Literature / Tortall Universe

Go on, just try and tell her to stay in the kitchen.

The Tortall-verse consists of several sets of young adult fantasy novels by Tamora Pierce:

• Song of the Lioness follows Alanna of Trebond and the time between her Twin Switch with her brother to her knighthood and subsequent adventures; for the first two books she must also disguise her true gender.
  • Alanna: The First Adventure
  • In the Hand of the Goddess
  • The Woman Who Rides Like a Man
  • Lioness Rampant
• The Immortals centers around Daine, a young girl able to communicate with animals as the world once again has to deal with the Immortals who had been sealed away centuries before.
  • Wild Magic
  • Wolf-Speaker
  • Emperor Mage
  • The Realms of the Gods
• Protector of the Small follows Keladry of Mindelan, the first girl to train openly for Knighthood after Alanna and her struggle to keep up with those who want to see her fail and constantly move the goalposts. She's the only protagonist so far not to have any magic.
  • First Test
  • Page
  • Squire
  • Lady Knight
• The Trickster's Duet follows Alianne, Alanna's daughter, and her involvement in the underground movement in the Copper Isles to install a new Queen to replace the Royally Screwed Up monarchy and free the repressed native people.
  • Trickster's Choice
  • Trickster's Queen
• Beka Cooper is told in first person from the point of view of the title character, George Cooper's ancestor 200 years before Alanna's time, and her time in the proto-police force known as the Dogs on the streets of Corus.
  • Terrier
  • Bloodhound
  • Mastiff
• Tortall and Other Lands is a collection of short stories written over the years, which was published in 2011. It includes eleven stories, six of which take place in Tortall.
• Tortall: A Spy's Guide is a collection of sensitive documents rediscovered by George Cooper. These documents include profiles on important characters like Numair Salmalín, as well as notes on immortals and personal communications.
• The Numair Chronicles follows Numair's days at the Imperial University of Carthak and eventual flight to Tortall.
  • Tempests and Slaughter

More are upcoming. Has a character page.

In 2019, it was announced that Lionsgate and Playground Entertainment were working on a TV adaptation of the series. Unfortunately, the deal fell through in 2022 as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

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Tropes present throughout the series:

• Acceptable Feminine Goals and Traits: Most of the feminine goals and traits can be observed throughout each of the series, though not all by the same person. Mostly this is done to prove that women do not have to give up their feminine personalities to do great things.
• Action Girl:
  • The cast is full of them. Alanna trained as a knight since she was ten, is an expert swordswoman, and can handle herself with a manner of other weapons and even unarmed. Daine is an excellent rider and archer, though her ability to transform into any animal understandably gives her a leg up in a fight. Kel, like Alanna, is a trained knight (with a particularly notable skill at the lance), and can wield a heavy glaive with ease. While Aly prefers to use stealth to fighting, she is more than capable of handling herself. Beka, meanwhile, was a cop and excelled at using the baton or her fists.
  • It's noted that Shang Warriors, elite fighters trained from childhood to be experts in almost every weapon but especially in hand-to-hand combat, are composed of both men and women. Most female Shang apparently don't like flashy titles, preferring to keep it practical, but the legendary Shang Unicorn was apparently "all steel".
• Aerith and Bob: Among others, we have Alanna, Jonathan, Gary and Raoul alongside Veralidaine, Numair (or Arram) and Keladry. Pierce also has distinct countries and regions with their own naming traditions, and people from the same country generally follow the same naming style; for example, quite a lot of the Tortallan names sound close to English, while Gallan names have a -sra (or -sri, in Daine's case), and obviously, Yamani names are like Japanese names. She actually subverts this trope, or at least doesn't flaunt it like many other authors.
  • Among Tortallans, most of the "Bob" names (George, Frances, Roger, along with those already named) were introduced in the first quartet. Tortallans from later books tend to have "Aerith" names (Keladry, Merric, Wyldon, Alianne) or Aerith-names that abreviate to Bob ones (Nealan) — although there are some exceptions (Owen). In fact, many of the "Aerith" names are variations on real-world names from Europe, England especially. "Wyldon" is a variant of "Weldon", for example, and Keladry could be seen as a variant of Kelly. "Alianne", of course, is named after King Jonathan's mother, Lianne.
• Age-Gap Romance: Pierce likes large age gaps. Alanna, Daine, and Kel are all more than five years younger than their main love interests (with Daine being about half the age of hers). Pierce has admitted openly that this is Author Appeal.
• Artistic License – History: Tortallan squires are depicted exclusively as knights-in-training, remaining squires for no more than four years. In the real medieval ages, there were many lifelong professional squires as knights strongly benefited from having support staff. Granted, Tortall is not Earth history. 'Squire' in Tortall has only partial relation to 'knight's assistant' as a squire's duties include helping their knight-master, but primarily seems to mean 'knight cadet'.
• Artistic License – Sports: Tamora Pierce's portrayal of jousting is hilariously inaccurate in both the rules and the equipment. While the differences in rules can be Hand Waved by Tortall not being Medieval Europe, so it can have its own rules for sporting events, what can't be hand-waved is the fact that unless they are fighting honor duels with the intent to kill, Tortallian knights tilt in nothing more than a helmet, a shield, and a gambeson (padded shirt), even though plate armour is the norm when knights step out onto an actual battlefield. In real life, anybody who jousted with anything less than a full suit of plate armour would probably die from the first hit they took, and most knights heavily reinforced the left side of their armour anyway, just to make sure.
• Ascended Extra: Kylaia al Jmaa, who was first mentioned offhand by Liam in Lioness Rampant as the Shang Unicorn and later became the protagonist of "Student of Ostriches", a short story in Tortall And Other Lands. You'd be forgiven for thinking she was a new character.
• Author Appeal: Animals. Every protagonist has at least one animal companion, more than that if you count the knights' horses, and they all get their own personality.
• Black-and-White Morality: Initially the case, but as Pierce develops as a writer morality becomes less clear-cut. Her heroines are always good and face at least one truly evil enemy, but there's increasing nuance in the details. Nearly everyone who likes Alanna, and whom she likes back, is outright good while those who are cruel to her are evil. She sees the gods, who favor her, as purely good. Daine comes to realize that some of the initially-antagonistic Stormwings and other Immortals have motives she understands and can ally with her, and that just because a man loves animals doesn't mean he's a good person. Kel is possibly the purest idealist of Pierce's heroines, but she has to navigate an unfair world and understand the value of compromise, and readily understands that just because someone's an Ungrateful Bastard doesn't mean they should be left to suffer. Aly is sketchier in many ways, as are plenty of her allies, some of whom duck the responsibilities placed upon them, and in her experience the gods are certainly not benign. Beka, as a commoner Dog, is the protagonist with the least societal power and sees the worst of Tortall. She is literally more corrupt than the others in that she takes bribes, while still being strictly principled.
• Breaking the Glass Ceiling: In the first series, Alanna becomes the first female knight in a century, but this isn't publicly known until after she's done it, because she disguised herself as a boy. As a result of Alanna's achievement, however, Kel (in the third series) is then able to become the first girl since Alanna was knighted to train openly (and she insists on wearing dresses at dinner to ensure people don't forget that she's a girl). Alanna bringing Thayet and Buri to Tortall also leads to the formation of the Queen's Riders, small light semi-military forces which are co-ed and often support more conventional armies.
• Character Overlap: Main and supporting characters from one series usually appear, Older and Wiser, in later ones. Less so in Beka Cooper as that takes place a few hundred years before the other stories (so there's the Cat, and otherwise a number of characters are the ancestors of characters in the later books), and in Tempests and Slaughter as that takes place at the same time as Song of the Lioness but a continent away.
• Coming of Age Story: Each of the series follows its protagonist as she finds or creates her place in the world. Although Aly and Beka are at the age of adulthood in Tortall already (sixteen), their stories still have them go from youthful inexperience to maturity and confidence.
• Continuity Drift: The rules of magic change over time.
  • In the Song of the Lioness quartet, George says that the Gift acts as a shield against those with the Sight. Three miniseries later, Alianne has the Sight so strongly she can see a great many things about people with the Gift.
    • George notes that his sight isn't very strong, though he can still notice when she's around. This may also be because she was a chosen of the Mother Goddess, or that her Gift specifically protects her, like how some people can't scry, but can throw fire and lightning.
    • It could also be the Gift in Alanna's genes augmenting the Sight in George's passed down to Aly — she notes that the strength of her Sight is due to her mother's Gift, so it could just be another effect of that mix.
• Continuity Nod: Every single new series is packed with references to the previous series, mostly through the reappearance of old characters. In First Test, one moment concerning Numair from Wolf-Speaker is mentioned. One of the best things about this series is that characters age and change between books and series, and it's always good seeing what the heroes from previous books are up to. Beka Cooper, while a prequel trilogy, has a great number of relatively subtler calls to books written earlier. Well, and the Cat.
• Continuity Snarl: A Spy's Guide has a listing of what is supposed to be all of the kings of Tortall from its founding to the series' present. Among other things, ordinals reveal there are at least four missing (the first and third Bairds and Jonathans), and some of the historical events don't match up with things stated in previous books.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Alanna is a noble who pretends to be a boy to become a Magic Knight, Daine is a backwoods demigoddess orphan who becomes a Nature Hero, Keladry is a normal (noble) girl with normal (noble) parents who becomes a Badass Normal lady knight, Aly is the daughter of Alanna and George and is a Guile Hero spy, Beka is a commoner who works as a police officer and has a connection to the Black God, and Arram is a boy and a powerful mage in training who, at least in his first book, has a much easier time of things than the others.
• Cosmic Plaything: All of the protagonists thus far. Usually they are chosen by one of the gods to either fulfill a specific purpose or just do their work generally.
• Cyanide Pill:
  • Suicide spells.
  • Fire-flower vines contain a poison that will kill you if you don't maintain contact with it.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The kindest, fairest, and least biased of the Fantasy Pantheon is the Black God, their God of Death.
• Dead Guy Junior: Multiple characters end up naming their children after deceased characters, not just limited to the royals, but it is fun to look at Song of the Lioness and Beka Cooper and see that Roger, Gareth, and Baird are names that have stayed in the line.
  • Among the more notable examples are Alanna's children Thom, Alianne and Alan, the latter two named after both her father and the name Alanna went by during her Masquerade.
  • Rikash and Sarralyn, Daine's children, named after the Stormwing she befriended and her late mother (who became a goddess).
  • Most, if not all, of Jonathan's and Thayet's children are named after dead guys. Roald and Jasson after Jonathan's father and grandfather, Liam after the Shang, Kalasin and Lianne after Thayet and Jonathan's mothers.
  • Aly and Nawat have triplets in "Nawat". Apparently dead-guy-junioring isn't done in raka tradition, so instead of Ochobu, Ulasim and Junai, they name the kids... Ochobai, Ulasu and Junim.
  • All of the above are truly and spectacularly outdone by Coram and Rispah, who name their children: Jonthair, Alinna, Thomsen, Mylec, Daran, Liam, and Thayine.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: The approximate age of adulthood in Tortall and its neighbors is sixteen, which includes marriage and having kids, as well as going to war, killing, and dying. Marrying is still a practical and political consideration and most young people hope to grow into love with an amiable partner instead of marrying due to love itself. Slavery is openly practiced in the Immortals, Trickster and Beka Cooper books, and Word of God says that neither Carthak nor the Copper Isles intends to abolish it even after gaining Reasonable Authority Figures as monarchs. Punishments are harsh and include forced labor, maiming, and boiling in oil, just in case you thought medieval times were fun and romantic. (Fortunately, they do not follow medieval medical practice. Magic takes care of that.)invoked
• Desecrating the Dead: The entire purpose of metal-winged immortals called Stormwings is to defecate on and claw battlefield corpses to pieces to leave a stinking, rotten mess. (They were created from the wish of a traveler long ago who wanted humans to understand that War Is Hell and not glorious, hoping that would make people second guess fighting. Of course, as Kel observes, some people don't have a choice but to fight.)
• Does Not Like Magic: There's at least one character in each series who has a strong aversion to magic, whether it's a fear of it or the idea that it's somehow "cheating".
• Dogged Nice Guy: Several of the male love interests. Although not all of the relationships work long-term, this tactic is shown as a perfectly reasonable way to start one with the heroine.
• Earth Drift: Zig-zagged. The first quartet introduces a pretty simple Low Fantasy universe where people mostly have names like George and Roger, chess is played, and there's a desert city that just happens to be called Persepolis. Starting from The Immortals, made-up names become the rule (and made-up terms for real things become more common), the world-building is a lot more elaborate, and you get the general sense that the author would retcon out some of that Early-Installment Weirdness if she could. However, Protector of the Small, while broadly following the same trend, also introduces a very close Fantasy Counterpart Culture for Japan that unabashedly uses words like "kimono", and the Trickster's Duet and Beka Cooper draw so heavily on Spy Fiction and Police Procedurals that it's hard not to see constant parallels to the real world.
• Eternal Sexual Freedom:
  • Played with. In a fictional universe based around medieval, European culture, there is no problem with a 12-year-old girl (Alanna) that has just had her first period being given birth control by an older woman so she can have sex without fear of pregnancy. The nobility, at least, pays lip service to "men can do what they want, women should be virgins until marriage". On the other hand, we see several noblewomen, good and bad alike, taking lovers in a more modern "dating" fashion without the fear of scandal and careful etiquette that you might see in (for instance) a Jane Austen novel. Kel's books say that commoners don't hold with all this nonsense and sleep with whomever they like... but the endless, endless negative terminology thrown at Kel suggests that the commoners don't approve of women sleeping around either! In the end it seems most like modern life, double standards and conflicting messages and all.
  • In Bloodhound, set several centuries before the series proper, we begin to learn of the rise of the worship of the Gentle Mother aspect of the Goddess which supports demure, virginal, separated, and stereotypical female medieval ideas and aspects. Predictably our heroine thinks its nothing but idiocy, but considering it's a broad cultural shift also supported by nobles there's not much she can do about it!
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
  • Tortall itself has, geographically, much in common with Spain, although its names and culture look a lot like England/France. Its immediate neighbors — Galla, Tusaine — are similar. Like France, Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula, these countries have a shared history as part of an ancient collapsed empire.
  • The Bazhir are Bedouins.
  • The Roof of the World and its people are modeled after the Himalayan cultures (Tibet, Nepal, etcetera). Sarain is roughly equivalent to Mongolia.
  • Carthak is an African empire; the part that Daine and Numair visit is akin to North Africa.
  • The Yamani Islands are Japan right down to the language. Some version of China is implied to be on the other side of the sea and so far hasn't been seen.
  • Scanra is Scandanavia; it has berserkers, blond and blue-eyed people, and "wolfships" that aren't hard to imagine as Viking longships.
  • The Copper Isles are a mix. They're fairly analogous to India and Southeast Asia, right down to the types of dress and foods but one could also make the case for Hawaii with its history, theology, and customs.
  • None of these are 100% copied, but the flavor is there. (Details on Carthak, K'miri, Sarain, and Copper Isles, can be found here).
• Fantasy Contraception: Anti-pregnancy charms are widely available for purchase, some better quality than others. Every protagonist either buys one or is mentioned as owning one at some point in the story. Surprise Pregnancy can still occur if the charm is damaged.
• Fantasy World Map: At the beginning of each book, although the last Lioness book's map doesn't show a large part of the world Alanna traveled through.
• Fantasy Pantheon: Covered in the Song of the Lioness quartet; half the point of The Immortals. The two most-mentioned are the god of war, Mithros, and the Great Mother Goddess. There are other great gods who have influence throughout the eastern lands and lesser gods who are patrons of specific locations (such as the Graveyard Hag, who is important in Carthak but not much outside it). Then there are local, minor gods like the Green Lady in Galla aka Daine's deceased mother, elevated to godhood who can only touch her specific calling. The gods often use mortals as proxies to carry out various missions. This can be beneficient, but the dark side becomes clearer in later books.
• Feminist Fantasy: Pierce wanted there to be more badass female fantasy protagonists, so she sat down and wrote about some.
• First Love Interest Wins: About half the time for the main characters.
• First-Name Basis: Many, many characters, including the royal family. However, most main characters are nobility who don't differ significantly in rank, and Tortallan nobles go by fief rather than an actual last name like commoners do (e.g. Alanna of Trebond).
• Functional Magic: Has a whole bunch of different examples.
  • Inherent Gift: While there are many different sub-sets of magic, all of them require you be born with the talent for them. The most common form of magic is literally called the Gift.
  • Rule Magic: The Gift has elements of this. There are certain boundaries that cannot be crossed, overuse of magic results in physical exhaustion, etc. That said, the Gift seems to be quite malleable in its uses.
  • Device Magic: Plenty of magical artifacts are present in the series — some are made from the Gift, some came from the Gods, others have unknown but ancient origins. One example would be the Dominion Jewel, which gives a king/ruler great power over the land, but there are also things like magic locks which can be used by anyone.
  • Necromancy: Possible through the Gift. The gods do not like people being brought back from death or spirits being used to animate constructs. One necromancer claims he can't help being one, but it's not made clear if this is true or not. There's also a form of necromancy which simply allows people to talk to the dead - in Beka's case it's inherent, in Farmer's case it's through his Gift. People may find this creepy, but the gods don't object.
  • Transmutation: Possible through the Gift and other, rarer types of magic.
  • Equivalent Exchange: To an extent, all magic — if you put more energy into a spell than you have, you'll die. Very high levels of the Gift also show this. (For example, if you turn a man into a tree, somewhere else a tree will turn into a man.)
  • Nature Magic: What's called "Wild Magic". At its most basic it gives a close bond with animals, then the ability to communicate with them, then "ride in their mind", and finally, transform into them. It also has elements of Rule Magic despite the name, as there are certain boundaries (shapeshifting into an immortal is permanent, you can use Animal Talk but there is a distance limit), but there are also things about it that are beyond the user's control. Daine, for instance, can inadvertently affect animals with strong emotion and spending too much time around them results in Amplified Animal Aptitude because she's unusually powerful.
  • White Magic: Comes with the Gift.
  • Black Magic: Also possible via Gift.
  • There's also a final form of magic that doesn't quite fit any of the categories: the Sight. Seems to be quite weak and limited, but allows a person to sense lies and deceptions, and stronger abilities might allow you to see far away. Aly has her father's gift of Sight, but the strength of her mother's magical Gift, which is very strong indeed. As a perk, it comes with superhuman vision that Aly can adjust at will.
• Genii Locorum: The Chamber of the Ordeal, Chitral.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: In Tempests and Slaughter a teacher tells Arram that mortal prayers, tribute, and respect strengthens the gods and helps them as they fight to subdue Uusoae.
• God Was My Copilot: Faithful/Pounce in both the Lioness books and Beka Cooper novels. He was affirmed as a god at the end of The Realm of the Gods, the last Immortals book. It distinctly points out that Daine met a black cat with purple eyes. He was annoying the Goddess. This was first hinted at in the epilogue of Lioness Rampant. It could also be interpreted, using information from Terrier, that Faithful and Pounce are one and the same constellation. That last interpretation was confirmed in Trickster's Choice by Aly, who mentions in passing to someone else that "the star-Cat became a real cat, and taught [her mother] things as she grew up." Incidentally, Pierce said in an interview that the character took the "copilot" role because he was bored. Typical cat.
• Gold–Silver–Copper Standard:
  • Tortall's currency is based on this. All three metals are divided into "nobles" (big coins) and "bits" (smaller ones).
  • It also appears in their genealogies, with the oldest noble families being recorded in the "Book of Gold", the newest in the "Book of Copper", with a "Book of Silver" in between. (The ruling Conté family is in Silver.)
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Very consciously averted in the early books. Word of Godinvoked is that the reason almost none of her heroines are blonde is precisely because of this trope. In Song of the Lioness, the blonde princess, Josiane, is evil. However, in her namesake trilogy, the heroine Beka Cooper's hair is described as dark blonde, and Aly's hair is strawberry blonde (red gold), too.
• Hero of Another Story: Alanna, Daine, and Keladry become this after the completion of their books. It's made clear that they are still active and doing very important things for Tortall, but since Pierce likes to write Coming Of Age Stories, she moves onto new characters once the protagonists have sorted themselves out and moved onto adult life.
• Heroic Fantasy: The stories in the series fall squarely into this genre. Good versus evil comes up, with the protagonists desiring to do the right thing and the villains usually being undeniably awful individuals, but the stakes rarely go higher than the story's immediate setting. Instead, the focus is on the protagonist's coming of age and how they come to grips with internal struggles while also contending with external threats. The closest it gets to High Fantasy is the Immortals quartet, which does fundamentally change the setting from that point on due to the return of fantastical creatures to the human world, but that still happens through the lens of Daine coming into her own.
• Hit So Hard, the Calendar Felt It: The years are counted in the "Human Era", starting from when the immortals were banished by Carthaki mages. This is kept up even after their return.
• Honor Before Reason: The lady knights.
  • Kel runs into enemy territory in the middle of a war to rescue the refugees who have been abducted from her camp. Admittedly, she's been explicitly told, by what amounts to a god, that it's her fate to face off with the perpetrator, which is a pretty good sign that she'll win. If she doesn't go save them, the number of nigh-unstoppable killing machines assaulting the border will quintuple, because they're powered by the souls of murdered children- given that they're already losing the war...Just to top it off, when Kel finally gets where she needs to be, she is told that the odds of success are fifty-fifty. Since the speaker in question is a seer who can function as a medium when the gods want to talk to Kel...
  • The rise of worship for the Mother aspect of the Goddess that takes place during Beka's time. Girls are taught to be dainty, feminine, gentle, ladylike, celibate, loyal, et cetera, et cetera. It's essentially a Shout-Out to and blatant berating of what "the perfect young lady" of eras before equal rights were like. They never speak out against their husbands and dedicate themselves to the home. However, that doesn't stop Beka from using this to her advantage.
• Humble Heroine: Most of the protagonists tend to shrug off or dismiss compliments.
• I Call It "Vera": Alanna names her first sword "Lightning", while Kel names the sword that Alanna gives her "Griffin".
• Indentured Servitude: Legal in Tortall. In one quartet, the protagonist buys the two-year indenture of a servant boy who was being abused by his current master.
• Jerkass Gods:
  • Mithros and the Threefold Goddess/Great Mother Goddess/Goddess, as well as some less prominent members of the pantheon. They have no problem using even young children as disposable pawns in their power struggles and seem genuinely unable to comprehend how important human problems are to humans... so at one point, the Mother Goddess is supporting a house that throws the children of rebels into a piranha-filled moat, because the rebels are favored by her rival brother.Aforementioned God of the rebels, Kyprioth, isn't any better. He had no compunction about arranging the murder of several children, when he only needed two of them killed, when they were in the way of his rise back to power, In fact chiding Aly for dragging her feet on the matter when confronted about it.
    "Uh oh," whispered Trick, "Gods not good. Gods sly."
  • Gainel, the god of dreams, is kindly to Daine and Numair but has little regard for human life and supports the return of the Immortals to the human realms because they support richer dreams and nightmares.
  • The God of the Hunt Daine's father tells Daine that pain and suffering may trouble gods but don't hurt and burden them as they do to mortals. Daine says the gods would be kinder if they were hurt more, and the god scoffs at her.
    Weiryn: "What makes you think our first duty is to be kind? Too much tenderness is bad for mortals. They improve themselves only by struggling. Everyone knows that."
    Daine blinked. He sounded like those humans who claimed that poverty made the poor into nobler souls.
  • Minor gods are often better. Several animal gods that Daine meets range from brusque but good and helpful to outright friendly and giving. Daine's mother was raised into a small goddess specific to a particular region, who helps with childbirth, illness, and troubles of the heart.
  • Inverted with the Black God, who is described in several of the books as the kindest and most merciful god and forgives even the worst transgressors.
• Knight in Shining Armor:
  • Alanna, Kel and Sabine are female examples. Seen best when Alanna and her apprentices have to defend the Bloody Hawk tribe from being attacked.
  • This is enforced to a degree by the Chamber of the Ordeal. It won't make a Jerkass into a nice person, and it can't prevent knights from becoming rotten afterwards, but if a squire who is unfit to be a knight enters, they will not pass their Ordeal. One job of the pages' teachers and a squire's knight-master is to recognize when a trainee won't become ready and end their training before they can be publicly broken by the Chamber.
• Left-Justified Fantasy Map: Whenever a map of the full nation of Tortall is included, the western ocean is on the left side of the map. Although the map very roughly corresponds to the pattern of Europe, with an analogue for Africa to the south and one for the Himalayas on the eastern edge, Tortall and its neighbors are usually referred to as the "Eastern Lands" due to their position east of the Copper Isles and Yaman (both analogues to places considered to be "the East" on Earth).
• Legendary in the Sequel: Alanna's exploits become famous throughout the Eastern lands even before her quartet is over, and she is a direct inspiration to Keladry. Daine, too, becomes quite famous.
• Magical Sensory Effect:
  • The Gift, or the main type of magic in Tortall, manifests in a color fairly unique to the user. Family members can have similar colors, like Alanna and her twin Thom (who both have a violet Gift), and Duke Baird and Neal of Queenscove (Baird has emerald green and Neal's is described as "very dark green").Duke Roger has orange (until Thom resurrects him, at which point his magic turns dark to reflect the corruption of his soul and indicates that he Came Back Wrong. It actually becomes a mix of his natural orange and Thom's darker purple. Numair, easily the most powerful magic user in the series, has an unusual Gift described as "black with white sparkles".
  • Wild magic, the far less common nature-specific variant of magic, is copper in color.
• Medieval Stasis: Used to a degree, averted to another. In the four hundred years between Beka Cooper and Alanna the Lioness, Tortall endures as a fairly stock fantasy setting. The premier warriors are knights in plate mail. However, culturally there are many changes not just from Beka's to Alanna's books, but through the books that come after Alanna's as the setting diversifies and becomes more integrated.
  • In Beka's time there was relative gender equality, though even at the time there was a spreading cultural influence telling women to Stay in the Kitchen; by Alanna's time that's the norm. Her example and the allies she makes, other woman warriors included, set a lot of changes in motion.
    • Bazhir are mentioned in passing in the Beka books as exotic and coming from some distant desert. A few decades before the Alanna books, the father of King Roald bloodily annexed the Bazhir's homeland, and Roald's son helps to bring peace between them and the rest of Tortall. In Kel's books, Bazhir are integrating into the ranks of the pages and squires - becoming accepted as Tortallan nobility - and into the King's Own. Similarly, Alanna meets and helps Princess Thayet, a half-K'miri woman who returns to Tortall with her. By Daine's books many K'miri have come to Tortall and adopted it as their homeland, and taken up important positions. In Daine's books Tortall allies with the Yamani islands, resulting in some Altar Diplomacy between the Yamanis and Tortallans in Kel's books.
    • There are also developments in magical technology, though it may appear that it's declined between Beka's time and the later-set books as in her era there are options available that are not mentioned later. Out of universe this can be chalked up to a bit of Early-Installment Weirdness as Tamora Pierce didn't worldbuild as much in her first novels as she did later. In-universe, the events of the third book alienate many powerful mages from the Tortallan government. By implication they start preferring to settle outside of Tortall. In Alanna's time, it's not that the magic ever went away but it was de-emphasized and powerful mages only started to be welcomed back, and pages trained in magic, after the Heir was nearly killed.
• Mind-Control Device: In Alanna the First Adventure, Roger plays with a jeweled pendant while telling Prince Jonathan about the Black City and how it's very cool but he totally shouldn't go there, oh no. Jon, of course, sneaks out to go see it, which would have got him killed if Alanna hadn't followed. Later in Lady Knight Numair accidentally dazzles Kel with his eyes and then explains that mages need someone's attention and something shiny in order to plant compulsions; he can do it through eye contact, but most others need an actual object. Blayce tries to dazzle Kel with a jewel but, remembering the lesson, she manages to push past it.
• Mind Rape: The Chamber of the Ordeal, which must be faced by all would-be knights (and, as shown in Lioness Rampant, the heir to the Tortallan throne in order to become King), is a big box of this. It will show you your worst fears in an attempt to break you emotionally. People have walked out of it without their sanity. People have failed to walk out of it at all. To win the Ordeal, a knight candidate must defeat these fears in a fight, in silence. Duke Gareth lost a finger without screaming.
• Narrative Profanity Filter: Phrases like "Alanna swore colorfully" are heavily used in the early books. Midway through this filter is still used but gods are often called upon in profanity. In the Beka Cooper books the actual curses are printed, though in archaic forms such as 'fusst'.
• Necromancy:
  • At the end of the second book of ''In The Hands Of The Goddess' Alanna finally kills her archenemy Duke Roger and leaves court. Thom stays behind and is swayed by Roger's followers, who alternately flatter him and put him down until he brings Roger back to life. Purportedly he was Not Quite Dead but in a "sorceror's sleep" that had him Buried Alive for the eight months it took before Thom raised him - regardless, he Came Back Wrong, having gone from wanting the throne to wanting to throw a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum. He was also able to draw on Thom's strength and magic, though he claimed to have left his own magic in the grave.
  • The goddess known as the Graveyard Hag can briefly grant the ability to raise the dead to her pawns, one of whom roused a graveyard's worth of humans at some unknown point in the past. The power works by touch but doesn't work for free - waking one corpse can leave the 'necromancer' lightheaded and dizzy but fine, waking several in succession will kill them, and they have to make their own arrangements for the power required to raise an army. The dead feel no pain or distress and seem to default to mildly following their necromancer's orders. In Emperor Mage Daine, finding herself favored by the Hag, resists the idea of waking humans and accidentally rouses several preserved dead animals (such as a tiger skin rug) until her Rage Breaking Point at the climax of the book, which has her touching a whole lot of dinosaur bones.
  • The actual word 'necromancer' comes up once in Protector of the Small referring Blayce. He's built steel-and-bone constructs only known as "killing devices", which are Powered by a Forsaken Child (literally; he kills children to use their souls to power the devices, and the uneasy heroes note that there's no reason why his victims have to be children, it's simply that he likes that). Blayce claims this is simply where his talents lie and he can't help being a necromancer.
  • Finally, in the "Dead Person Conversation" sense, the titular Beka Cooper has a minor magical affinity for spirits. Pigeons are (mostly) unwitting psychopomps that carry the dead until they slip into the Peaceful Realms. Beka can hear their passengers and later communicate with them and uses this to try to solve murders. The Black God favors her for this. Farmer Cape, the mage she meets in the third book, has a spell that can let him listen in on Beka's conversations and another spell that allows him to speak to the dead who've passed entirely out of the mortal world, though he does note that they forget things quickly and so it's not always as useful as one might think.
• Nice to the Waiter: In the early books everyone good is good to commoners, everyone bad is not. We keep being told by the huge cast of nobles who care about commoners that it's atypical in Tortall for nobles to care about commoners. The only main cast member to do this is Kel's friend Merric, who, while certainly not cruel or miserly, tells her and Neal at one point that they're too concerned and generous.
  • It's different in Beka's books, since she has to deal with loads of annoying nobles (and even upper middle-class commoners) who are offended at being questioned by a member of the unwashed masses. She dislikes seeing a noble clear beggars from his path by having servants scatter copper coins like grain for the beggars to dive after. It works and is better than keeping them back with violence but it's also very dehumanizing.
  • It's zigged and zagged in Tempests and Slaughter. Arram is unfailingly good to commoners and deeply uncomfortable about the brand of Enlightened Self-Interest displayed by healer-students working at a field hospital in a pandemic; they have no compassion for the poor and are only working for them to get their degrees. Ozorne and Varice, on the other hand, are kind, neutral, or cruel depending wildly on the circumstances. Arram, being the point of view character and very invested in his friends being good people, ignores or rationalizes away most of their harsh moments.
• Nobody Poops: Completely averted through small mentions of characters going to the bathroom in the middle or end of a scene, and latrines. In Lady Knight Kel volunteers to clean the latrine in 'lead by example' humility. It's taken up to eleven in Mastiff. Beka describes often and at great length the many times her scent hound Achoo finds a spot where their quarry relieved himself on the road. And then of course we had Saucebox demonstrating his opinion of Pounce's high opinion of himself.
• No Periods, Period: Completely averted by frank discussions of feminine issues and magical birth control. Alanna and Keladry both experience their first menstrual cycle while they are training as pages (with different reactions, since Alanna was not educated in these matters and Keladry was).
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The world before the Immortals War is a very different place than the world after it thanks to the return of all the fantastical creatures that had been banished centuries earlier. Suddenly, the wilds are filled with fantastical creatures, many of which are predatory and dangerous. War in particular becomes even more horrific due to the presence of Stormwings, and the page lessons in Protector of the Small include specific instruction on how to deal with immortals both in battle and in day-to-day life.
• Oh, My Gods!: "Goddess" most commonly replaces "God", though some characters swear by multiple gods; Numair says "Mithros, Mynoss and Shakith!" quite a bit.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted for royal dynastic names; one royal Big Bad is named Roger, but there was a better Roger in the trilogy set two centuries earlier, as well as dutiful Baird of Queenscove and roustabout Baird of Conté. Fully in force within each series, however, where there is usually only one living person of each name at a time, the sole exception being Duke Gareth the Elder of Naxen and his son Sir Gareth "Gary" the Younger. (Pierce justified this in one fan conversation by saying that Tortallans think it's bad luck to name a kid after a living relative.)
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: While murder without provocation is a big crime, knowledge that a character is a rapist clues the readers in that they have crossed the Moral Event Horizon.
• Redshirt Army: It is mentioned that the Tortallan army uniforms are maroon. In the war with Scanra, there are huge numbers of corpses in uniform.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: The Tortall Universe follows the feudal system to a T. The peasants would work on the land owned by their lords, and the lords would train to be warriors (aka, knights), who would defend the kingdom against invaders; Kings were expected to be strong warriors to defend their holdings and inspire the men around them.
• Ruling Couple: Jonathan and Thayet.
• Saved by the Awesome: It's practically an initiation ritual in Tortall for the heroine to screw the rules and do what's right, save everyone, and get commended.
• Secret Relationship: That Alanna and Jonathan were romantically involved in their youth and even seriously considered marriage, to the point that Thayet initially angsted about accepting his advances for fear of endangering her friendship with Alanna, is evidently far from common knowledge even decades after the fact, despite the fact that they weren't terribly discreet about it at the time. Well Justified in that four books into the series, they're both married, Famed In-Story, and highly visible political figures whose reputations (particularly Alanna's) could be very heavily damaged if this information were to become public, because her position as King's Champion would seem like an obvious conflict of interest.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Many female characters get at least one of these. Kel does it intentionally as passive-aggressive protest against all the "girls can't be knights" crowd.
• Shoot the Mage First: Kel often remembers her teacher's advice: When in doubt, shoot the wizard.
• Shout-Out: Gainel, god of dreams, is one to Neil Gaiman, author of The Sandman.
• Shown Their Work: One of the major virtues separating the books (particularly from The Immortals onwards) from the swathes of other feudal-set sword-and-sorcery series is Pierce's attention to detail. Daine may be able to communicate with, transform into, and heal animals through magic, but Pierce's descriptions of the animals, their behaviour and biology is all thoroughly well-researched. The cultures of the fantasy lands outside Tortall also demonstrate the kind of authentic detail only possible through conscientious research into their real-world counterparts.
• Silk Hiding Steel: There are many examples of highborn women who are not to be trifled with. Queen Thayet is one, as is Kel's mother, who earned a lot of prominence for her family and an alliance with the Yamani people by defending sacred artifacts from pirates during a raid.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • The heroines are usually this to the Big Bad of their series, but special mention goes to Alanna and how she brings down her enemy's plots, twice. It helps when The Hero possesses powerful magic of her own and has the (inadvertent) assistance of the Eldritch Abomination in the Chamber of the Ordeal, not to mention help from the gods.
  • The Chamber of the Ordeal has been known to make itself into a spanner whenever something threatens the natural order and pushes both Alanna and Kel in the right direction.
• Standard Royal Court: While it differs from series to series, several protagonists spend quite a lot of time at the Tortallan court - especially Alanna and Keladry, as they are nobles training to be knights. Even in series that do not have a noble main character (like The Immortals) the court and how it functions is quite relevant to the plot. Really the only series that shows almost nothing of the Tortallan court is the Trickster's Duet, because it focuses mainly on the court of the Copper Isles.
• Stock Aesops: There are many aesops to be found but the most prevalent one is: Women are just as good as men.
• Straw Misogynist: Joren. On the one hand, he's really over the top with his hatred of Kel and it's his chief feature. On the other hand, there are plenty of men in Real Life who share his toxic opinions about women and poor people, and if you're a woman trying to do something they deem unfeminine, that's all you're going to see.
• Squishy Wizard: There's some degree of mage-fighter specialization. Most fighters with the magical Gift only have a limited amount of it. Many mages may be in shape and know how to break a hold etc but few characters are really good at both.
  • Song of the Lioness has Duke Roger, primarily a sorceror but still a knight and a skilled swordsman as well. In the first book, Roger returns from Carthak and starts teaching Gifted pages magic, including Jon, who also breaks more towards mage eventually, and Alanna herself. Alanna spends the quartet overcoming her fear of magic and becoming a true Magic Knight. Thom, on the other hand, is squishy and uncomfortable with exertion to the point of just never adventuring.
  • In Protector of the Small Neal left magic school to become a page. He gets some continued education in the Gift, but nothing like enough to keep him caught up to what he would have learned at university. Conversely he doesn't enjoy exertion and is a good enough fighter but not on the level of many of his yearmates. Neal ends up as Alanna's squire, though, and she takes him through a crash course trying to keep both sides sharp. The end villain of the quartet, Blayce, is more completely squishy, a scrawny little "nothing" of a man who relies on his seven-foot bodyguard for protection.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The series tends to bring this in with well-inclined Royals Who Actually Do Something. Given the Black-and-White Morality of the first quartet you'd expect a good king/queen making good laws would simply dismantle oppression, but because they aren't absolute monarchs (and the writing becomes more complex) there are complications and progress is often slow.
  • Song of the Lioness has Alanna become the first lady knight in living memory and absurdly, fantastically heroic and acclaimed. Her friend Prince Jon becomes The Good King, marries the Rebellious Princess she rescued, and together they enact reforms including abolishing the law that women can't seek knighthood. Little girls are shown being inspired by Alanna. Having broken the glass ceiling she expects to not be the only lady knight for long and fantasizes about helping the next one. However, Tortall's misogyny is too entrenched to be so easily dismissed. Alanna, being god-touched and a mage, is seen as an exception, not a demonstration that women are as capable as men. When Kel, the next prospective female knight, enrolls over a decade later, she starts under probation and has a difficult road to walk. Alanna is also barred from contact with her for years, to prevent rumors that she's helping an unworthy person to succeed.
  • In Protector of the Small Kel's maid is kidnapped at the behest of a noble in order to hurt Kel. When he's caught and brought to trial she expects justice. The readers have heard nothing about the courts being unfair, the previous quartet went to great pains to depict Tortall as being quite enlightened for a feudal culture, and Kel knows that if he'd kidnapped her, he would be in for dire penalties. However the noble, having "only" harmed a servant, is merely made to pay a fine that he shrugs off, and most of that fine doesn't even go to the maid but to Kel. As a feudal society Tortall still holds nobles as more important than commoners. An outraged Kel goes to King Jon about this, and he agrees that the law is unfair and agrees to change it, but also explains why it can't be an instantaneous change. He has to build coalitions and get enough people on his side.
  • In Beka Cooper, King Roger is moved by the trials his young son went through after being kidnapped and treated as a slave, and abolishes slavery in Tortall. His son is ecstatic and convinces an uncertain Beka that this is a triumphant moment, a fantastic thing that does away with one of Tortall's great evils and makes it a better place. It does eventually but like his descendant Jon, Roger's not an absolute monarch and his unilateral action made a lot of his subjects angry - slavery was well-entrenched and there hadn't been a broad push for abolition in Tortall. Tortall: A Spy's Guide and The Numair Chronicles mention that a civil war resulted and nobles who'd benefited from slavery fought the crown for decades.
  • Usually media involving a Friend to All Living Things who's regularly perched on by numerous birds, nuzzled by horses etc won't have the animals make messes, unless it's a gross out moment Played for Laughs after which the animals in question are regarded as disgusting. Daine of The Immortals is one such character. Her animal friends try to be clean for her but horses are always smearing her with grassy saliva and birds, especially if she's treating them for sickness, still streak her and her things with filth on a regular basis, something regarded quite neutrally in the narrative as gross and degrading to more pampered characters but just part of being around animals by everyone else. Similarly if less markedly, friendly sparrows in Protector of the Small and pigeons in Beka Cooper leave droppings which are simply cleaned up and regarded in a manner of fact way.
• True Sight: The Sight can detect illusions and some other kinds of information. Griffin feathers held over the eyes have a similar effect.
• Vestigial Empire: The nations that make up most of the Eastern Lands arose from the ruins of the old Thanic Empire, which appears to be this setting's equivalent to the Roman Empire. Little is known of them except that they fell centuries before the Human Era calendar began and left behind some ruins and the foundations for the Code of Ten laws that govern Tortall and its neighbors.
• Villainous Breakdown: Many a villain when he's drawn into the open.
• Villain by Default:
  • Used and then deconstructed in The Immortals with Stormwings. They desecrate bodies on the battlefield and feed on human fear, so they are universally hated by nearly all humans, and most other creatures. In Wild Magic they simply seem to be evil, helping Tortall's enemies and attacking Daine. She goes into Wolf-Speaker expecting that they're Always Chaotic Evil but several characters argue that she shouldn't. When she meets Rikash, who's taken on an older brother role for a neglected young girl, Daine is forced to grasp that Stormwings are individuals and some are outright decent people.
    • In Tortall: A Spy's Guide she says that Stormwings' natures are opposite to that of humans but that doesn't make them all evil. In Protector of the Small a flock of Stormwings does nothing as a refugee camp is overrun and the children taken away, but during the Trickster's Duet, some entirely different Stormwings swoop down and rescue children imperiled by a riot.
  • It's played more straight with some of the other Immortals, who are simply monsters. Hurrocks, killer unicorns, and killer centaurs are clawed, predatory, bestial versions of winged horses, peaceful unicorns, and peaceful centaurs, though in A Spy's Guide 'peaceful' unicorns are quite fierce when crossed, and in Protector of the Small 'peaceful' centaurs are much like humans and some are quite repugnant. Tauroses exist to attempt to rape women and kill or be killed. Spidrens, Giant Spiders with human heads, are intelligent enough to speak and use tools and weapons but only see humans as food and are quite sadistic. In the Spy's Guide Daine mentions hearing that they have to be taught to be cruel but she doubts this.
  • Bandits are generally this, existing in Song of the Lioness as little more than a faceless enemy. They're less so in Protector of the Small as Kel, fighting them, understands that most bandits are driven to prey on others by extreme poverty rather than inherent evil, and sees starving children among their dependents. This doesn't make her hold back and more of her sympathy is for their victims, but she doesn't celebrate their deaths either. A bandit she fought in Page reappears as a convict-soldier forced to fight for her in Lady Knight. Kel, seeing that he's now serving his time and isn't trying to make a difficult situation any worse, holds no malice towards him and doesn't allow he and the other convicts to be whipped.
• War Is Hell: All but the Beka Cooper books involve warfare at some point, and it's always shown as being thoroughly unglamorous, brutal, and nasty. The prospect of death and being forced to kill are not treated lightly, and the addition of Stormwings (creatures who desecrate the war dead to punish humans for waging war) just makes it worse.
• Wife-Basher Basher: This is strongly implied to be one duty of warrior priestesses of the Goddess' temple, along with sheltering female abuse victims.
• Worldbuilding: Each subseries adds considerably more detail to the world of Tortall, both in Tortall itself and its neighbors. Some elements (like the Ysandir and "The Old Ones") are discarded, but others like the Copper Isles are fleshed out considerably.
• Writer on Board:
  • The first quartet can get preachy sometimes, on the subjects of both gender roles and religion.
  • Protector of the Small as well, especially with Joren staying in the story long after he's served his purpose of giving a face to the worst aspects of the misogynist culture Kel is fighting.
• Wutai: The Yamani Islands are basically Japan; island nation, naginata, kimono, the emphasis on stoic politeness etc.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: The friends Kel makes in the Yamani Islands; polite and graceful and can kill you with a decorative fan. One of them winds up married to her best friend. Another winds up married to the Crown Prince of Tortall.
• You Mean "Xmas": Tortall celebrates "Midwinter", a feasting and gift-giving holiday. Averted with Beltane, which is a real holiday.

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