Chronicles of Chaos

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The Chronicles of Chaos is a fantasy trilogy by John C. Wright. Five children in a orphanage-cum-school slowly discover their own heritage and the nature of the beings imprisoning them.

Works:

• Orphans of Chaos
• Fugitives of Chaos
• Titans of Chaos

Tropes featured

• Action Film Quiet Drama Scene
• Air Vent Passageway
• Alien Geometries: Has an unusual take on the 4th dimension.
• Amnesiac Hero: All of the orphans, multiple times
• As You Know: Subverted; "Headmaster Boggin" begins one of these, but is quickly stopped. Double subverted later, when you find out his reason.
• Author Appeal: The curricula that the orphans are taught are taken directly from Wright's alma mater, St. John's College.
• Amazon Brigade: The Amazons.
• Axe Crazy: Artemis, the Maenads.
• Back From the Dead: Because of Mutually Exclusive Magic, by several means.
• Bad Dreams
• Being Watched
• Blackmail
• Blue Eyes
• Children Are Innocent: Explicitly invoked; Mrs. Wren asks Vanity and Amelia to pray for her, because God will hear the prayers of the "young and sweet" better than hers.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe
• Close Knit Community: The Prelapsarians, who will not act to distress Helion despite his holding no official position.
• Comes Great Responsibility
• Conversational Troping
• Cool Ship. Which, as it turns out can be:
  • Cool Boat
  • Cool Starship (This one takes some aftermarket modifications....)
• Crack Pairing: Lord Mavors/Mrs. Wren
• Crossover Cosmology: Features Grendel, Greek gods, and figures from nursery rhymes -- among others.
• Deadpan Snarker: Amelia is a bit to ladylike to qualify as a First-Person Smartass.
• Determinator: Telegonus.
• Don't Explain the Joke
• Due to the Dead
• Dumb Blonde: Invoked as an insult.
• Enemy Civil War: Part of the backstory, and connected to why the orphans are in the school.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas
• Even Evil Has Standards: Grendel may have drowned hundreds of sailors and drunk their blood, but damnit, he's never molested a woman outside of wedlock. He's got the skull of a preacher in his shed to officiate, too...
• Everyone Knows Morse: Amelia muses that every conspirator should know Morse code, as it makes things simpler.
• Exact Eavesdropping: slightly subverted in Orphans, played straight in Fugitives.
• Famed in Story
• Feed the Mole
• Five-Man Band: Played with, in that different characters rotate in and out of the Hero slot according to different circumstances.
  • The Hero: Victor, when the situation requires logical, careful planning. Amelia is his Lancer.
  • The Lancer: Amelia, who tends to take the lead during battles.
  • The Smart Guy: Quentin. When he takes the Hero role, Victor is his Lancer.
  • The Big Guy: Colin (although he fits The Brute better). Only gets leadership of the team once when everybody else is out cold.
  • The Chick / Team Mom: Vanity.
• Forceful Kiss: Amelia tends to run into these.
• A Friend in Need
• Genius Loci
• Gilded Cage: The orphanage.
• Girl-On-Girl Is Hot: Explicitly invoked by Vanity in hopes of giving Colin the will to turn himself from eagle back to a young man. Also see Crowning Moment of Funny.
• Go-Go Enslavement
• Great Big Book of Everything
• Happiness in Slavery: Well, not happiness, but Miss Daw, who as a siren is also a POW, admires and is loyal to Queen Hera.
• Hidden Depths: Every character.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: "Terrance Miles" wears punk gear and conceals knives and throwing stars among the zippers and chains on his clothes.
• Home, Sweet Home
• I Have Many Names
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: In Fugitives, this briefly happens to Amelia.
• I Know Your True Name: Done by one of the villains late in the trilogy.
• In Harm's Way
• Insubstantial Ingredients
• Jerkass Gods: Ingeniously examined. In this universe, moral laws have definite weight, which is why every supernatural species is leery of breaking them. Olympians, however, can define and change morality and destiny, which means they don't have to pay heed to them. At all.
• King Incognito
• Knight Templar
• Language of Magic
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: At the end of the first book. And, as it turns out, the beginning as well.
• Last of His Kind
• Like Brother and Sister
• Losing Your Head: Orpheus and Bran.
• Love Triangle: Amelia, Victor and Colin.
• Made a Slave: The music teacher, Miss Daw, claims to Amelia that she is a POW. as a Siren, she is also a Uranian and has the same powers as Amelia.
• Magic a Is Magic A: And Magic B is Magic B, and Magic C is Magic C... they get up to F.
• Malicious Slander
• Mama Bear: Echidna.
• Manipulative Bastard: Headmaster Boggin can usually play the orphans like violins.
• Manly Tears
• Masquerade
• Meaningful Name: The orphans chose their own names. This became quite important towards the end.
• Metaphorgotten
• A Million Is a Statistic
• Mind Over Matter
• More Deadly Than the Male: Amelia, as the most dangerous of the orphans.
• Ms. Fanservice: Amelia from necessity, so she keeps insisting, Vanity far more enthusiastically
• Mutually Exclusive Magic: There is a sophisticated system involving four paradigms of power, each with a specific weakness to a different paradigm and the power to trump another.
  • Plus two composite paradigms.
• Never Found the Body
• Not Quite Dead
• Omnicidal Maniac
• One-Scene Wonder: Most of the Olympians, in Orphans. Telegonus.
• Order Versus Chaos The Olympians vs the Uranians.
• Orphanage of Fear: Though there's an unusual amount of education going on in this one.
• Our Mermaids Are Different
• Parental Abandonment: The title orphans never knew their parents. All of whom are, in fact, alive, but had to surrender their children as hostages to the Olympians.
• Physical God: Lots of them, including some mythological gods.
• The Power of Rock
• Power of Trust
• Power Nullifier
• The President's Daughter
• The Promise
• Promotion to Parent
• Restraining Bolt
• Running Gag: Quentin's "The true name of the first Salmon." It later becomes a Crowning Moment of Awesome when he uses said name to turn a group of Maenads into fish.
• Sacred First Kiss: Amelia is saving hers for Victor. She kisses all of the other orphans first, though. Even Vanity. Chronologically, Victor is the last person she kisses in the entire trilogy.
• Secret Legacy
• Secret Test of Character
• Shout-Out: Many. There is banter mangling together the Lord of the Rings and Wagner's Ring Cycle. When Amelia and Victor are talking on the Queen Elizabeth 2, about what a young man wants, she rattles off something very similar to the "Roc's Egg" monologue from Robert A. Heinlein's Glory Road.
  • Also notable is one point in the second book when the Orphans need to get past a locked, magically trapped door and Quentin uses one of the incantations Gandalf used on the Moria-Gate. Nothing happens.

Quentin: That would have worked if these had been dwarf doors.

• • Also per Word of God, the series is a Perspective Flip of Chronicles of Amber, with the Olympians mapping out to the various Amberite factions.
• Shown Their Work: Concerning the gangs trip to Mars: "astronomers can figure out what year the scene takes place, because I established the orbital positions needed for a Hohmann transfer orbit".
• Show Some Leg
• "Shut Up" Kiss: Don't tell a boy to put you down when you're both being held aloft by aerial spirits.
• So Proud of You
• Spank the Cutie: Amelia runs into this.

Amelia: Headmaster Boggin v. dangerous! Flies! Curses! Bends Space! Spanks!

• Speak of the Devil
• Spock Speak: Victor and Dr Fell, being robotic. This makes their pre-battle banter somewhat...odd.
• Standard Female Grab Area: Amelia has a slight tendency towards this, at least at first.
• Stealth Insult: Boggin's conversation with Centurion Infantophage is loaded with these.
• The Stoic: Victor and Quentin both behave like this most of the time.
• Succession Crisis: Part of the reason the orphans have been in the school so long is there is dispute over who should take the throne of Olympus now that Zeus is dead.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Amelia toward Glum.
• Talking Animal: Lelaps the hound.
• Talking in Your Dreams
• Take a Third Option
• Take That: Amelia's musing after reading Ulysses on how Joyce should have sued his publisher for all the typographical errors. Probably a general Take That to True Art Is Incomprehensible.
  • Also done to Kant, whose books are the only ones in the library that don't give off any usefulness-light when Amelia looks at them with her higher senses.
• Tap on the Head: Amelia tried to do this to Headmaster Boggin, but failed, probably because she didn't really want to cave his head in.
• They Have the Scent
• Through His Stomach
• Trickster Archetype
• True Love Is Exceptional: Mulciber attempts to bribe Amelia by offering her her True Love on a platter.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid
• Voluntary Shapeshifting
• We Need a Distraction: This is Colin's default job.
• What You Are in the Dark
• The Wild Hunt