History YMMV / TortallUniverse

* CaptainObviousAesop: Mostly averted, with the series focusing on the insidious nature of sexism in both obvious and subtle forms. Which is why it's so jarring when ''Mastiff'' goes for nothing more than "Slavery is bad," as if anyone who actually needed to be told that would be reading these books in the first place.

* ContinuityLockOut: Averted, when outside of each series itself. Obviously you can't read any quartet from book 3, but each series can stand alone easily.

** Onua in ''The Immortals''. In book one she's a major character and becomes one of Daine's best friends and closest supporters, and has an interesting backstory of being left to die by her abusive husband, being kept alive by her dog, and coming to be quite important to the Queen's Riders. Then she's completely absent from books two and three and only makes a fleeting appearance in book four, thanks to the story moving in a direction that made it awkward to include her.

* EvilIsSexy: Duke Roger. Delia of Eldorne tries to be this but usually fails thanks to her bitchiness and petulance.

* ParanoiaFuel: Whenever Daine gets angry or afraid enough, animals in a huge radius instantly respond to her will. If this means getting themselves killed, so be it; her magic makes them disregard everything but her feelings, even if they've never met her. Very few animals seem to even be willing to resist, and Daine actually has to consciously force them to regard their own lives. Beloved animal companions will turn on their people without a thought if she's angry enough, and in this pre-industrial society where there's great emphasis on the bonds between people and their mounts and dogs, that's a pretty big deal.

** Keladry is considered by many to be rather lackluster as a protagonist because she lacks magic and the peppery personality of the others, but her fans tend to call her their favorite in the series ''because'' she's such an aggressive BadassNormal and find her [[TheStoic stoicism]] in the face of endless frustration quite admirable.

** Onua in ''The Immortals''. In book one she's a major character and becomes one of Daine's best friends and closest supporters, and has an interesting backstory of being left to die by her abusive husband. Then she's completely absent from books two and three and only makes a fleeting appearance in book four, thanks to the story moving in a direction that made it awkward to include her.
** A number of characters from first two quartets are present as teachers in ''Protector of the Small'' but are essentially cameos. Most notably, Sir Myles offers sympathy to Kel, who's flattered that her hero's adoptive father likes her but unlike Alanna in her place doesn't become friends with him.

* NeverLiveItDown: The major romance of The Immortals. Pierce was asked/flaked about this so much she said future couples would have a smaller age gap. [[spoiler: It's about Daine and Numair and how they hook up when they're 16 and 30 respectively. Plus Numair had been Daine's teacher not long before. (Having said that, they both clearly regard themselves as equals by the time they do fall in love. Fans often also justify it by saying Daine is very mature for her age, having been forced to grow up quickly, and Numair is a bit childish.) Song of the Lioness was able to get away with a (apparently) similar age gap marriage [[note]] Mostly because Pierce couldn't keep track of her character's ages. When Alanna and George first meet, she's eleven and he's 'about seventeen'. But in the last book it's implied that George is late thirties to Alanna's early twenties [[/note]] both because it didn't become official until both were modern-day adults, plus people weren't on the lookout for this sort of thing as much in the '80s. By the time Daine and Numair got together it was 1996, and times had changed enough for many people to have a problem with it. He also steals a lock of her hair after Emperor Mage to use as a focus, which even people who support the pairing tend to find creepy. (It's at least partly for magical purposes and has practical applications, but he didn't ''ask'' her and also keeps it in a locket with a portrait of her painted without her consent.)]]

* ShockingMoments: The climax of "Nawat." The conflict revolves around Nawat (and his warriors) being shunned by crows for becoming too human, and very concerned that they have do prove they're real crows through practices like "culling" [[BuryYourDisabled disabled offspring]]. [[spoiler:When Nawat realizes his daughter has dwarfism, he actually gets to the point of ''holding her out the window'' before changing his mind.]]

** Onua in "The Immortals." In book one she's a major character and becomes one of Daine's best friends and closest supporters, and has an interesting backstory of being left to die by her abusive husband. Then she's completely absent from books two and three and only makes a fleeting appearance in book four, thanks to the story moving in a direction that made it awkward to include her.

** The Provost Dogs take their name a bit too far, coming up with a dog-related term for almost ''everything'' they do.

* ShockingMoments: The climax of "Nawat." The conflict revolves around Nawat (and his warriors) being shunned by crows for becoming too human, and very concerned that they have do prove they're real crows through practices like "culling" disabled offspring. [[spoiler:When Nawat realizes his daughter has dwarfism, he actually gets to the point of ''holding her out the window'' before changing his mind.]]

** Onua in "The Immortals." In book one she's a major character and becomes one of Daine's best friends, and has an interesting backstory of being left to die by her abusive husband. Then she's completely absent from books two and three and only makes a fleeting appearance in book four, thanks to the story moving in a direction that made it awkward to include her.

** She got hit harder by it after hooking up 16-year-old Daine and 30-year-old Numair in the final book of ''The Immortals''. By the time this book came out, the {{Squick}} reaction was fully in force, and resulted in such a backlash that Pierce promised never to include such a wide age gap again. It ''is'' worth remembering, however, that by the standards of her world Daine was an adult woman very much considered of marrying age, not a teenage girl with no life experience.
** Repeatedly across the series, Pierce has characters say that girls of thirteen and up are "usually" married to adults and having children, implicitly placing her characters as atypical.

** Pierce has admitted that these days, George telling a teenaged Alanna that they're obvious soul mates and destined to be together comes off as far creepier than it did in the '80s. It also hurts that Alanna herself thinks of his actions as "stalking", her reaction to him following her around is indistinguishable from fear, and he drugs her at one point, benignly but without her consent.

* NeverLiveItDown: The major romance of The Immortals. Pierce was asked/flaked about this so much she said future couples would have a smaller age gap. [[spoiler: It's about Daine and Numair and how they hook up when they're 16 and 30 respectively. Plus Numair had been Daine's teacher not long before. (Having said that, they both clearly regard themselves as equals by the time they do fall in love. Not to mention, Daine's not only acted as a self-supporting adult but as the single mother of a special needs toddler (well, what else would you call an infant dragon??) for several years.) Song of the Lioness was able to get away with a (apparently) similar age gap marriage [[note]] Mostly because Pierce couldn't keep track of her character's ages. When Alanna and George first meet, she's eleven and he's 'about seventeen'. But in the last book it's implied that George is late thirties to Alanna's early twenties [[/note]] both because it didn't become official until both were modern-day adults, plus people weren't on the lookout for this sort of thing as much in the '80s. By the time Daine and Numair got together it was 1996, and times had changed enough for many people to have a problem with it. He also steals a lock of her hair after Emperor Mage to use as a focus, which even people who support the pairing tend to find creepy. (Despite the fact that it's at least partly for magical purposes, and given the kind of things that tend to happen when they're separated, it actually makes practical sense.)]]

** After [[spoiler:Tunstall]] is revealed as a traitor in ''Mastiff'', Beka is told that one day she'll also face a decision where the morality of betraying her oath won't seem as clear cut. She dismisses it as a cheap excuse, and since this is the end of her story, we never find out if it happened.

** Pierce has admitted that these days, George telling a teenaged Alanna that they're obvious soul mates and destined to be together comes off as far creepier than it did in the '80s. It also hurts that Alanna herself thinks of his actions as "stalking" and he drugs her at one point, even though the latter was just to help her sleep when she was anxious.

* DracoInLeatherPants: Despite being an uncompromisingly misogynistic asshole who even threatens that he'll try to kill Keladry once they're both knights, Joren has a lot of fans. Even fans who ''ship him and Kel''. (For bonus points, his physical description is actually similar to Draco's: delicate good looks and white-blond hair.) It's probably helped by ''Lioness'' having featured a very '80s case of StalkingIsLove.

* AuthorsSavingThrow:
** The creepy romance between Bronau and Sarai in ''Trickster's Choice'' definitely feels like an acknowledgement of the issues people had with the series' previous major romances, with Pierce saying she gets why people had problems with them. And she actually wasn't even satisfied with this, and put another such relationship into the book "Cold Fire" in her other series ''Literature/CircleOfMagic''.
** In ''Bloodhound'', Dale is getting very flirty and handsy with Beka. When she protests, he drops it immediately and sincerely tells her that he'll stop if she's not enjoying it, but she says that she likes it, making it clear that their SlapSlapKiss is a consensual game they're playing.
** ''Trickster's Choice'' got a lot of criticism for Aly being a MightyWhitey, so ''Queen'' goes a bit out of its way to make clear that she's only a very small piece of a rebellion that literal generations of work from the raka have gone into.
** The tendency for MayDecemberRomance gets another hit in ''Terrier'', when Beka chastises Rosto for flirting with her because he's so much older.
** The notoriously thin character Princess Josiane from ''Song of the Lioness'' is given a motivation for her actions ''three'' series later, when ''Daughter of the Lioness'' shows us the kind of society she came from.
** Pierce tried to put in gay characters right from the start of the series, but managed to never actually make it explicit in the text. She very much regretted this by the time of ''Provost's Dog'' and made sure to specify that it includes an unquestionably canon gay couple.

* UnfortunateImplications: Some readers of the Trickster books [[http://www.amithaknight.com/2011/01/book-review-tricksters-choice-by-tamora-pierce-spoilers/ have]] [[http://girlsincapes.com/2014/10/01/el-problematicfave/ noted]] the MightyWhitey issues therein, with white Aly being the only one who can catalyze the brown-skinned raka into open rebellion. Although it's made clear (particularly in the second book) that plans have been going on for years and she's one part of a big picture, her being treated as a priceless spying genius in Book 1 when she makes some big blunders (like trying to blend in with "brownface" and being found out immediately) make this harder to swallow.

* FanNickname: To be honest, the only place you're likely to see Aly's books actually referred to as ''Daughter of the Lioness'' is on Wiki/TVTropes. Everyone just calls them the "Trickster books" or "Trickster duet."

* RelationshipWritingFumble: The idea with Aly and Nawat is supposed to be that Nawat's early flirtations are just regular crow ideas about sex, and he has to develop into a true human before he's worthy to be with Aly. Trouble is, every single bit of that development happens offpage, and when he finally returns we just have to take the narration's word for it, with no evidence in his behavior. Plus, Aly is very abruptly pregnant in the epilogue, when she spent the entire two books insisting to him that she didn't want kids. Luckily, the novella "Nawat" is told from his point of view and goes a long way to rectifying this.

* ShockingSwerve: [[spoiler:Tunstall's FaceHeelTurn]] in ''Mastiff''. It does work well within the book itself as there's lots of subtle foreshadowing to it, but some fans cried foul given what we'd seen in the first two books, feeling that it went completely against established characterization. Basically, Pierce set up a twist that had no good resolution possible; either [[spoiler:Farmer could be the traitor, which would be absurdly obvious with him being a newly introduced character, a mage, and having easily the most opportunities to pull something without being noticed]], or [[spoiler:Tunstall or Sabine, which would make no sense with all we know about them from the last two books]].

* TheUntwist:
** In ''Protector of the Small'', [[spoiler:Alanna is the one sending Kel all her gear]]. Some fans were surprised to realize this was even supposed to be a twist. Who else would be doing it?
** In ''Bloodhound'', Beka learns early on that a man named Hanse is part of the cole operation. Then she meets a man from Port Caynn named Hanse, but somehow fails to make the connection, and the inevitable reveal that he's ''the'' Hanse is played like it's supposed to be a surprise. Although we're told that Hanse is a common name, OneSteveLimit is in play, so it would have worked better if it was a name readers themselves recognized as common.
** In ''Provost's Dog'', Pounce is the same being as Faithful from ''Song of the Lioness''. Any longtime reader of Tortall knows right away and there's no attempt made to conceal it; the identifying features of purple eyes, choosing who can understand his meows as speech, and the absence of the Cat constellation are all included. The only reason it might look like a twist is because of the third book's DistantFinale, which is the only place where it's directly stated that Pounce = Faithful and vice versa (as it's the only time there's a human who's familiar with both incarnations), if it's so obvious that you think it's a RedHerring, or if you start at the Beka books to read the series in chronological order.

* {{Anvilicious}}: The feminist subtext usually does not derail the narrative. ''Usually.'' [[WriterOnBoard But when it does...]]
** Administrivia/TropesAreTools, however:
*** Women are people who should be able to pursue their dreams and desires (including romantic and sexual ones) without being shamed or forced to hide who they are. Also, RealWomenDontWearDresses is a bullshit idea--mothers and seamstresses and {{Proper Lad|y}}ies aren't automatically weak or shallow just for being traditionally feminine. These points come up in various ways in every series with varying levels of force.
*** Joren's single-minded obsession with hating Keladry can seem unrealistic to the point of {{Narm}}, but look in the comment section of articles about feminism[[note]]ones that aren't well-moderated[[/note]] and you can find numerous people who sound a lot like him. Yes, he's absurd, but he has plenty of RealLife counterparts.

* {{Squick}}: Aly and Nawat, for some people (a human and a crow with a human form). Daine and Numair, for others. An 11 year age gap and relative social status is often quoted as the reason.

** She got hit harder by it after hooking up 16-year-old Daine and 27-year-old Numair in the final book of ''The Immortals''. By the time this book came out, the {{Squick}} reaction was fully in force, and resulted in such a backlash that Pierce promised never to include such a wide age gap again. It ''is'' worth remembering, however, that by the standards of her world Daine was an adult woman very much considered of marrying age, not a teenage girl with no life experience.

* NeverLiveItDown: The major romance of The Immortals. Pierce was asked/flaked about this so much she said future couples would have a smaller age gap. [[spoiler: It's about Daine and Numair and how they hook up when they're 16 and 27 respectively. Plus Numair had been Daine's teacher not long before. (Having said that, they both clearly regard themselves as equals by the time they do fall in love. Not to mention, Daine's not only acted as a self-supporting adult but as the single mother of a special needs toddler (well, what else would you call an infant dragon??) for several years.) Song of the Lioness was able to get away with a (apparently) similar age gap marriage [[note]] Mostly because Pierce couldn't keep track of her character's ages. When Alanna and George first meet, she's eleven and he's 'about seventeen'. But in the last book it's implied that George is late thirties to Alanna's early twenties [[/note]] both because it didn't become official until both were modern-day adults, plus people weren't on the lookout for this sort of thing as much in the '80s. By the time Daine and Numair got together it was 1996, and times had changed enough for many people to have a problem with it. He also steals a lock of her hair after Emperor Mage to use as a focus, which even people who support the pairing tend to find creepy. (Despite the fact that it's at least partly for magical purposes, and given the kind of things that tend to happen when they're separated, it actually makes practical sense.)]]

* MagnificentBastard:
** Duke Roger. While plotting to regain the throne, he managed to portray himself as the CoolUncle while making several creditable attempts to kill off Jon (and then "Alan") and used a fairly simple but highly effective magic construct to keep anyone from suspecting.
** Aly spends much of the series lying to everyone about everything. Still a heroic character, though.
** Ozorne. In ''Emperor Mage'' he tells Daine, cool as you please, that he [[spoiler:plans to have her teacher executed]] while she's [[spoiler:succumbing to the drug he slipped into her drink]] so he can [[spoiler:abduct her and use her disappearance to set off a war]]. And after she'd been nice enough to take care of his birds! He even turns [[spoiler:his forced Stormwing transformation]] into an advantage.
** Joren is another. And in ''Lady Knight'', Kel is disappointed when [[CompleteMonster Blayce]] turns out ''not'' to be this, but rather a scrawny, inept, vulgar little man.

* {{Anvilicious}}: The feminist subtext usually does not derail the narrative. ''Usually.'' [[WriterOnBoard But when it does...]]
** Administrivia/TropesAreTools, however:
*** Women are people who should be able to pursue their dreams and desires (including romantic and sexual ones) without being shamed or forced to hide who they are. Also, RealWomenDontWearDresses is a bullshit idea--mothers and seamstresses and {{Proper Lad|y}}ies aren't automatically weak or shallow just for being traditionally feminine. These points come up in various ways in every series with varying levels of force.
*** Joren's single-minded obsession with hating Keladry can seem unrealistic to the point of {{Narm}}, but look in the comment section of articles about feminism[[note]]ones that aren't well-moderated[[/note]] and you can find numerous people who sound a lot like him. Yes, he's absurd, but he has plenty of RealLife counterparts.