Royal Blood: Difference between revisions

** Probably based on the real-life myth that kings could heal scrofula (a skin disease) by [[Laying On Hands]]. A lot of French kings actually spent quite a lot of time doing this, for instance. It was part of the job.

*** It was officially restricted to scrofula from 'illness' pretty late in the Middle Ages, to cut down the annoyance and chance of contagion and number of people annoyed about it not working. Right through the seventeenth century, though, people kept coming with things like leprosy.

** And not just "various" royal families. Tolkien took this trope to extremes: via a pretty complicated family tree, Aragorn's son Eldarion is the ultimate in Royal Blood: [http://everything2.com/title/Lineage+of+Aragorn+and+Arwen the High King of all elves and men in the entire world.]

* In ''[[The Prisoner of Zenda]]'', they are willing to try the [[Emergency Impersonation|imposture]], because he is himself illegitimately descended from a [[Ruritania]]n king. The fact that the impostor looks exactly like the king helps...

*** In a typical Discworld subversion, Sam Vimes makes the offhand comment that drawing a sword ''from'' a stone wasn't very special; you could hire a dwarf to hide inside and hold onto it with tongs until the "right guy" came along. Being able to stick a sword ''into'' solid rock... well. That's much more interesting. Carrot demonstrates such an ability, without really noticing or caring at the time.

** True Troll Kings are rather hard to miss, since [[All Trolls Are Different|Discworld trolls are made of Metamorphological rock]], and the kings are made of Diamond.

*** Any troll with a diamond composition could make itself a king (or, presumably, a queen) if it wanted, because they're all but indestructible and much smarter than the rest.

**** According to Mr Shine, any troll with a diamond composition becomes king whether they want or not, since unlike Carrot, hiding isn't an option.

* Arguably, the ''entire human race'' can claim at least some strain of royal blood. It's been stated that most everyone in the Western world is descended from Charlemagne. This is because with every generation going backwards through time, your number of ancestors doubles - you have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, etc. - and the population of the world has been such that it would be almost impossible for an individual to not claim at least one royal ancestor. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/05/the-royal-we/2497/ The concept is explained in detail here.]

**Heck the chief of the first human tribe ruled all the humans in the world making us all descended from a [[Fridge Logic|world ruler.]]

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Royalty and Nobility Tropes]]

[[Category:Older Than Dirt]]

[[Category:Fairy Tale Tropes]]

[[Category:Bloody Tropes]]