Basic Trope: A character is kept as an advisor specifically because they are honest.
- Straight: Queen Alice keeps Bob as her advisor specifically because he Will Not Tell a Lie and always offers honest counsel.
- Exaggerated: Bob's job comes with the agreement that if Alice ever finds out that he lied about something, he will be fired.
- Downplayed:
- Bob survives as Queen Alice's advisor, because he is good at delivering bad news well and pointing out how to use the clouds' silver linings.
- All the other advisors are so desperate to avoid having to deliver bad news that they conspire to keep Bob around...
- Justified:
- Everyone else in Alice's court is a sniveling Yes-Man, and she knows that she can come up with dumb ideas without a check on her power.
- Alice knows about The Chains of Commanding and figures that it's part of the job of being in charge. Bob being someone who will earnestly tell her how bad things are and tell her to avoid bad decisions helps her, because it keeps her from making costly mistakes that could doom the entire empire. It also ensures she gets a better idea of how things currently are instead of the sugarcoated version.
- Inverted:
- Alice keeps Bob as her adviser because he always tells her what she wants to hear, even when it is false.
- Bob feeds Alice lies and makes her think everything's hunky dory, so as to ensure her reign will end from her incompetence.
- Subverted: Alice seems wise enough to keep an honest advisor, but when Bob is shown in person, he lies to her constantly to garner favor or forward his own agenda.
- Double Subverted: Bob is only pretending to be dishonest so that others in the court will underestimate Alice. When they can't see, Bob would never lie.
- Parodied: The most important thing Alice ever asks Bob is "Does this dress make me look fat?", to which he always replies with Brutal Honesty.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice keeps Bob on for his honesty, even though he's occasionally wrong. But one day, he goes too far and criticizes her fiancé; she promptly fires him. Then her fiancé nearly destroys the kingdom by accident, and after much soul-searching, she rehires Bob.
- Averted: Alice doesn't have an advisor. Or Bob is a Treacherous Advisor instead.
- Enforced: Bob is the main character, and the story requires him to be both a very honest person and the queen's advisor.
- Lampshaded:
- "As ever, Sir Robert, I thank you for your clear thinking and open expression thereof."
- "My Queen, I would prefer to hurt your heart now and heal the wound later, than to poison you with lies and watch you succumb."
- Invoked: Alice has a new but grave problem and she solicits information from the finest minds in the kingdom. She intentionally seeks out someone who won't try to sugarcoat things.
- Exploited: Bob knows he's too important to be replaced or discarded, so he arranges to transfer more and more of Queen Alice's powers to him until he's The Man Behind the Man.
- Defied: Alice fires Bob as soon as he tells her something that conflicts with any of her preexisting biases.
- Discussed: Alice, to her new advisor, Ben: "Robert was much better at telling me bad news."
- Conversed: "They present Alice as the hero, but she needs Bob to tell her what she needs to hear, so as far as I'm concerned, he's the real hero."
- Implied: Bob is never mentioned, but several times Alice has stupid ideas, and later understands the problems with them without anyone explaining onscreen.
- Deconstructed:
- Alice is The Ditz and relies on Bob to help her with reasoning. When she's separated from him, she can't think well.
- Bob is honest to a fault, and ends up telling her things that, while true, would have been better off unsaid, at least to her face.
- Reconstructed:
- It turns out that Alice learned proper logical situational analysis from Bob.
- Bob learns to warn Alice about the things he may say, so that she can brace herself and decide if she wants to hear them.
Back to Honest Advisor. I know it sounds like a hard decision, my Queen, but it's better than the alternative, I assure you.
