What's Up, King Dude?/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Commoners are allowed easy access to royalty.

  • Straight: Vince, though a commoner, walks up to the king in his palace without any trouble.
  • Exaggerated: Vince makes a not-so-subtle entrance into the palace, makes out with the princess and/or queen, and talks boisterously to the king and/or prince, and nobody says anything.
  • Justified: It's a festival or special occasion where barriers between commoners and royalty are relaxed.
    • Vince is a war veteran and fought by the king's side, where they became good friends.
    • Vince is a wealthy merchant who bribed his way in.
    • This is a society where Asskicking Equals Authority, so nobody really poses a threat to the king.
    • The king wants to be seen as a man of the people, so he lets commoners speak freely to him.
    • The King is cruising the bars in disguise as a vacation from court ceremony. He is a regular at one joint and everyone knows who he is but the pretense is kept for good manners.
    • The King is a vassal ruler serving in the army of The Empire. To Imperial officers a local king is a respectable but not particularly awesome title-like baron is in The Empire.
    • The King is a Noble Fugitive with a job as janitor in the Cafe American. Rick is his boss and can toss him out on his royal ear.
  • Inverted: Access to royalty is so tightly controlled that Vince doesn't even know the king's real name or what he looks like.
    • The king randomly shows up at Vince's house.
  • Subverted: Vince goes up to the king as if it's seemingly normal, until the king orders his guards to drag him to the dungeons for insubordination.
  • Double Subverted:...where the king meets them again, revealing the entire thing to be a prank on his good buddy Vince.
  • Parodied: The commoner Vince has his own room and gang of servants at the palace for no reason at all.
  • Deconstructed: Though warned against such lax policy, the King doesn't believe that any 'lowly commoners' could seriously threaten him. This attitude comes back to haunt him when an assassin disguised as a common farmer comes in to speak with him.
  • Reconstructed: The king proceeds to beat the would-be assassin to a bloody pulp.
  • Zig Zagged: Vince talks to the king as if it's normal in one episode, but in another episode he has to wait nearly 2 weeks before his request for an audience is granted.
    • The King is only willing to meet with some commoners; others have to go through various extra procedures, unless they have information that their ruler simply must hear immediately...
  • Averted: Vince never goes to the palace or sees the king outside normal circumstances.
    • Vince has to wait for an audience as normal.
    • Vince doesn't even live in a monarchy at all.
  • Enforced: Vince is the protagonist of an RPG, and the programmers didn't want to force the player to jump through all sorts of hoops just to access the King and the quests he hands out.
  • Lampshaded: "Is he allowed to just waltz up to the king like that?"
  • Invoked: To show the idiot king just how bad of a job he's doing, The Good Chancellor convinces the king to relax his security for a short period of time to allow his subjects the time to express their dissatisfaction.
  • Defied: "Talk to the king about it? Are you nuts? They'd never let some common schmuck like me into the palace!"
  • Discussed: "How did I just go up to the king like that? I paid off the guards, that's how."
  • Conversed: "So why did they let that guy just stroll on up to the king again?"