I love the plot idea you've got there @MaxHuber25. Almost as much as I love imagining someone explain how it is problematic for Doctor Who to be kidnapped by Cro-Magnon Woman for to be sold to the Aztec-y lemur overlords.
I, for one, welcome our Aztec-y lemur overlords. I would like to remind them that, as a would-be media figure, I can be relied upon to supervise others as they cut out their own hearts and offer them to the Sun God Huītzilōpōchtli. Now here's Tom with the weather!
In one of my WIPs, Ys, the main character basically kidnaps the female lead. Not only does he kidnap her, he also accidently destroys her home city, drowning a lot of people. He doesn't see it as kidnapping, he thinks he's saving her from a horrible life. She very much sees it as a kidnapping. By the end of the story, he's learnt to see her, not as an object of desire or a damsel in distress who needs a MAN to save her, but a person in her own right and spends quite a lot of time trying to make it up to her. He thought he was in love with her at the start, but he realises that he wasn't really - he was in love with the idea of being a hero and that he has now really fallen in love with her. For her part, he's the only person in her life who (by the end) hasn't put her on a pedestal, and she wants to forgive him and acknowledge that but she can't - she's not only emotionally stunted by her upbringing but also feels she has to hold on to her anger. For her, it's a journey of discovering herself and gaining agency and independence. They do eventually reconcile and live happily ever after. Whether I can pull that off successfully... remains to be seen.
For me it would really depend on why exactly the kidnapping occurs. Did they have bad intentions? Sometimes a kidnapping is really just a rescue. Say, the hero kidnaps their love interest right before they're forced into a marriage against their will, or being made a sacrifice or some other undesirable fate. It can be downright romantic. Honestly, the kidnapping part still sounds bad pretty but I'm more concerned about this person being a slaver. A lot of people aren't going to just forgive that: It implies that no matter how good the character is otherwise they still possess a worldview most these days considered inhumane and wrong, acting on values that are considered unacceptable. Many people simply don't want that in a protagonist, even if the story justifies it. Well, context can help but sometimes it doesn't, especially when it comes to sensitive subjects. You can understand why a person does something but still object to it, and you can understand why an author puts a certain thing into their story and still be deeply uncomfortable with it. It may just be an emotional reaction, not a rational one, but it still matters. Sure, maybe people won't get mad at you and call for your story to be banned or anything, but it may be the sort of thing that makes a lot of them just put the book down and never pick it up again. (Which, it can be argued, may actually be worse.) There have been times a character who was otherwise supposed to be likable does something I consider completely reprehensible, and that always just kinda poisons the whole experience for me. Especially if the story doesn't treat it as appropriately as reprehensible. Then I'll start suspecting the author thinks that sort of thing is actually okay, and I wonder if I really want to continue reading or watching a story by an author with values like that. I'm not saying don't do it, just that I would personally be really careful with this sort of thing.
One of the first known cases of Stockholm syndrome if some accounts are to be believed. Though as I recall there were several less than flattering explanations for her actions at the time.
Well, context is EVERYTHING in a story. Is the (presumed) woman being sold due to the man being blackmailed? Are the man's initial intentions nefarious? Does he change over the course of the story? If Stockholm syndrome isn't a part of the picture (which most people will presume anyway), the romance will have to happen naturally with the characters changing in some way. I think it can definitely work, but given what limited information we're giving from the initial post, the context is what will determine whether or not it could realistically work.
