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

* [[Knight in Shining Armor]]: Ser Loras, Ser Barristan, Ser Garlan, the old Kingsguard (at least according to the rose-tinted glasses of those who remember them) and many characters from the "Dunk & Egg" stories. Most of them are [[Deconstruction|deconstructed]] to a greater or lesser extent. Brienne plays the trope more or less straight, with the twist being that she is female. Sandor Clegane so despises this trope that he [[Defied Trope|has refused multiple offers of knighthood]], even when he joins the Kingsguard.

* [[Knight Templar]]: Stannis Baratheon is a rigid and merciless man who never compromises on anything. He has an even ''bigger'' [[Knight Templar]] advisor, the priestess/sorceress Melisandre, who wants to burn all false gods in preparation for the last battle against evil. The rise of the [[Church Militant]] of the Swords and the Stars provides even more opportunities for the trope. Finally, the Brotherhood Without Banners have gone from Robin Hood Expys to this under Lady Stoneheart aka {{spoiler|Catelyn}}

** Torrhen Stark became known as the King Who Knelt because he chose to submit to Aegon the Conqueror rather than fight a battle he could not win.

** After a failed rebellion, Balon Greyjoy accepts his defeat, even though it comes with two of his three sons being killed and the third taken hostage, biding his time until the day when he can rebel successfully.

* [[Mad Libs Catchphrase]]: [[Madness Mantra|Reek, Reek, it rhymes with ______]].

* [[Mad Love]]: {{spoiler|The loony Lysa Tully Arryn, whose [[Horrible Judge of Character|terrible taste in suitors]] makes her an easy pawn for Petyr Baelish}}.

* [[The Magnificent]]: [[Long List|Tormund]] Giantsbane, [[The Munchausen|Tall-talker]], Horn-blower and Breaker of Ice; Tormund Thunderfist, [[But You Screw One Goat!|Husband to Bears]], the Mead-king of Ruddy Hall, Speaker to Gods and [[Really Gets Around|Father of Hosts]].

* [[Mama Bear]]:

** The ''Kettleblack'' brothers (as in "the pot calling the...") are involved in a scheme by Cersei to accuse Margaery of crimes that Cersei herself is guilty of.

** Ami Frey is a very [[Really Gets Around|friendly]] young woman.

* [[Medieval Stasis]]: Westerosi technology has improved very slowly over its extremely long history. The continent was once ruled by the Children of the Forest, with stone age technology, who were then conquered by the First Men with Bronze Age technology, who were then partially replaced by the Andals with Iron Age technology. In the last thousand years, technology has not significantly improved. In fact, some ancient marvels of engineering, such as the Wall, Harrenhal, and the hot-springs-heated Winterfell, are probably built on [[Lost Technology]]. However, it's hinted that the timeline includes many legends and anachronisms, so it's not entirely trustworthy.

* [[Mentor Archetype]]: Littlefinger for Sansa Stark; Syrio Forel, Jaqen H'ghar and the Kindly Old Man for Arya Stark; Jeor "Old Bear" Mormont and Qhorin Halfhand for Jon Snow; Ser Arlan for Dunk

* [[Murder, Inc.]]: The Faceless Men are a foreign religious order who worship death, to the point that one of their two primary services is painless euthanasia. They are also the most skilled assassins in the world, able to murder anyone for the right price. Contract killing is a sacred act to them. There is also a lesser guild of assassins called the Sorrowful Men, who apologize to their victims the instant before they kill them.

* [[My Beloved Smother]]: Cersei Lannister gave Joffrey free rein, but does this with Tommen after {{spoiler|Joffrey's death}}. Lysa Arryn does this with Robert. Both find a strange balance between coddling their children's flaws so they don't outgrow them and smothering them to prevent them from maturing. Olenna Tyrell makes no apologies for running her son Mace's life, stating, "All these kings would do a deal better if they would put down their swords and listen to their mothers." Subverted in that Olenna is way more competent than him.

* [[My Nayme Is]]:

** Westerosi culture features a lot of archaic, alternate, or non-English spellings of common names, such as "Eddard" instead of "Edward". The letter Y crops up quite often in names, especially as a vowel. Knights are titled ''ser'' rather than the traditional English "sir."

* [[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...

* [[Necromancer]]:

** The Others, who raise the corpses of people and animals they kill (and possibly corpses in general) as wights.

* [[No Party Like a Donner Party]]: In ''A Dance With Dragons'', some of Stannis' men end up eating their dead when they are trapped by a massive snowstorm during the march to Winterfell. They get burned alive for it.

* [[No Pronunciation Guide]]: GRRM is of the opinion that you should be allowed to decide on pronunciations for yourself. This is probably because he didn't ''want'' to have to decide how to say "Xaro Xhoan Daxos" or "Jaqen H'ghar." The TV series immediately begged his help.

* [[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.

** 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.}}

** Ned Stark names two of his children Brandon and Rickon, probably after his brother and father who were killed by the Mad King. Robert Arryn (and probably Robb Stark) is named after King Robert Baratheon; there has been more than one Jon running around (Arryn, Connington, Snow, two Umbers); there's two Balons (Swann, Greyjoy); it seems to be a House Stark tradition to ''always'' have a Brandon in each generation (The Builder; The Shipwright; The Burner; The Daughterless; The Broken); and there's more Aegons, Viseryses, Aeryses, Daerons, and Baelors than you can break a spear at.

** House Frey is a particular exception for all the Walders and Waldas, named to suck up to family patriarch Walder Frey - even the ''other characters'' get confused, and good luck trying to remember whether you're reading about Black Walder or Red Walder or Bastard Walder without [[All There in the Manual|referring to the family tree]]. Winterfell takes on two young wards, ''both'' named Walder Frey. They're called Big Walder and Little Walder in reference to their age, but Little Walder is bigger than Big Walder, which greatly amuses the two boys but confuses everyone else.

* [[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.]]}}"

* [[Playing With Syringes]]: Qyburn, who is struck off by the Citadel but continues his research (which at its most explicit is described as "cut[ting] open the living in order to better understand death") on prisoners in Cersei's [[Oubliette|oubliettes]].

* [[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.

* [[Powder Keg Crowd]]: During the starvation, the hungry poor people of King's Landing become this when King Joffrey deliberately provokes them (by telling the Hound to kill anyone that gets between him and someone who threw shit at Joffrey).

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

* [[Pretty Boy]]:

** Also, Joffrey Baratheon, who is described as a combination of his sister Myrcella and his uncle Jaime, {{spoiler|who also happens to be his father.}}

** Jaime was apparently one in his early youth, when he and his beautiful sister were almost spitting images of each other.

* [[Red Oni, Blue Oni]]: Fire and Ice is a central theme, so there are a number of examples:

** The [[Evil Is Deathly Cold|deathly cold Others]] and the [[Light Is Not Good|fire-themed R'hllor]].

** Stoic Ned Stark and [[Boisterous Bruiser]] Robert Baratheon.

** Doran and Oberyn Martell, to the point of being [[Sibling Yin-Yang]]. However, in ''Dance'', Doran explains to his nieces that it was an [[Exploited Trope]]: like long grass, his calm, harmless demeanour "hides [[In-Series Nickname|the viper]] from his enemies and shelters him until he strikes".

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

* [[Royal Blood]]

** The Targaryens, though it seems to be touch and go: there's an equal chance that each new Targaryen baby will be a total nutter like Aerys or a reasonably capable leader like his son, Rhaegar.

** The Baratheons are hardly any better; Robert was a lazy, inconsistent ruler as well as a drunk and adulterer, his brothers went to war over his throne, and the two children who've succeeded him are actually his wife's bastards by her own brother. Joffrey in particular seemed to share the worst qualities of both his biological parents and his legal father, and the graces of none of them.