"Welcome, Princess. For generations, it has been our task, our duty, to protect our people. The price is dear, but so too the reward. So, tonight, you join a long line of women who have helped to build this kingdom."
— Queen Isabelle
Damsel is a 2024 Dark Fantasy film directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and written by Dan Mazeau. It stars Millie Bobby Brown, Robin Wright, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Brooke Carter, Ray Winstone, Nick Robinson, and Angela Bassett.
Set in a fairy tale kingdom, the film follows a young noblewoman named Elodie who discovers her impending marriage to a handsome prince was a trick and that she is actually to be sacrificed to a fire-breathing dragon. Now she will need all her wits in order to avoid becoming the dragon’s next meal.
A novelization based on an earlier version of the script was written by Evelyn Skye.
The film was released on March 8, 2024 on Netflix.
Once upon a trope…
- Actor Allusion: Robin Wright's most famous role is arguably that of Princess Buttercup from The Princess Bride, famously imperiled on her wedding night at the hand of her homicidal fiancé prince Humperdinck; here, she's graduated to the role of the Evil Queen who sends the eponymous damsel to her death with false promises of marriage to her son, the prince.
- This is not the first time Millie Bobby Brown has tackled with dragons or giant fire-breathing monsters.
- Ray Winstone and Robin Wright both starred in Beowulf (2007), as a hero standing against a mythical monster and a queen respectively.
- Agony of the Feet: Poor Elodie’s feet take a lot of punishment over the course of the film. She tears strips off her dress to bandage them with.
- Ambiguous Situation: It’s not specified why the dragon and her babies (before they were murdered) were the last of her kind. A dragon-plague? Competition with humans? Habitat loss? Dwindling prey? Unclear.
- It’s not clear when the Aurean royal family realized they could perform a ritual sharing their blood with chosen victims to trick the dragon into killing them instead of their own daughters. Whether the first Aurean king realized this and never even sacrificed his daughters in the first place, or if it took several generation before they figured out this loophole, is left ambiguous.
- Ambiguously Bi: Elodie seems attracted to the handsome prince, but she also has some gentle touching and pointed looks with other women.
- Androcles' Lion: After Elodie tricks the dragon into setting herself on fire, the dragon is mortally wounded and at her mercy, even telling Elodie to “End it” after being informed she had been unknowingly killing innocents. Rather than kill the dragon however, Elodie not only spares her, but uses the glowworms to save her life, gaining the dragon’s allegiance.
- Altar Diplomacy: Everyone assumes that this is the case for the marriage, with Elodie's family and kingdom getting money in exchange for her marrying the prince. The reality is...a lot darker.
- Armour Is Useless: Played With: In the prologue, the Dragon's fire breath is shown to be strong enough to reduce fully-armoured knights to slag in a single blast, and her physical strength and speed is enough to tear them apart with her bare claws like their protective covering was tinfoil, as shown especially with Lord Bayford getting crushed/impaled underfoot with minimal effort. However, several times the Dragon's Breath Weapon fails to directly strike Elodie running through the caverns, but she still takes splash damage from the flaming propellant splashing everywhere, especially on her legs. At the climatic fight, Elodie scavenges several armour pieces from her father's deceased retinue to create a makeshift distraction with to lure the Dragon away from Floria, but doesn't equip any of it herself, as it's too heavy and designed for men to wear, choosing instead to use her faster mobility to dodge the Dragon's attacks. However, she still suffers several nasty burns in the fight that proper protective armour would have given her some defence against, so it's less that armour is outright useless, and more that Elodie lacks access to any protective gear that suits her needs.
- Attack Reflector: Elodie finds a large curved rock structure, which she uses to send the dragon's fire breath right back at her.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Played straight with Elodie's face; she gets some minor cuts, but nothing that detracts from her beauty. She gets some pretty nasty injuries to the rest of her body, including a big burn on her upper chest—but the glowworms heal those, so there is no lasting damage.
- Big Sister Instinct: Elodie actually does escape the caves at the end of the second act. Then she learns that her sister Floria was thrown to the dragon in her stead, and heads back in to rescue her.
- Big "NO!": At the end, this serves as the Queen's last word while being incinerated by the dragon.
- Bittersweet Ending: While Elodie has ended the long line of sacrificing princesses to a dragon, rescued her younger sister, and convinced the dragon to instead burn the royal family responsible for this, her father is still dead, and she helped exterminate an entire castle full of people, which likely has resulted in Aurea falling into chaos. Her own homeland is also still suffering from a terrible winter famine.
- The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In: When Lord Bayford drops his sword while fighting the dragon, it lands with the point sticking into the ground.
- Blade Brake: Elodie uses her dagger-shaped metal busk to stop herself from sliding down a rock wall.
- Blood Oath: Part of the Elodie's wedding ritual is sharing blood with her husband through cuts on their hands. This actually serves to mark her as prey for the dragon.
- Breath Weapon: The dragon breathes fire, naturally. 'Breathe' might not be quite the right word, however; it looks more like she produces some kind of liquid fuel that ignites as she spits it out.
- Brick Joke: At the sacrifice, Queen Isabelle initially makes Elodie think that the sacrifice will be a single coin, before she's given instead. When she shows up at the third wedding at the end, Elodie announces her arrival by tossing the coin ahead of her.
- Buy Them Off: This is how the Aureans have managed to keep up the supply of sacrifices for so many centuries. They offer the father of the bride a king's ransom in gold to hand over his daughter and look the other way while they sacrifice her.
- This is what the first Aurean king and his descendents have been doing to avoid facing the Dragon’s fury for the unprovoked murder of her new-born children, by instead buying the dragon off with the sacrifices of three daughters (or so she thought) every generation.
- Cassandra Truth: Lady Bayford, Elodie's stepmother, tries and fails to reason first with Lord Bayford and then warn Elodie to call off the wedding after becoming suspicious of the royal family's motives. Subverted later in that Elodie's father is only pretending not to believe her. He already knows his wife's suspicions are justified yet isn't calling off the wedding because he agreed to it, knowing fully what it entailed.
- Catlike Dragons: The dragon has a notably feline body shape with long, slender limbs and overlapping scales on its neck and chest that resemble a lion's mane. Even its movements and its habit of toying with its prey are quite cat-like.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The dagger-shaped metal busk that the servants put into Elodie's bodice comes in handy as a tool (unusual, in that historical busks
were largely made of wood or bone). - The scented wax in the ornate egg serves as a makeshift light.
- While confronting the dragon, Lord Bayford drops his sword. Elodie later retrieves it, with it proving very useful in defeating the dragon.
- The dagger-shaped metal busk that the servants put into Elodie's bodice comes in handy as a tool (unusual, in that historical busks
- Chekhov's Skill: Elodie's skill in making and solving mazes comes in handy.
- Clothing Damage: Between falls, dragon attacks, and Elodie ripping pieces off of it for various reasons, Elodie's wedding dress goes through a lot of abuse over the course of the film. By the end of the film she's down to a red underlayer, which is in rags.
- Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are: The dragon loves to taunt Elodie when she's hiding, as it can smell her and is more than happy to drag this out.
- Cool, Clear Water: Subverted when Elodie tries to drink from a pool in the dragon's lair, then immediately spits it out upon noticing the plants within it. She has to drink water from the dripping icicles instead.
- Costume Porn: An entire scene is dedicated to Elodie being dressed in an elaborate, multi-layered Fairytale Wedding Dress by a team of servants before the ceremony. By the end of the film, the dress is utterly ruined.
- Crystal Landscape: In the area of the caves where the glowworms live, their slime accumulates and hardens into glowing crystal-like stalagmites.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The attempt to kill the dragon by the first king of Aurea and his knights fails miserably.
- Dark Is Not Evil: The Dragon may appear to be a satanic, bloodthirsty and evil monster. However, the truth is that she was scary-looking but benevolent creature who did nothing to deserve the murder of her children. It was this unprovoked crime, which drove her species into functional extinction, that resulted in her becoming a vengeful killer to (who she thought were) the family that did it to her.
- The Dead Have Names: Elodie finds a cave within the lair engraved with the names of over a dozen previous sacrifices. However, this isn't the names of all the sacrifices; it's just the names of all those who made it to this one section that the dragon can't reach with her claws or fire. Elodie adds her name to the list before leaving.
- Dead Man Writing: Elodie finds messages and a map carved on the walls of the dragon's cave. When she follows the map to a marked exit, she finds that although it leads outside the caves, it doesn't lead to safety, as the exit is halfway up a mountain with no safe way down. She also finds the mapmaker's body next to the exit.
- Defeat Means Friendship: More specifically a combination of this trope, Elodie explaining to the dragon that the women she had been killing are not from the Aurean royal family and healing/sparing the dragon after tricking her into setting herself on fire.
- Defiant to the End: When the dragon orders Lord Bayford to call out to Elodie to reveal her hiding spot in exchange for sparing his life, he instead orders her to remain hidden while staring the dragon in the eye, prompting her to kill him.
- Delightful Dragon: Downplayed. At first it seems as if the dragon is the classic Demonic Dragon, with the rather sadistic way she tormented and hunted down Elodie. However, it’s revealed that originally the dragon was this trope as she never did anything to provoke the humans that first settled on Aurea and the king who killed her children. This act is what lead to her becoming vengeful and murderous to the royal family, demanding the kings three daughters in exchange for the lives of her murdered offspring and three woman from the royal family every generation, so they would know her pain. However, even despite this, she still drew the line at killing innocents and never sought to take her revenge out on anyone but (who she thought were) the royal family, leading to her rage when Elodie revealed that they had fooled her and they had actually been sacrificing innocent women to her for centuries. This sways the dragon to bring an end to her vengeance after burning the royal family to the ground, and seemingly return to this trope.
- Determinator: Elodie and the Dragon. The former keeps going despite how many injuries she gets or how hopeless her situation. Meanwhile, the latter during the final battle keeps going no matter how many injuries Elodie manages to land on her, with the only injury that brings her down being when Elodie uses her own fire against her.
- "Die Hard" on an X: Die Hard in a dragon's lair.
- Dirty Coward: The first Aurean king. He murdered the dragon’s helpless offspring without provocation. When the king’s soldiers were all killed and he was at the dragon’s mercy, he traded his daughters' lives to save his own hide. This also applies to the royal family as a whole, as they have been sacrificing innocent woman rather than face the dragon themselves for centuries.
- Dirt Forcefield: Completely averted. Elodie is filthy by the climax.
- Distress Ball: After finding safe water to drink in the form of slowly melting icicles, Elodie stands under them with her mouth open and her eyes closed to catch the droplets. She is seemingly too sore, tired, and thirsty to notice or feel anything other than relief when they start melting faster as the dragon approaches and charges her flame-breath until it's almost too late. Elodie narrowly evades being incinerated, and the dragon snidely mocks her for being so careless.
- Dragon Hoard: The dragon's lair is strewn with jewelry and gold from all of the sacrificed princesses, especially in the initial drop area. Later, the dragon has created one not for herself, but around the bodies of her dead children, laying gold, jewels, and a crown at the base of their broken eggs.
- Dragons Prefer Princesses: Only royal blood will do for the sacrifices, hence why the prince and the princess share blood before they toss her into the chasm. This is because the dragon's daughters were killed, and she demanded the king's daughters in return, every generation.
- Easily Forgiven: Elodie appears to have made friends with the dragon in the final scene, having bonded with her over the fact that the Aureans tricked both of them. Never mind that the dragon tried to kill her and her sister, did kill her father and countless other girls, and was generally sadistic about the entire process up until learning about the ruse.
- Empire with a Dark Secret: Aurea is happy, prosperous, and peaceful...as long as they give up three women to be brutally murdered by a dragon.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Prince Henry goes along with his family's plans to sacrifice three young women, but he's shown to be much more hesitant than most of the family, knowing it is wrong and does grow to like Elodie in the small time they have with each other. He also refuses to sacrifice Floria because she's a child, protesting against it to the Queen, though he just gets sidestepped and ignored. While he's still shown marrying the final bride in the end, it's implied it's more out of the Queen forcing him to. When the dragon finally kills him and the rest of his family, he doesn't run, and acts like a Death Seeker, in contrast to the Queen who just shouts back in futility. Henry just closes his eyes and lets it happen rather than blame Elodie.
- Evil Counterpart: Like Elodie, the dragon is a natural-born survivor who has been victimised by the Royal Family. In the end, they put aside their differences.
- Evil Sounds Deep: The dragon has a deep but androgynous-sounding voice, and is a massive Sadist.
- Evil Sounds Raspy: Shohreh Aghdashloo's natural rasp is enhanced and deepened for the dragon's voice, befitting a giant reptilian monster stalking the protagonist.
- Evil Versus Evil: Elodie and her family are caught between a sadistic, bloodthirsty dragon that has been torturing and killing princesses for centuries as punishment for someone else's crime, and a royal dynasty all too willing to continue to procure innocent young women to sacrifice to the beast so that these innocents can bear the brunt of the dragon's vengeance in their place.
- Exact Words: The Queen gives a speech about how Elodie will join a long line of women who have helped to build the kingdom, a centuries-old tradition, and a legacy of honor and duty she will now inherit. All of this is true—but Elodie was led to believe that it would mean being the new princess, not being sacrificed to a dragon.
- Excellent Judge of Character: Lady Bayford, Elodie's stepmother. She almost immediately notices something is wrong with how her husband acts after deciding the Bride Price, and gets very unnerved when the Aurean Queen is casually classist and mistakes Elodie for "Eloise".
- Eye Scream: Elodie stabs the dragon in the eye with the dagger-shaped metal busk. The wound severely damages the dragon's vision, which Elodie then exploits to defeat it. It's difficult to see, but it seems that the healing glow worms repaired the damage, as the dragon seems to have both eyes when she burns the royal family.
- Face Death with Dignity: Unlike his mother, who dies screaming, Prince Henry merely closes his eyes and calmly accepts his fate when the dragon unleashes her fire.
- The dragon herself, after being tricked by Elodie into wounding herself with her own fire and learning that she had not been killing Aurean princesses, but innocent strangers, tells Elodie to “End it” and calmly expects Elodie to slay her, only for Elodie to instead spare her.
- The opening scene sets the first Aurean King up to be doing this after his men are killed by the dragon, planting his sword in the ground and hopelessly dropping to his knees to apparently accept his impending fate. Subverted later when it's revealed the king was an utter coward who was merely begging for his life, and gladly sacrificed his own children in exchange for the dragon sparing him.
- Fantastic Medicinal Bodily Product: The glowworms' slime can heal wounds almost immediately, as Elodie discovers when she wakes up with a bunch of them clustered around her burnt leg. Being able to heal quickly gets her farther than almost any other princess, and she uses them to save the dragon in the end.
- Feminist Fantasy: A Fractured Fairytale where the princess must use all her wits and skill to face the dragon herself and break the tradition of women being used as sacrifices.Elodie ultimately triumphs through the help of the other women sacrificed before her, reconciles with the dragon based on how they were both lied to and used by the royal family, and ends the curse. In addition, the majority of the cast is women, with only two major male characters: the prince, and Elodie's father.
- Foil: Elodie’s father Lord Bayford and the first Aurean King. Both are noblemen who sacrificed their daughters to the dragon and entered the dragon’s lair. The difference is the former was clearly tormented by the decision and ultimately could not go through with it, going to save Elodie and even sacrificing himself to keep her safe from the dragon. On the other side of the coin, the latter was a Dirty Coward who begged for his life and traded his daughters to save himself from the dragon’s wrath.
- Forgiveness:
- While Elodie was not actively hostile to her stepmother, she seemed to have a resentment or dismissiveness towards her. She grows to fully trust and embrace her as a mother after she first warns her of a bad feeling about the wedding after speaking with the Aurean queen, and later rides with a chest wound to warn her that her sister is the next sacrifice.
- Bordering between this and Easily Forgiven above. Elodie spares the dragon's life when she was at her mercy even after the dragon asked Elodie to kill her. Saying "I'm through being told what to do," and taking action to save her life, despite the dragon killing her father, dozens if not hundreds of princesses and almost herself, under the reasoning both were tricked and put in that position by the Aureans. It turned into a heroic sort of Pragmatic Villainy or "Pragmatic Forgiveness" in that both then teamed up to finally kill off the Aurean royals and nobles, while giving the innocents a chance to flee.
- Foreshadowing:
- After moving to Aurea, Ellie sees another young noblewoman in the tower next to hers, but before they can exchange greetings the other noblewoman is called away. Later that evening she sees a mysterious fire up on the mountainside that quickly disappears, foreshadowing that this young noblewoman, like Ellie herself not long after, was sacrificed to the dragon. Elodie later finding her half-charred corpse in one of the tunnels.
- In the prologue, the dragon flies over the castle and the fields on the way to the mountain, showing a thriving kingdom. One notes it's conspicuously unburnt for a king that claims to be "saving" his land from a dragon attacking it, setting up the reveal that the dragon was never a threat to the kingdom until the king killed her daughters. This is further set up later in the movie when it is revealed that this king wasn't just the first of his dynasty, he actually led the first humans to settle on the island. One notes that for a dragon so allegedly hostile to the human settlers, she was surprisingly accommodating of their construction projects, since Aurea's massive royal castle is already completely built.
- The Dragon's Breath Weapon noticeably resembles a flamethrower, with it being stored in a liquid form within her body and igniting once expelled from her mouth. This foreshadows that for all the advantages her draconic nature grants her, immunity to her own flames is not one of them, with her needing to store her fire-spewing substance in a safe form within herself to avoid self-harming. This is ultimate the main contributor to rendering her helpless before Elodie, despite all the damage she'd dealt to her with a sword.
- Fractured Fairy Tale: The story has a number of classic elements from a typical Fairy Tale, such as a princess who is a Damsel in Distress, a hero facing a dragon, an ancient curse that threatens the kingdom, and the princess marrying a prince. However, the story begins with the princess marrying the prince only to be immediately sacrificed in order to appease that curse, making her the hero who must face the dragon in order to survive.
- Friend to All Living Things: Elodie puts out a burning bird and expresses sympathy for it, and assures the glowworms that she won't hurt them. While she initially reacts in disgust when the glowworms start crawling on her leg, she apologizes when she realizes they were healing her. She even ends up forgiving and seemingly befriending the dragon after they both learn they were wronged/deceived by the royal family. note
- From Dress to Dressing: One of the many reasons why Elodie's dress gets ruined over the course of the film.
- Gold Makes Everything Shiny: The kingdom of Aurea is covered in gold from the armor to the buildings to the tables, showing off their fabulous wealth. The dragon herself has gold blood and scales, implying that they got all this wealth from the bargain.
- Good Stepmother: One of the film's inversions of classic fairy tale tropes. While strict and proper, Elodie's stepmother cares deeply for her two stepdaughters. When she suspects something is amiss about the wedding, she goes straight to Elodie to warn her.
- Grimmification: The overall premise, as showcased by the trailer and official plot summary, is a Darker and Edgier take on the Fairy Tale Prince Lindworm, which also featured a King and Queen who sacrifice multiple young damsels to a fearsome dragon under the false pretense that they will be marrying a prince. Here, rather than easily taming the dragon thanks to the advice of a friendly witch, the titular damsel is in mortal danger and must fight for her life.
- Hate Sink: Queen Isabelle is a vile class snob who looks down on self-made wealthy people and is willing to sacrifice innocent women to a bloodthirsty dragon.
- Hellish Pupils: The dragon has rectangular pupils like a sheep or a goat's, seemingly just because it's creepier than the usual slit pupils used for dragons.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Elodie tricks the dragon into breathing fire on herself.
- Hope Spot:
- In the cult, Elodie is at first convinced that she will be sacrificed, but the Queen eventually clarifies that paying her due means tossing a coin down the chasm. She relaxes and lets the prince carry her on the bridge...at which point he throws her off, revealing she was the sacrifice all along.
- Elodie finds a map that shows a way out to the sun. It does, but the hole is halfway up a mountain with no way down.
- Humans Are Bastards: It at first seems as if the dragon holds this view towards all humans, however this is surprisingly downplayed when it’s revealed that when she referred to Elodie as “You! Your kind, your blood,” she was really talking about the royal family, who were the ones who killed her children, rather than humanity in general.
- Important Haircut: Elodie saws off her hair with a knife before going to save Floria, signifying that she's gone from merely wanting to escape to seeking the dragon herself.
- Impoverished Patrician: Elodie's home kingdom is devastatingly poor, and her Arranged Marriage is to win her father enough gold from her bride price to keep their people alive.
- It Can Think: The dragon makes it clear that she's far more than a simple beast when she speaks to Elodie, explaining her desire for revenge before telling her to run.
- In the Blood: The Royal House of Aurea is made up of generation after generation of utterly despicable people, going back to its founder who led his people to settle on the island and slaughtered the dragon's innocent children; and who have spent centuries sacrificing three innocent women every generation instead of daughters of their own house as the dragon demanded in retribution for their founder's crime.
- Karma Houdini:
- The family of the third sacrifice gets to keep their daughter and the gold the Aureans paid them to let them sacrifice her to the dragon. Of course, this would assume they were paid in advance.
- The Dragon faces no consequences for her sadistic murder of dozens of innocent girls, or Elodie's father.
- Several generations of the Aurean royal family that sacrificed innocent woman to the Dragon and got to live out their lives punishment-free before Elodie discovered the truth.
- Last of Its Kind: The dragon is described as this. She originally had three daughters, but the first Aurean king killed them. She even tells Elodie to accept her fate by saying they will both die alone, and killing the sacrifices in an endless, symbolic quest for revenge is the only purpose she has in life.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The tradition of Human Sacrifice started with the first king of Aurea, who cravenly accepted the dragon's demands for his daughter's lives to save his own. Lord Bayford, though initially going through with the Royal Family's bargain to gains much-needed funds for his kingdom, ultimately cannot bring himself to do the same, and leads a doomed attempt to rescue Elodie that leads to his own death in her place, though his efforts do ultimately allow Elodie the chance she needs to escape. This leads to Elodie eventually revealing to the Dragon how the Royal Family deceived them both, and the Dragon burning the entire family away, ending their reign that was brought about by a father's sacrifice, and ended by a different one's.
- Long-Lived: The Dragon. She is at least hundreds if not thousands of years old by the time she meets Elodie.
- Loophole Abuse: The dragon kills three women of the Aurean royal family's bloodline every generation. The royal family figured out long ago that mixing their blood with that of a random woman makes them indistinguishable from an actual daughter of the line, and have been tossing temporary daughters-in-law to the dragon for centuries.
- Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: Elodie loses her shoes falling down the pit and goes barefoot for the rest of the film, which although probably lovely for her actress is very unpleasant for her. She eventually makes foot wraps from her dress, but loses those too.
- MacGyvering: Elodie has to make makeshift tools from her wedding dress, jewelry and the remains of the dragon's previous victims.
- Monster Delay: The dragon's presence is certainly felt throughout the film and we get brief glimpses of her in part and in silhouette almost right from the start, but we don't get a clear, well-lit look at her until the final act.
- Monster Is a Mommy: Was a mommy, anyway. The first king shattered the dragon's eggs, and in repayment, the dragon forced him to sacrifice three daughters of his own line in every generation after. At some point in the process, the royal family figured out that they could sacrifice daughters-in-law instead of actual daughters, so long as they could get them to smell right. The dragon is not happy when Elodie explained what was going on, and destroys the castle in revenge for this betrayal.
- My God, What Have I Done?: When Elodie reveals that all the women she's been killing were completely innocent, the dragon coolly tells her to "End it." While she's already dying and thus had nothing to lose by it, once she's healed she kills the royal family and ends her reign of terror.
- Near-Death Clairvoyance: When she's on the brink of dying, Elodie briefly sees the spirits of the other women who have been sacrificed to the dragon. While it could be written off as just a hallucination, one of them gives her information she couldn't have known beforehand.
- Near-Villain Victory: Elodie comes within a hair's breadth of dying to the dragon multiple times, diving to safety or the dragon being distracted just barely before she's roasted or caught. The most notable is when the dragon has her cornered by the exit, and is just about to burn her to death...then hears Lord Bayford's voice, and is so outraged she flies to confront him.
- The Needs of the Many: Deconstructed. This is how the kingdom justifies the sacrifices generation after generation, and how Elodie's father justifies letting her go along with it for the sake of saving his impoverished people. However, her father is so wracked by guilt that he comes back to save her anyway, and it's revealed that the sacrifice isn't as straightforward as the royal family claim: the king killed the dragon's three daughters unprovoked, offered his own daughters as collateral, and the royal family have been using a loophole for centuries to sacrifice other, non-royal women to keep avoiding punishment for their crimes. What's worse, it's demonstrated by Elodie that they could have faced and killed the dragon themselves if they genuinely put their minds to it, but chose instead to let the women die because it was easier and have been using this trope to justify it.
- No Endor Holocaust: By the end of the movie Elodie has wiped out the entire Aurean royal family and left a power vacuum. The movie ends with Elodie leaving Aurea with her sister and stepmother even though she is the only one with a semi-legitimate claim to the throne. On the other hand, the dragon is shown leaving with her, so the Aurean commoners will not have to worry about that at least.
- The Nose Knows: The dragon can tell people's lineage from smell, to a point. While she can recognize the relationship between Elodie and her father and sister, and can recognize Aurean royal blood, she can't tell the difference between a woman of Aurean royal blood and a woman who has had Aurean royal blood put in her in a Blood Oath ceremony.
- Not So Invincible After All: Much of Aurea's fear of the dragon lies in the fact that they simply do not see any way to kill it, having been curbstomped when they first confronted it, and so have been giving it sacrifices for years without any attempt to fight it. Lord Bayford's troops meet the same fate, being easily picked off and squashed. Elodie is able to take out one of her eyes, stab her in the hand and throat, and trick her to breathing fire on herself. She might have killed the dragon herself, had she not decided to spare her.
- Once More, with Clarity: The prologue shows how the king of Aurea first set out to kill the dragon, the sound of something living breaking and tearing off-screen, and then the dragon arriving and killing everyone but the king, who was forced to make a bargain. Later, Elodie discovers some remains, and the full scene is shown: the king killing the dragon's three newly-hatched daughters was the off-screen sound, and the dragon demanding three daughters in return was the bargain.
- Our Dragons Are Different: The dragon is a sentient creature capable of human speech. She also has six limbs (four legs and two wings) (especially different considering several notable dragons portrayed in film resemble wyverns), horizontal pupils, retractable claws, gold blood and scales, an exceedingly long lifespan lasting centuries, and seems to have an inflatable throat sac she uses to breathe fire.
- Papa Wolf: While he did originally agree to sacrifice her for the good of his kingdom, Lord Bayford feels so bad for it that he eventually comes to save Elodie. When the dragon captures him and tries to make him call for his daughter, he uses the opportunity to apologize to her...and then orders her not to come out, before the dragon kills him for it.
- Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Subverted hard. Elodie and Henry are arranged, but seem to get on quite well and bond over both wanting to see the world. Then he uses her as a human sacrifice. Apparently he did catch feelings, but not enough to actually do anything about it.
- Pet the Dog: The dragon has no real reason to keep Floria alive, as Elodie would come for her living or dead. Perhaps she just found killing a child to be too much, as she's shown cradling Floria in her tail in an almost motherly fashion.
- Pintsized Powerhouse: Elodie is small but tough and this is matched by the dragon, which is capable of Smaug-like levels of destruction but when seen in the light is only about the size of a minibus.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Queen Isabelle mocks Lady Bayford for having common blood. She later dismisses Elodie as just a commoner when she shows up at the third wedding.
- Pragmatic Villainy: While the Aureans go to great lengths to keep the would-be sacrifices in the dark about what is going on until it is too late, they are very upfront about the whole situation with the girls' parents when proposing the matches, offering a straight-up trade of a staggering amount of gold for the life of their daughters as sacrifice to a dragon, as while you only need to fool the girls until you sacrifice them, lying to their families would be utterly impractical, since they would eventually come around asking questions. Specially with three of them at the same time. Presumably the payment also insures that word doesn't get out about the situation so potential sacrifices aren't forewarned.
- Rags to Royalty: Lady Bayford was the daughter of a ropemaker who managed to become the second wife of Lord Bayford.
- Red Herring: Two of lord Bayford's soldiers talk about knights who went to fight the dragon in the past, noting that they did so for its blood. In Norse Mythology the hero Siegfried gained Nigh-Invulnerability after slaying the dragon Fafnir and being showered with his blood. Considering the Aurean nobles had been using a blood sharing ceremony to turn the princesses royals and trick the dragon into thinking they were natural-born daughters, it stood to reason that dragon blood might have similar, possibly magical effects. However while Elodie does wound the dragon and makes her bleed, at no point does her blood figure into the narrative. Interestingly, in the novelization, the dragon's blood mixes with Elodie's during their fight and gives her the ability to transform into a dragon herself.
- Redemption Quest: Implied, the final shot of the movie showing the dragon flying alongside Elodie’s ship as she returns to her kingdom indicates the dragon, having ended its revenge and destroyed the royal family, is going to help Elodie rebuild her kingdom as a way to not only make up for the suffering she caused Elodie, but also to try and make up for all the innocents that she killed.
- Repurposed Pop Song: The trailer is accompanied by “Run From Me” by Canadian group Timber Timbre.
- Revenge by Proxy: The dragon not only killed the first Aurean king's three daughters because he killed her children unprovoked, but she also demanded the royal family sacrifice three woman from the royal line for centuries.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: It's established in the beginning that Elodie's kingdom is desperately poor, so even the two princesses are chopping wood and offering their own tapestries and clothes to burn to try and save as many people as possible.
- Rule of Three: The Aureans offer three sacrifices to the dragon in every generation. Oddly for this trope, Elodie is the second sacrifice. Elodie glimpses the first girl in another balcony of the castle the night she arrives in Aurea and later finds her dead body inside the mountain after her own sacrifice. After she escapes, she goes back into the cave to keep her sister Floria from being offered as second sacrifice in her place, and the third is an unnamed bit character who only shows up in a single scene after Elodie has defeated the dragon.
- Sadist: The dragon says that her prey running in terror is her favorite part and taunts Elodie all the while, even giving her a false sense of hope by letting her escape up the crystals to the door outside, just so she can swoop around and block it. She also states that the whole point of the generational sacrifices is so the Aureans will know the pain of losing their children as she had in every generation until they die out—which is why she gets so angry after learning that they've actually been sacrificing strangers who have only been part of the family by marriage for a matter of hours for centuries.
- Save the Villain: One of them, at least: After defeating the dragon and explaining to her what is really going on, Elodie uses some glowworms to heal her, and then goes to confront the true villains, her in-laws. Elodie gives the Prince's latest bride, her family, and the castle servants time to run before the dragon sets the castle on fire.
- Screaming Woman: Elodie does a lot of screaming over the course of the movie.
- Senseless Sacrifice: Narrowly subverted. Lord Bayford orders his daughter not to come out and lets the dragon kill him, but she instinctively cries out anyway as he's stabbed. She only lives because another person in the cave accidentally made a noise, distracting the dragon. However, even before this his arrival provided a crucial distraction that saved Elodie's life when the dragon had her cornered, and the rope he left is what lets Elodie finally escape the cave.
- Sins of Our Fathers: The dragon has been killing three women every generation to avenge her own slain daughters, ensuring that the royal family will always know the pain she did even though the king who actually did it is long dead. It's clear from her dialogue that she considers the entire royal family culpable for her pain, getting angry when Elodie denies that she did anything and yelling that "your kind" are murderers because they slaughtered her children unprovoked. Learning that she has been killing strangers instead horrifies her, and she kills the royal family instead and declares her revenge over. Unlike most examples, the royal family aren't very sympathetic, as they've been feeding women to the dragon all that time and Elodie doesn't really care when the dragon kills them for deceiving her.
- Significant Wardrobe Shift: In the prologue, the sigil of the king of Aurea is a gold lion on a blue field. By the time Aurea is revisited in the present day, the royal sigil is a gold "dragon" on a red field. And the Aureans have taken to putting the dragon symbol on everything, including dragon statues in the entry to the harbor. They also have a group of female retainers/emissaries who dress head to toe entirely in red.
- Talking the Monster to Death: Elodie manages to convince the dragon she is not a princess of the Aurean dynasty, and in fact most of the women she has been killing were innocent. Further, her act of forgiving and healing the dragon's rather than killing her cemented the fact that not all humans were bad, and both team up to destroy the Aurean royals. The fact the dragon seems to be following them back to their northern lands even suggests they might have become friends, or at least that Elodie convinced the dragon to literally move on with her life and seek a new home.
- Took a Level in Badass: Elodie is depicted in the trailer as going from a sheltered Princess Classic destined to be a Human Sacrifice to a battered and hardened warrior. She does have non-standard princess skills: Wood chopping, horseback riding, and interest in mazes. And she's not grossed out by the glowworms. And the strength to pull herself up a rock wall—twice.
- Trampled Underfoot: The dragon likes to crush her enemies, smashing at least two men onscreen into a bloody pulp.
- Two-Timer Date: Or in this case, two-timer wedding. The need for three sacrifices without alerting the dragon to the fact that the girls are actually daughters-in-law means that each wedding has to take place so soon after the one before that the brides-to-be can actually coincide at the castle at the same time. Elodie glimpses the first sacrifice on another balcony on her own wedding night.
- Virtue Is Weakness: Queen Isabella calls her son Henry weak when he protests sacrificing Floria on the grounds that she is only a child.
- Wedding Ring Removal: Elodie dumps her ring away in the caves in outrage at her husband's betrayal.
- Well, This Is Not That Trope: Elodie's narration at the beginning says that there are many tales of chivalry, of heroic knights saving damsels in distress, and this is not one of those stories.
- What You Are in the Dark: Elodie's father ultimately decides that he can't live with himself for selling his daughter to be a Human Sacrifice and goes back to try to rescue her. He fails, to his death, but the attempt provides Elodie with some resources that help her save herself.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child:
- The Dragon. She is fully prepared to kill grown men and women in some pretty brutal and sadistic ways but the fact that she never harms Elodie's sister Floria even though keeping her alive serves no purpose indicates that she draws the line at harming children.
- Prince Henry may have reconciled with the need of tossing young women to a dragon, and begrudgingly does so, but throwing Floria, a young child, proves to be too much for him, protesting as such, but gets ignored. Unfortunately for him, his mother has no such qualms.
The novelization contains these tropes:
- Adaptational Badass: Thanks to Blood Magic, this Elodie gains the ability to transform into a dragon after mixing her blood with Retaza's.
- Adaptational Heroism:
- With a slice of Adaptational Dumbass, to boot. Lord Bayford thought the dragon was a metaphor when negotiating Elodie's marriage. It wasn't until they actually threw her in that he realized what he'd given his daughter away for.
- Queen Isabelle is less of a Hate Sink and doesn't have the classist tendencies she has in the movie. She regrets what she must do for the kingdom and feels bad for the sacrifices, but feels the need to press on since her husband can't. She also faces death with dignity.
- Adaptational Villainy
- In the movie, Victoria is just another one of the many sacrifices through the ages, namely the one who wrote the messages on the walls. In the book, she was the one who struck the initial bargain. She never intended any princesses to follow her, but accepted the risk as "necessary sacrifices for Aurea," something Elodie curses her for.
- In the movie, Prince Henry is the royal most uncomfortable with the sacrifices, apologizing to Elodie before he throws her in and later refusing to throw Floria down after her. In the book, he is the least uncomfortable, showing no remorse over tossing Elodie into the pit and dismissing her as a possible future queen because she's "too spirited," and throwing Floria into the pit himself. His final moments are also changed: while the movie Henry is genuinely remorseful and accepts his fate to atone for it, the book Henry is clearly faking the whole thing and runs for it.
- In the movie, the sacrifices are three women every generation. Here, it is three sacrifices every year, meaning the kingdom and the dragon have killed at least 2400 people for their crops and prosperity.
- Adaptation Inspiration: The novelization is based on an early version of the film's screenplay and author Evelyn Skye stated she was "given free rein to write my own version of the story" with the screenplay as a starting point. Consequently, while the film and book share a basic premise - a girl sacrificed to a dragon by a treacherous kingdom fights back - among other details, they're very different stories (the dragon's motives in particular differ greatly between the two works).Evelyn Skye: Both the novel and the movie may stem from the same origin, but they are also each their own unique works of art.
- Blood Magic: Elodie has the ability to see people's memories when she touches their blood, but it's not reliable and only awakens on Aurea. It proves valuable, as the former princesses condemned to the dragon left bloodstains she can learn from. It's also why the dragon is so determined: her mother prophesied that a princess' blood would cure her infertility and revive the race of dragons, so she's been killing princesses looking for the survivor. In the end, when she and Elodie perform a Mutual Kill and only survive thanks to the glowworms, the mixing of blood gives Elodie the ability to become a dragon and cures Retaza's infertility.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The dragon's strange way of thinking gets more emphasis here. It gives life to the isle, so it demands life in return, and doesn't see why anyone would complain about a reasonable bargain like three people each year. She's also been killing princesses in the hope of finding the prophesied survivor who will cure her infertility.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The dragon needs the blood of the sacrificed princesses, not just their deaths. At one point, Elodie manages to wedge herself deeply into the rock where the dragon could just burn her to death, but would have no way of retrieving her body to eat.
- Conlang: Khaevis Ventvis, the language of dragons, invented by the author's daughter for the book. The book includes appendixes at the end translating it, and Elodie not only starts figuring it out but leaves notes on it in the Safe Cave in case any princesses come after her.
- Conspicuous Consumption: While Aurea is plenty opulent in the movie, particularly where gold is concerned, Elodie in the book takes special attention to how obscenely Aureans flaunt their fabulous wealth, leaving gold dust on beds, wrapping things in gold paper, giving her opulent feasts and dresses filled with gems. It's later revealed that spoiling the wives with luxury is seen as a final grace before the sacrifices, meaning at least part of this is deliberate.
- Face Death with Dignity:
- At least a few of the former princesses have done this, with Elodie finding a group that just let themselves dehydrate in a cathedral-like cave rather than be burned. Elodie contemplates doing the same herself when the situation looks dire.
- In contrast to the film, King Roderick and Queen Isabelle calmly hold hands and let the dragon incinerate them to atone for all the princesses they've sacrificed. Their son, on the other hand, runs like a coward.
- Face Your Fears: Elodie is claustrophobic due to a traumatic incident when she was young. Having to hide in small crevices and travel down narrow tunnels to escape the dragon forces her to face it.
- False Utopia: Aurea is a paradise where even the poorest live in comfort and safety. And all it costs is the deaths of three innocent women every year.
- Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: The source of Aurea's fabulous wealth is aurum wheat (a single loaf of which provides all the nutrients needed for a single day), sangberries with healing properties, and silver pears.
- Fisher King: The novelization makes clear what was only implied in the film: the presence of the dragon infuses the land of Aurea with magic, giving them perfect harvests, a lack of any natural disasters, and fabulous wealth. In fact, they figured out long ago that they could just poison the dragon with a sacrifice, but have decided it's better to keep the sacrifices up to keep their wealth and prosperity.
- Graceful Ladies Like Purple: The sacrifices are tossed to the dragon wearing a diaphanous, Gem-Encrusted lavender gown. Unbeknownst to the kingdom, this is the color of fertility among dragons.
- Monster Is a Mommy: Given a different twist than the movie. This dragon was not the original dragon that settled Aurea came in conflict with: Victoria's poison killed that one. It's her daughter, who is killing princesses to try and find the one whose blood will cure her and as revenge for her mother's death.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- King Roderick is a mental wreck due to growing up sacrificing princesses, often barely being aware of what's happening or breaking down when he sees Elodie or any wedding related stuff. There's also mention of Henry's older brother Jacob, who fled the kingdom when he was 15 to avoid having to sacrifice women. Unfortunately, this means that Henry has been the groom for princesses since he was five, and has grown up cold and hardened because of it.
- Alexandra is a scout for princesses who specializes in fathers that are so duty bound to their kingdoms they'll sacrifice their daughters for it. She was the one who chose Elodie and she emphatically hates her job and herself, but feels it's necessary. After her daughter convinces her to try and rescue Elodie, she leads Lord Bayford to the mountain. In the end, she and her family leave Aurea despite the end of the sacrifices, as there's too much pain there for her.
- No Need for Names: It's clarified that dragons do not have names. The dragon takes the name "Retaza", or "mother", at the end.
- Prince Charmless: Henry puts on a facade of charm, aided by his exceptional beauty and grace. All of that drops once the sacrifice comes into play and he's revealed to be a cold, ruthless human being. Elodie later learns that he's used the same exact lines and tactics (right down to giving them the same necklace while claiming that he fell in love with his bride for herself, then taking it back to toss to the next one) for every single bride he's ever sacrificed.
- Regret Eating Me: Princess Victoria, with her sisters dead and her options running low, drank poison and let the dragon eat her. It killed the dragon and left her daughter infertile, starting the tradition of sacrificed princesses.
- Ruder and Cruder: By virtue of being an adult book rather than a PG-13 movie. Elodie is not a virgin and is looking forward to her wedding night with Prince Henry. There's a scene where she's stripped naked and painted as preparation for the sacrifice, and the book is freer with profanity like "bitch" and "merde."
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: At the end, a fair number of Aureans leave for Inophe, no longer willing to be part of a kingdom built on Human Sacrifice.
- Shout-Out: The ship Elodie comes in is called Deomelas, after the short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, another story about a supposed paradise built on the inhabitants quietly allowing others to suffer. At the end, a number of Aureans sail away on it, risking an uncertain future away from the utopia of Aurea rather than continue to be part of such a society.
- Stating the Simple Solution: Twice over. The original king of Aurea offered to just sail away and leave the dragon's home, but it was Princess Victoria who spoke against it, convinced she could slay the dragon. In the centuries since, it's been acknowledged that the royal family could have ended the sacrifices at any time by poisoning a girl before sacrificing her, but consider their crops and wealth to be worth the sacrifices of a few women every year.
- That Came Out Wrong: Elodie has a habit of thinking too quickly and then saying whatever comes out of her mouth somewhere down her train of thought, like thinking about how a man should build a home for his wife and then saying he needs to dig latrines.
- Thirsty Desert: The duchy of Inophe, where Elodie is from, is a desert province that's also been under a drought for 70 years. Aurea's gifts of fruits, grains, and gold could mean the difference between life and death for them.
"It’s not me you should fear. This is the end of your story."
