A Song of Ice and Fire/Tropes J To R: Difference between revisions

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== J-L ==

** Moon Boy serves at the Red Keep and can walk on stilts. He's also {{spoiler|on Varys' payroll}}.

** The [[Monster Clown]] Shagwell dresses like a jester and cracks jokes while braining you with a three-headed morningstar.

** Dolorous Edd is a very jester-like character, always snarking under the guise of being [[The Eeyore]], and like a jester, he's able to get away with making those comments to a higher up (in this case the Lord Commander) in a way that others aren't.

* [[Jigsaw Puzzle Plot]]

** {{spoiler|The wildlings give this offer to Jon Snow when he and his partner Qhorin Halfhand are captured. However, to make sure he's truly switched sides, they also force him to kill Qhorin.}}

** One of the recruitment methods of the Night's Watch, even those condemned to die may save their lives by choosing the Wall over the headsman.

* [[Just Like Robin Hood]]:

** The Brotherhood Without Banners starts out as this, with some pretty clear expies of the Merry Men (including [[The Archer]], a revered leader, and a roguish priest). After a change in leadership, the group increasingly become [[Knight Templar|Knight Templars]], changing its goal from helping the victims of war crimes to hanging war criminals.

** Lord Manderly's delicious {{spoiler|Frey Pie}} in ''A Dance With Dragons'', {{spoiler|which he serves to other conspirators, including a bunch of Freys.}}

** {{spoiler|Lysa Arryn gets shoved out the Moon Door}}, which she often threatened to do to others.

** When Tyrion {{spoiler|murders his father and former lover in cold blood, he clearly crosses a moral line, but his two victims were such jerks that it's hard not to cheer him on.}}

** While it's quite clear that Arya becomes increasingly morally grey every time she kills someone or is involved in causing a death, it's compensated for the fact that [[Asshole Victim|all of them more or less deserve it]].

** To a much smaller extent, Little and Big Walder. They indulge in some literal kicking the dog and are pretty mean to Hodor. In ''A Dance With Dragons'' they both start palling around with [[Torture Technician|Ramsay Bolton]] and get much worse.

* [[Kill'Em All]]: As a phrase, ''A Feast For Crows'' really sums up the series' plot and theme. By the end of ''A Dance With Dragons'', {{spoiler|all but one of the original "Five Kings" are dead (and Stannis' [[Bolivian Army Ending|fate is ambiguous]]),}} though new players have of course taken their places.

** The best way to deal with undead wights. There's even a song about it. {{spoiler|Presumably fire works on the Others as well, but obsidian, or "frozen fire," also works. Jon also interprets an ancient passage about "dragonsteel" to mean that Valyrian blades would work as well.}}

** One of the Mad King's preferred methods of execution.

* [[Kill the Poor]]: It is mentioned offhandedly that [[The Caligula|Joffrey's]] proposed solution to beggars and starving poor people in King's Landing is to kill them. He at one point brings a crossbow to the castle walls and uses it to [[Kick the Dog|shoot at the people outside the gates begging for food]].

* [[Killed Off for Real]]: {{spoiler|Eddard and Robb Stark}}, and many other characters, major and minor, going along with the series's [[Kill'Em All]] style.

** Jorah Mormont wore the favour of Lynesse Hightower and won a tourney, defeating all opponents and even gaining her hand in marriage.

* [[Lady of War]]: Daenerys

* [[Laser-Guided Karma]]: A rare example of this in a very cynical series - Stannis, looking for a lord who can bring the North under his control, offers to {{spoiler|legitimise Jon Snow and free him from his vow to the Night's Watch.}} He refuses, partly out of an [[Generation Xerox|eerily familiar ironclad sense of honour]], and before the night is out he's been, largely coincidentally, {{spoiler|elected as Lord Commander of the Watch}} (for which Stannis' offer would have made him ineligible).

* [[Last-Minute Baby-Naming]]: [[Justified]]. With the [[Grim Up North]] conditions behind the wall, the mortality of children is so high that naming one that hasn't yet grown enough to walk is considered [[Tempting Fate]].

* [[Lightning Bruiser]]: What makes the Hound one of the most dangerous fighters in Westeros, when he's not drunk off his arse.

* [[Like a Son to Me]]: Maester Cressen saw Stannis Baratheon in this light, having been maester for the Baratheons for decades and watching Stannis grow up. {{spoiler|This makes his shaming before the court, and his death, that much more tragic.}}

* [[Line-of-Sight Name]]:

** Ser Rolly Duckfield, one of Griff's men in ''A Dance With Dragons''; like other lowborn characters who receive knighthoods (e.g. Davos and Bronn), he wasn't born with a surname, and made up/acquired one upon being knighted. In Rolly's case, while being knighted in a field, he noticed some ducks nearby.

* [[Living Shadow]]: Introduced in ''A Clash of Kings'', these shadow-beings are revealed to be {{spoiler|the children of Melisandre.}}

* [[Loads and Loads of Characters]]: How many? Well, for a long time, the huge character sheet wouldn't tell you who the five kings in the "War Of Five Kings" were, just because ''some of them weren't important enough to list''. The reader of the unabridged audiobook of ''A Game of Thrones'' actually holds the certified world record for most characters voiced in an audiobook - 224.

** Also Sansa, what with her infatuation with Joffrey and wide-eyed hero worship of Cersei. {{spoiler|That sure doesn't last long.}}

* [[Loose Lips]]: Sansa Stark. {{spoiler|Unintentionally helped the queen's plot against Eddard, which cost him his life, and also prevented the Tyrell's plan to help her and whisk her away to Highgarden because she kept telling everything to Dontos.}}

** Several characters note that just about all the war and strife afflicting the land can be traced back to Rhaegar marrying Elia of Dorne instead of Cersei Lannister, then absconding with Lyanna Stark.

** The Starks and the Northern rebellion are brought down when {{spoiler|Robb Stark has a tryst with Jeyne Westerling and breaks his marriage pact with the Freys to marry her}}.

 

== M-O ==

*** ''Janos'' Slynt turns out to be two-faced, as the Roman god Janus.

*** ''Lancel'' Lannister is (one of several people) having an affair with the queen, reminiscent of Arthurian Lancelot.

*** Hodor may be an approximation of Höðr, a disabled (blind) god in [[Norse Mythology]].

*** ''Stannis'' Baratheon is hard and unyielding. His name is a homophone for "stannous," meaning "like tin," which is often brittle. He's openly compared to iron, however, specifically for his brittleness.

* [[Mook Horror Show]]: There's several similar instances (at Winterfell when Theon held it; at Harrenhall under the Lannisters; and at Winterfell again under the Boltons) where "good guys" spook "bad guys" by committing undetected murders of their forces.

* [[Morality Pet]]: Brienne, for {{spoiler|post-[[Heel Face Turn]] Jaime}}. The two Stark girls, for Sandor Clegane.

* [[The Mourning After]]: Tywin is forever hardened after his wife Joanna's death, to such an insane extent that he never smiles {{spoiler|though he does get it on with whores}}. Hoster Tully is also never quite the same. Robert, one of the most epic cases, goes so far as to get hammered and then call Cersei "Lyanna" on their wedding night. And then there's Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish, whose long [[Unlucky Childhood Friend|fixtation]] on Catelyn (not to mention the severe [[Break the Cutie]] process he went through because of it) lead to him turning severely [[Yandere]] and [[Replacement Goldfish|creepy consequences]] regarding Catlyn's daughter, Sansa.

* [[Mr. Smith]]:

** There's a whole lot of surnames that are unusual spellings of animals, fruit, etc. (typically those featured on the family's coat-of-arms): i.e. Plumm, Codd, Hogg, etc.

* [[Myth Arc]]: The Others, The Prince Who Was Promised.

* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]: A standard of the series. The Hound, the Mad King, the Kingslayer, the Mountain That Rides, the Bloody Mummers, the Crow's Eye, the Red Viper, the Titan's Bastard, the Darkstar and so on...

* [[Near-Rape Experience]]: Sandor Clegane did indeed intend to rape Sansa during the Battle of the Blackwater, but stopped himself and ended up taking nothing more than a song.

* [[Never Say That Again]]: Tyrion does ''warn'' {{spoiler|Tywin}} to stop throwing the word "whore" in his face. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't listen.

* [[Never Split the Party]]: played with. Jaime is criticised for splitting his siege of Riverrun into three camps, allowing them to be overrun separately. Tywin immediately shoots down the criticism, pointing out that the [[Genre Savvy]] Tullys have sited their castle precisely to ''enforce'' this trope, making defense that much easier.

* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Herod]]: Subverted. The maegi Mirri Maz Duur {{spoiler|magically kills Daenerys Stormborn's unborn son in utero, both for revenge against the father and because the unborn child is prophesied to be the Stallion That Mounts the World, an unstoppable city-smashing warlord. While it doesn't exactly turn out well for Mirri in the end, she DOES successfully prevent the boy from being born and fulfilling whatever his Super Special Destiny was supposed to be.}}

** {{spoiler|Of course, Mirri's actions do wind up resulting in the rebirth of dragons into the world, and it's entirely possibly that they'll mount the world or whatever. So possibly played straight, with a helping of prophecy?}}

* [[Noble Fugitive]]: Viserys is a bit of a deconstruction. Straighter examples in Daenerys, {{spoiler|Ser Barristan, Jon Connington, and Tyrion.}}

* [[Nobody Poops]]: Averted. Defecation is mentioned quite frequently. In ''Storm of Swords'', Strong Belwas shames the Yunkai champion Oznak zo Pahl by shitting in the direction of his city and wiping himself with the dead Oznak's cloak. And {{spoiler|Tywin Lannister}} is assassinated when he's on the privy, {{spoiler|proving that he ''doesn't'' shit gold}}. Astapor's refugees bring the bloody flux to Mereen, leading to a mass outbreak of dysentary. Also, {{spoiler|Dany}} gets the runs after eating wild berries while stranded near the end of Dance with Dragons.

* [[Non-Human Sidekick]]: The Stark's direwolves and {{spoiler|Dany's dragons}}.

* [[Noodle Incident]]: A number of incidents are referred to early on, with clues popping up over the course of the series. Examples include the tragedy at Summerhall, the Doom of Valyria, and the events at the "tower of joy."

* [[Not So Different]]:

** Tyrion comes to this conclusion regarding himself and his father.

** At one point, characters come across a burnt out ruin of a village, and it's explained that the lord of the area was on the wrong side, and as punishment, Hoster Tully sent soldiers to [[Rape, Pillage and Burn]] and basically kill everyone. It shows the moral greyness of the series that the head of the Tullys (seemingly one of the "good guys") dealt with enemies just as ruthlessly as Tywin Lannister.

** The Starks are shown to have been ruthless in maintaining their power in the past. Long before the series begins, a branch of the Stark family called the Greystarks joined with the Boltons in a rebellion against the Starks. The Stark lord at the time crushed the rebellion and wiped out the Greystark branch of the family.

** Sandor Clegane calls out the Brotherhood Without Banners in what's both an example of this as well as [[At Least I Admit It]]:

* [[The Oathbreaker]]:

** Jaime Lannister. He killed the king he was sworn to protect, and everyone - even the people who acknowledge that Aerys needed killing - treats him like the lowest of the low, even in a [[Crapsack World]] full of child rapists, [[Torture Technician|Torture Technicians]], and [[The Caligula|mad kings]] (like the one he killed to save King's Landing).

* [[Oddly Common Rarity]]: While the Targaryan features initially seem quite unusual (and are admittedly rare in Westeros), it's eventually revealed that not only are there two Westerosi families who have the same look (the Daynes and the Velaryons), but that in Essos, or at least the city of Lys, those features are exceedingly common.

* [[Oedipus Complex]]: Tywin and Tyrion Lannister.

* [[Offstage Villainy]]: Done chillingly well with Ramsay Bolton. Pre-''Dance'' he had only appeared in person under his own name in one chapter at the end of the third volume, yet was already one of the biggest sources of [[Nightmare Fuel]] in the series. Once he comes onstage he manages to get ''worse''.

* [[Older Than They Look]]: The waif is a Faceless Man (Faceless Woman?) who is thirty-six years old but looks like a child close to Arya's age. Her body is unnaturally small because she is around dangerous poisons all the time and the face she has probably isn't her real one anyway.

* [[Old Master]]: Ser Barristan Selmy, Syrio Forel and Jeor "Old Bear" Mormont.

* [[One-Liner]]: "There are no men like me. There's only me".

* [[One-Gender School]]: The Citadel, much like the medieval universities it was inspired by.

* [[Old Retainer]]: Ser Rodrik Cassell, Master-At-Arms for House Stark.

* [[One-Scene Wonder]]:

** Ser Cortnay Penrose, castellan of [[Meaningful Name|Storm's End]].

** Archmaester Marwyn, called "The Mage" by the other archmaesters for his interest in the occult. He is very well-traveled and he is mentioned a few times throughout the story but so far he has only actually appeared once, at the end of the fourth book. Possibly his popularity with the fandom is a result of his [[Jumped At the Call|extremely proactive behaviour]] in what had been a very slow-paced book.

** Lord Manderly's granddaughter [[Plucky Girl|Wylla Manderly]], {{spoiler|who stands up for the Starks and gives Davos her support, despite her family's protests and attempts to silence her. Wyman Manderly praises her bravado once he reveals his plan to Davos.}}

* [[Our Vampires Are Different]]: The Others, [[Epileptic Trees|possibly]], although it's hard to tell, since we've seen so little of them. Still, they (reportedly) drink blood, are pale and cold, and only seem to come out at night...

* [[Our Werewolves Are Different]]: Called skinchangers, beastlings, and wargs, and they {{spoiler|take control of animals rather than turn into them, and can do this with other animals besides wolves}}.

* [[Our Zombies Are Different]]:

** The people resurrected with the flames of Rh'llor are the Revenant variety, and Coldhands is likely one of these as well.

* [[Out of the Inferno]]: The end of ''A Game of Thrones''.

* [[Outside Context Villain]]: The Others.

 

== P-R ==

** Greyscale is a chronic, disfiguring disease that causes numb grey lesions to spread across the body, making the victim appear to be turning to stone. Victims in an advanced state are called "stone men" and live together in isolated colonies. Its symptoms share similarities with leprosy and smallpox. Supposedly it's relatively harmless in children, merely leaving them disfigured (notably Shireen Baratheon), but the wildlings disagree and kill afflicted children as a matter of course. Victims of Greyscale are so scorned that {{spoiler|Jon Connington hides the fact that he has it rather than seek treatment because he won't risk abandonment by his followers}}.

* [[Planning for The Future Before The End]]: {{spoiler|Jon}} has something of a one-sided version of this with the dying {{spoiler|Ygritte}}. He tells her that she'll be fixed up, that she'll see a hundred castles, and that they'll return to their cave together. Her response is simply, "{{spoiler|[[Arc Words|You know nothing, Jon Snow.]]}}"

* [[Please Spare Him, My Liege]]: Sansa tries one of these to {{spoiler|save her father's life}} and Cersei obliges. {{spoiler|Then Joffrey has him executed anyway}}. Sansa also uses this to save Ser Dontos from Joffrey's wrath {{spoiler|by noting that he it would be "crueler" if he were made into a fool rather than executed}}.

* [[Posthumous Character]]: Many the characters in the series have already died by the first page, including Rhaegar Targaryen, Aerys Targaryen, Jon Arryn, Lyanna Stark, Ashara Dayne, Elia of Dorne, Ser Arthur Dayne, etc; Ser Arlan of Peny Tree in the Dunk & Egg Saga.

* [[Prayer of Malice]]: Before she goes to sleep, Arya recites to herself a mantra which lists the names of her enemies, all of whom she plans to kill, and at one point, when she has an opportunity to engage in prayer, she recites the same list.

* [[Precursors]]: Valyria.

* [[Preemptive Apology]]: The modus operandi of the Sorrowful Men, a guild of assassins.

* [[Preemptive Declaration]]:

''''Ryman''': "Ser, you do not unders-" (cut off by Jaime backhanding him in the face) }}

* [[Pretty Boy]]:

** Ser Jorah confesses to Daenerys that she reminds him of [[Love At First Sight|Lynesse]].

** Cersei's musings on Aurane Waters include comparisons (of whim-dependent favorability) to Rhaegar.

* [[Rhetorical Request Blunder]]: {{spoiler|The attempt to kill Bran after his injury}}

* [[Royal Blood]]

* [[Rule of Three]]:

** In ''A Storm of Swords'', there's a detailed description of how Robb bids farewell to Jeyne Westerling thrice before departing to his uncle Edmure's wedding, {{spoiler|which turns into the Red Wedding, making it the last time the couple bid farewell to each other.}}

** The [[Rule of Three]] runs through Dany's whole story - contrast the Rule Of Seven in the Westeros chapters. She's one of three children (as are a lot of past Targaryen generations), she has three bloodriders, three handmaids, three dragons, three ships. She sends her bloodriders out from Vaes Tolorro to find civilisation, and only the third succeeds, returning with three envoys from Qarth, only the third of which is any help. The Undying's prophecy is stacked to the gills with threes - the famous line that "the dragon has three heads", along with "three fires must you light, one for life and one for death and one to love... three mounts must you ride: one to bed and one to dread and one to love... three treasons will you know: once for blood and once for gold and once for love". She conquers three Ghiscari cities, settling in the third.

* [[Running Gag]]:

** Shagga's "I'll chop off your manhood and feed it to the goats!" There's a reference to this running gag in the ''Dunk and Egg'' stories, but with dogs instead of goats. Tyrion also gets in on the act:

'''Tyrion:''' I'll get some, just for you. }}

** "As useless as nipples on a breastplate" is quipped by multiple people throughout the series. The gag continues when {{spoiler|Ser Jorah Mormont}} is shown in ''A Dance With Dragons'' wearing a breastplate with pierced nipples.

 

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