Line #55 YMMV/TortallUniverse


1	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
2	** In ''Wild Magic'' Daine asks whales to come to the bay around Pirate's Swoop and attack the enemy fleet putting it under siege. The whales - a pod with calves - listen to her but refuse on moral grounds and because they don't want to kill and die for her, like the other animals she calls. Daine is enraged and says that other animals fight for her because they're her friends. Most animals do what she wants immediately and with little regard for their own well-being, including ones in her general area that she's never met - ''are'' those her friends, or does her magic overwhelm their self-interest and drive for survival? She doesn't like when animals get killed for her but the few that can resist her even when she's upset - whales, rats - make her angry in a rather entitled way. She's still sore about the whales in ''Literature/TortallASpysGuide''.
3	** Sarai Balitang invites a lot of it. [[spoiler:Would she have still eloped]] if she'd known about the raka rebellion? Or had she actually figured it out on her own? It gets even murkier when you consider that [[spoiler:Pierce originally planned to have her be killed]] after speaking her mind one too many times, and claims to not have changed her characterization at all during revisions.
4	** A minor example with Kel, caused by some vague wording. In ''Squire'', is she deliberately losing a portion of her jousting matches so nobody will suspect cheating, or is she using that as a silver lining to take away the sting of a genuine loss? On the one hand it can easily be read as the former, but the latter is more realistic since she's often going up against experienced knights.
5	* AntiClimaxBoss:
6	** The fight with Claw, the would-be leader of the Court of the Rogue, and the revelation of his identity, is played this way. It might have been more dramatic if Alanna had been involved, but she was rather busy with the BigBad at the time.
7	** Topabaw, who is TheDreaded spymaster of the Rittevon royals in ''Trickster's Queen.'' Everyone is very concerned about getting around his spy network when they return to Rajmuat and wonder how they are possibly going to deal with him, given his reputation. He turns out to be sloppy and stupid and hopelessly outclassed by Aly.
8	* {{Anvilicious}}: Creator/TamoraPierce writes her books, particularly in the ''Literature/TortallUniverse'', as very FeministFantasy. Each series has at least one example of gender inequality and how it's terrible; two of the quartets are essentially about that with a YouGoGirl plot. Pierce also goes out of her way to deconstruct the RealWomenDontWearDresses trope by having many sympathetic female characters be maids, mothers, seamstresses, etcetera, treated with just as much respect as the ActionGirl protagonists, and a major part of the first protagonist's CharacterDevelopment is learning that dressing up and being in love doesn't conflict with being a knight.
9	** Much of the way through ''Wolf-Speaker'' Daine hangs a lampshade on advice she's been getting all book - ever since she's come to the Long Lake valley, she says, people have been telling her not to make snap judgements about anyone she instinctively dislikes. She's had a running conflict with Maura, who thinks it's bizarre and upsetting that Daine is friends with creatures as dangerous as wolves, but is friends with Stormwings and says they aren't AlwaysChaoticEvil. Daine's a CosmicPlaything called in to try to make the valley into a place where humans, Immortals, and animals can all live in peace.
10	* BaseBreakingCharacter:
11	** Keladry is considered by many to be rather lackluster as a protagonist because she lacks magic and the peppery personality of the others, but her fans tend to call her their favorite in the series ''because'' she's such an aggressive BadassNormal and find her [[TheStoic stoicism]] in the face of endless frustration quite admirable, not to mention a stronger core of idealism than any of the other protagonists.
12	** Aly is another controversial one, thanks to her story's premise, plus her having by far the easiest time beating her enemies of any heroine of the franchise, to the point where there's hardly any sense of suspense throughout the two books.
13	** Farmer Cape of ''Mastiff'' is either adorable and [[spoiler:perfect for Beka]] or a walking AssPull for both his magic abilities [[spoiler:and sudden romance with Beka]].
14	* BrokenBase:
15	** [[spoiler:Tunstall's betrayal]] in ''Mastiff.'' [[spoiler:The fans of it like the well hidden bits of foreshadowing that there's a traitor in the group, but others say it wrecks his character by having a very weak and unbelievable motivation that involves a huge departure from his earlier characterization as a NiceGuy.]]
16	** From the same book, Beka having been in an abusive relationship between books. Fans have pointed out how it makes little sense that she would put up with it to nearly the extent that she apparently did, and also that it adds nothing to the story given that the guy's already dead by the time it starts. It ends up coming off as just [[spoiler:a way to make her sudden romance with Farmer go down easier.]]
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18	%% Before adding an entry to Complete Monster, please see this forum thread and keep in mind that a character must have zero redeeming values whatsoever to qualify: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=6vic3f9h1cy5qivsenw8llok. Pearl and Rubinyan have already been rejected.
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20	* CompleteMonster: [[YMMV/SongOfTheLioness Duke Roger of Conté]]; [[YMMV/ProtectorOfTheSmall Vinson of Genlith & Blayce the Gallan]]; [[YMMV/DaughterOfTheLioness Imajane Rittevon]]; [[YMMV/ProvostsDog Ammon "Crookshank" Lofts & Mistress Deirdry Noll]]. See those pages for details.
21	* DesignatedHero: Nawat and Aly have some human/crow child rearing conflict in the short story bearing his name. The BlueAndOrangeMorality of crows is a big part of the plot, of course, but even considering that it can be hard to sympathise with his struggles. Nawat is high-handed about everything down to not using diapers (which only works for him ''because'' he can crow-sense when the babies need to go) and sneaks around behind Aly's back, then pitches a fit when she expresses valid objections--said objections include that the kid pissed on an ambassador's secretary and that he's using a two-story window. He's painted as being in the right and it's ''Aly'' who apologizes for not suggesting a compromise in spite of not knowing he was continuing to do this. In his later struggle over [[spoiler:whether to kill Ochobai for her dwarfism]] he's still acting without considering Aly's wishes at all in spite of learning to compromise earlier. Instead he laments how it's difficult to lie to her; not because he shouldn't lie to his wife, but because her Sight makes it physically difficult.
22	* DracoInLeatherPants: Despite being an uncompromisingly misogynistic asshole who even threatens that he'll try to kill Keladry once they're both knights, Joren has a lot of fans. Even fans who ''ship him and Kel''. (For bonus points, his physical description is actually similar to Draco's: delicate good looks and white-blond hair.)
23	* EndingFatigue: The climax of ''Bloodhound'' goes on rather longer than it needs to, with Beka repeatedly entering and leaving the sewers with no appreciable forward progress. It's even highlighted by her journal entries pausing several times as she's too tired to write any more.
24	* FanNickname: "Numy" for Numair. It was later upgraded to canon as Aly's pet name for him.
25	* FanonDiscontinuity: ''Mastiff.'' The whole Corus crew disappearing? [[spoiler: Tunstall going traitor? Beka not ending up with Rosto?]] It never happened!
26	* FanNickname: To be honest, the only place you're likely to see Aly's books actually referred to as ''Daughter of the Lioness'' is on Website/TVTropes. Everyone just calls them the "Trickster books" or "Trickster duet."
27	* FanPreferredCouple:
28	** The official couple of the ''Protector of the Small'' books is [[spoiler:there is no official couple and Kel is happy with not having anyone right now]]. Many fans assume, however, that she will end up with Dom sometime in the near future, whether as casual lovers or something more serious.
29	** Played straight with [[spoiler:Beka and Rosto]], as she ends up marrying [[spoiler:Farmer, who didn't appear in the first two books]].
30	* HarsherInHindsight:
31	** Neal laying a magic on Alvik the innkeeper in ''Lady Knight'', admittedly with the best of intentions (keeping him from abusing his servants) but taking full advantage of ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections because it's highly illegal. In ''Bloodhound'', commoner Beka is magicked by Sir Lionel of Trebond, and she's apoplectic with rage over the violation of being magicked almost as much as [[spoiler:the fact that he's doing it to have her "disappeared"]].
32	** Goodwin's warning to Tunstall not to get involved with nobility. [[spoiler:''Mastiff'' sees him betraying the realm so he can feel worth of Lady Sabine, although Lady Sabine herself said there was no need for it.]]
33	** In ''Squire'', Jon mentions how the kingdom's various groups would rebel against him if he tried to make too many changes too quickly and says he'll leave it to Kel's imagination as to what the mages would do. We find out what they ''did'' do once in ''Mastiff'', and it is not pretty.
34	** At the end of ''Mastiff'' George Cooper is warned that he will come to deeply regret the path he's chosen. A year later the series began to be covered on Blog/MarkDoesStuff, and the horrified reaction of him and most of the commenters toward George and Alanna's StalkingIsLove romance caused Pierce to indeed deeply regret that she'd written the story that way.
35	* HeartwarmingInHindsight: Kel disobeys direct orders in ''Lady Knight'', as do many of her friends, with the assumption that they'll be executed on Traitor's Hill. In ''Mastiff'', we find out that the typical traitor is drawn, quartered, and hanged--just being decapitated is getting off ''lightly.'' That Keladry and her yearmates don't even hesitate to rescue her refugees anyway speaks volumes.
36	* HilariousInHindsight: Numair is one of the series' most powerful wizards, and WordOfGod has revealed that his physical appearance is based on Creator/JeffGoldblum. Decades later, Jeff Goldblum would be cast in the two-part film version of ''Theatre/{{Wicked}}'' as the Wizard of Oz – who of course is only thought to be a powerful wizard, but is really just a con artist.
37	* ItWasHisSled: Since the series go in chronological order until the latest two, when Pierce jumps back to earlier points of Tortall's history, it's common to learn the major plot points of earlier series by starting with a later one. (For example, the events of ''The Immortals'' come up as classroom lessons in ''Protector of the Small''.)
38	* LauncherOfAThousandShips: Kel, since she has a few crushes but no overall romance arc. Kel/Neal and Kel/Dom are both pretty popular.
39	* MemeticMutation: Calling the ''Provost's Dog'' trilogy "the doggy books."
40	* MoralEventHorizon: Imajane and Rubinyan [[spoiler:have Dunevon and Elsren assassinated. Granted, Kyprioth gave them the idea, but they went through with it all on their own]]. And then they had the gall to pretend sympathy.
41	* {{Narm}}:
42	** It can be pretty hard to take Blayce seriously when you find out Pierce based his appearance on Woody Allen.
43	** Aly's capture in the first chapter of ''Trickster's Choice'' is portrayed in such a detached, rushed fashion that it's more likely to jar a laugh out of you than shock.
44	** Aly suggesting the Balitangs deal with a group of robbers by sneaking up behind them, which everyone reacts to like it's an utterly brilliant idea no one else could have possibly thought of.
45	** The Provost Dogs take their name a bit too far, coming up with a dog-related term for almost ''everything'' they do and even growling.
46	** The villains' motives in ''Mastiff'' sound like talking points from Fox News. [[spoiler:Maybe it's a case of ValuesDissonance, but it's hard to justify that many people willing to commit high treason over a ''sales tax''.]]
47	** In ''Terrier'', Beka gets the titular nickname for her persistence in chasing people down. In ''Bloodhound'', it's because she's paired with a scent dog and also shows good investigative skills. In ''Mastiff''... she's cheered with the name at the end, for no apparent reason. It seriously comes off like everyone somehow knows the title of the book they're in. (Possibly because mastiffs aren't as well known for their purpose as big game hunting dogs nowadays.)
48	** The occasional realistic touches to the journal gimmick in ''Provost's Dog'' really don't do enough to offset how absurdly detailed Beka's journal entries usually are, to the point that we might as well just be reading standard narration. And then there's the epilogue of ''Mastiff'', where we're very awkwardly taken out of the journal into regular narration twice, for the only time in the series.
49	** In the ''Mastiff'' epilogue, [[spoiler:Pounce/Faithful removes George's memory of his purple eyes, as a hasty explanation of why George doesn't recognize him in ''Song of the Lioness'']].
50	* NarmCharm: Joren's single-minded obsession with hating Keladry can seem unrealistic to the point of {{Narm}}, but look in the comment section of articles about feminism[[note]]ones that aren't well-moderated[[/note]] and you can find numerous people who sound a lot like him. Yes, he's absurd, but he has plenty of RealLife counterparts.
51	* NeverLiveItDown: The major romance of ''The Immortals''. Pierce was asked/flaked about this so much she said future couples would have a smaller age gap. [[spoiler: It's about Daine and Numair and how they hook up when they're 16 and 30 respectively. Plus Numair had been Daine's teacher not long before. (Having said that, they both clearly regard themselves as equals by the time they do fall in love. Fans often also justify it by saying Daine is very mature for her age, having been forced to grow up quickly, and Numair is a bit childish.) ''Song of the Lioness'' was able to get away with a (apparently) similar age gap marriage [[note]] Mostly because Pierce couldn't keep track of her character's ages. When Alanna and George first meet, she's eleven and he's 'about seventeen'. But in the last book it's implied that George is late thirties to Alanna's early twenties [[/note]] both because it didn't become official until both were modern-day adults and people weren't on the lookout for this sort of thing as much in the '80s. By the time Daine and Numair got together it was 1996, and times had changed enough for many people to have a problem with it. He also steals a lock of her hair after ''Emperor Mage'' to use as a focus, which even people who support the pairing tend to find creepy. (It's at least partly for magical purposes and has practical applications, but he didn't ''ask'' her and also keeps it in a locket with a portrait of her painted without her consent.)]]
52	* ParanoiaFuel: Whenever Daine gets angry or afraid enough, animals in a huge radius instantly respond to her will. If this means getting themselves killed, so be it; her magic makes them disregard everything but her feelings, even if they've never met her. Very few animals seem to even be willing to resist, and Daine actually has to consciously force them to regard their own lives. Beloved animal companions will turn on their people without a thought if she's angry enough, and in this pre-industrial society where there's great emphasis on the bonds between people and their mounts and dogs, that's a pretty big deal. In ''Wild Magic'' a strawman points out that she's a risk because people have to be able to trust and rely on their horses to act as they're trained to in a dangerous situation, but none of the sympathetic characters give it another thought.
53	* RomanticPlotTumor: In ''Bloodhound,'' Beka has a lot of UST and romantic bickering with Dale Rowan, which some people find far less interesting than the undercover investigation she's actually there for.
54	* ShockingMoments: The climax of "Nawat." The conflict revolves around Nawat (and his warriors) being shunned by crows for becoming too human, and very concerned that they have to prove they're real crows through practices like "culling" [[BuryYourDisabled disabled offspring]]. [[spoiler:When Nawat realizes his daughter has dwarfism, he actually gets to the point of ''holding her out the window'' before changing his mind.]]
55	* {{Squick}}: Aly and Nawat, for some people (a human and a crow with a human form). Daine and Numair, for others. A 13 year age gap, relative social status, and him being her teacher are often quoted as the reason.
56	* StrangledByTheRedString:
57	** Beka and [[spoiler:Farmer]] are a Type 3, and possibly a Type 2 as well, depending on one's interpretation. About 400 pages of no romantic hints... and then suddenly she notices what broad shoulders he has. And then [[spoiler:they're declaring their love for each other and promising marriage while they're in a jail cell, after being tortured, and at a time when Beka ''still'' doesn't know for sure who the group traitor is]].
58	** Alanna and George are a much less extreme example; while his feelings for her are established early in ''Song of the Lioness'', their actual romance is given very little time to develop on the page compared to Alanna's relationship with Jonathan, and her decision to be with George after the death of [[TakeAThirdOption Liam Ironarm]] comes off more like a LastMinuteHookup than the main romance of the series. Depiction of the pair as a loving and supportive OfficialCouple in later series successfully salvaged this in the eyes of many readers, however.
59	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter:
60	** Onua in ''The Immortals''. In book one she's a major character with an interesting backstory of being left to die by her abusive husband, being kept alive by her dog, and coming to be quite important to the Queen's Riders. She becomes one of Daine's best friends and closest supporters, on par with Numair. Then she's completely absent from books two and three and only makes a fleeting appearance in book four, thanks to the story moving in a direction that made it awkward to include her.
61	** A number of characters from first two quartets are present as teachers in ''Protector of the Small'' but are essentially cameos, due to how short and spare ''First Test'' and ''Page'' are. Most notably, Sir Myles offers sympathy to Kel, who's flattered that her hero's adoptive father likes her but unlike Alanna in her place doesn't become friends with him.
62	** All of ''Terrier's'' supporting cast. They're all set up as important, being Beka's fellow Dogs and a few DatingCatwoman situations with her criminal friends, [[spoiler:along with Rosto becoming Rogue at the end]]. But in the next two books, Beka hardly spends any time at all in Corus, meaning that only she and Goodwin do much that's relevant to the plot (in ''Bloodhound'') and ''Mastiff'' has hardly anyone from the original crew.
63	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot:
64	** Just in general, the writing style of the early books is much briefer and less complex than in later novels, with less worldbuilding and fewer characters. Yet they still cover some very interesting events. Seeing them written with the kind of expanse and care of a more experienced Pierce could have been quite impressive - though there's something to be said for the spareness and efficiency of the mid-early books, too, with their faster pace.
65	** Duke Roger was in Carthak before he was called back to Corus in the first ''Song of the Lioness'' book but he's not so much as mentioned in ''Tempests and Slaughter'', which takes place entirely in Carthak.
66	** Although it wouldn't have been ''fun'' to see Beka in an abusive relationship, it could have been an important lesson for readers to recognize what it looked like and portray how easy it is to get ensnared in one and how hard it is to get ''out'' of it even when, from the outside, the toxicity is obvious. Instead, Holborn is a PosthumousCharacter whose main purpose is to make Beka angst from time to time.
67	*** Holborn also could have been alive and part of the traitor plot somehow, leading to Beka being mistrusted to some degree and second-guessing herself.
68	** After [[spoiler:Tunstall]] is revealed as a traitor in ''Mastiff'', Beka is told that one day she'll also face a decision where the morality of betraying her oath won't seem as clear cut. She dismisses it as a cheap excuse, and since this is the end of the trilogy, we never find out if it happened.
69	*** Said reveal [[spoiler: seems out of nowhere. Reasons why Tunstall would turn on the Crown are ''there'' if one looks, such as TakingALevelInJerkass due to being DentedIron and fearing the loss of his livelihood as his physical ability decreases, and having a different relationship with Beka his former Puppy than he did with the older Goodwin,]] but the foreshadowing is rather subtle and could have been elaborated upon more.
70	* TooCoolToLive: [[spoiler:Rikash Moonsword]] from ''The Immortals''.
71	* TheUntwist: In ''Bloodhound'', Beka learns early on that a man named Hanse is part of the cole operation. Then she meets a man from Port Caynn named Hanse, but somehow fails to make the connection, and the inevitable reveal that he's ''the'' Hanse is played like it's supposed to be a surprise. Although we're told that Hanse is a common name, OneSteveLimit is in play, so it would have worked better if it was a name readers themselves recognized as common.
72	* ValuesDissonance:
73	** Pierce has admitted that these days, George telling a teenaged Alanna that they're obvious soul mates and destined to be together comes off as far creepier than it did in the '80s. It also hurts that Alanna herself thinks of his actions as "stalking", her reaction to him following her around is indistinguishable from fear, and he drugs her at one point, benignly (to help her sleep when she's anxious), but without her consent.
74	** She got hit harder by it after hooking up 16-year-old Daine and 30-year-old Numair in the final book of ''The Immortals''. By the standards of her world Daine was an adult woman very much considered of marrying age, not a teenage girl with no life experience, but by the time this book came out, the {{Squick}} reaction was fully in force, and resulted in such a backlash that Pierce promised never to include such a wide age gap again.
75	** Repeatedly across the series, Pierce has characters say that girls of thirteen and up are "usually" married to adults and having children, implicitly placing her characters as atypical. Fans often claim that historically men often married young girls, but in fact "historically" this usually led to DeathByChildbirth as becoming pregnant in one's early teens is quite dangerous.
76	* {{Wangst}}:
77	** Aly whining about Nawat being sent away to serve a more useful purpose, despite Nawat himself clearly being unhappy where he was and wanting to be more useful. She realizes how ridiculous it is later.

Context YMMV / TortallUniverse