuding Families

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With so many Wrestling Families around, this was bound to happen eventually.

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

— Prologue, Romeo and Juliet

It's a sad Truth in Television that most of the time revenge triggers revenge, triggers revenge, triggers revenge... you know how that goes. When this happens on a large scale, we have war. When it happens on a more private scale, between two family groups, we have the blood feud or vendetta.

If the families of the first perpetrator and victim are large enough and roughly equal in power and resources, this can go on for a long, long time. So long, in fact, that it's rather easy for them to forget what the original cause of their fighting was. A feud usually doesn't help the mental health of the individuals or the wisdom of their family culture. This can lead to three most obvious conclusions:

The near extinction of one or both warring families. Feuding clans usually start with picking out the men of their opponents. When they begin to kill the women and children too, that's the sign that things are headed straight to hell and any reconciliation is off the table. Other seriously bad signs are if the families engage in Revenge by Proxy or visit the Sins of Our Fathers upon their children.
One family yields and flees the area. This rarely happens, because people are stubborn like that and it's also anticlimactic. Plus, the other family might just pursue them to finish the job, even if they started the feud to get them to leave in the first place.
They make peace. Sometimes they even intermarry to strengthen their arrangement, a form of Altar Diplomacy. This has been known to happen in real life, surprisingly enough. In real life, there was also a practice to pay blood money to appease the family of the dead and end this vicious cycle. This rarely happens in fiction, though.

Many depictions of Feuding Families show a Grey-and-Gray Morality, as the feuding parties are not evil but committing cruel acts out of grief and rage.

This scenario offers possibilities to explore all these themes, like the cause of war and peace, hate and forgiveness, right and wrong, and family loyalty. Following Romeo and Juliet, there will often be a pair of Star-Crossed Lovers kept apart by the feud. This is a stock trope for any story about The Mafia or any other similar syndicates.

The origin of the feud is sometimes unmentioned or very vaguely explained, as in Romeo and Juliet or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Motive Decay may occur if nobody involved even remembers how it started, but perpetuates the feud anyway.

Not to be confused with the Game Show Family Feud.

In a Fur Against Fang setting, may result in a Vampire-Werewolf Love Triangle. See also Dueling Dojos and Small Town Rivalry.

This is likely to take place in cultures with a high emphasis on Family Honor. Clashing Cousins is often due to this trope. Compare to Familial Foe. See also Feud Episode for when this kind of thing flares up for a single episode.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

Basilisk has two feuding ninja clans who had been in a tense peace, until given a reason to engage in open warfare. And anyone who didn't have a personal reason before, gets one.
Dragon Ball GT: A few generations removed, but this is what happens to Goku's great, great, great-grandson and Vegeta's great, great, great-grandson, who meet for the first time in a martial arts tournament and both have inherited their ancestors love of battle. Though the rivalry doesn't appear to be a hostile one.
In Ghost Hound, the main and branch family, Komori and Ogami respectively, are at odds with one another, silently feuding despite two different generations trying to bring them together. Makoto and Tarou eventually overcome this.
The Tennos and Sanzenin families of Hayate the Combat Butler are said to have this kind of a relationship, hinted at being a rivalry of fortunes. What with only one person of child-bearing age each and both of them after the same guy, it's likely one of the families will die out, if not both.
Initial D has a race between Fujiwara Takumi and Kogashiwa Kai, whose fathers (Fujiwara Bunta and Kogashiwa Ken) had raced each other years ago.
Chapter 168 of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War reveals the moderate Shinomiyas formed the Shijo family when they were exiled from the Shinomiyas because of their distaste for the main families' unsavory business practices. The Shinomiyas have done all they can to interfere with the Shijos since then, forcing the Shijos to move their business overseas. In the modern day both families see each other as enemies to crush to the point Maki even states the Shijos are driven to succeed because of their grudge.
Naruto: The Senju and Uchiha clans were constant rivals during the Warring Clans Era, often seeking employment in conflicts simply to oppose one another. Eventually both clans grew tired of the bloodshed and formed an alliance, which led to the founding of the Hidden Leaf Village and the end of open conflict between the two. Due to Madara's actions and the inherited distrust of the Uchiha, the Senju used their dominance in Konoha to effectively muzzle their rivals. The resulting discontent led to the Uchiha planning a coup, which resulted in the Uchiha being wiped out by one of their own in an attempt to prevent a full-blown civil war. Ironically enough, the Senju themselves are implied to have already been all-but-extinct by the time the attempted coup was to take place.
- The origin of their feud is interesting in that it began when the two sons of the Sage of Six Paths fought over who was their father's rightful successor. The eldest and disinherited son was forefather to the Uchiha, and the favored younger son was forefather to the Senju.
- Tobi states that Naruto, being a relative of the Senju, is destined to battle with Sasuke, an Uchiha. In the end the two fight to a draw, and in the aftermath they manage to make peace with each other, bringing the feud to a close.
The title characters of Noir end up taking a contract on an ex-KGB officer who had ordered genocidal purges on a specific ethnic group some decades before. It turned out that this particular incident was just the last atrocity committed between that ethnic group and the officer's ethnic group in a feud that had been going on for centuries. The ultimate cause of this feud was never mentioned.
In PandoraHearts, the Nightray dukedom resents the Vessalius dukedom through a century of grudges and being put in their shadow. Interestingly, the Vessaliuses don't seem to have any negative feelings towards the Nightrays, and Oz Vessalius and Gilbert Nightray adore each other. Oz also had an excellent friendship with Elliot Nightray before the latter died, and they had wanted to fix the rift that had been created between their families.
In Wild Rock, although they avoid bloodshed, the lake clan and the forest clan have tense relations because their natural hunting grounds overlap. Thanks to Emba's prowess the forest clan is not getting much meat at all, hence Yuuen gets sent on a Honey Trap mission to convince Emba to give him some of his catch. In the end Yuuen's and Emba's genuine feelings for each other lead to the clans setting aside their rivalry and uniting, and Yuuen's and Emba's siblings get married.

Comic Books

Played for Laughs in the British Anthology Comic The Beezer with the strip the Hillys and the Billies about two feuding families of Hillbillies. The Beano also featured feuding families in a strip called The Three Bears which would occassionally feature a feud between Ma, Pa and Ted bear (the eponymous three bears) and Grizzly Gus and his family.
The DCU:
- The two big speedster families, the West/Allen line and Thawne line. The feud spans centuries, and comes from the hate Malcolm Thawne has for his biological brother, Barry Allen (the second Flash), who got to grow up happy with their biological parents while Malcolm was raised by criminals. Bart Allen (Impulse/Kid Flash II) is an heir to both, and aware of it, but doesn't angst over his lineage like most other people (he doesn't really think or talk about it unless you insist on pressing the issue) and practically laughs at Zoom's "corrupted bloodline" rant.
- The Arrow and Hawk families. It stems from the contempt that Hawkman (Carter Hall and Katar Hol) and Green Arrow (Oliver Queen) have for each other, given Hawkman's conservative, even fascistic, worldview conflicting with Green Arrow's liberalism. Roy Harper (Speedy/Arsenal/Red Arrow, the former sidekick to Ollie) even invokes it when someone warns him away from Kendra Saunders (Hawkgirl), a Hawkgirl who doesn't have her past self's memories. Writer Brad Meltzer even intentionally invokes Romeo and Juliet when it comes to the two.
A good part of Les Maîtres de l'Orge revolves around the feud between two dynasties of brewers, the Steenforts and the Texels; however, while the feud is set up from the first tome, the Texels then relocate to America, and the Steenforts who remained in their native Belgium and focus more on the European market don't feel its full weight until the fifth tome, when Karl Texel threatens to take control of Steenfort Breweries. The next tome ends with Christopher Texel, a.k.a. Jay Simpson, and Julienne Steenfort agreeing to put an end to this senseless feud after four generations, and sealing the reconciliation with their marriage.
Invincible: The final issue sees the rivalry between Invincible and his archenemy Angstrom Levy evolve into a full blown blood feud between the Grayson and Levy families, with Angstrom's son seeking vengeance against Mark's own children for the death of his father.
A major plot point in Nikolai Dante is the feud between the Romanovs and ruling Marakovs. When this erupts into all-out war, Nikolai is forced to fight against his lover, Jena Marakov, due o conflicting loyalties.
Scare Tactics (DC Comics) included a generations old feud between the Ketchums (a clan of werewolves) and the Knightsbridges (a family of ghouls).

Fan Works

In the "Doctor Who" fanfic Game of Doctors, Chapter 23 mentions a feud between the Virmokian families Morebo and Relmosh. Apparently it started when the Elder Morebo started spread rumors that the father of a current Relmosh was having relationships with boys. The Relmosh family apparently retaliated by spreading a story Morebo was having an affair with his niece. Later the sons of the original perpetrators get into an argument in front of their General while they are losing a battle.
In The 10th Kingdom fic "The Last Dragon", Wolf reflects that the families of Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf basically became this, with the Wolf's family trying to cover up his worst sins and Red's family tarring all wolves with the same brush. As a result, when Wolf was born from a liaison between the Wolf's grandson and Red Riding Hood's granddaughter, he became an exile from both parties, resenting how Red's family judge all wolves as equally capable of his great-grandfather's crimes.
In Rivalry, when Berk was founded, the first two clans the Haddocks and the Hoffersons fought over who would elect their chief, the Haddocks winning. Ever since, the two clans have been at odds with the Hofferson clan trying and failing to institute one of their clan members as chief every generation. The closest they ever had were "Fearless" Finn Hofferson before the Flightmare froze him and besmirched his honor.
In What Might Have Been, Bismuth, Pearl and Garnet convince Rose to reveal her true form to everybody, knowing that those in the Pink Court who were under the assumption that Rose was the enemy would side with Pink Diamond against Yellow, Blue and White's Courts.

Film - Animated

Brave: The three lords don't get along with each other and are the leaders of their respective clans. It's up to the royal family to keep the feuding from escalating into war.
The Krums and the Ellingboes in Klaus (2019) have been violently fighting for centuries, thus turning the town of Smeerensberg into the Wretched Hive it is. Apparently their feud has spanned across the entire globe since at least as far back as the Stone Age. Naturally, nobody knows how it started or which side instigated it - they just hate each other because they've always hated each other, and it'd be bad to break with tradition!
Although it was the two halves of the same pride, The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride basically counts since it was Simba and his pride versus Zira’s group of outsiders. Kiara and Kovu are the Star-Crossed Lovers being kept apart due to the feud. It's based on Romeo and Juliet, but unlike the source material, Kiara and Kovu manage to end the feud and reunite the pride- minus Zira, who won’t give up and dies in the end.
Disney's Make Mine Music had a segment titled "The Martins and the Coys," which featured the popular radio vocal group King's Men singing the story of a Hatfields and McCoys-style feud in the mountains broken up when two young people from each side fall in love. This segment was later cut from the film's video release due to comic gunplay.
In an earlier version of Turning Red, the original plot with Mei's cousin Leo also had the curse being bestowed upon them by Sun Yee because they were destined to stop the family conflict.

Film - Live Action

The Call of the Cumberlands centers around a violent feud between two Appalachian families that is obviously Inspired by… the Hatfield-McCoy feud.
Descendants has this as the motive. The Disney Villains led by Maleficent are angry at being defeated and exiled to an island ghetto without basic human rights by the Disney Heroes, and they expect their also banished sons and daughters to avenge them. Meanwhile, the Heroes live in a world with Black-and-White Morality, and teach their children that All Crimes Are Equal, and must shun and hate everyone who is even related to a criminal. This does nothing but fuel a Cycle of Revenge.
Highlander: The MacLeods and Frasers, whose border skirmishes appear to have resulted in the first deaths of both Duncan in the series and Connor in the film. Truth in Television as seen in the Real Life section.
Buster Keaton's silent comedy Our Hospitality centers on one of these that parodies the Hatfields and McCoys.
Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud revolves around this trope, with two families, the Hatfields and the Mccoy's (not the Real Life ones), embroiled in a blood feud that had apparently started over a car theft in the 1930's. The feud accidently kills one of the younger daughters of the Mccoy's, and her older brother Ricky summons Pumpkinhead for revenge. The families end up reconceiling to form a defense, not that this matters much since Pumpkinhead is virtually immortal and wipes out almost all of the Hatfields and some of the Mccoy's before Ricky kills himself to vanquish Pumpkinhead by dragging him down a well.
The classic Polish comedy Sami Swoji tells the story of the feuding Pawlak and Kargul families. The feud started because a Kargul plowed about three inches into land claimed by the Pawlaks. Violence ensued and the oldest Pawlak son Jan had to flee to America or face serious criminal charges. In 1964 Jan finally returns to Poland and discovers that not only have the families given up the feud but are now united through marriage. The rest of the movie is a series of flashbacks to the post-World War 2 period when the families had to leave their ancestral home and relocate to western Poland. There they were forced into an Enemy Mine situation in order to survive the hardships of the time period.
Santoalla: Averted at first. The Rodriguez family were quite welcoming to Martin and Margo when they first moved to the village. However, when Martin tried to implement his plans to fix up Santoalla, the Rodriguezes would basically demand that he stop. It eventually got to a point where they refused to speak with each other.
Shotgun Stories centers on two sets of half-brothers who begin to feud after the death of their shared father. The older set crash his funeral and criticize the dead man for being an abusive drunk who abandoned them. The second set, born after their father reformed and found religion, are outraged and strike back, starting a Cycle of Revenge.
Silverado: Emmett killed a rancher named McKendrick in the past and comes home to find McKendrick's son harassing his sister and nephew, and happy at the idea of killing Emmett.

Literature

Taken for granted in Fazil Iskander's works, which are mostly centered around a remote Abkhazian town. The most prominent example is that of two extremely close families, where one allowed a couple of minor breaches of local etiquette, which led to a person from one family killing one from the other... it ended up with the last member of one family keeping the last member of the other as a slave. He couldn't marry to continue the line, since no one would give his daughter to a slave-owner, and couldn't release him due to an oath. It continued that way for about twenty years. Then the slave murdered the owner and starved to death himself, unable to remove his chain.
Louis L'Amour
- The first Sackett book opens with the conclusion of the long-lasting Sackett-Higgins feud. Long Higgins (the last male member of his family) is killed during an attempt to ambush and murder Orrin Sackett (who has over a dozen surviving male members of his family) at a wedding. The cause of the feud is never revealed.
- Matagorda features the Munson-Kittery feud and is a bit of a Deconstruction of the trope. The Kittery Family has been reduced to just a few members (and relies on outside allies), while the Munsons let hired gunmen do a lot of their killing. The last confirmed instance of a blood member of either family personally killing a member of the other family happens several weeks before the book begins.
- Matt Ryan, The Hero of the short story "A Texan Takes Over," once took part in a feud with a family named Kenzie.
[A]t the last count there were five Kenzies and one Ryan left. And now there was still one Ryan.
- The short story "From the Listening Hills" features a bloody feud between two groups: the five Tremayne Brothers on one side, and the three Watson Brothers, their cronies and their two brothers-in-law on the other. The feud starts when the Watsons become jealous over being beaten in a horse race by Johnny Tremayne.
- In The Proving Trail, the Yant Family has spent three generations trying to kill their distant cousins over a disputed inheritance. Shortly before being murdered, the main character's father writes in a letter, "At last count there were thirteen of them and but three of us." It's unclear who the third member of his side of the family is, but his son kills about half of the Yants in self-defense over the course of the book.
- The villains of Radigan once fought a neighboring family in a range war that saw the patriarchs of both families and a son of the neighboring family killed. The villains are alarmed when a cousin of the people they fought against arrives to help the hero.
- In the short story "The Trail to Pie Town," Dusty Barron and his family have been feuding with the Hickmans (a family with ten fighting men and four cronies or cousins) for an unspecified amount of time. Dusty tries to negotiate an end to the feud and is forced to kill Dan Hickman in self-defense, causing him to go on the run. Later, he finds out that his two brothers single-handedly killed most of the Hickmans in response and made the last two leave town.
- Short story "Squatters on the Lonetree." Morgan was once involved in a feud where he single-handedly killed the last four members of the opposing family at the age of sixteen when they shot one of his relatives In the Back.
Ann Tanner:' Morgan Tanner's mother was a Lowry, from the Neuces Country. You may remember what happened to the Fullers.
Wiley Dunn stared at her, shocked. Every detail of the twenty-five year feud was known to everyone in cattle country. The Fullers, or some people who called themselves that, had killed a Lowry boy in an argument over horses, and every Fuller had died.
In The 39 Clues, the feud is going on between different branches of the same family, but characters from different branches are only very distantly related. In the tenth book, there is also mention of another family who wants to gain Cahill secrets, hinting that if a second series is made, there will be a fight between the Cahills and Vespers.
Grangerfords vs. Shepherdsons from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It was pretty funny until Buck died.
A fact of Uplands life in Gifts from the Annals of the Western Shore trilogy. Resources are limited and hardship frequent, so the domains are constantly embroiled in alliances and power struggles over land and cattle and whatnot. Sometimes there's feuding within families, as with the Drums.
This appears, of all places, in a The Berenstain Bears chapter book between the Grizzlys and the Bears, based on the in-universe equivalent of the American Civil War. Highlights include Brother being violently chased out of Squire Grizzly's manor and the cubs at school getting into so many brawls that the teachers can't focus on anything else, including potentially injured cubs who just got in the way (like Sister's friend Lizzy who, as a Bruin, probably isn't counted on either side but clearly got knocked head over heels for being there, to her obvious fright and confusion).
Fred Saberhagen's Book of Lost Swords:
- In one of the books, two feuding families have been going at it for generations. One side even cursed the other so that female children are sometimes born as mermaids who cannot conceive. This all comes to a crashing halt when one side gets a hold of Farslayer, a sword which does exactly what it sounds like it should do. Most of the two sides are wiped out in one night.
- To clarify: Farslayer is a magical sword, which can fly towards any target the wielder uses and slay it, no matter how far away. The catch is, once Farslayer hits the target, it stays there. Where it is free for the target's kinsmen to pick it up and retaliate. Rinse and repeat until there's no one left to aim at.
Bret King Mysteries: The Burkharts (who seem to be down to just one member) and the Conrads from The Phantom of Wolf Creek have been fighting over a patch of land for seventy-five years.
A Brother's Price has an especially pointless one as part of the backstory: The royal family split up, with the older set of princesses marrying one husband and the younger set another. When the older princesses' husband turned out to be infertile, the younger princesses insisted that their offspring should be considered heirs to the throne. The losing part of the family was executed down to the last woman. But not the last man: Prince Alannon was kidnapped by a couple of spies during the war, became their husband, and the grandfather of protagonist Jerin.
In The Dark Elf Trilogy a feud between the Do'Urdens and Hun'etts leads to the downfall of both houses in the end.
In Dark Heart, the House of Destin and the House of Arlavan are competing for a high honor called the Choosing. Said competition mainly consists of them sending assassins, both magical and mundane, against each other to kill anyone whom the other side nominates as a candidate.
The first war in the Deverry series is between a Tieryn (Count) and a Lord whose families had been feuding for three generations, first over whose line would be named the regional Tieryn, then over the borders between their lands, and then who had what privileges, and then over anything else they could think of. By the time the focus characters arrived, they were warring over who held the swine rights (The right to forage for pig fodder) in the local woods that formed the border between their lands, and both sides had been bled so dry by the fighting that between them, both sides could only field a total of fourteen people (Eleven soldiers, the nobles in question, and one mercenary). Also, during the Succession Crisis known as the Time of Troubles, it was mentioned that some clans chose one side purely because a rival clan chose the other, which gave them unrestricted ability to pursue their feud in the name of the 'true' king.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Meltdown: Greg mentions that one of the houses on Upper Surrey Street is a duplex but that the two families that live in it hate each other.
Discworld:
- The feud between the Venturi and Selachii families has escalated to ridiculous levels; in social situations, should members of both families meet, their attempts at acting courteous involves conversations on which there can be no disagreement. Given their history, this has become "a very small number of things." Whatever started the feud is long forgotten, but is naturally assumed to be something tremendously huge, or else it would be silly to keep it up like that. To illustrate further just how far it has gone, the aforementioned small number of things acceptable to talk about boils down to mentioning people are standing upright at a party and that the horizontal position, while not done for the social occasional, has its uses. (Genius Bonus: a Venturi pipe is a kind of pressurised outflow pipe, and Selachii is the scientific name for the shark and dogfish family. They're the Sharks and the Jets.)
- The various branches of the Ogg family are constantly mid-feud, a fact that has caused some people to try and feud with an Ogg, which results in the entire Ogg family turning on them. (It's noted that the main reason for Ogg family infighting is because Nanny Ogg deliberately provokes them into feuding with one another, mostly to relieve her boredom between supernatural crises.)
The backstory of the Venezuelan novel Doña Bárbara mentions the long rivalry of the Luzardo with the Barquero. The protagonist, Santos Luzardo ends the feud with Lorenzo Barquero, both of them the last of their family.
Dune:
- Feuding families are so prevalent in the Dune universe that it has evolved into an art form. There's "Kanly," which is one-on-one combat, and the all-out War of Assassins, which is just what it sounds like. The rules are codified in the Great Convention, which sets out exactly who are the acceptable targets and what weapons or poisons are permitted. Noble families in the Dune universe accept the fact that you can be knifed in the back at any time as just another hazard of the job.
- The first book is based around the ten thousand year old feud between the Houses Atreides and Harkonnen, which allegedly started when an Atreides had a Harkonnen under his command during the Butlerian Jihad exiled for cowardice.
In William Johnstone's fourth Eagles novel, Jamie Ian MacCallister badly injures a paid assassin named Asa Pike, who seeks revenge upon his recovery and manages to convince dozens of his relatives to make multiple attempts to kill Jamie and his sons. This leads to a few dozen dead Pikes (although a few of the survivors decide to call it quits) and no dead MacCallisters, although Asa himself pulls an apparent Karma Houdini.
The Defictionalized Harry Potter textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them tells the story of the McCliverts and the MacBoons, two Wizarding clans who shared an island off Scotland. Legend has it that after a MacBoon killed a McClivert in a drunken duel, the McCliverts transformed all of the MacBoons into ravenous, five-legged hairy beasts, then immediately realized their error when the monstrous MacBoons killed them all. Whether this is true, or the Quintaped is just a natural beast, is unknown, and the island has been quarantined.
In The Godfather, Vito Corleone promises not to take revenge after the death of Sonny, as he is tired of the continuous cycle of murders. When Vito dies, Michael is free to eliminate pretty much every other Don who ever posed as rivals, plus a few traitors in his own family, leaving the Corleones in sole control of the city.
The Heralds of Valdemar novel Closer to Home concerns the feud between the noble houses Chendlar and Raeylen. The Valdamaran royalty had managed to keep the feud to a low simmer for several years by manipulating Court so that the families were never there at the same time, but this winter season they both show up looking to arrange marriages for their offspring. The protagonist, Herald Mags, practices his spycraft on this relatively low-stakes scenario, keeping the families' young hotheads away from each other. Like Juliet, a naïve daughter of House Chendlar falls head-over-heels for the brash son of House Raeylen, but unlike Romeo, he is manipulative and uses her in a scheme to kill off both families and inherit their lands. When all is settled, the chagrined survivors agree to try and intermarry in order to resolve the feud.
Huckleberry Finn has an episode dealing with the blood feud between the Shepherdsons and the Grangerfords where nobody even remembers what it was originally about.
Katt Loves Dogg: The ongoing hatred between katts and doggs is quite infamous in the series. However, it's revealed in this book that no the hatred is strongest between the dogg family called the Montahughs (Oscar's family) and the Hissletons (Molly's family).
In Robert E. Howard's "The Shadow Kingdom", Kull's relations with his mercenaries are complicated by the inter-tribal feuds; even being The Exile does not help.
Kushiel's Legacy has a gradually building example of this. In Kushiel's Scion one of Imriel's reasons for sitting on the information that cousin Bernadette de Trevalion tried to have him killed is to try to end the Cycle of Revenge; his mother was responsible for the disgrace of her and her husband's families.
Likewise, Mario Puzo's The Last Don begins with Don Clericuzio agreeing for his daughter to marry Jimmy Santadio, the son of his rival. Don Clericuzio then has Jimmy and Jimmy's family murdered on the wedding night.
In Lucius Shepherd's Life During Wartime, the Sotomayors and the Madradonas, two families in Panama that have been feuding for hundreds of years. Thanks to their ESP, the rest of the world are just pawns in their feud.
The novella Limes is set two centuries After the End of the Western Roman Empire, when the Germanic tribe if the Lombards have conquered most of Italy, supplanting the local aristocracy. The protagonist is a Roman patrician who laments the decay of Rome and its institution under the Lombards, but has managed to survive the troubled times with his properties and lifestyle unchallenged. That ends when a young Lombard warrior (who doesn't speak Latin neither does he understand the Roman concept of private property) settles in the estate next to his and starts to invade his property. Tensions between the neighbors escalate quickly, until the protagonist's daughter takes matters in her hands uncovering the Lombard's secret, that he was a former servant of theirs who her father wronged in the past, and that in fact he can speak Latin and has a Roman father. The girl resolves the feud peacefully by marrying the young warrior.
One of the Nightside books involves a Romeo and Juliet type situation where the couple persuade their families to call a truce and get married, only to both be murdered at the wedding dinner.
The Thorburn, Duchamp, and Behaim families, in Pact, are the three major families of practitioners in Jacob's Bell-specializing in diabolism, enchanting, and chronomancy, respectively. Each of them individually wants to control the town's Magical Society, but since neither the Duchamps nor the Behaims want the Thorburns in charge, they tend to gang up on the Thorburns while watching carefully for a knife in the back.
In The Reynard Cycle, Arcasia has been split into three separate countries for over a hundred years due to a conflict between the Dukes of Arcas and the Counts of Luxia. In Defender of the Crown it's revealed that the origin of the feud is over a thousand years old.
Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts' Empire Trilogy from the The Rift War Cycle. In the first two novels, Daughter of the Empire and Servant of the Empire, the Acoma and Minwanabi families are long-term enemies who seek to destroy each other while remaining within the laws and customs of the Empire. In the third, the Acoma are triumphant, but they have to deal with two new feuds that started due to their war with the Minwanabi.
In Liliana Bodoc's The Saga of the Borderlands, two noble families have been fighting for generations for the throne of The Lords of the Sun. Hoh-Quiú is the current emperor, and Molitzmós is the leader of the rival family, and has no problem allying with Misaianes, the Son of Death. That leads him to betray the entire continent of The Fertile Lands, and cause Civil War in the Empire.
Sammy Keyes: The Huntley and Murdock families have been feuding ever since Mary Huntley shot a Murdock she caught robbing her while they were part of a wagon train. Three generations later, Lucinda Huntley and Manny Murdock get engaged. It's unclear whether there'd been any violence in the years before that, but the engagement causes Manny's brother to make an attempt on Lucinda's life that accidentally kills Manny instead. Several decades later, the remaining Murdock's and Lucinda still hate each other, but there isn't any more violence, and Lucinda's nephew and the Murdocks do business together (albeit in secret). The Murdock's are suspected of setting a fire on Lucinda's land but are innocent.
Schooled in Magic: Emily mistakenly invites two of them to her faire in Love's Labor's Won. She then has to keep both of them from killing each other when their heirs turn out to be a couple.
The Silerian Trilogy: Sileria has been torn apart by clan warfare for most of its history, with it explicitly being stated as the major reason they stayed unable to unite against their foreign rulers. Later, this is used to the rebels' advantage, by having a blood feud sworn against the Valdani, as if they were just another Silerian clan.
A Song of Ice and Fire:
- The Starks and Lannisters. The only reason they are civil to each other is because Ned Stark's best friend Robert Baratheon married into the Lannister family. But once Robert dies (and it's strongly hinted that his wife Cersei killed him so her bastards who she passes off as Robert's children could succeed), all bets are off and the Lannisters utterly devastate the Starks, though not without suffering some losses themselves. It's worth noting that Martin based this feud lightly on the Wars of the Roses.
  - Though this feud is relatively recent, occurring because Lord Eddard Stark was outraged at the Lannisters' treacherous actions during Robert's Rebellion, sacking King's Landing and murdering all the Targaryens they could find, even though he was at war with the Targaryens.
- A more civil example exists between Houses Tyrell and Martell; while not openly hostile towards each other like the Starks and Lannisters, they have a long enmity dating back centuries that they're still not entirely over today. They mostly get by using passive-aggressive digs at each other and giving whoever's in charge of dealing with them when they're in the same place a headache. A notable exception is Willas Tyrell and Oberyn Martell, who are pen pals and get along nicely, despite being the pretext for the current generation's mutual hatred; Oberyn crippled Willas in a tournament, and even though it was a fair match and a complete accident caused largely by Non-Action Guy Willas being in a fight he had no business being in, the only Tyrell not to blame Oberyn (and thus the entire Martell family) is Willas himself.
- There's also a lot of bad blood between House Lannister and House Martell, as during the Sack of King's Landing, Tywin Lannister sent his bannermen to kill Rhaegar Targaryen's children in order to make it easier for Robert Baratheon to take the throne. Said bannermen, Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch, not only brutally slaughtered the children, but Clegane also raped and murdered their mother Elia Martell—the sister of the current Prince of Dorne. Prince Doran and Oberyn naturally didn't take this too well and it gradually emerges that they conspired to return Viserys Targaryen to the throne and take their revenge for Elia and her children. Even after the Viserys plot falls through, thanks to that pot of molten gold, the Martells are still determined to make the Lannisters pay. When Oberyn dies fighting Gregor, his bastard daughters the Sand Snakes swear vengeance and want Dorne to declare war on the Iron Throne. Doran calms them down, and puts them to work on his more subtle plans.
- Riverlands families Bracken and Blackwood loathe each other, to the point that Lord Tytos Blackwood refuses to surrender despite his castle being his side's last remaining stronghold in a war, because it means he'll be surrendering to the Brackens. When Jaime Lannister comes along and offers more amicable terms, he's quick to surrender. While there Jaime inquires why the two families have never tried to make peace, and it turns out they have made peace dozens of times and are so intermarried every Blackwood has a Bracken ancestor, and visa versa. Eventually the people who made the peace die, and something reinvigorates the feud. The Bracken-Blackwood feud had wider-reaching consequences for the realm, and may have helped to fuel the first Blackfyre Rebellion.
  - This feud stretches back for centuries, back to the pre-Conquest days when kings ruled over the Riverlands, although one dynasty of Riverlands kings (House Justman) was actually founded by a Heroic Bastard whose parents were Star-Crossed Lovers from the two families.
- Although initially rather one-sided, the Freys have loathed their titular overlords the Tullys for quite a while and stalled them wherever feasible using mainly Passive-Aggressive Kombat of various kinds and ducking behind Plausible Deniability whenever possible without actively breaking their connections. They ramp their end of the feud up by several orders of magnitude thanks to the Red Wedding, so it actually becomes this trope good and hard with any surviving (or undead) Tully and their allies quite motivated to join in. As many Northmen and Rivermen were murdered, the Freys are surrounded by people who want them dead, and for breaking Sacred Hospitality most of the Seven Kingdoms, even their allies, despise them. Ironically enough, there are numerous feuds within House Frey due to how large and unpleasant the House is, with Walder Frey's many descendants jockeying for favour and the implication numerous members are quite willing to murder their way up the line of succession.
- The Manderlys and the Peakes of the Reach feuded until the former were defeated and fled to the North, at which point the Peakes were given their abandoned castles. This stemmed from a dispute between 2 historical Lords Manderly and Peake over which of their wives would inherit the throne of the Reach from their father the king, who had no sons. After a war during which the Dornish invaded, sacked the king's castle, and killed the king, a coalition led by the Tyrells ended the dispute by ignoring the feuding lords and crowning a distant cousin as king.
- The Starks of Winterfell and their vassals the Boltons of the Dreadfort feuded, the Boltons revolting numerous times and even sacking Winterfell, along with flaying some Stark Kings. During the Red Wedding Roose Bolton murders Robb Stark, apparently ending the Starks in the male line. He is then named Warden of the North by the Lannisters and tries to legitimize his hold on the North by having his legitimized bastard Ramsay Bolton marry a girl who is forced into the role as "Arya Stark", claiming that now their ancient feud will be forgotten. However, most of the North is still loyal to the Starks, who are not quite wiped out yet.
- The Targaryens and Martells feuded for years, until a marriage alliance finally ended the feud. This, however, only fueled the animosity of House Blackfyre until it rebelled against their Targaryen overlords and kin.
L.A. Banks's short story "Spellbound" has the Hatfields and McCoys practicing voodoo, making things complicated when the newest generations meet at college and fall in love.
In the Star Trek Expanded Universe:
- In the novel Imzadi, two planets have been hostile—not open warfare, but anger and resentment—for generations, until a window into the past reveals the extremely trivial origins of the hostility (a dog analogue owned by an official from one planet killed a cat analogue owned by an official of the other, which resulted in the first-ever peace treaty to include a section about leash laws). It's played exactly like Feuding Families.
- In the Star Trek: New Frontier novel "Martyr," the Unglza and Eenza tribes of the planet Zondar had been at war for over 500 years, and Calhoun's arrival was predicted to usher in peace. Then in "Cold Wars" in the Gateways series, the Aerons and Markanians had been separated warring for the "sacred world" of Sinqay, with the Gateways recently renewing their hostilities, until the Excalibur and Trident actually return them to their "sacred world," now an uninhabitable black rock. Does This Remind You of Anything?, Israel and Palestine?
- Q-in-Law featured a pair on massive space ships, literally making Enterprise the man in the middle, trying to provide neutral ground for the intermarriage. Since Q is around, it definitely does not go as planned. A case of Hilarity Ensues done well.
- So to recap, Peter David really likes Feuding Families.
A Study in Charlotte: The Moriarty family and the Holmes family have been fighting since Sherlock Holmes pushed Professor Moriarty off a cliff. August has attempted to try to reconcile them, but it hasn't been successful so far.
Sean Russell's Swan's War books: The eponymous swan is the heraldic animal of both the feuding families, the Rennes and the Wills. Their feud lasts centuries and is partially fueled by an ancient curse, partially by the fear that if one of them stops fighting, the other will destroy them. Unusually, there seems to be no real hatred between them anymore and it's repeatedly stressed how profoundly battle-weary they are. In the end they make peace through marriage of their family heads and it seems the next heir to those posts will be a Renne-Wills.
Talion: Revenant: The Temuri are a clan-based, tribal society with frequent wars between them. However, customs have been established to limit the wars by the central government so they don't grow too vicious.
The St. Cloud, Nast and Cortez cabals in the Women of the Otherworld series by Kelley Armstrong have vicious rivalries, and are almost incapable of uniting against a common enemy.

Live-Action TV

This is one of the main tropes in Bad Buddy. Pat and Pran come from families with an intense rivalry. Though it ultimately doesn't stop them from being friends and something more, it does greatly complicate their relationship.
Perhaps inevitably, The Beverly Hillbillies had one of these, after Sonny Drysdale refuses to marry Elly May in a first-season episode.
Bonanza had the Cartwrights in this situation in "The Spitfire" when Joe is forced to kill a squatter in self-defense when the squatter tried to burn down half of the Ponderosa to illegally homestead and tried to shoot Joe when the Cartwright tried to stop it. The rest of the squatter's family, lead a hard-as-nails matriarch, tries to threaten the rest of the Cartwrights for that. However, between the good treatment of the squatter's daughter, the testimony from the matriach's children that Joe legitimately acted in self-defence, and a generous offer of land by a courageous Ben Cartwright to deliver it, they are pacified.
Bones had an episode on it, “The Family In the Feud”. The victim is feared to be a victim of the feud and there were a bunch of misunderstandings as the victim wanted to end the feud and the other family head actually approved. And the death that started it all was actually caused by toxic chemicals in the soil and wasn’t murder at all.
In the Charmed episode "Love's a Witch," Paige has to play mediator in a feud between two magical families.
CSI: NY had a first season episode with feuding circus families that led to a suicide pact.
Coronation Street has this as a stock plot, and for some reason it seems to keep happening to the Platts. First, there was the feud with the Battersbys when Nick Tilsley got into a relationship with and secretly married Leanne Battersby. Later was the feud with the Grimshaws, which involved the Love Dodecahedron between Todd and Jason Grimshaw and Nick Tilsley and Sarah Louise Platt. Later, a feud with the Windasses arose, which ended when David got Gary sent to prison. Currently there seems to be a feud between the Barlow's and the Platt's which started when Tracy Barlow lied to incriminate Gail for murder, while she was serving time herself and trying to cut a deal. It continued when Deirdre tried to steal Audrey's(Gail mum) boyfriend, only to have him turn around and steal four grand from her stepson Peter's business. With it recently being revealed that Gail's son Nick was having an affair with Peter's wife this feud looks to be continuing for quite a while yet.
Criminal Minds: The "Blood Relations" episode involves two West Virginian families that have been in a feud that dates back to when they were working as rival Hillbilly Moonshiners in the times of prohibition.
The Ewings vs. Barnes intergenerational feud in Dallas. As of the latest revival of the show, the feud has been going on for approximately 80 years and its still going strong into the third generation.
Frontier Circus: The circus gets caught in the middle of a centuries old feud between two families, the MacDuffs and the MacNeils, in "The Clan MacDuff".
Game of Thrones:
- The Starks and Lannisters were never on the best terms, but they quickly slide into Arch-Enemy territory when Catelyn Stark abducts Tyrion Lannister and Cersei Lannister imprisons Eddard and Sansa Stark. As of the end of season one, they are at war.
- There is a lot of bad blood between the Lannisters and Martells since Elia Martell was murdered during the Sack of King's Landing when Tywin Lannister sent men to kill her children by Rhaegar Targaryen.
- Adapted Out in the case of the Martells and Tyrells, who have a long-standing rivalry in the source material dating back to the ancient wars between Dorne and the Reach, but in the series canon Oberyn Martell and Loras Tyrell openly flirt with one another.
Occurs in Grimm. Grimms have been killing wesen for centuries and those families can hold grudges. Monroe's grandfather was killed by a Grimm and he is afraid he would be disown if his family finds out that he is friends with Nick, a Grimm.
- Some supernatural species don't get along, such as the Blutbad and Bauerschwein, wolves and pigs respectively. Bauerschwein has been victim to Blutbad violence and in "Three Bad Wolves", one has had enough and killed the brothers of the Blutbad who had killed the Bauerschwein's brothers.
The blood feud of American history—Hatfields & McCoys— has its own miniseries on the History Channel.
House of the Dragon: While the Targaryens end up A House Divided, the reason for this division is the meddling of House Hightower, as Rhaenyra Targaryen's half-siblings are all children of Alicent Hightower. House Hightower is the main power in the faction of the Greens, who oppose the Blacks led by House Targaryen of Dragonstone.
The main conflict of Once Upon a Time is slowly revealed to be this rather than the clear-cut good vs. evil that it originally seems to be.
The Haven episode "Roots" had the Keegan and Novelli families, who had been feuding ever since Dom Novelli was accused of killing a Keegan several years ago. Hostilities renew when Maura Keegan and Peter Novelli attempt to marry despite their families' protests. Complicating things is the fact that The Power of Hate between the two families creates a When Trees Attack situation. Audrey Parker manages to prove that Dom didn't kill anybody and makes him admit his love for Beverly Keegan, ending the feud and stopping the trees.
Justified has the Givens' and the Bennetts, both of whom are deeply involved in Harlan County's criminal underworld. During Prohibition, a Bennett got arrested for selling moonshine and, convinced that a Givens had sold him out, shot protagonist Raylan Givens' great-uncle, kicking off a feud that lasted until there were very few Givens' and Bennetts left. The feud was started up again in the 1980s when a fight between baseball rivals Raylan Givens and Dickie Bennett left Dickie crippled, and only the efforts of family matriarchs Mags Bennett and Helen Givens kept it from erupting into violence. The family rivalry finally comes to an end in the 2010s, when a new Bennett crime wave draws the attention of Raylan and his fellow US Marshals and leads to the deaths of Helen Givens and every Bennett except Dickie.
On Mad Men Pete Campbell is related to the Campells of the infamous MacDonald-Campbell feud but for him it is just a bit of interesting family trivia. Then his daughter is denied entry into an exclusive preschool because the headmaster is a MacDonald who still takes the feud deadly serious. Pete ends up punching the guy out.
Medici has the Medici and the Albizzi in constant conflict, both for political control over Florence, and because of an old grudge. Then there's the Medici and the Pazzi during the era of Lorenzo the Magnificent, which gets even more violent with the Pazzi Conspiracy.
Motherland: Fort Salem: The Bellweathers and Swythes have been feuding over whose ancestor was the real Heroine of Juarez for over a century. Abigail and Libby carry it on into the present, becoming instant rivals at Fort Salem.
On NCIS: Los Angeles, Callen finds himself in the middle of a blood feud against a Romanian crime family, the Comescus. This leads to a very bloody gunfight at the Comescu house.
The Outpost: Tobin's family has been feuding with his cousin Milus's over a dispute that their grandfathers had. Although their fathers officially settled it, there's still bad feeling about it.
Queen Sugar: The Bordelon family has an ongoing, multigenerational feud with the Landry family that stems from the Landrys' constant attempts to take the Bordelons' land, which used to belong to the Landrys until their ancestor sold it. This feud is the primary source of conflict throughout the series.
Step by Step: an ep of this show has one of the daughters trying out for head cheerleader. Towards the end, the mother tells the daughter about how she was robbed when she tried out for that spot... and as it turns out, the spot goes to the daughter of the woman who won the spot when mother tried out. //character names welcome, please
There's an entire Super Sentai based around the concept, namely Rescue Sentai GoGoFive, wherein the Tatsumis, a family of rescue workers, battle the Saimas, a family of demons who cause natural disasters.
The White Queen: The Yorks ("the White Rose") and the Lancasters ("the Red Rose"), cadet branches of The House of Plantagenet, are the rival factions in the Wars of the Roses. The Woodvilles were initially allied with the Lancasters, but they switch to York after Elizabeth marries Edward IV. The Nevilles were originally Yorkists, but they later join the Lancastrian cause. In the aftermath of Edward IV supplanting Henry VI for the second time, the Nevilles are brought to heel, as their patriarch Lord Warwick is dead, his two daughters are married to York husbands, and his widow Countess Warwick is the prisoner of her York son-in-law. The Lancasters have been fundamentally wiped out with this Yorkist victory, which results in Henry Tudor, the second cousin once removed of Henry VI, as nominally the last surviving Lancastrian claimant to the throne.
Wild Bill: In "Bad Blood in the Soil" the Gilchrist and Marek families have hated it each other for years-it's pretty notorious in the area. Still, Ray Gilchrist and Audrey Marek were engaged to be married. However, it didn't work out as Ray's father just saw this as an opportunity to get her land, so she called the marriage off. Audrey was left bitter, single and hating the Gilchrists for this.

Music

"Decoration Day," from the Drive-By Truckers album of the same name, is a dramatized account of an ostensibly-real feud in Lauderdale County, Alabama.
But I know the caliber in Daddy's chest
And I know what Holland Hill drives
The state let him go but I guess it was best
'Cause nobody needs all us Lawsons alive

Podcasts

The Adventure Zone: Dust has the Blackwells, a clan of vampires who run the copper mine, who are feuding with the Mathises, a pack of werewolves who run the silver mine. Surprisingly, the issue is not that of Fur Against Fang but rather of competing business interests.

Professional Wrestling

The blood feud between the Funks (Terry & Dory Jr) and the Briscos (Jack & Jerry).
The 2001 feud between The Dudley Boyz and the Holly Cousins over Spike Dudley and Molly Holly's love affair.
OMEGA had the feud between The Hardy Boyz and The Briscoes, though it was mainly the feud between Jay and Matt, that made it personal. Poor Mark and Jeff otherwise being more friendly than feuding.
NWA member Vendetta Pro Wrestling played up a family feud between the Guerreros and the...666s(?)(father and son Damian and Bestia).

Tabletop Games

From Battletech, we have the Great Houses of what used to be the Star League. Short version: after three hundred years of on-again-off-again warfare absolutely everyone hates their neighbors. The finest example, however, likely comes from the feud between House Davion and House Kurita, who always attack each other whenever hostilities break out.
Dungeons & Dragons
- 1st Edition AD&D supplement Oriental Adventures. If a character was created under the OA rules, their family could have an Ancestral Feud with another family. When any member of the character's family meets a member of the other family they have a significant reaction penalty to each other and the two are much more likely to be hostile to each other. This can result in insults, a duel or even an outright attack.
- The Eberron setting has the Houses of Shadow, House Phiarlan and House Thuranni. Unlike the other dragonmarked houses, which each have a monopoly on their respective industries, the elves of House Phiarlan and House Thuranni both bear the Mark of Shadow and compete in the same market. That market? Espionage. Two families of magically enhanced spies going head-to-head. But what makes this rivalry especially bitter is the fact that they used to be one house. The Thuranni family once existed as one of several families making up House Phiarlan as a whole, but within the past few decades of the Last War, they had increasing conflicts with the House leadership until they straight-up left. No one is sure how the situation is going to shake out yet; it could be the focus of a campaign, if a DM so chose.
A large part of one Rocket Age adventure. The heroes' largest obstacle in protecting the community of Downey Creek in the Downey Creek War is the pre-existing feud between the Wendt and and McTaggert families.
Warhammer 40,000:
- This is the general state of affairs in the upper levels of hive cities and worlds that haven't known much strife in the past millennia, where families maintain old grudges and constantly try to overrule the others. This is explored even further in the Necromunda Gaiden Game, where each of the ruling families has its own Hat: House Goliath have Testosterone Poisoning, House Escher have Amazon Brigade (yeah, they get along real well), House Kawdor are religious lunatics..., and is always fighting the others for dominance of the hive.
- Dark Eldar Kabals are always attempting to overthrow the others, whether from greed, politics or boredom (being the Dark Eldar, usually all three).

Theatre

Romeo and Juliet: The famous Capulets vs Montagues feud. They make peace after the only children of the heads of the two families (and several more men) die and they're sternly admonished by their lord. Also, we never figure out what caused the feud in the first place (all we know is that it's been going on for a very long time), since the story is more about the tragic consequences.

Video Games

In Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse, your own family, the Al-Hazrads, have a long-running vendetta with another merchant family in town, the Wassabs. An early quest involves helping the local Qadi (magistrate/mayor) establish a formal treaty peace between the two. This is achieved just in time for the Al-Hazrads' genie to go rogue and sink a ship belonging to the Wassab family, undoing all the work. Later, you visit an island where a war between its two clans has been going on for years (despite the island's tiny size and the huge cost of the conflict to both sides). If you want, you can figure out that the incident which incited the conflict was engineered by the Nameless Masters in order to distract the islanders; doing this allows the feud to be ended.
The Zafords and Hodunks are in a truce over their feud at first in Borderlands 2, but ex-Hodunk Ellie decides the world would be better off without them and has you set off the feud and let you decide which family survives. In the DLC Mad Moxxi's Wedding Day Massacre, Moxxi (also an ex-Hodunk) attempts to unite the two clans peacefully through marriage with the help of Ellie and the Vault Hunters. Although the wedding proves to be disastrous, they manage to succeed, if only by uniting the two clans in a blood feud against them.
Crusader Kings II
- This was added in The Republic DLC, where rival patrician houses can engage in feuds that can last generations. Appropriate given how the game is all about dynasties instead of nations.
- Nomadic khaganates can also have feuds between the Great Clans, which often only end when one is destroyed and its lands seized.
The Goodsoups and the VanSalads in The Curse of Monkey Island were feuding families both in the hotel business, but the Vansalads were eventually driven out of the Caribbean.
Dragon Age:
- As seen in Dragon Age: Origins, the Couslands and the Howes have a complicated history, fighting on opposite sides during the Orlesian occupation of Ferelden. While close allies in the present, Arl Howe later betrays Teyrn Cousland out of jealousy and orchestrates the murder of the entire family save for (potentially) the Human Noble and Fergus Cousland.
  - In Awakening, if importing a save with the Human Noble Warden, this adds additional subtext when Nathaniel Howe attempts to murder the Warden to avenge the death of his father and the loss of his family lands to the Grey Wardens. Nicely subverted however, as the Warden can decide to end the blood-feud by recruiting Nathaniel into the Wardens and befriending him. If he survives the ending, Nathaniel saves Fergus Cousland's life, and is given a portion of the old Howe lands that had been seized, further mending the rift between the families.
- In Dragon Age: Inquisition, this is revealed to be part of Josephine's backstory. Her family's rivals, the du Paraquettes, took out a contract with the House of Repose to kill any member of the Montilyet family who attempts to restore their trading enterprise in Orlais. Josephine only learns of the matter when she herself tries to do just that; because the du Paraquette nobles died out several years earlier, it makes the contract very unusual, so the assassins feel they owe her the courtesy of an explanation. The Inquisitor must then take steps, one way or another, to put a stop to the feud in order to save Josephine's life.
The Battle-Borns and the Grey-Manes in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim were once close, but after the Civil War broke out, they became bitter enemies, with the Battle-Borns supporting the Empire while the Grey-Manes support the Stormcloaks. One side-quest involves investigating the disappearance of one of the Grey-Manes, Thorald, whom the Grey-Manes suspect is being held by the Battle-Borns. Thorald has actually been captured by the Thalmor, who have taken him to Northwatch Keep to be tortured, and the Battle-Borns have been trying to get him released.
Game of Thrones (Telltale): The noble house of the main player characters, the Forresters, have been rivals with their neighbors, the Whitehills, for several generations prior to the game's start. While no one remembers exactly what started the feud, much of their current animosity centers around the Forrester's claim to the Ironwood trees in the Wolfswood. The Whitehills had Ironwood themselves, but lost it as a result of over-harvesting. As the Forresters were bannermen to the Starks, and the Whitehills bannermen to the Boltons (Stark bannermen themselves), the Whitehills were never any kind of threat to the Forresters' power and influence until almost the entire Forrester army was killed along with their patriarch, at the Red Wedding.
As a game revolving around playing feudal houses in space, Imperium Nova features a mechanic called feud score that regulates family feuds. Feud score is created through spying, attempted assassinations, military attacks, insults, and other hostile actions. Attacking another house without the proper feud causes you to become a renegade and, theoretically, an instant pariah.
There's one in King of Dragon Pass: Rangarda Dark-Eyes, who is from another clan, has her sons steal the Cool Horse Tempest from Glendara, a woman in your clan. Glendara has her kids reclaim the horse, but they'll kill one of Rangarda's sons during the rescue. And from there on it erupts into a full-on Cycle of Revenge: the two families will try to kill each other, burn down their houses, destroy their property, and so on. And nothing you do can ever stop the feud, short of killing ^note or outlawing everyone involved. The most you can do is try to maintain a good relationship with the other clan. Fortunately, the whole mess is started by a Random Event, so if you're lucky it may never happen at all.
The Kusanagi vs. Yagami feud in The King of Fighters. Although they both sealed Orochi, the Kusanagi got more recognition and fame, which provoked the Yagami to cut a deal with Orochi for the ability to wield flames like the Kusanagi. However, despite being on the respective families, Kyo and Iori don't actually care about the feud and consider their rivalry to be on their own terms.
The Sandrals and Matales in Knights of the Old Republic. How their story ends depends on player actions... sort of.
Laurentia from Nexus Clash gives us the feuding Grahams and Moreaus, started when the daughters and son of Laurentian founding figure Lucien Moreau had equal, mutually exclusive claims to his inheritance and legacy. The latter wins and claims the Moreau family name for himself, but animosity between the two goes on for another century and a half. By the time the player characters arrive on the scene, you can learn through some sleuthing that the feud was eventually resolved, though it doesn't tell you how.
There are three governing families of the unnamed town in Pathologic: The idealistic Kains who wish to go beyond the limits of the human body and who funded the town's miraculous architecture, the merchant Olgimskys who exploit the town's indigenous people for labor, and the iron-fisted Saburovs who want to carry out the law as they see fit. They don't want to collaborate with each other when the plague hits and so the protagonists are swept into their web of machinations as they try to get the families to compromise.
Red Dead Redemption II has the Greys and the Braithwaites, two families in the town of Rhodes who've been feuding with each other for so long that they don't even remember how or why it started, but they can't stop fighting and hating each other. It isn't until Dutch Van der Linde's gang shows up that the balance of power tips.
The Montys and the Capps in The Sims is based off the Montagues and the Capulets; the reason why they started the feud was due to the Monty Patriarch losing a promising job as an associate with the Capps.

Webcomics

In Doc Rat, a rabbit-wolf wedding produces this.
In Girl Genius, the Fifty Families are the most powerful ruling families in Europa. The fact that the years between the reign of the Storm King (two hundred years ago) and the start of the Wulfenbach Empire (about eighteen years ago) were known as the 'Long War' tells you a lot about them. More recently, they've all been feuding with Wulfenbach instead.
- The Valois extended family contains possibly hundreds of families, most notably Sturmvoraus, von Blitzengaard and Selnikov, which are continually feuding, fighting and assassinating each other. Then the people within each family all have their own plots, too - the father/son/daughter combination of Aaronev, Tarvek and Anevka were all double-crossing each other for years, and the brother/sister team of Martellus and Xerxsephnia aren't exactly on the same page either.
Tarvek: The only way to keep my family in line would be to bury them in a row.
Real Life Comics example: The Aggie and Longhorns feud.
In The Silver Eye, the Hollingsworths and the Shephards have been in conflict for eight hundred years. The only reason given so far is that their Nedarian ancestors hated each other. This doesn't really help the fact that each family rules over one of two adjacent countries.

Web Original

In The Gamer's Alliance, the Jardines and Mathesons are two powerful noble families, each of which controls one big city. They hate each other's guts and are often literally at each other's throats if given time. This animosity goes so far that if one of them joins a large faction like the Grand Alliance, the other will automatically oppose the alliance even if it means siding with a faction they would normally consider their enemy.
A mechanic of Imperium Nova, houses gain feud points against other houses who offend them via insults, ignoring monopolies or trade restrictions, destroying facilities, or assassinations. Feud is required for houses to attack one another on planets under imperial jurisdiction and is expended with every successful assault. It's not unknown for players to intentionally insult one another so the mechanical feud can persist as long as the RP one.
SCP Foundation:SCP-2039 consists of a pair of feuding mountain clans, the Pikes and the Wagners, trapped in eternal battle with a variety of bizarre, anomalous weapons. It's all thanks to the Pikes' matriarch, Dixie Mabel Pike, being granted an ill-conceived wish by a grey-eyed stranger.

Western Animation

In one episode of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, Jimmy's father and Carl's father have a feud due to Jimmy's father accussing Carl's father of taking his lawn lopper and not returning it. Jimmy attempts to get them to put aside their differences and work together by causing crab grass to grow on both of their lawns, but it fails before resulting in mutated crab grass that attacks him, Carl, and Sheen. To save the boys, the dads end up working together, but Hugh still believes Mr. Wheezer has his lawn lopper. It's then that Sheen realizes he forgot to say that Sam from the Candy Bar promised to return the lopper in a few days. Needless to say, the Neutrons and the Wheezers are both more than a little peeved at Sheen.
A case of feuding clans happens in Adventures of the Gummi Bears between the Gummi Glen clan and the Barbaric Forest clan due to their very different cultures (the Barbarics are, well, barbarians and warriors, whilst the Glens are civilized and pacifists); but the real conflict comes from the fact that the Barbarics want to Kill All Humans and the Glens not only oppose violence but also know some humans are good (as they befriend several). Of course, the conflict gets resolved at the end with An Aesop.
The Zhang vs the Gan Jin from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Their animosity is played for laughs, and in the end they're tricked into making peace by Aang.
The 12th season Bob's Burgers episode "Sauce Side Story" revealed Linda's maternal relatives went through a very messy divide decades before she was born. Her great uncles, Tony and Joey Volpintesta, had a falling out when Joey used his wealthy wife's money to buy a house Tony spent years saving up to buy. This escalated to a feud when Joey invited his entire family to his new home for dinner, and Tony stabbed his hand with a fork. Linda's grandmother Claudia sided with Tony who insisted it was an accident, while their other sister Pauline sided with Joey. Years later, the one attempt to mend fences ended badly when Joey's daughter Lorraine wore white to Linda's parents' wedding. Linda's mother Gloria responded by throwing punch on Lorraine's dress and then punching her in the back.
Downplayed in Danny Phantom with Danny and Sam's parents as while they don't forbid their kids from hanging out together^note, they have a mutual dislike for one another.
Magica makes mention of a centuries old blood feud between the De Spell and McDuck families in the DuckTales (2017) episode "Jaw$!", though this is the only time it's mentioned (and the series' penultimate episode would retcon it out of the story).
The Flintstones episode "Bedrock Hillbillies" has Fred inheriting a shack in the mountains and getting caught up in a longstanding feud between his ancestors and the Hatrock clan. It turns out it all started when Fred's ancestor made fun of a painting of a Hatrock matriarch and the family was murderously insulted. Eventually, the families manage to make peace after saving their children from danger, at least until Fred sees the painting himself... and unknowingly makes the exact same wisecrack and restarts the feud, forcing the Flintstones and Rubbles to flee back to Bedrock.
According to Word of God the Canmore and Monmouth families in Gargoyles would have become this, stemming from each one's attitude toward gargoyles. Jon Canmore's side of the family would have been strongly opposed to gargoyle integration in society whilst his sister Robyn (having married Harry Monmouth, a.k.a. Dingo) would have supported it.
Another Hatfield-McCoy feud parody is in the The Hillbilly Bears between the Ruggs and the Hoppers.
Infinity Train: In the second episode of Book 2, "The Family Tree Car", Mirror Tulip and Jesse climb down a literal family tree. Unfortunately the two sides of the tree, the sophisticated Gillincutty family and the rural Trundleshank family, do not get along at all, and are only together because their descendants Gilda & Herbert got married.
In one episode of Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures "The Spectre of the Pine Barrens", the real driving force of the plot is not the Jersey Devil (the real one is rather helpful all things considered) but a pair of feuding families who are remnants from the Revolutionary War. One family is descended from a British spy who stole the real Declaration of Independence while the other family is descended from the American Minuteman tasked with retrieving it (not knowing that he was sent on a suicide mission by his superiors to keep him from revealing the truth while they copied the Declaration). Both families would regularly kidnap people from the outside world to keep the family lines and the feud going.
Looney Tunes:
- Martin and Coy, in the Bugs Bunny cartoon Hillbilly Hare.
- The McCoys and Weavers, in the 1938 short A Feud There Was.
- The McCoys and Martins, in the 1939 short Naughty Neighbors. The feud is broken up by a "non-aggression pact" (an allusion to then-looming World War II) signed by the respective heads of the families (Porky and Petunia Pig).
Mickey Mouse Works: Two rural feuding families found oil. (Shout-Out to The Beverly Hillbillies, perhaps?) When they moved away, one family hired Pete as a housekeeper and the other hired Mickey, Donald, and Goofy as housekeepers and they continued the feud. (It all started because the two families had to share the same outhouse.)
In Mike, Lu & Og, it's revealed that there's a second group of settlers on the island, the Cuzzlewitz clan, who have something of a rivalry with the Albonquetines. Lu seems to be the only one who takes the feud seriously, however, loudly pretending that she doesn't notice the Cuzzlewitz Kids (Haggis, Baggis, and Hermione) when they go to school together.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- The episode "The Hooffields and McColts" features a longstanding feud between the two titular clans, named after the Hatfield and McCoy feud. All attempts made by Twilight to solve it peacefully fail, and in the end she freezes them all while they're having an all-out brawl. Fluttershy learns their original mission was to help the animals of the Smokey Mountains, and scolds them for forgetting their purpose all because of a petty grudge between their ancestors.
- As revealed in "The Perfect Pear", the Apple Family has been feuding with the Pear Family for years. It's also revealed that Applejack, Big Macintosh, and Apple Bloom's mom is a Pear whose father disowned her for loving their dad, an Apple. The two families manage to reconcile by the end of the episode.
In The Simpsons, while Sideshow Bob's initial grudge is against Bart, over time this has developed into a murderous hatred of the family in general that has extended to the rest of the Terwilligers, including his infant son Gino.
Skull Island (2023): Inverted with Annie and Dog. They're a nigh-inseparable A Girl and Her X duo, but they first met and bonded with each-other as a result of their respective fathers killing each-other. Dog's father was hunting Annie and her father, presumably for food, and Annie's father died killing him in defence of her; leaving both Annie and the then-pup Dog orphaned, and alone on an Isle of Giant Horrors save for each-other.
Woody Woodpecker: By the time Woody got involved, the Coys were already extinct and the last one's house became a museum of family memorabilia. Woody put on a Coy's hat and the last Martin assumed Woody was a Coy.

Real Life

Real Life example: The Hatfield and McCoy feud. It was the inspiration for the Lucky Luke album The Rivals of Painful Gulch.
More Real Life: The Pazzi family and the Medici family of Renaissance Florence, Italy. The former is famous for their botched assassination attempt on Lorenzo and Guiliano de' Medici on April 26, 1478 after High Mass on the steps of the Duomo. To be fair to the Pazzi family, The Pope didn't like the Medicis either. Not many people did, except the people of Florence.
- And thus, the inspiration for the first arc of Assassin's Creed II. The main character is on the Medicis' side, but that has less to do with any personal attachment to them and more to do with his part in a way bigger feud: the Assassins vs the Templars.
The Wars of the Roses, with the House of York and the House of Lancaster. It started in 1455, due to the fallout from the English defeat in The Hundred Years War and the declining mental state of Henry VI. Because he came to the throne as an infant, and never became a forceful leader, the nobility descended from different sons of Edward III grew in power and ambition. This was complicated by the fact that Henry's grandfather, Henry IV, was a usurper, and one without an ironclad claim to the throne, from a certain perspective the Yorkist claim to the throne was actually better then Henry VI's claim.
- And the situation was even more complicated with the Neville-Percy feud. The war between the two Plantagenet branches provided a neat way to resolve matters with cold steel by Nevilles and Percys on both sides.
The German branches of the House of Welfs and the House of Hohenstaufen in the 12th century. Not even marriage between them could end it, though both families were much too large and powerful to actually die out from a mere feud.
- Which led into three centuries of civil wars between Guelphs (Welf supporters, usually Papal) and Ghibellini (Hohenstaufen supporters, usually Imperial) in Italy.
- In the second half of the 19th century the House of Welf got into a feud with the House of Hohenzollern after The Kingdom of Prussia (under the Hohenzollerns) annexed the Kingdom of Hannover and drove the Welfs in exile in Austria. This feud was resolved in the classical way in 1912, when the last surviving son of the head of the Welfs met and fell in love with the only daughter of the head of the Hohenzollern family.
The Japanese have had a bunch of these. Several of which led to country wide civil wars. Most famously the Gempei war between the Taira (Heike) and the Minamoto (Genji) clans.
The Vikings of the Scandinavian lands were infamous for this. They would always fight each other for even the smallest things. The only thing that would make temporary truces was to invade England or France. It was only when Christianity came to the northern lands, and then the Viking chieftains took inspiration from the feudal systems in the mainland and reformed their turfs into united kingdoms, that the feudings ended.
- …or at least grew in scale due to the centralizing nature of the church. For much of the Scandinavian middle age violent murder and civil strife played an important part in the royal succession. Denmark and Sweden are also among the top contenders for the title of most wars fought between the same countries.
In several Italian city-states one of the requirements of citizenship was to forswear vengeance as that supposedly now belonged to The Government which was supposed to dispense it impartially. The fact that that had to be made explicit reveals a number of things about Medieval Italian culture.
Unfortunately, very much Truth in Television amongst the Romani (Roma and Sinti) nations. One reason why the Nazis almost managed to exterminate those two nations for good during WWII was that various Sinti and Roma families were unable to co-operate due to centuries of family feuds.
In Korea, the Shims and the Yooms. The feud started in the mid 1700's and went on for about 250 years.
A more lighthearted version of this is from many British regiments. The British military system still maintains traces of the eighteenth century warrior fraternity air in an age of heavily bureaucratized warfare. Several regiments are traditional "enemies" and will continue their feuds with practical jokes and bar brawls.
Similar ritual feuds have been noted by anthropologists among low-tech cultures. As lethal weapons are sometimes used the proportion of ritual and the proportion of feud is debatable and in any case probably depends on the nature of the dispute.
Oddly enough potential feuding does have a positive (or at least less negative) side effect in serving as a substitute for military and constabulary deterrence in places where The Government is weak. In such places a common custom is to pay blood-money for cross-tribal offenses weighted at the economic or political value of the person injured. This provides a face-saver that allows The Patriarchs of a given clan to settle the dispute without a feud, but the threat of feud remains a feature of local politics.
The Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, located about 15 miles northwest of Nuremberg, is today considered one of the greatest laboratories for sociologists thanks to a local family feud that has since expanded to ridiculous proportions. It all started in 1924 when hometown boys Adolf "Adi" Dassler and his brother Rudolf opened an athletic shoe company which is today known as Puma. The Dasslers achieved worldwide fame when Jesse Owens ran in their shoes when he won several gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games. But the Dassler boys - the biggest employers in town - hated each others' guts, and their hatred for each other only grew worse during World War II. In 1948, the brothers announced to their workers that their hatred for each other had reached an irreconcilable point and that Adi was leaving to open a rival company – Adidas - on the other side of town, across the Aurach River. The employees then started choosing sides. After a quarter century, most of the people in town had relocated themselves to the side of the river that corresponded with whichever company they favored. Now the town - which had been united for over 900 years – is like a house shared by two pissed-off divorcees who refuse to move out after everything else has been settled. Except that instead of two people, there are about 24,000 people. Today, each side of the river has its own businesses, athletic teams, schools, etc. And if you wear Pumas on the Adidas side of the river, or vice versa, you probably won't get served at local businesses, you probably will be heckled, and you may be assaulted.
The clans of Scotland were known for this for a long time, though it died down after the country's acquisition by the United Kingdom, which served to unite many of them to rebel against a perceived common enemy.
Clan warfare was similarly common in Ireland and Wales, and it allowed the English to divide the countries against themselves.
- Not, however, the MacDonalds and Campbells, whose feud fed into the Jacobite wars, and was maintained into modern times by the Gordon and Argyll Highlander regiments of the British army.
- The border clans also, as depicted in George MacDonald Fraser's history of the border reavers.
Armenia was chiefly ruled by wealthy families between 300 BC and 1045 AD in a similar way to Scotland, the heads of which were called nakharars. The families developed fierce rivalries with one another, but were mostly kept in check by a king or a conquering empire. The Mamikonians and Bagratunis particularly disliked one another, due to the Mamikonians liking to fight first and ask questions later, while the Bagratunis solved their problems diplomatically. Things got much worse though between the 800's and 1000's when the Bagratuni family was given its own kingdom by the Arabs. Rival nakharars decided to break away and form their own small kingdoms, and there was much in-fighting, making the whole area easy pickings for the Byzantine Empire and then the Seljuk Turks.
The feud between the Habsburgs (also known as the House of Austria), rulers of the Holy Roman Empire and Spain, and the Royal House of France (first the Valois, then the Bourbons, but both were branches of the same dynasty) which goes back at least to the Italian Wars of Charles V (Carlos I of Spain) and Francis I and went on for centuries despite frequent marriages between members of the two rival houses. Later, when nationalism arose, the "hereditary enmity" between the Habsburgs and their French rivals came to be reinterpreted as something between the French and German peoples.
Also dating back to the 16th century, the rivalry between the Ernestine (elder) and Albertine (younger) branches of the House of Wettin. As Electors of Saxony, members of the Ernestine branch had supported Martin Luther and the Reformation, which in a subsequent war led to them losing their Electoral title and their original lands to the Albertine branch and being forced to relocate to Thuringia, where they split into several lines, including the one that would later become the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha or Windsor. August the Strong, an Albertine Elector of Saxony, later converted to Catholicism in order to become king of Poland, as did his heirs, which added a religious note to the rivalry between the Ernstine and Albertine branches.
Canada had its own feuds, especially the infamous one involving the notorious Donnelly family in Lucan, Ontario. That conflict involved that family against most of the surrounding community that got so bitter that it ultimately ended with a bloody home invasion/massacre of the Donnellys.
The Figueres family and the Calderón family in Costa Rica, thankfully after the short but bloody civil war in 1948 when each of the families' patriarch lead a different enemy faction of the war, their rivalry became exclusively political.
Romanovs and Ulyanovs in Russia. As the Czarist regime sentenced Alexander Ulyanov on murder attempt against Czar Alexander III, the elder brother of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) to death, Vladimir swore revenge to the whole Imperial family. He rose in power in 1917, and wasted no time on exterminating not only Czar Nicholas II and his family, but most of the Romanovs. A chain of vendetta was prevented only by the family line of Ulyanov going extinct first.
The Trịnh and Nguyễn lords divided Vietnam into two because of this, with a helping of courtly intrigue. At first they both claimed to be vassals of the Later Lê dynasty intent on defeating the Mạc usurpers, but utilized this to increase their influence and land. Altar Diplomacy was tried before war officially broke out (and it was an aunt-in-law/nephew-in-law marriage to boot). They fought for 46 years, then gave up, and managed to have 100 years of a peaceful ceasefire. Then the Tây Sơn rebellion (against a Nguyễn court that was infighting) happened. The Trịnh lords decided it was a good time to crush their enemies once and for all, and threw their support behind the rebellion, until Tây Sơn forces turned against them too. Tây Sơn land ended up making a barrier between the Trịnh and Nguyễn sides, so neither could advance to attack the other. The feud finally ended when the Nguyễn, taking advantage of the Trịnh resting on their laurels of having pushed their enemies into a tight corner, finally seized power and made themselves into a full-fledged dynasty.

Examples:

Video Example(s):

Tobins, Tuntleys, & Evanoffs

Alternative Title(s): Family Rivalry

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Feuding Families

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Examples:

Video Example(s):

Tobins, Tuntleys, & Evanoffs

Alternative Title(s): Family Rivalry

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