Markup View

Author: LordGro

Sep 18th 2016 at 12:07:37 AM

The motive is not the only distinction between the examples that were named here. I think we have the following options of what the trope should be: 
# Taking revenge on someone by serving them the flesh of their own children, for them to eat it unkowingly, but with the intent of revealing the deed later. This is obviously what the OP was thinking of.
# Serving someone the flesh of their own child(ren), so they eat it unknowingly. But motive does not matter, and it is also not necessary that the deed is revealed later. This would cover an example like "The Juniper Tree", in which the bad stepmother just wants to get rid of her stepson and disposes of the body in a practical way, and has no intention of ever telling the boy's father.
# The act of eating your children (intentionally or not, knowingly or unknowingly, for whatever motive). This covers both 1) and 2), but is much broader and covers, for example, Kronos who ate his own children (uncooked) because it was prophecied that his own children would overthrow him.

In either case, the trope is NOT serving human flesh to someone (for whatever reason) who eats it unknowingly (Tantalus, Lycaon, Sweeney Todd, ...). This is a supertrope to 1) and 2), but it occurs often without someone eating specifically their own children. *Serving* your own children is something much different from *eating* them.