Line #78 ComicBook/TheOgreGods


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/81q7vzt91el_5.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Fee-fi-fo-fum...]]
3
4	->''Mundus Nostrum Catillum Est'' [[labelnote:*]]''The World Is Our Plate''[[/labelnote]]
5	-->-- Family motto of the Ogre Gods
6
7	''The Ogre Gods'' (''Les Ogres-Dieux'') is a French {{Fantasy}}/{{Horror}} graphic novel series written by Hubert Boulard (author of ''ComicBook/{{Beauty}}'') and illustrated in black-and-white by Bertrand Gatignol, with the tone and aesthetic of a dark and gruesome FairyTale, telling the saga of an aristocratic dynasty of giants ruling tyrannically over a kingdom of humans.
8
9	From a titanic castle situated on a mountain overlooking a great valley reign the Ogre Gods, a monstrous clan of giants served by armies of humans whom they kill and devour with impunity. The giant's rule is weakening however, as centuries of inbreeding has resulted in a physical and moral decline, with each generation becoming smaller than the last, increasingly brutal and depraved, and obsessed with restoring their former glory. When the Ogre King's youngest son is born scarcely larger than a human his father wants him killed as an embarrassment, but his mother sees in him the possible regeneration of the family, as he alone can mate with humans to breed new, healthy giants and break the destructive cycle of inbreeding.
10
11	The story is told across multiple time periods, with the present-day being interspersed with passages from [[FictionalDocument in-universe history books]] detailing the history of the giants and their kingdom. Four volumes have been released, although the series is seemingly concluded due to Hubert Boulard's death in February 2020.
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13	* ''Petit'' (2014)
14	* ''Half-Blood'' (2016)
15	* ''The Great Man'' (2018)
16	* ''First Born'' (2020)
17	----
18	!!''The Ogre Gods'' provides examples of:
19
20	* AbusiveParents:
21	** Petit's father, King Gabaal, is so disgusted by his human-like size he demands his death ''seconds'' after his birth. [[ArchnemesisDad Their relationship only deteriorates from there]].
22	** Book 4 reveals that the Founder was this as well -- he kept his children locked in the castle (confining the girls to a single building) and was extremely strict with gender roles, training his sons to be an army of destructive killing machines and relegating his daughters to being [[BabyFactory baby factories]] to give him more giant soldiers. When his cruel son Orobaal murders his [[WhiteSheep only decent brother]] Aristobull, the Founder simply says that Aristobull was too weak to become king before naming Orobaal his heir. It's also revealed that it was the Founder's idea to [[BrotherSisterIncest pair his children with each other]] in order to make the next generation of giants even bigger, and those who were naturally disgusted at the idea were forced into it.
23	* AnimalThemeNaming: Bear, the brigand and former soldier that leads the resistance against the Ogre-gods. When he runs into a bear trapped by the forest, he asks Petit if he believes in omens before MercyKilling the bear. Sure enough, [[spoiler:Bear gets his throat slashed by the end of the book.]]
24	* AristocratsAreEvil: It's consistent throughout the story that the nobility are selfish, callous elitists who find the idea of using their position to exercise some responsibility to the common good rather than indulge themselves abhorrent.
25	** The royal giants are almost exclusively brutal tyrants with zero regard for the lives of their human subjects, and since the days of the god-king they dine on feasts of human flesh on a daily basis.
26	** Book 2 reveals that the corrupt and backstabbing human nobility are barely any better, for while they don't eat people themselves they're quite content to administrate the giant's empire and treat the peasants like slaves and livestock to feed to their masters.
27	* BigScrewedUpFamily: To be expected from an extensive, massively inbred aristocracy of cannibals.
28	* BrotherSisterIncest: The first generation of giants consisted entirely of the Founder's children, who only bred with each other. Book 4 reveals that [[spoiler:Petit's parents Emione and Gabaal are half-siblings who share the same father]].
29	* BungledSuicide: On hearing all four of her sons are dead, Emione hangs herself... or tries to and fails, being too heavy for the masonry.
30	* TheCaligula: King Gabaal is cruel, depraved and selfish, with more interest in indulging his various appetites and literally feasting on his subjects than doing any actual ruling. For that matter, most of the ogre kings ([[TheGoodKing with one exception]]) were similarly oppressive and with no regard for humans as anything other than labour and food.
31	* CantHaveSexEver: When Petit meets and falls in love with a human woman, he refuses to have sex with her out of fear that, if his mother's right in her belief that he'll breed another generation of giants, she won't survive the pregnancy.
32	* DamselInDistress: In the penultimate book Petit gets separated from his love interest, Sala, who is held hostage by the remaining antagonists.
33	* DancingBear: InUniverse. In her youth, Desdée ran off with a circus to become a dancer. Unfortunately, what she wanted was the admiration of the crowd at her skill, not yokels staring open-jawed at a dancing giant.
34	* DeathByChildbirth: The earliest generations of giants, always born bigger than their mothers could survive. The firstborn daughter of the Founder, especially, gets a disturbing recounting of how her gestation exceeded the usual nine months as she kept growing, wasting her mother away to sustain her growth and driving her mad through the entire harrowing process as she was rendered bedridden and forcefed while the Founder maintained cold satisfaction at the whole thing. After the Founder's era the only one big enough to kill his mother was the God-King, being "a giant among giants". In the present era, Petit refuses to have sex with his human partner, justifiably fearing that their children would be big enough to tear her apart from the inside.
35	* DefectorFromDecadence: Petit's Aunt Desdeé ran away from the family in her youth, in an attempt to both get away from their awful cruelty and to try a make a name for herself as a dancer. Unfortunately, she ended up becoming a curiosity in a circus, but still enjoyed dancing freely at night.
36	* DontGoIntoTheWoods: The penultimate entry in the series introduces a deep, black forest inhabited by a barbarian tribe. They not only managed to repel the Founder and his army, they formed a pact of blood sacrifice with ''something'' to ensure neither he or his giants could ever invade. Whatever's behind it, there's an uncanny sense of danger felt by anyone who goes in there, and something attacks at night, leaving victims covered in bite marks that apparently leeched blood.
37	* FacialHorror: One of Yori's eyes is burst and the skin pushed off to the side after the queen grabs him and threatens to pull him apart. Note that she wasn't pulling a YouHaveFailedMe, she was demonstrating what she'd do to him if he ''did'' fail her.
38	* FailureHero: Bear sees himself as this, his life having been one long series of setbacks, betrayals and failures. At least [[spoiler:he dies with his father's ghost]] forgiving him.
39	* FanDisservice: Most scenes involving nudity or sex are not played for tittilation, such as the queen undressing (her thighs still drenched in blood from giving birth), Yori sleeping with his old and ugly MealTicket, or Petit going down on his deformed and inbred cousin.
40	* {{Fanservice}}: Desdée's servants, who are made up entirely of buxom young women bursting out of their corsets.
41	* FounderOfTheKingdom: Literally [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep only ever recorded as "The Founder"]], he [[MonsterProgenitor sired the family of giants]] and used them as soldiers in an unstoppable army to conquer all the land in the area. His history past this is ShroudedInMyth, only alluding to a desire to return with his new family back to his old family of giants and kill them all for rejecting him. He died without ever actually following up on this goal, without even informing anyone where he came from.
42	* AGodAmI: The God King believed himself to be a perfect, divine, immortal entity, and while he was far longer lived than the rest of his family to the point of outlasting his own grandchildren, he ultimately died of old age. Despite this, his successors copied his example and started calling the entire royal bloodline gods.
43	* GodEating:
44	** A more symbolic example than most but the climax of book one has [[spoiler:the king and the, by then, former queen being eaten by the peasants, thinking it's an intentional gift, once they tumble out of the mountain to their deaths after their fight]].
45	** During the climax of book three, [[spoiler:Petit undergoes a MushroomSamba and sees himself devouring his GodEmperor father]].
46	* GodEmperor: While his predecessors didn't have any delusions about what they were, the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin God-King]] believed himself to have shedded all human "impurity" and become a divine entity. He was wrong, but his successors continued calling themselves gods.
47	* GodSaveUsFromTheQueen: Downplayed only slightly with Queen Emione. While her genuine love for her son makes her somewhat sympathetic, she's still as cruel and callous towards humans as any other giant (thinking nothing of eating them or grabbing a bunch for her son to rape and impregnate), and her ultimate goal is to restore her family's dynasty to its former glory and ensure their tyrannical rule lasts forever.
48	* GrotesqueGallery: The impact of the massive amount of inbreeding is shown in the deformed appearance of many of the giants, which really underscores how monstrous they are in character.
49	* HotSkittyOnWailordAction: Thoroughly deconstructed; the first generation of giants in the family didn't even humor the idea of mating with humans, instead choosing to pair with each other due to a lack of viable alternatives. At one point Petit starts having sex with his much larger cousin, who complains of not being able to feel anything and prefers him performing cunnilingus.
50	* HormoneAddledTeenager: Played for drama; at one point Petit gets hot under the collar over one of the servant women attending him and almost rapes her on the spot before getting smacked back to his senses. After that he maintains control over himself, but still seeks sexual gratification once he resolves never to have sex with his human partner Sala out of fear of a pregnancy killing her.
51	* HyperCompetentSidekick: Malkus Elissen, the first "true" chamberlain, who elevated the office from little more than gatekeepers to being the most powerful human position in the kingdom. As the God-King was too lazy and arrogant to concern himself with minor things like actually running his own kingdom, Elissen became responsible for making his king's borderline-impossible requests a reality. Since then, being a HyperCompetentSidekick responsible for managing the entire kingdom essentially became the chamberlain's purview, although a number of them proved to be incompetent and/or corrupt.
52	* ImAHumanitarian: Although they consider themselves a separate species, and later as divine entities, all known giants (except ''possibly'' the Founder) are descended from human-giant couplings and have some amount of human ancestry, making their flesh-eating cannibalism to boot.
53	* InbredAndEvil: The giants are all related to various degrees and keep reproducing with each other since there are no other giants ''to'' marry.
54	* {{Infodump}}: Happens between chapters to explain backstories, histories and various myths (usually the last line of the chapter refers to the historical character now being described).
55	* IHaveNoSon: King Gabaal disowns Petit the instant he's born, dismissing him as an "aberration" to be killed at once.
56	* IronicName: Petit's name is this to humans, because he's still notably larger than all of them, even if he is very small by giant standards.
57	* IWantGrandkids: Petit's mother is obsessed with him having kids so as to stop the giant line from continuously shrinking, to the point of locking him up with female servants and telling him to get on with it already.
58	* KissingCousins: The entire royal family engages in incest but Petit in particular eventually seeks sexual gratification from one of his cousins after abstaining from sex with his human partner out of fear of giving her an eventually fatal pregnancy.
59	* LargeAndInCharge: Par for the course in a kingdom of humans ruled by giants. Most of the ogre kings appear to be the largest of their respective generations, with the God-King being the single biggest giant on record.
60	* LargeRunt: Petit and his ancestor the Founder: at a glance, they could pass for enormous human men, but are actually [[OxymoronicBeing very small giants]].
61	* ALighterShadeOfBlack: Emion is objectively better than her husband, but not by much: she has just as little regard for the feelings of others (including her son in spite (because?) of her love for him, and sees humans as slaves and food.
62	* LongestPregnancyEver / MysticalPregnancy: This is PlayedForHorror: the Founder's first daughter gestated for sixteen months, growing abnormally huge due to her father's true nature, causing her mother incredible suffering as her body was twisted and drained by the fetus, and eventually killing her via traumatic c-section as the baby was too large to be born naturally. The Founder then proceeded to impose the same fate on dozens of other women, caring nothing for their lives as long as they gave him more giant children.
63	* TheManBehindTheMan: After the [[spoiler:giants are killed]], Yori becomes obsessed with putting Petit on the throne since he can't (and doesn't want to) seize power himself.
64	* MeaningfulName: Petit means "small" in French, and by giant standards, he is.
65	* MistakenForCheating: Sort of: Sala walks in on Petit and his cousin Nibie and thinks he loves her. Petit ''is'' having sex with Nibie and not Sala, because he needs to stay on the former's good side and he's afraid of DeathByChildbirth for the latter.
66	* MyopicConqueror: The eponymous beings only conquer because they believe their giant size makes it their divine right to do so. Their founder wanted them to become powerful enough to take vengeance on the family he claims rejected him, but died without actually informing anyone ''where'' he came from. Actually running their territories quickly fell to their human subordinates, and then most of the furthest ones were soon annexed back as they [[BadBoss horribly punished any bad news]], so the only things maintained were things they would directly see.
67	* OrificeInvasion: On hearing Nibie saying she plans to be queen (once Petit marries her), king Gabaal forces his finger down her throat (note that Nibie is about as tall as his forearm) before saying he'll keep his current queen.
68	* OurGiantsAreBigger: The comics are essentially a treatise on man-eating fairytale giants and how they might operate, and their declining size is the main focus of the story. The Founder was a giant of mysterious origin who was only slightly larger than most humans, but the children he had with human women all grew huge, with each subsequent generation growing larger than the last until they peaked in size with the God-King, after which each generation grew smaller until the birth of Petit, likewise human-sized. The queen hopes for Petit to breed with humans to produce a new generation of healthy giants and break the cycle of inbreeding causing their decline.
69	** OurOgresAreHungrier: While the species is mostly referred to as "giants", "ogre" is used interchangeably (or perhaps as more of a descriptor of their brutality) rather than denoting a separate race. Although the youngest generations of smaller, increasingly deformed giants more closely resemble stereotypical ogres compared to their ancestors, who looked indistinguishable from humans apart from their great size.
70	* PenPushingPresident: The giant king pretty much only signs off on legislation the chancellor has drawn up, carefully avoiding giving them any actual details of the state of decay their kingdom is in.
71	* PeopleFarms: A massive human farm is built into the side of Castle Mountain to provide the giants with a food supply.
72	* PersecutedIntellectuals: Commonly. The Philanthropist King let in philosophers and scientists to improve his reign and ease the life of his subjects but this just led to his kin rebelling against them. Change is being forced too quickly. So many of them ended up being stomped and smashed and eaten. As well as being used as scapegoats for the kingdom's various problems.
73	* PitTrap: Petit runs to an abandoned part of the palace when pursued by his brothers that can barely take his weight. When they keep coming, the floor collapses and they end up iumpaled on the debris.
74	* PretentiousLatinMotto: For the royal family of giants: ''Mundus Nostrum Catillum Est'' ("The World is our Plate"), reflecting their view of their own superiority and inherent right to use the world as they see fit, and to [[ToServeMan treat humans as nothing more than food]]. For the office of the chamberlains: ''Manus Deorum'' ("Hands of the Gods"), reflecting their role as [[HypercompetentSidekick the ones who manage the kingdom and keep everything running smoothly]].
75	* APupilOfMineUntilHeTurnedToEvil: One of Bear's biggest regrets is that Sol turned the skills he'd learned from him (in theory to become an officer) to instead become Yori's NumberTwo.
76	* PsychopathicManchild: An apt description of most of the giants, but Petit's brothers in particular see no problem in swatting random humans or raping them (back when they were small enough for this to be feasible).
77	* TheRightOfASuperiorSpecies: The God-King's rationale for a diet of humans is that humans eat animals because they're above animals, so naturally as the superior to humans he shouldn't be relegated to human food but rather feast on the humans themselves.
78	* RoyalInbreeding: After the Founder's children proved too large to feasibly breed with humans, and due to an apparent lack of other giant families anywhere in the known world, the only way the giants saw to preserve the family was through extensive inbreeding, which eventually led to...
79	** RoyallyScrewedUp: The royal family's constant inbreeding resulted in a physical and moral decline, growing gradually smaller, more deformed, and with shorter lifespans, even as they became increasingly cruel, brutal and depraved.
80	* RunningGag: Not really a gag, but Petit keeps running into Sala as she's being harassed/about to be raped by soldiers.
81	* ScreamingBirth: Subverted for Petit's birth, which Emione barely notices. Played horrifyingly straight the Founder's sons, which lasted more than a year and ended with the mother's death.
82	* ShoutOut: Petit's father dresses like UsefulNotes/HenryVIII on the cover of book 1.
83	* TheGoodKing: King Eliabaal, known as the Philanthropist King, was the only giant king to actually try to improve the lives of his subjects and work towards a common good and create a fair society rather than have his subjects toil endlessly to feed the royal family, instituting just reforms and banning the consumption of human flesh. Naturally, the other giants think he's insane and [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished overthrow him, reverse all his reforms and leave him to starve in a dungeon]].
84	* TeenyWeenie: It's not known whether Petit's is particularly small, just that the much larger woman he used it on didn't feel a thing.
85	* ToServeMan: The giant's diet consists almost exclusively of humans, to the point of having a huge farm installed beneath their castle. This practice is actually relatively recent, as the generations prior to the God-King didn't eat humans, but as he considered himself divine he believed that mundane food wasn't good enough, and all other giants followed his example until it became their main diet.
86	* UglyGuyHotWife: Queen Emione is noted to have escaped her inbred family's deformities, simply appearing as a [[GiantWoman gigantic attractive woman]], while her husband King Gabaal is just... a big, fat, ugly ogre.
87	* UnskilledButStrong: The giants have little but their colossal size going for them, and are relatively easy to outwit.
88	* VestigialEmpire: The Ogre Gods originally carved out a vast empire, but since the days of the god-king they stopped embarking on military expeditions and rarely bother to leave their mountain, causing the loss of the conquered territories as the people no longer fear them, and reducing their kingdom to the lands around the mountain. They remain unaware of this due to generations of chamberlains misleading them about the lost territories and assuring them that all is well, as the last chamberlain to deliver bad news was [[ShootTheMessenger squished]].
89	* VillainousIncest: Every generation of the family since the Founder wed brothers to sisters as well as cousins, more due to the [[HotSkittyOnWailordAction impossible mechanics]] of mating with humans and lack of outsider giants than anything else.

Context ComicBook / TheOgreGods