History Film / Damsel

* AmbiguouslyBi: Elodi seems attracted to the handsome prince, but she also has some gentle touching and pointed looks with other women.

* BarefootCaptives: Elodie [[LosingAShoeInTheStruggle loses her shoes]] falling down the pit and goes barefoot for the rest of the film, which although [[PrefersGoingBarefoot probably lovely]] for [[CastingGag her]] [[Creator/MillieBobbyBrown actress]] is [[AgonyOfTheFeet very unpleasant for her]]. She eventually makes foot wraps from her dress, but loses those too.

* EyeScream: Elodie [[spoiler:stabs the dragon in the eye with her father's sword. The wound severely damages the dragon's vision, which Elodie then exploits to defeat it.]]
** It's difficult to see, but it seems that the healing glow worms repaired the damage, as the dragon seems to have both eyes when she burns the royal family.

* TheNoseKnows: The dragon can tell people's lineage from smell, to a point. While she can recognize the relationship between Elodie and her father, and can recognize Aurean royal blood, she can't tell the difference between a woman of Aurean royal blood and a woman who has had Aurean royal blood put in her in a BloodOath ceremony.

* OurDragonsAreDifferent: The dragon is a sentient creature capable of human speech. She also has six limbs (four legs and two wings), horizontal pupils, retractable claws, gold blood and scales, an exceedingly long lifespan lasting centuries, and seems to have an inflatable throat sac she uses to breathe fire.

* RedHerring: Two of lord Bayford's soldiers talk about knights who went to fight the dragon in the past, noting that they did so for its blood. In Myth/NorseMythology the hero Siegfried gained NighInvulnerability after slaying the dragon Fafnir and being showered with his blood. Considering the Aurean nobles [[spoiler:had been using a blood sharing ceremony to turn the princesses royals and trick the dragon into thinking they were natural-born daughters, it stood to reason that dragon blood might have similar, possibly magical effects. However while Elodie does wound the dragon and makes her bleed, at no point does her blood figure into the narrative.]]

* ArmourIsUseless: PlayedWith: In the prologue, the Dragon's fire breath is shown to be strong enough to reduce fully-armoured knights to slag in a single blast, and her physical strength and speed is enough to tear them apart with her bare claws like their protective covering was tinfoil, as shown especially with [[Lord Bayford getting crushed/impaled underfoot with minimal effort]]. However, several times the Dragon's BreathWeapon fails to directly strike Elodie running through the caverns, but she still takes splash damage from the flaming propellant splashing everywhere, especially on her legs. [[spoiler:At the climatic fight, Elodie scavenges several armour pieces from her father's deceased retinue to create a makeshift distraction with to lure the Dragon away from Floria, but doesn't equip any of it herself, as it's too heavy and designed for men to wear, choosing instead to use her faster mobility to dodge the Dragon's attacks. However, she still suffers several nasty burns in the fight that proper protective armour would have given her ''some'' defence against, so it's less that armour is outright useless, and more that Elodie lacks access to any protective gear that suits her needs]].

* ArmourIsUseless: PlayedWith: In the prologue, the Dragon's fire breath is shown to be strong enough to reduce fully-armoured knights to slag in a single blast, and her physical strength and speed is enough to tear them apart with her bare claws like their protective covering was tinfoil, as shown especially with [[Lord Bayford getting crushed/impaled underfoot with minimal effort]]. However, several times the Dragon's BreathWeapon fails to directly strike Elodie running through the caverns, but she still takes splash damage from the flaming propellant splashing everywhere, especially on her legs. [[spoiler:At the climatic fight, Elodie scavenges several armour pieces from her father's deceased retinue to create a makeshift distraction with to lure the Dragon away from Floria, but doesn't equip any of it herself, as it's too heavy and designed for men to wear, choosing instead to her her faster mobility to dodge the Dragon's attacks. However, she still suffers several nasty burns in the fight that proper protective armour would have given her ''some'' defence against, so it's less that armour is outright useless, and more that Elodie lacks access to any protective gear that suits her needs]].

* AmbiguousSituation: It's not specified why the dragon [[spoiler: and her babies (before they were murdered) were the last of her kind. A dragon-plague? Competition with humans? Habitat loss? Dwindling prey? Unclear.]]
** It's not clear [[spoiler: when the Aurean royal family realized they could perform a ritual sharing their blood with chosen victims to trick the dragon into killing them instead of their own daughters. Whether the first Aurean king realized this and never even sacrificed his daughters in the first place, or if it took several generation before they figured out this loophole, is left ambiguous.]]
* AndroclesLion: [[spoiler: After Elodie tricks the dragon into setting herself on fire, the dragon is mortally wounded and at her mercy, even telling Elodie to "End it" after being informed she had been unknowingly killing innocents. Rather than kill the dragon however, Elodie not only spares her, but uses the glowworms to save her life, gaining the dragon's allegiance.]]

* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Played straight with Elodie's face; she gets some minor cuts, but nothing that detracts from her beauty. She gets some pretty nasty injuries to the rest of her body, including a big burn on her upper chest- but the glowworms heal those, so there is no lasting damage.

* TheBladeAlwaysLandsPointyEndIn: When Lord Bayford drops his sword [[spoiler: while fighting the dragon]], it lands with the point sticking into the ground.

* DarkIsNotEvil: [[spoiler: The Dragon may appear to be a [[DemonicDragon satanic, bloodthirsty and evil monster]]. However, the truth is that she was scary-looking but benevolent creature who did nothing to deserve the murder of her children. It was this unprovoked crime, which drove her species into functional extinction, that resulted in her becoming a vengeful killer to (who she thought were) the family that did it to her.]]
* TheDeadHaveNames: Elodie finds a cave within the lair engraved with the names of over a dozen previous sacrifices. However, this isn't the names of all the sacrifices, it's just the names of all those who made it to this one section that the dragon can't reach with her claws or fire. Elodie adds her name to the list before leaving.

* DefeatMeansFriendship: [[spoiler: More specifically a combination of this trope, [[TalkingTheMonsterToDeath Elodie explaining to the dragon that the women she had been killing are not from the Aurean royal family]] and [[AndroclesLion healing/sparing the dragon]] after tricking her into setting herself on fire.]]
* DefiantToTheEnd: When the dragon orders [[spoiler: Lord Bayford to call out to Elodie to reveal her hiding spot in exchange for sparing his life, he instead orders her to remain hidden while staring the dragon in the eye, prompting her to kill him.]]
* DelightfulDragon: Downplayed [[spoiler: at first it seems as if the dragon is the classic DemonicDragon, with the rather sadistic way she tormented and hunted down Elodie. However, it's revealed that originally the dragon was this trope as she never did anything to provoke the humans that first settled on Aurea and the king who killed her children. This act is what lead to her becoming vengeful and murderous to the royal family, demanding the kings three daughters in exchange for the lives of her murdered offspring and [[SinsOfOurFathers three woman from the royal family every generation]], so they would know her pain. However, even despite this, she still drew the line at killing innocents and never sought to take her revenge out on anyone but (who she thought were) the royal family, leading to her rage when Elodie revealed that they had fooled her and they had actually been sacrificing innocent women to her for centuries. This sways the dragon to bring an end to her vengeance after burning the royal family to the ground, and seemingly return to this trope.]]
* {{Determinator}}: Elodie and [[spoiler: the Dragon. The former keeps going despite how many injuries she gets or how hopeless her situation. Meanwhile, the latter during the final battle keeps going no matter how many injuries Elodie manages to land on her, with the only injury that brings her down being when Elodie uses her own fire against her.]]
* DieHardOnAnX: Die Hard in a dragon's lair.
* DirtyCoward: [[spoiler: The first Aurean king. He murdered the dragon's helpless offspring without provocation. When the king's soldiers were all killed and he was at the dragon's mercy, he traded his daughters' lives to save his own hide. This also applies to the royal family as a whole, as they have been sacrificing innocent woman rather than face the dragon themselves for centuries.]]

* DragonHoard: The dragon's lair is strewn with jewelry and gold from [[spoiler:all of the sacrificed princesses, especially in the initial drop area. Later, the dragon has created one not for herself, but around the bodies of her dead children, laying gold, jewels and a crown at the base of their broken eggs.]]

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Prince Henry goes along with his family's plans to sacrifice three young women, but he's shown to be much more hesitant than most of the family, knowing it is wrong and does grow to like Elodie in the small time they have with each other. He also [[spoiler:refuses to sacrifice Floria because she's a child,]] protesting against it to the Queen, though he just gets sidestepped and ignored. While he's still shown [[spoiler:marrying the final bride in the end, it's implied it's more out of the Queen forcing him to. When the dragon finally kills him and the rest of his family, he doesn't run, and acts like a DeathSeeker, in contrast to the Queen who just shouts back in futility. Henry just closes his eyes and lets it happen rather than blame Elodie.]]
* EvilCounterpart: Like Elodie, the dragon is a natural born survivor who has been victimised by the Royal Family. In the end, they put aside their differences.
* EvilSoundsDeep: The dragon has a deep but androgynous sounding voice, and is a massive {{Sadist}}.
* EvilSoundsRaspy: Shohreh Aghdashloo's natural rasp is enhanced and deepened for the dragon's voice, befitting a giant reptilian monster stalking the protagonist.

* ExactWords: The Queen gives a speech about how Elodie will join a long line of women who have helped to build the kingdom, a centuries-old tradition, and a legacy of honor and duty she will now inherit. All of this is true- but Elodie was led to believe that it would mean being the new princess, not being sacrificed to a dragon.
* ExcellentJudgeOfCharacter: Lady Bayford, Elodie's stepmother. She almost immediately notices something is wrong with how her husband acts after deciding the Bride Price, and gets very unnerved when the Aurean Queen is casually classist and mistakes Elodie for "Eloise".
* EyeScream: Elodie [[spoiler: stabs the dragon in the eye with her father's sword. The wound severely damages the dragon's vision, which Elodie then exploits to defeat it.]]

** [[spoiler: The dragon herself, after being tricked by Elodie into wounding herself with her own fire and learning that she had not been killing Aurean princesses, but innocent strangers, tells Elodie to "End it" and calmly expects Elodie to slay her, only for Elodie to instead spare her.]]
** The opening scene sets the first Aurean King up to be doing this after his men are killed by the dragon, planting his sword in the ground and hopelessly dropping to his knees to apparently accept his impending fate. [[spoiler: Subverted later when it's revealed the king was an utter coward who was merely begging for his life, and gladly sacrificed his own children in exchange for the dragon sparing him.]]
* FantasticMedicinalBodilyProduct: The glowworms' slime can heal up wounds almost immediately, as Elodie discovers when she wakes up with a bunch of them clustered around her burnt leg. Being able to heal quickly gets her farther than almost any other princess, [[spoiler:and she uses them to save the dragon in the end.]]
* FeministFantasy: A FracturedFairytale where the princess must use all her wits and skill to face the dragon herself and break the tradition of women being used as [[DisposableWoman sacrifices]].[[spoiler:Elodie ultimately triumphs through the help of the other women sacrificed before her, reconciles with the dragon based on how they were both lied to and used by the royal family, and ends the curse.]] In addition, the majority of the cast is women, with only two major male characters: the prince, and Elodie's father.
* {{Foil}}: Elodie's father Lord Bayford and the first Aurean King. [[spoiler: Both are noblemen who sacrificed their daughters to the dragon and entered the dragon's lair. The difference is the former was clearly tormented by the decision and ultimately could not go through with it, going to save Elodie and even sacrificing himself to keep her safe from the dragon. On the other side of the coin, the latter was a DirtyCoward who begged for his life and traded his daughters to save himself from the dragon's wrath.]]
* {{Forgiveness}}:

** Bordering between this and EasilyForgiven above. Elodie [[spoiler:spares the dragon's life when she was at her mercy even after the dragon asked Elodie to kill her. Saying "I'm through being told what to do", and taking action to save her life, despite the dragon killing her father, dozens if not hundreds of princesses and almost herself, under the reasoning both were tricked and put in that position by the Aureans. It turned into a heroic sort of PragmaticVillainy or "Pragmatic Forgiveness" in that both then teamed up to finally kill off the Aurean royals and nobles, while giving the innocents a chance to flee.]]
* {{Foreshadowing}}:

* FriendToAllLivingThings: Elodie puts out a burning bird and expresses sympathy for it, and assures the glowworms that she won't hurt them. While she initially reacts in disgust when the glowworms start crawling on her leg, she apologizes when she realizes they were healing her. [[spoiler: She even ends up forgiving and seemingly befriending the dragon after they both learn they were wronged/deceived by the royal family.]] [[note]] She's not above using horses as sacrificial distraction, though.[[/note]]

** In the cult, Elodie is at first convinced that she will be sacrificed, but the Queen eventually clarifies that paying her due means tossing a coin down the chasm. She relaxes and lets the prince carry her on the bridge....at which point he throws her off, revealing she was the sacrifice all along.

* HumansAreBastards: It first seems as if the dragon holds this view towards all humans, [[spoiler: however this surprisingly downplayed when it's revealed that when she was referring to Elodie and "You! your kind, your blood" she was really talking about the royal family, who were the ones who killed her children, rather than humanity in general.]]

* ImpoverishedPatrician: Elodie's home kingdom is devastatingly poor, her ArrangedMarriage is to win her father enough gold from her bride price to keep their people alive.
* ItCanThink: The dragon makes it clear that it's far more than a simple beast when it speaks to Elodie, explaining its desire for revenge before telling her to run.
* InTheBlood: The Royal House of Aurea is made up of generation after generation of utterly despicable people, going back to its founder who led his people to settle on the island [[spoiler:and slaughtered the dragon's innocent children]]; and who have spent ''centuries'' sacrificing three innocent women every generation [[spoiler:instead of daughters of their own house as the dragon demanded in retribution for their founder's crime]].

** Several generations of the Aurean royal family that [[spoiler: sacrificed innocent woman to the Dragon and got to live out their lives punishment-free before Elodie discovered the truth.]]

* LaserGuidedKarma: [[spoiler:The tradition of HumanSacrifice started with the first king of Aurea, who cravenly accepted the dragon's demands for his daughter's lives to save his own. Lord Bayford, though initially going through with the Royal Family's bargain to gains much-needed funds for his kingdom, ultimately cannot bring himself to do the same, and leads a doomed attempt to rescue Elodie that leads to his own death in her place, though his efforts do ultimately allow Elodie the chance she needs to escape. This leads to Elodie eventually revealing to the Dragon how the Royal Family deceived them both, and the Dragon burning the entire family away, ending their reign that was brought about by a father's sacrifice, and ended by a different one's]].
* LongLived: The Dragon, she is at least hundreds if not thousands of years old by the time she meets Elodie.
* LoopholeAbuse: The dragon kills three women of the Aurean royal family's bloodline every generation. The royal family figured out long ago that [[BloodOath mixing their blood]] with that of a random woman makes them indistinguishable from an actual daughter of the line, and have been tossing temporary daughters-in-law to the dragon for centuries.

* MonsterIsAMommy: [[spoiler: ''Was'' a mommy, anyway. The first king shattered the dragon's eggs, and in repayment, the dragon forced him to sacrifice three daughters of his own line in every generation after. At some point in the process, the royal family figured out that they could sacrifice daughters-in-law instead of actual daughters, so long as they could get them to smell right. The dragon is not happy when Elodie explained what was going on, and destroys the castle in revenge for this betrayal.]]
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: [[spoiler:When Elodie reveals that all the women she's been killing were completely innocent, the dragon coolly tells her to "End it.". While she's already dying and thus had nothing to lose by it, once she's healed she kills the royal family and ends her reign of terror.]]
* NearDeathClairvoyance: When she's on the brink of dying, Elodie briefly sees the spirits of the other women who have been sacrificed to the dragon. While it could be written off as just a hallucination, one of them gives her information she couldn't have known beforehand.
* NearVillainVictory: Elodie comes within a hair's breadth of dying to the dragon multiple times, diving to safety or the dragon being distracted just barely before she's roasted or caught. [[spoiler:The most notable is when the dragon has her cornered by the exit, and is just about to burn her to death....then hears Lord Bayford's voice, and is so outraged she flies to confront him.]]

* OurDragonsAreDifferent: The dragon is a sentient creature capable of human speech. She also has six-limbs (four legs and two wings), horizontal pupils, retractable claws, gold blood and scales, an exceedingly long lifespan lasting centuries, and seems to have an inflatable throat sac she uses to breathe fire.
* PapaWolf: [[spoiler:While he did originally agree to sacrifice her for the good of his kingdom, Lord Bayford feels so bad for it that he eventually comes to save Elodie. When the dragon captures him and tries to make him call for his daughter, he uses the opportunity to apologize to her....and then orders her not to come out, before he's killed by the dragon by it.]]

* PragmaticVillainy: While the Aureans go to great lengths to keep the would-be sacrifices in the dark about what is going on until it is too late, they are very upfront about the whole situation [[spoiler:with the girls' parents when proposing the matches, offering a straight up trade of a staggering amount of gold for the life of their daughters as sacrifice to a dragon, as while you only need to fool the girls until you sacrifice them, lying to their families would be utterly impractical, since they would eventually come around asking questions. Specially with three of them at the same time. Presumably the payment also insures that word doesn't get out about the situation so potential sacrifices aren't forewarned.]]

* RedemptionQuest: Implied, [[spoiler: the final shot of the movie showing the dragon flying alongside Elodie's ship as she returns to her kingdom indicates the dragon, having ended its revenge and destroyed the royal family, is going to help Elodie rebuild her kingdom as a way to not only make up for the suffering she caused Elodie, but also to try and make up for all the innocents that she killed.]]

* RevengeByProxy: [[spoiler: The dragon not only killed the first Aurean kings three daughters because he killed her children unprovoked, but she also demanded the royal family sacrifice three woman from the royal line for centuries.]]

* {{Sadist}}: The dragon says that her prey running in terror is her favorite part and taunts Elodie all the while, even giving her a false sense of hope by [[spoiler:letting her escape up the crystals to the door outside, just so she can swoop around and block it. She also states that the whole point of the generational sacrifices is so the Aureans will know the pain of losing their children as she had in every generation until they die out - which is why she gets so angry after learning that they've actually been sacrificing strangers who have only been part of the family by marriage for a matter of hours for centuries.]]
* SaveTheVillain: One of them, at least: [[spoiler:After defeating the dragon and explaining to her what is really going on, Elodie uses some glow-worms to heal her, and then goes to confront the true villains, her in-laws. Elodie gives the Prince's latest bride, her family, and the castle servants time to run before the dragon sets the castle on fire.]]

* TookALevelInBadass: Elodie is depicted in the trailer as going from a sheltered PrincessClassic destined to be a HumanSacrifice to a battered and hardened warrior. She does have non-standard princess skills: Wood chopping, horseback riding, and interest in mazes. And she's not grossed out by the glowworms. And the strength to pull herself up a rock wall - twice.

* TwoTimerDate: Or in this case, two timer ''[[spoiler:wedding]]''. The need for three sacrifices [[spoiler:without alerting the dragon to the fact that the girls are actually daughters-in-law means that each wedding has to take place so soon after the one before that the brides-to-be can actually coincide at the castle at the same time. Elodie glimpses the first sacrifice on another balcony on her own wedding night.]]

** The Dragon, she is fully prepared to kill grown men and women in some pretty brutal and sadistic ways but the fact that she never [[spoiler: harms Elodie's sister Floria even though keeping her alive serves no purpose indicates that she draws the line at harming children.]]

** In the movie, Victoria is just another one of the many sacrifices through the ages, namely the one who wrote the messages on the walls. In the book, [[spoiler:she was the one who struck the initial bargain. She never intended any princesses to follow her, but accepted the risk as "necessary sacrifices for Aurea", something Elodie curses her for.]]
** In the movie, Prince Henry is the royal most uncomfortable with the sacrifices, apologizing to Elodie before he throws her in [[spoiler:and later refusing to throw Floria down after her.]] In the book, he is the least uncomfortable, showing no remorse over tossing Elodie into the pit and dismissing her as a possible future queen because she's "too spirited", and throwing [[spoiler:Floria]] into the pit himself. His final moments are also changed: [[spoiler:while the movie Henry is genuinely remorseful and accepts his fate to atone for it, the book Henry is clearly faking the whole thing and runs for it.]]

* RuderAndCruder: By virtue of being an adult book rather than a PG-13 movie. Elodie is not a virgin and is looking forward to her wedding night with Prince Henry, there's a scene where she's stripped naked and painted as preparation for the sacrifice, and the book is freer with profanity like "bitch" and "merde".

* ShoutOut: The ship Elodie comes in is called Deomelas, after the short story ''Literature/TheOnesWhoWalkAwayFromOmelas'', another story about a supposed paradise built on the inhabitants quietly allowing others to suffer. [[spoiler:At the end, a number of Aureans sail away on it, risking an uncertain future away from the utopia of Aurea rather than continue to be part of such a society]].

* AmbiguousSituation: It's not specified why the dragon [[spoiler: and her babies (before they were murdered) were the last of her kind, A dragon-plague?, competition with humans?, habitat loss?, dwindling prey? Unclear.]]
** It's not clear [[spoiler: when the Aurean royal family realized they could perform a ritual sharing their blood with chosen victims to trick the dragon into killing them instead of their own daughters, it's unknown if the first Aurean king realized this and never even sacrificed his daughters in the first place or if it took several generation before they figured out this loophole.]]
* AndroclesLion: [[spoiler: After Elodie tricks the dragon into setting herself on fire, the dragon is mortally wounded and at her mercy and even tells her to "End it" after being informed she had been unknowingly killing innocents. Rather than kill her however, Elodie not only spares her, but uses the glowworms to save her life, gaining the dragon's allegiance.]]

* AttackReflector: [[spoiler:Elodie finds a large curved rock structure that she uses to send the dragon's fire breath right back at her.]]

* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Played straight with Elodie's face; she gets some minor cuts, but nothing that detracts from her beauty. She gets some pretty nasty injuries to the rest of her body, including a big burn on her upper chest, but the glowworms heal those, so there is no lasting damage.

* CassandraTruth: Lady Bayford, Elodie's stepmother, tries and fails to reason first with Lord Bayford and then warn Elodie to call off the wedding after becoming suspicious of the royal family's motives. [[spoiler:Subverted later in that Elodie's father is only ''pretending'' not to believe her. He already knows his wife's suspicions are justified and isn't calling off the wedding because he agreed to it knowing fully what it entailed.]]

** While confronting the dragon, [[spoiler: Lord Bayford drops his sword.]] Elodie later retrieves it and it proves very useful [[spoiler: in defeating the dragon.]]

* DarkIsNotEvil: [[spoiler: The Dragon may appear to be a [[DemonicDragon satanic, bloodthirsty and evil monster]], the truth is that she was scary-looking but benevolent creature who did nothing to deserve the murder of her children and it was this unprovoked crime which has drove her species into functional extinction that resulted in her becoming a vengeful killer to (who she thought were) the family that did it to her.]]

* DeadManWriting: Elodie finds messages and a map carved on the walls of the dragon's cave. [[spoiler:When she follows the map to a marked exit, she finds that it leads outside the caves, it doesn't lead to safety, as the exit is halfway up a mountain with no safe way down. She also finds the mapmaker's body next to the exit.]]

* DelightfulDragon: Downplayed [[spoiler: at first it seems as if the dragon is the classic DemonicDragon; however despite the rather sadistic way she tormented and hunted down Elodie, it's revealed that originally the dragon was this trope as she never did anything to provoke the humans that first settled on Aurea and the king who killed her children. This act is what lead to her becoming vengeful and murderous to the royal family, demanding the kings three daughters in exchange for the lives of her murdered offspring and [[SinsOfOurFathers three woman from the royal family every generation]] so they would know her pain. However, even despite this, she still drew the line at killing innocents and never sought to take her revenge out on anyone but (who she thought were) the royal family and was enraged when Elodie revealed that they had fooled her and they had actually been sacrificing innocent women to her for centuries, leading the dragon to bring an end to her vengeance after burning the royal family to the ground and seemingly return to this trope.]]
* {{Determinator}}: Elodie and [[spoiler: the Dragon, the former keeps going despite how many injuries she gets or how hopeless her situation, the latter during the final battle keeps going no matter how many injuries Elodie manages to land on her, with the only injury that brings her down being when Elodie uses her own fire against her.]]

* DirtyCoward: [[spoiler: The first Aurean king, he murdered the dragon's helpless offspring without provocation and then when his soldiers were all killed and he was at the dragon's mercy, he traded his daughters' lives to save his own hide. This also applies to the royal family as a whole as they have been sacrificing innocent woman rather than face the dragon themselves for centuries.]]

* DistressBall: After finding safe water to drink in the form of slowly melting icicles, Elodie stands under them with her mouth open and her eyes closed to catch the droplets, and is seemingly too sore, tired, and thirsty to notice or feel anything other than relief when they start melting faster as the dragon approaches and charges her flame-breath until it's almost too late. Elodie narrowly evades being incinerated, and the dragon snidely mocks her for being so careless.

* EvilCounterpart: Like Elodie, the dragon is a natural born survivor who has been victimised by the Royal Family. In the end they put aside their differences.
* EvilSoundsDeep: The dragon has a deep but androgynous sounding voice and is a massive {{Sadist}}.

* EvilVersusEvil: Elodie and her family are caught between a sadistic, bloodthirsty dragon that has been torturing and killing princesses for centuries [[spoiler:as punishment for someone else's crime]] and a royal dynasty all too willing to continue to procure innocent young women to sacrifice to the beast [[spoiler:so that these innocents can bear the brunt of the dragon's vengeance in their place.]]
* ExactWords: The Queen gives a speech about how Elodie will join a long line of women who have helped to build the kingdom, a centuries-old tradition, and a legacy of honor and duty she will now inherit. All of which is true, but Elodie was led to believe that it would mean being the new princess, not being sacrificed to a dragon.

* {{Foil}}: Elodie's father Lord Bayford and the first Aurean King, [[spoiler: both are noblemen who sacrificed their daughters to the dragon and entered the dragon's lair, the former was clearly tormented by the decision and ultimately could not go through with it, going to save Elodie and even sacrificing himself to keep her safe from the dragon while the latter was a DirtyCoward who begged for his life and traded his daughters to save himself from the dragon's wrath.]]

** After moving to Aurea, Ellie sees another young noblewoman in the tower next to hers, but before they can exchange greetings the other noblewoman is called away. Later that evening she sees a mysterious fire up on the mountainside that quickly disappears, [[spoiler:foreshadowing that this young noblewoman, like Ellie herself not long after, was sacrificed to the dragon; with Elodie later finding her half-charred corpse in one of the tunnels]].

* FriendToAllLivingThings: Elodie puts out a burning bird and expresses sympathy for it, and assures the glowworms that she won't hurt them. While she initially reacts in disgust when the glowworms start crawling on her leg, she apologizes when she realizes they were healing her. [[spoiler: She even ends up forgiving and seemingly befriending the dragon after they both learn they were wronged/deceived by the royal family.]]
** [[note]] not above using horses as sacrificial distraction though[[/note]]

** Ray Winstone and Robin Wright both starred in ''Film/Beowulf2007'', as a hero standing against a mythical monster and a queen respectively.

** The dagger-shaped corset bone that the servants put into Elodie's bodice comes in handy as a tool.

* BarefootCaptives: Elodie [[LosingAShoeInTheStruggle loses her shoes]] falling down the pit and goes barefoot for the rest of the film, which is [[AgonyOfTheFeet very unpleasant for her]]. She eventually makes foot wraps from her dress, but loses those too.

* BigSisterInstinct: [[spoiler:Elodie actually does escape the caves at the end of the second act. Then she learns that her sister Floria was thrown to the dragon in her stead, and heads back in to rescue her.]]

* DefeatMeansFriendship: [[spoiler: More specifically a combination of this trope, [[TalkingTheMonsterMonsterToDeath Elodie explaining to the dragon that the women she had been killing are not from the Aurean royal family]] and [[AndroclesLion healing/sparing the dragon]] after tricking her into setting herself on fire.]]

* StatingTheSimpleSolution: Twice over. [[spoiler:The original king of Aurea offered to just sail away and leave the dragon's home, but it was Princess Victoria who spoke against it, convinced she could slay the dragon. In the centuries since, it's been acknowledged that the royal family could have ended the sacrifices by poisoning a girl before sacrificing her, but consider their crops and wealth to be worth the sacrifices of a few women every year.]]

* ConspicuousConsumption: While Aurea is plenty opulent in the movie, particularly where gold is concerned, Elodie in the book takes special attention to how obscenely Aureans flaunt their fabulous wealth, leaving gold dust on beds, wrapping things in gold paper, giving her opulent feasts and dresses filled with gems. It's later revealed that spoiling the wives is seen as a final grace before the sacrifices, meaning at least part of this is deliberate.

* FaceYourFears: Elodie is claustrophobic due to a traumatic incident when she was young. Having to hide in small crevices forces her to face it.

** Several generations of the Aurean royal family that [[spoiler: have been sacrificing innocent woman whom they marry into the royal family just to sacrifice them to the Dragon and got to live out their lives punishment-free before Elodie discovered the truth.]]