A Picaresque Royale
is a Persona 5 fanfiction by Naomi_Saphorus. This story follows a Trans Fem version of Joker, who goes by Ren Amamiya. This along with other changes are present in this fic, leading to various divergences.
This Fan Fic contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Ren's parents aren't very supportive of her being a transgender teen and outright call her a monster and they'd rather have their "son" Akira back. They also threaten to kill Ren if she comes back still sticking to being transgender.
- The Ace: Shiho is seen as the strongest fighter besides Ren.
- Adaptational Badass: In the original game, Shiho and Mishima are both regular people. In this story, they both joined as Phantom thieves.
- Adaptational Villainy: Kobayakawa was always a horrible person, considering he knew what Kamoshida was doing and let it slide, however in this story he actually requested for Kamoshida to target Ren and had a Palace on top of that.
- All of the Other Reindeer: Ren feels this way in a combination of both her gender identity and her criminal record alienating her from the rest of Shujin.
- Ascended Extra: Shiho is a phantom thief in this story, as opposed to leaving after Ann's Rank 9.
- Attempted Rape: Kamoshida nearly rapes Ren, and is only stopped by the rest of team arriving just in time. Despite it being avoided, it still affects her greatly.
- Adaptational Gender Identity: Ren being a trans woman is a big part of this fic and her dead name is Kurusu Akira.
- Adaptational Nice Guy:
- Morgana and Ryuji are nicer to each other in this fic as opposed to canon.
- While Sojiro is a nice person in canon, it takes him a while to warm up to Ren. In this fic, he warms up to her rather quickly. Chapter 65 reveals this is because he empathizes with Ren due to Futaba also suffering under a transphobic household.
- Adaptational Sexuality: Aside from almost everyone being bi or pan, Morgana is aromantic in this fic.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The Phantom Thieves can increase their spell power by getting emotional, but it leads to them getting tired more quickly.
- Badass Adorable: Ren, easily.
- Blaming the Victim: Ren at one point overhears that she brought her sexual assault on her self, or is lying about it.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Ren admits she has a hard time just sitting by and watching people suffer.
- Corrupt Church: Kobayakawa's palace is a cathedral.
- Cruel Mercy: Ren considers killing Kamoshida, and everyone agrees that if she did she'd be justified, but she decides against it so his other victims can see him get what he deserves.
- Darker and Edgier: The story makes it clear how powerful palace rulers are, to the point where Ren avoids death by the skin of her teeth against Kamoshida when he stabs her.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- Kobayakawa wants to hurt and expell Ren simply for being transgender.
- A student who tried to go after Ren due to rumors that Ren's an underaged prostitute failed to do so when Haru saved Ren in time. His response is to spread Malicious Slander of Ren as payback for Ren and Haru breaking his pride and when the slander failed, he escalated to trying to maul and mutilate Ren in broad daylight.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Haru, Makoto, and Futaba all appear earlier than in canon.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop : The velvet room attendants acknowledge that Ren has experienced Persona 5 Royal multiple times. Some other Rens even failed.
- Hidden Badass: In the real world Ren is rather meek, but Joker is confident, suave, and a natual leader.
- Insane Troll Logic: Ren's Abusive Parents outright stated and hopes that her probation in Tokyo will convince her to come back to being their "son" Akira again.
- Kids Are Cruel: The Shujin students are horrid to Ren over her criminal record and spread Malicious Slander of her over it. Thankfully for Ren, she had the thieves on her side.
- Mistaken for Prostitute: Played for Drama and heavily deconstructed. Shortly after Kamoshida is dealt with, a student assumed that Ren is an underaged prostitute and surmised that to being why Ren got a probation, and tried to get a "favor" out of her. Though she's thankfully saved by Haru, the student's pride couldn't take it and so he decided to come up with a scheme to slander Ren and get her out of the school with help of his brother and when that failed, he got the help of his brother and friend to gang up and mutilate her and then found out that Ren is transgender in the process. They decided to use this information to instead threaten to have her secret out unless she leaves Shujin and even then, the group of bullies still want to beat and kill her because she's the easier target in their eyes that a Change of Heart is the only way that Ren can feel safe to go to Shujin again.
- Pet the Dog: Futaba, during a time period where she still hasn't revealed herself as the true identity of Alibaba to the thieves, help deal with Ren's bullies by hacking and threatening them to spread their Dark Secret in retribution of their actions towards Ren.
- Polyamory: The main ship is polythieves.
- Shipper on Deck: The couples that get together first are Ren with Ryuji, and Ann with Shiho. All 4 of them thought it'd be cute if their partner kissed someone else, but everyone but Shiho suppressed this idea.
- Trans Chaser: Kamoshida becomes rather attracted to Ren upon finding out she's trans.
- Trans Tribulations: A good portion of the story portrays this as part of Ren's conflict and how she moves forward from it.
- Trauma Conga Line: Ren has it rough early on. In addition to canon events of being sent away to Tokyo on probation, she had to deal with going to prison for a bit, being targeted by Kamoshida and Kobayakawa, and being disowned by her parents.
