History Literature / TheBrokenEmpireTrilogy

** Any sympathy you might have felt for [[spoiler: Brother Row]] should disappear once you find out that he was into girls '' younger than twelve'' whilst alive.

* AdvancedAncientHumans: See AfterTheEnd below for more details.

* {{Anyone Can Die}}: Including quite a few Brothers and [[spoiler: Jorg himself.]]

** The copper box in ''King Of Thorns''.

* {{Blood Knight}}: Jorg himself at times and several of the Brothers from his band. However, Egan of Arrow outdoes them both.

* {{Combat Pragmatist}}: Jorg, Makin and their entire band of Brothers. They keep catching others by surprise by how dirty they're willing to fight. Even Necromancers.

* TheManBehindTheMan: All seers aspire to become this, but Sageous is the master of this trope.

* {{Mind Rape}}: [[spoiler: A favorite tactic of several sorcerers, including Sageous, Corion and Katherine.]]

* NeckSnap: What Chella does to [[spoiler: Young Sim]] after she catches him.
* [[spoiler: NeverBringAGunToAKnifeFight]]: Averted: Jorg bypasses what would have been a virtually hopeless duel by using [[spoiler: a Colt. 45 revolver he is given by the Fexler Brews hologram.]]

* {{Ax Crazy}}: Jorg, who says this gem:
-->You got responsibilities when you're a leader. You got a responsibility not to kill too many of your men. Or who're you going to lead?
//During combat, he also reminiscences about the ''seven shades of fluid'' you can draw from a man, and finds the sound of sword cutting through flesh ''sweeter than the best flute''.

* CreateYourOwnHero | CreateYourOwnVillain: Depending on whether you see Jorg as the hero or villain, but either way [[spoiler: Sageous shouldn't have killed William or Jorg's mother]].

** Bishop Murillo, a corrupt clergyman in ''Prince of Thorns'', gets killed by Jorg by ''having nails hammered into his head''. Jorg later complains that it wasn’t ''slow'' enough for him. (Don't worry, [[PedophilePriest Murillo]] [[KickTheSonOfABitch deserved it]].)

* KickTheSonOfABitch: Between other bandits, cruel aristocrats and perverted and/or corrupted religious figures, some of Jorg's victims tend to be just as noxious as he is.

** Any sympathy you might have felt for [[spoiler: Brother Row]] should disappear once you find out that he was into girls ''[[{{Squick}} younger than twelve]]'' whilst alive.

As well as the short story collection, ''Road Brothers, Tales From the Broken Empire,'' which features side stories and backstories for some of the characters.

* ArcNumber: 2 for Jorg in ''Empire of Thorns''. As Qalasadi spelt it:
-->Qalasadi: "Two friends lost in dry-lands? Two friends to be made in the desert? Two years away from your throne? Two women who will own your heart? [[spoiler:Two decades you will live?]]"

* AsTheGoodBookSays: Averted in the traditional sense, as the Roma Church has gathered all the Bibles for its priests and refuses to give them to anyone else, much like the real Catholic Church did at one point. However, Jorg at one point goes and says something he just made up and says he’s read it in the book. When asked on the book he replies "It's in the great Jorg’s book of [[PrecisionFStrike Go Fuck Yourself]]."

** Jorg and his band come to Fire-sworn Ferrakind in the hope he can cure Gog of his condition or help him master his powers. Ferrakind attempts to assimilate him instead. [[spoiler: Jorg, prepared for this, got Gog to channel Ferrakind's flames to the frozen lake above them until it melts and extinguishes Terrakind. However, Gog dies as well.]]
** [[spoiler: As Jorg gets tainted with both necromancy and pyromancy, Ferrakind and Dead King attempt to claim him for themselves, fighting against each other within his body. In the end, they end up neutralising each other's presence and cleansing Jorg from all magic.]]

* AwesomeButImpractical: Jorg considers the medieval siege engines in this way in the ''King of Thorns'', because of how difficult it is to transport and supply them.

** Jorg's younger brother William makes even Jorg looks soft: [[spoiler: His will is so strong that after death he breaks the control that the necromancers had on him and makes them his puppets, when he was ''seven''. Only a little later, he becomes ''king of the dead''.]]

** He can't bring himself to kill [[spoiler:his baby half-brother]], even though [[spoiler:as the legitimate heir of their father]] he's an obstacle in his quest for the throne. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, he wasn't able to control his necromantic powers while holding him, and accidentally killed him.]]

* FormulaicMagic: Mathmagic is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, a branch of magic which uses mathematical formula as its base with its most common application being calculating projection of the future. A relatively subtler branch of magic compared to Necromancy or Pyromancy, though it seemingly has fewer risks too.

* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: Averted with Katherine Ap Scorron, who is one of the most positive characters in the books. [[spoiler: Eventually subverted as it turns out she never really was pregnant in the first place, and the "abortion" was application of poisons that made her sterile.]]

* HeroAntagonist: Prince Orrin in the second book is this. He wants to unite the Hundred broken kingdoms into the original empire in order to bring peace to the people, not for sake of power or challenge like Jorg.

* LustObject: Katherine becomes this for Jorg after their first meeting. Although he acknowledges that she probably hates him, he spends the coming years frequently fantasizing about her.

* NotDistractedByTheSexy: Jorg barely manages to move his gaze away from Chella's naked form, which somehow manages to be seductive in spite her being dead.

* ShoutOut: When Jorg locked Costco and his fifteen supporters with him so he can [[spoiler:beat them to death]], one of them shouts that he simply trapped himself with them. Jorg's retort? [[ComicBook/{{Watchmen}} He thinks they're trapped there with him]].

* VestigialEmpire: The "Hundred" are the kingdoms that remained after the empire they once formed broke apart; they have been fighting each other ever since. Jorg's ultimate goal is to reunify the empire.

* ShoutOut: When Jorg locked Costco and his fifteen supporters with him so he can [[spoiler:beat them to death]] one of them shouts that he simply trapped himself with them. Jorg's retort?[[ComicBook/{{Watchmen}} He thinks they're trapped with him]].

-->Qalasadi: "Two friends lost in dry-lands? Two friends to be made in the desert? Two years away from your throne? Two women who will own your heart? Two decades you will live?’ The magic lies in the first number, the mathematics in the second."

* {{Abusive Parents}}: Jorg's father is a cold, cruel, callous, calculating bastard, who uses his son for his own ends.
** After you've read about Justice in ''King Of Thorns'', you will lose what little sympathy you may or may not have had for Jorg's father. [[spoiler: Justice was Jorg and William's pet dog. As a punishment to Jorg for breaking a snowglobe, his father made Jorg take a hammer and break three of his dog's legs. When Jorg refused to break the fourth, his father had the dog burned alive. Jorg was six years old.]]

* {{Artifact of Doom}}: [[spoiler: The still functional nuclear bomb, which Jorg uses to great effect.]]

* AsTheGoodBookSays: Averted in the traditional sense, as the Roma Church has gathered all the Bibles for its priests and refuses to give them to anyone else, much like the real Catholic Church did at one point.
** However, Jorg at one point goes and says something he just made up and says he’s read it in the book. When asked on the book he replies "It's in the great Jorg’s book of [[PrecisionFStrike Go Fuck Yourself]]."

* AssimilationBackfire: Jorg and his band come to Fire-sworn Ferrakind in the hope he can cure Gog of his condition or help him master his powers. Ferrakind attempts to assimilate him instead. [[spoiler: Jorg, prepared for this, got Gog to channel Ferrakind's flames to the frozen lake above them until it melts and extinguishes Terrakind. However, Gog dies as well.]]
** Happens at the end of the book as well. [[spoiler: as Jorg gets tainted with both necromancy and pyromancy, Ferrakind and Dead King attempt to claim him for themselves, fighting against each other within his body. In the end, they end up neutralising each other's presence and cleansing Jorg from all magic.]]

** During combat, he also reminiscences about the ''seven shades of fluid'' you can draw from a man, and finds the sound of sword cutting through flesh ''sweeter than the best flute''.

* {{Determinator}}: Besides his savage cunning and amorality, this is the other key feature of Jorg. The guy will not quit, starting from childhood when he survived impalement on the hook briar patch and the surgeries that removed the thorns from his body and later surviving a long trek through a radioactive desert that no else has ever survived.
** His younger brother makes even Jorg looks soft: [[spoiler: His will is so strong that after death he breaks the control that the necromancers had on him and makes them his puppets, when he was ''seven''. Only a little later, he becomes ''king of the dead''.]]

** The last part was later subverted in ''King Of Thorns'', when [[spoiler: it's revealed that said "companion" was a dog torturing sadist whom Jorg had punished earlier that day. Said torture reminded Jorg of the Justice incident mentioned above. Jorg knew that said "companion" was planning to try to kill him, so Jorg killed him before he had the chance.]]

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Jorg has a few.

** He also would not hurt a dog, and neither should you in front of him.

* FantasyGunControl: True to form, the cool, twin-firing crossbow Nuban has [[spoiler:and which is eventually taken by Jorg for himself]] is about as advanced as ''functional'' ranged weapons (as opposed to rusting, millennia-old rifles nobody has any idea how to use) get in this world. The only exception is [[spoiler:the Colt revolver that the hologram of Fexler Brews killed himself with and which is taken by Jorg.]]

** GodivaHair: Chella manages to make her rotting body look attractive though the combination of magic, strategically placed ''slime'' and this.
* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: Averted with Katherine Ap Scorron, who is one of the most positive characters in the books.
** [[spoiler: Eventually subverted as it turns out she never really was pregnant in the first place, and the "abortion" was application of poisons that made her sterile.]]

* HopeSpot: There are plenty of these in the books, often when Jorg decides to do something evil, considers against it, then does it anyway.
** In ''King of Thorns'', he returns to the circus that helped his band earlier. Before leaving, he notices a starved lion in the cage, and is eventually left alone with it. He considers the livelihoods of the circusfolk and the carnage a starved lion will wreak, then opens the cage anyway.

* MercyKill: Jorg does this to [[spoiler: a dying infant girl, using sedative drugs to ease her pain.]]
** Later, he kills [[spoiler: Lesha]] before a group of torturing bandits can take her. He also kills a little girl living with them and calls it helping her, because now she won't be able to grow up like he did.
** Averted with [[spoiler: Coddin]], whom he refuses to kill in spite of him getting an arrow through the stomach, something that usually results in slow and painful death. He does it because he still needs his advice, and it works: in ''Emperor of Thorns'', Coddin is still alive, though unable to move and has to have his wound regularly washed and bandaged.

* NotDistractedByTheSexy:of Jorg barely manages to move his gaze away from Chella's naked form, which somehow manages to be seductive in spite her being dead.

* NotMeThisTime: Jorg might not be exceptionally evil when compared to his fellow kings and princes, but he's still a very evil character by today's standards. However, he didn't [[spoiler: rape Katherine Ap Scorron: that was Friar Glen, who found her unconscious.]]
** Similarly, when in disguise at the castle of his grandfather, he is accused of poisoning the guards' food. [[spoiler: This was actually Qalasadi, their Moor advisor.]]

* {{Too Spicy for Yog Sothoth}}: Nearly at the start of the story, a ghost tries to haunt Jorg; instead of fleeing, Jorg allows the spectre to see into his mind ... and the ghost runs away, since our protagonist can offer worse thoughts than the ghost itself.
** Later subverted when it is discovered that [[spoiler: the ghost wasn't running from Jorg, but the wizard that had its hands in him.]]

* {{After the End}}: At first the world appears to be a classic medieval fantasy setting, although with fantasy elements like undeath thrown in. Soon enough we learn that it's our world when Jorg starts talking about Plutarch and Plato. As the story goes on it becomes apparent that it's set in the far future. Our civilization reached new heights in the past before it destroyed itself, leaving behind a changed world of little technology, powerful magic and remnants of the 'builders'. Jorg's house took the ruins of a skyscraper for their castle, among other things.
** The nuclear war caused sea levels to rise dramatically worldwide, which led to drastically changed coastlines as can be seen on the maps. The Drowned Isles are what's left of Britain, Crath City, Jorg's hometown, is actually Paris and the old Empire's capital is what used to be Vienna.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: The fates of [[spoiler: Chella and Count Renar]] are left unresolved, although in the case of the first it's a pretty safe bet to assume death ([[spoiler: since she killed Jorg while surrounded by his allies, and magic stopped working just after]]), and one would hope the same for the second. The story also never truly confirms if Jorg's [[spoiler:uncle and grandfather]] survived the final battle against the undead forces of the Dead King.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Jorg despises the fanatical, intolerant and hypocritical [[CorruptChurch Church of Roma]]. He also would not hurt a child. Nor, for that matter, a dog, and neither should you in front of him.

* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Subverted. Many kingdoms have obvious medieval counterparts, like Arrow in medieval England or Maladon in Viking Scandinavia. However, these cultures ''aren't'' fantasy: they're the same medieval cultures reborn (quite possibly ''intentionally'') after the collapse of the modern world a thousand years earlier.
* FantasyGunControl: True to form, the cool, twin-firing crossbow Nuban has [[spoiler: and which is eventually taken by Jorg for himself]] is about as advanced as ''functional'' ranged weapons (as opposed to rusting, millennia-old rifles nobody has any idea how to use) get in this world. The only exception is [[spoiler: the Colt revolver that the hologram of Fexler Brews killed himself with and which is taken by Jorg.]]
** At one point, Jorg specifically asks the Fexler Brews hologram to teach him how to create guns. He firmly refuses, believing that the people of Jorg's world are not advanced enough to handle the power. [[spoiler: Although he does let him take the single Colt revolver for himself.]]

* ILoveNuclearPower: Many of the fantastic creatures encountered were originally created by the fallout from the Builders' Suns (e. g. a nuclear war).

* AffablyEvil | FauxAffablyEvil: Jorg zigzags between the two.

* AMillionIsAStatistic: Frequently averted throughout the book, as Jorg and other characters are fully aware of lives they take throughout the book. At one point, Jorg describes an unnamed soldier's corpse as "something that lived and laughed only hours ago."

* TheBigGuy: Rike is the biggest of the Brothers, larger even than Makin, and he prides himself on that and his strength. The only person he's shown to wholeheartedly -- almost childishly -- respect is the strong man from Taproot's circus, who is bigger and can lift Rike up.

* {{The Brute}}: Brother Rike.

* DeadpanSnarker: Jorg, frequently.

* FreudianExcuse: Jorg [[ForcedToWatch watched]] his brother being murdered and his mother being raped then murdered when he was still a child, while he was stranded in a hook briar patch and lacerated by the thorns. His father was also an [[AbusiveParents Abusive Parent]]. And, finally, we learn in the third book that he completely snapped after [[spoiler:he was raped by Bishop Murillo while he was still a child]].
* GeniusBruiser: Jorg is this compared to his Road Brothers, thanks to his royal upbringing.

The author has another trilogy, ''Literature/TheRedQueensWar'' - set in the same world - which can be read independently. That said, it does provide some crucial information on what is going on in the background of this one, and Jorg even shows up at one point to meet the other protagonist, Jalan.

* ArrangedMarriage: The marriage of Jorg and Miana. Before the wedding day, they only saw each other once at the Castle Morrow (He was fourteen and she was eight). Jorg put this memory into Luntar's box and thus, forgetting entirely this encounter as well as the fact that she was six years younger than he was.

* BrainUploading: Some builders have survived this way. [[spoiler: Also happens to Jorg at the end of 'Emperor of Thorns'.]]

* {{Anyone Can Die}}: Including quite a few brothers and [[spoiler: Jorg himself.]]

* BefriendingTheEnemy: Though whether it's Jorg or [[spoiler: Qalasadi and Yusef]] who is the enemy being befriended here is open for interpretation. Jorg shows up to Afrique with the intention of seeking revenge for an attempt on the lives of his mother's family, but after kicking around the place, having some adventures, and asking "what would Makin do?" he decides to [[spoiler: genuinely accept the mathemagician's offer of friendship and spares their lives, gaining needed information in the process]].

* {{Combat Pragmatist}}: Jorg, Makin and their entire band of brothers. They keep catching others by surprise by how dirty they're willing to fight. Even Necromancers.
* ColdBloodedTorture: Seeing as how this is a GrimDark, crap sack world with a medieval bent to it, torture is a common fate for anyone who gets taken prisoner by anyone. Jorg joins the brothers by interrupting the torture of the Nuban. Makin is tortured by Jorg's father after Jorg's apparent death. Jorg casually mentions that he and his road-brothers have tortured people for entertainment, and he nearly gets to experience this from the other side when he's taken prisoner by the Perros Viciosos (his companion wasn't [[CruelAndUnusualDeath so lucky]]).

* ConvectionShmonvection: Averted in the ''King of Thorns'': Jorg gets half of his face burnt off by radiated heat. Before that, he nearly passes out because all oxygen has been consumed by the fire.

** Bishop Murillo, a corrupt clergyman in the Prince of Thorns, gets killed by Jorg by ''having nails hammered into his head''. Jorg later complains that it wasn’t ''slow'' enough for him. (Don't worry, [[PedophilePriest Murillo]] [[KickTheSonOfABitch deserved it]].)

* CuttingTheKnot: In order to become Emperor, any member of The One Hundred needs to have a majority vote, either because they've conquered enough kingdoms, or because they've made enough alliances to guarantee that people vote for them. Or, if you're Jorg, you can [[spoiler: secure up 41 votes, then murder enough of the other delegates until that 41 becomes the majority]].

* {{Determinator}}: Besides his savage cunning and amorality, this is the other key feature of Jorg. The guy will not quit, starting from childhood when he survived impalement on the hook briar patch and the surgeries that removed them from his body and later surviving a long trek through a radioactive desert that no else has ever survived.
** His younger brother makes even Jorg looks soft: [[spoiler: His will is so strong that after death he breaks the control that the necromancers had on him and makes them his puppet, when he was ''seven''. Only a little later, he becomes ''king of the dead''.]]

* EvilGloating: Sageous seemingly can’t get enough of them in the King of Thorns. Jorg takes them as good sign, though, because it means more subtle manipulation has failed.

* EvilVersusEvil: Jorg is by no mean a good person, but his opponents (with the notable exception of Orrin) are just as bad, [[ALighterShadeOfBlack often even worse than him]].
* EyeScream: A fortman in the ''King of Thorns'' gets an arrow stuck through his eye.
* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Subverted in the book. Many kingdoms have obvious medieval counterparts, like Arrow in medieval England or Maladon in Viking Scandinavia. However, these cultures ''aren't'' fantasy: they're the same medieval cultures reborn (quite possibly ''intentionally'') after the collapse of the modern world a thousand years earlier.

* ForgottenFallenFriend: Averted with [[spoiler: Hanna]]. Katherine grieves for her and frequently mentions her in her diaries after [[spoiler: she's strangled by Jorg when attempting to protect her]]. While many of the brother's are not mentioned again after their deaths, some, such as [[spoiler: Young Sim]] are referred to with frequency.

* GeniusBruiser: Jorg is this compared to his road brothers, thanks to his royal upbringing.

* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: Averted with Katherine Ap Scorron, who is one of the most positive characters in the book.

** In the ''King of Thorns'', he returns to the circus that helped his band earlier. Before leaving, he notices a starved lion in the cage, and is eventually left alone with it. He considers the livelihoods of the circusfolk and the carnage a starved lion will wreak, then opens the cage anyway.

* ImprobableAimingSkills: The Nuban is the best marksman the brothers have, able to make shots that seem impossible. While much of this is no doubt due to his own skill, some of it might have to do with [[spoiler: the spell Corion put on his crossbow]].

* InSpiteOfANail: Jorg plans to deal with some of the Arrow’s army assaulting them by having an avalanche triggered over them, but he gives the signal to start it several minutes too late and the army catches up with them. However, it (barely) works anyway because one of the fires was flawed and burnt out too soon.

%%* TheLancer: Sir Makin.

* LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe: The ''King of Thorns'' briefly mentions Cennat shield dancers, who wield their man's height shields so well they can practically twirl them.

* MasterSwordsman: Many in this book, even amongst the Brotherhood who are better known for being combat pragmatists - Jorg and Makin are true masters of the sword and will show that a blade in their hands become little more than a blur when fighting dirty would be inappropriate.

* NiceJobBreakingItHerod: Subverted/averted, depending on the villain. When Jorg [[spoiler: infiltrates the Tall Castle in ''The King of Thorns'', he considers killing his baby brother Degran, holds him in his arms and decides against it, but he's already killed by the necromancy touch.]] This leaves him with so much guilt that he has to have the memory removed from him and it takes him four years to look at it again and come to terms with it. However, [[spoiler: this was partially engineered by Sageous in an attempt to break Jorg mentally and he almost succeeds at that.]]

* NotDistractedByTheSexy: Jorg barely manages to move his gaze away from Chella's naked form, which somehow manages to be seductive in spite her being dead.

** Similarly, when in disguise at the castle of his grandfather, he is accused of poisoning the guards' food. [[spoiler: this was actually Qalasadi, their Moor advisor.]]

* NotUsingTheZWord: Played with. In universe the zombies are simply referred to as the undead, but Fexler Brews, a hologram from the modern world, calls them zombies, surprising Jorg.

* PlayingWithFire: The powers used by Gog, an eight-year-old mutant child, as well as Ferrakind, an ancient fire-sworn. Subverted in that neither actually create any new fire but instead combine and transport the existing ones to whenever they're needed. They're also capable of seeing from one fire into another anywhere in the world. As Gog puts it at one point, "there's really only one fire in the world."

* ProphecyTwist: A prophecy a lot of the major power-players believe states that the Prince of Arrow will win the throne, and that two Ancraths will destroy the power of the mages. [[spoiler: Jorg forces the Prince of Arrow to adopt him as a brother before his death, which Jorg jokes satisfies the conditions of the first. For the second, Coddin and others had assumes Jorg would have to work with his father to overcome the mages. It's actually William/The Dead King, and they don't fight the mages, they end all magic in the world]].
* PsychicLink: Gorgoth, being a genetically engineered creature, can communicate with other such creatures, like trolls, though mind link alone.

* RapeAsBackstory: Before getting picked up by the brothers, Young Sim spent his youth in a brothel, and not as a customer.

* RapePillageAndBurn: Jorg's band's favorite pastime in the ''Prince of Thorns''. Much of his ''King of Thorns'' arc involves him letting go of these habits.

* RefugeInAudacity: Jorg, constantly. Examples include murdering some of the Gilden Guards sent to protect him and the other members of The Hundred in order to get them to do what he wants, murdering the [[spoiler: Pope]] in broad daylight, and killing off [[spoiler: enough delegates during the election that the 40 or so votes he has gives him a majority]].

* RocksFallEveryoneDies: Jorg manages to kill several thousand soldiers in the Arrow’s army by initiating a rock fall over them. [[spoiler: Twice.]]
* SadisticChoice: Jorg is confronted with one when he's just six. [[spoiler: Either he breaks his dog's Justice leg, or it gets burnt to death]]. Ultimately, the choice doesn't matter.

* TheBigGuy: Rike is the biggest of the brothers, larger even than Makin, and he prides himself on that and his strength. The only person he's shown to wholeheartedly-- almost childishly-- respect is the strong man from Taproot's circus, who is bigger and can lift Rike up.
* TheEasyWayOrTheHardWay: Jorg's father presented him with a very sadistic version of the dilemma when he was just six: [[spoiler: either he breaks his dog's leg for stealing from the treasury, or the dog is burned to death. When he complies, he is asked to break all the others before the dog is killed anyway.]] Since then, Jorg always purposely seeks the hard way in any situation he faces. His advisor, Coddin, has to say "the clever way" instead in order to even get him to consider the alternative.
* [[spoiler: TheHeroDies]]: Well, if you want to call Jorg a hero ...

* TooDumbToLive: The fourteen fortmen in the ''King of Thorns''. Letting a guy in the fort to return an arrow ''they shot at him'' and after having killed his companion?

* {{Too Spicy for Yog Sothoth}}: Nearly at the start of the novel, a ghost tries to haunt Jorg; instead of fleeing, Jorg allows the spectre to see into his mind ... and the ghost runs away, since our protagonist can offer worse thoughts than the ghost itself.

* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: Referenced several times with regards to Prince Orrin. The man is an ideal hero, who is every bit as good as they say he is. Even Jorg likes and admires him in a fashion. [[spoiler: But while he stood a very real chance of winning the Imperial throne, it was doubtful that Orrin had the iron fist to hold it and he would later be murdered by his own brother, a man who's far more similar to Jorg.]]

* WellDoneSonGuy: While Jorg has shades of this in the first book, before vowing to become a SelfMadeOrphan, a clearer example is [[spoiler: The Dead King, who is actually William, Jorg's deceased little brother. In their confrontation, The Dead King says he wanted to show Jorg how powerful he had become after being "abandoned" by Jorg the day he died, right before offering to [[WeCanRuleTogether join him]].]]

** This apparently becomes the fate of most powerful magic users. Fire-sworn like Ferrakind and Gog lose their minds in the fire, wind-sworn like Kai lose their sense of identity if they fly for too long, and an earth-sworn named Arron collapsed into a puddle and sank into the earth.

* {{Yandere}}: Chella in the ''King of Thorns.'' Reborn as a lich, she is determined to make Jorg embrace his necromancy and marry her as another lich.
* YouCantFightFate: Every mystic is sure that Jorg's rival will end up as the Emperor. However, it is also defied, because Jorg fights fate mainly because others say he can't.

* IncestIsRelative: Mianna is Jorg's wife and [[spoiler:mother of his son]]. She's also blood related to him, she's his first cousin on his mother's side (their mothers are sisters). Justified as this wasn't too uncommon of a practice among medieval nobility and it is an opportunity for Jorg to shore up support from his relatives for the Imperial election.

* TheLancer: Sir Makin.

* NotSoDifferent: Prince Egan literally says this to Jorg before their final fight:

* ConvectionShmonvection: Averted in the ''King of Thorns'': Jorg gets half of his face burnt off by radiated heat. Before that, he nearly passes out [[RealityEnsues because all oxygen has been consumed by the fire]].