History Literature / RealmOfTheElderlings

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Considering the length of the series it's inevitable that the cast ends up pretty large. Largely averted within any given sub-series though, at least the Fitz trilogies, each of which tends to revolve around a relatively small group of characters. Played straighter in ''The Liveship Traders'' and ''The Rain Wild Chronicles'', both of which have an EnsembleCast.

* DynamicCharacter: Malta changes from a bratty, spoiled and self-centered teenaged daughter of a trader family to a thrifty and patient young woman capable of choosing her words and takes a central role in saving her family and her home city. She does this by way of [[spoiler:plunging headlong into a marriage just for the money and watching her family lose all their fortune due to her father's mismanagement]].

* AmbiguousGender: In the ''Farseer'' trilogy there's the Fool, who the narrator Fitz believes is male. The ''Liveship Traders'' trilogy has a totally different dramatis personae, including the female Amber. It's never stated that these two are the same person, but more and more clues are dropped as the trilogy progresses, and because Amber advises Althea on how to disguise herself as a boy we start to think he/she is really female and was disguised as male in the earlier books. But in the ''Tawny Man'' trilogy, where we and Fitz are told outright that [[spoiler:both characters are the same person]], there's a section where [[spoiler:Fitz inhabits the Fool's body and can presumably tell what sex he/she is, but never tells us! Fitz implies that the Fool's kind are so different from humans that neither gender is appropriate -- but then there's the Pale Woman to account for, who is clearly female, leading to the conclusion that not all Whites are the same]]. This is in line with the Fool's claim that where he comes from, people don't insist on the existence of only two genders.

* DemotedToExtra: Tends to happen to most characters in the Fitz trilogies who survive any one trilogy, e.g. [[spoiler: Kettricken, Molly and Starling after the first trilogy, Dutiful, Elliana, Hap, Thick and Web after ''Tawny Man''.]] The only real constants are Fitz, the Fool, [[spoiler: Chade, and to a certain extent Nighteyes]].

* GenderBenderName: Jess is generally short for Jessica, but the Jess in this series is a man and Jess doesn't appear to be short for anything.

* NotSoDifferent: Althea and Malta, which is ironic as they often butt heads, but their headstrong personalities make Malta a lot more like her aunt their her timid, dowdy mother.
** Neither are Kennit and [[spoiler:Wintrow]], as it turns out.

* EatenAlive: [[spoiler:Hest]] suffers this fate, SwallowedWhole to boot. [[KarmicDeath Not that he didn't have it coming.]]

* MoralityKitchenSink: Justified. The Six Duchies folk, the Bingtowners, and the Outislanders all have very different standards of morality, depending on their previous histories, and even those groups are not morally homogenous, with each individual character bringing their own reasons and morals to the story.

* OurElvesAreDifferent: The Elderlings combine this with LizardFolk. They are taller, more beautiful, with metallic eye colours, telepathic and possessed {{Magitek}}. As a mark of the dragons they live alongside, they also have scales and sometimes claws and even wings. Later it is revealed that [[spoiler:they are not really a separate race as such, but humans and their offspring who have been 'claimed' by Dragons and shaped in their image through magic]]. The lucky ones get much longer lifespans than humans and magical powers, but because Dragons are [[BlueAndOrangeMorality generally unconcerned]] with most things besides themselves and prone to forgetting such insignificant things as humans -- after all, [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman what measure is a non-dragon?]] --, this can also end up being BlessedWithSuck.
* {{Phlebotinum}}: The [[spoiler: Silver, or liquid skill]]. Embedded in various objects it seems to be able to produce any magical effect desired, including all the various Elderling {{magitek}} like the Skill-pillars and the [[InvisibilityCloak Butterfly Cloak]] as well as more mundane things like lighting and the skill-cubes (basically magic tape recorders). Later revealed to be the source of [[spoiler:the Skill as well as the Dragons' various powers, and by extension Wizardwood and Liveships]].

* AerithAndBob: Characters such as Fitz, Burrich, Regal, and Chade...as well as Molly and Will. Possibly a case of EarlyInstallmentWeirdness, as the characters with "normal names" are introduced in the first book and are out of the picture by the end of the first trilogy.

%% RealityEnsues: protip: if you want someone to help you, don't make them look stupid for months first.

* StandardRoyalCourt: The Farseer court at Buckkeep is as standard as it gets, with -- most of the time -- a King, his Queen, the King-in-Waiting (or Queen-in-Waiting, but the books are dominated by the male members of the Farseer line), princes, a royal bastard -- hello, Fitz -- , TheSpymaster doing double duty as the chancellor, [[TheJester the Fool]], various nobles and their hanger-ons, the King's/Queen's Guards, the normal guards and a vast array of servants.

* AnnoyingArrows: Thoroughly averted. [[spoiler: Prince Rurisk of the Mountain Kingdom had taken an arrow through the chest initially some time before his appearance in ''Assassin's Apprentice'', and it still ails him greatly; and FitzChivalry takes an arrow in his back in ''Assassin's Quest'' that must be ''very'' carefully (and painfully) extracted a week later when he has recovered enough so he won't bleed out in the effort.]]

* PowerIncontinence: See: TheRainman.
** Despite his refusal to use it intentionally, [[spoiler:Burrich]] is so buzzing with the Wit, not only do [[{{FriendToAllLivingThings}} animals instinctively come to him]] but, he's been [[{{HealingHands}} working as a mystical chiropractor]] all these years and not known it.

* TheRainman: Subverted. Thick's PowerIncontinence makes him a sheer terror to train [[spoiler:until the end of the last book]], and because of his childish mind, when he's uncomfortable or upset he can't help but radiate those feelings outward. It's enough to make people who aren't even sensitive to the Skill share his seasickness.

* DeadlyDecadentCourt: Usually not decadent, but the first books are called ''Royal Assassin'' and ''Assassin's Apprentice'' for a reason.

* OurElvesAreBetter: The Elderlings combined this with LizardFolk. They were taller, more beautiful, with metallic eye colours, telepathic and possessed {{Magitek}}. As a mark of the dragons they lived alongside, they also had scales and sometimes claws and even wings. Later it is revealed that [[spoiler:they are not really a separate race as such, but humans and their offspring who have been 'claimed' by Dragons and shaped in their image through magic]]. The lucky ones get much longer lifespans than humans and magical powers, but because Dragons are [[BlueAndOrangeMorality generally unconcerned]] with most things besides themselves and prone to forgetting such insignificant things as humans -- after all, [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman what measure is a non-dragon?]] --, this can also end up being BlessedWithSuck.

* BigBadEnsemble: Regal and the Red Ships (technically their leader Kebal Rawbread counts, but [[TheGhost he never makes an appearance]].

** What does seem more like this trope is the carving of Girl-on-a-Dragon; the leader of that coterie thought to preserve herself, carving a human body astride the coterie's dragon and attempting to fill only the body with her mind. [[spoiler:Her vanity and reluctance to throw herself fully to the dragon resulted in it not fully awakening, leaving it lifeless and half-trapped in stone.]]

* BigBadEnsemble: Regal and the Red Ships.

* AerithAndBob: Characters such as Fitz, Burrich, Regal, and Chade...as well as Molly and Will.

** [[spoiler:Chancellor Ellik is presumed to die alongside the Duke of Chalced, but of course, because the reader never sees the body, he's still alive and kicking by the time of Fitz and the Fool.]

* OffScreenMomentOfAwesome: While we do see the set-up for it, [[spoiler: the actual destruction of the ducal palace in Chalced]], along with [[spoiler: the deaths of Chancellor Ellik and the Duke of Chalced]] and [[spoiler: Chassim’s ascendancy to the throne]], are skipped over. Instead, these events are all related in a conversation in the next chapter.

** Dragons are intelligent, can fly, and they breath acid as a weapon. They also have a complex life cycle. They begin as Sea Serpents, go upriver to cocoon themselves inland, and emerge as dragons. [[spoiler:The disruption of this cycle created the current state of the world, with the dragons all but gone and humanity's knowledge of the magics of the past nearly lost.]]