History Literature / BlackJewels

* AerithAndBob: Names range from the ridiculously {{Goth}}ic (Daemon, Lucivar, Hekatah) to the relatively mundane (Alexandra, Marian, Cassidy).

* LighterAndSofter: The Cassidy books, in comparison to the main trilogy. The world has already been saved, so the stakes are a lot lower, all the soul-searing abuse and trauma took place in the past and off-screen, and the main villainess is a SpoiledBrat rather than a CompleteMonster.

* KaleidoscopeEyes: a minor example, as they technically stay blue, but Jaenelle's eyes turn from summer-sky to sapphire when she's in Witch mode, and it is apparently quite noticeable to everyone.

* GenreSavvy: Surreal and Rainier in ''Tangled Webs''. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], since the [[HauntedHouse spooky house]] they're trapped in was explicitely made in-universe after all the classics elements of horror stories, and the characters are well-reads.

* {{Badass}}:

** Lucivar.

** Jaenelle.
** Titian.
** Surreal.
** Karla; when [[spoiler:fatally poisoned, she manages to cut her poisoner in half before collapsing]].
* BadassAdorable: Wee!Jaenelle. On the surface she's a shy, sweet girl with mega helpings of power. Then Briarwood "teaches her to hate" and she almost kills a stranger for ''approaching'' her handicapped Papa and develops a habit of splattering enemies all over the walls.
* BadassFamily: The [=SaDiablos=]. And they're in the habit of more or less adopting and teaching the new members to be badass, like Lucivar teaching all the females to use Eyrien weapons in book three.
* BadassInANiceSuit:
** Daemon.
** Saetan.

* ActionGirl: Surreal, who is also a bit of a KnifeNut. Jaenelle in the later books. Titian.

* ArcWords: "Briarwood is the pretty poison. There is no cure for Briarwood." Explained to the reader, not to the victims of said pretty poison.
** Also, "Everything has a price." Typically said whenever an action or event occurs that deeply affects the plot or the relationships between the characters.

* {{Badass}}: Daemon first of all, but also Lucivar and Saetan.
** Jaenelle. Titian. Surreal. Also Karla; when [[spoiler:fatally poisoned, she manages to cut her poisoner in half before collapsing]].

* BadassFamily: The [=SaDiablos=]. And they're in the habit of more or less adopting and teaching the new members to be badass.
** Like Lucivar teaching all the females to use Eyrien weapons in book three.
* BadassInANiceSuit: Special mention goes to Daemon; also Saetan.
* BadassInCharge: Jaenelle as the Queen of Ebon Askavi, Saetan as the High Lord of Hell and the Warlord-Prince of Dhemlan, later Daemon as the High Lord of Hell and the Warlord-Prince of Dhemlan, Lucivar as the Warlord-Prince of Ebon Rih.
* BerserkButton: When Saetan finds out that it was Greer who [[spoiler:raped Jaenelle]], he almost destroys/kills everything in sight (and farther).

** A short story in ''Dreams made Flesh'' explains why Saetan never made more of an effort to get Daemon and Lucivar returned after they were taken as children. [[spoiler:It's because when he lost a child earlier in life, he let himself get so angry at the presumed killers that he wiped out an entire ''country''.]]
*** [[spoiler:Not so much "wiped out" as "completely and utterly erased" a country. And not just the country. Anything and everything that could possibly lay a claim to being a part of that culture was eradicated. The people, the artifacts, the documents, the ''island.'' The only sign that it ever existed is others' memory of it.]]
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Inverted. Incredibly powerful, incredibly ''dangerous'' people are often shown to be vulnerable to emotional moments, physical weakness, and fits of hysterics. Saetan, stated to be one of the scariest motherfuckers out there, gets knocked flat a lot. Despite this, [[AvertedTrope none of them]] are [[BadassDecay at all fluffy]]...
** On the other hand, it's also played straight: Jaenelle seems like a nice, polite, adventurous girl...[[UnstoppableRage until you try to hurt the people she cares about]].
* BigBrotherInstinct: Lucivar can only be considered the younger brother by maybe a few months tops. But Daemon will ''end you'' if you even ''think'' about hurting him. Likewise, Lucivar considers himself to be this to Jaenelle pretty much from the moment they meet. By extension, he also serves in this role to most of the First Circle, the way Saetan is an honorary uncle.

* BigDamnHeroes: [[HotBlooded Lucivar]] attempts this at the smallest provocation, much to the annoyance of the women he serves. Jaenelle hands out rings to her nearest and dearest whose purpose is to call in the cavalry.

* BreakTheCutie: Jaenelle. Della. Wilhelmina. Surreal. Every girl who went to Briarwood. Lucivar and Daemon, for that matter.
* BroughtDownToNormal: Jaenelle's [[spoiler:attack against the BigBad leaves the Blood of Terreille]] either destroyed, untouched, or reduced to their most basic abilities. On a smaller scale, other releases of dark power do this to various people, reducing them from their adult strength to their birthright powers.
** It also [[spoiler:reduces her to the normal levels of power within the blood; she's the one that makes this happen. Recently they revealed that her power could potentially be restored by breaking the spell she put in place to restrict it, but since they had to rebuild her body it's doubtful she would survive being its vessel again.]]
*** [[spoiler:Thought in her case, it's more of a BroughtDownToBadass situation. And her power level may be "normal", but the way it can be used still very much ''isn't''.]]
* {{Calvinball}}: The game [[CapitalLettersAreMagic Cradle]]. All we know about it is that it is played with a game board, colored stones, bone discs, a deck of cards, and sadistic ingenuity.
** We also know it has 27 variations, all but the last of which are totally incomprehensible to males. That said variation is totally incomprehensible to females and was devised (of course) by Daemon.

* CoolHouse: The Hall and its subsidiary estates.
** Which include but are not limited to: The Hall in Kaeleer, The Hall in Hell, the other three estates in Dhemlan, Jaenelle's cottage, Jaenelle's summer home in Scelt, the family's townhouse in Amdarh, and others mentioned only in passing. In some of the prequels this may also include the Hall in Tereille kinda sorta.
* CrapsackWorld: Tereille, oh so much.
* CulturedBadass: Saetan and Daemon.

* DirtyBusiness: Saetan executes people and feels terribly about it, not least because their evil stench gets in his clothes and hair. Daemon, while playing the Sadist one last time in a gambit to rescue his father and brother, admits that even he can't keep his lunch down.
** Averted by others, such as the Harpies, who perform executions as or more grisly than Saetan's with great glee. Arcerian-style executions involve the executioner playing around with the executee's still-living body and then defecating on it once finished.
*** And, of course, Daemon isn't at all bothered by doing nasty, nasty things to people who aren't his father and brother.

* FamedInStory: Special mention goes to the [[ShroudedInMyth High Lord of Hell]] (aka Saetan) and the Demon Prince (aka Andulvar).
** Daemon "[[RedBaron The Sadist]]" Sadi and Lucivar Yaslana also count.
** As well as Jaenelle herself, as of ''Queen of the Darkness''.

* FreudianExcuse: Kartane [=SaDiablo=] is an evil misogynist and rapist/pedophile because he was [[{{Squick}} raped by his mother]].
** Among other, mostly female-related reasons. In a flashback, it's shown that he wasn't actually that bad, as a kid. He's a total bastard later, though.
*** And he still gets an extremely KarmicDeath. See FateWorseThanDeath above.

* FryingPanOfDoom
** Special note goes to Marian, who was trained to use one as a weapon by Lucivar, who was not happy until she could ''throw'' one accurately and ''break bones''.

* HeroicBSOD: Falling into the Twisted Kingdom is a magical form of this, but characters have the normal type as well.
** WalkingTheEarth: Tersa, herself a permanent denizen of the Twisted Kingdom, disappears for weeks at a time. [[spoiler:Daemon's]] BSOD lasts for eight years. Both characters have to be corralled for their own protection, but have a knack for slipping away.

* INeedAFreakingDrink: Male characters are frequently driven to this by the antics of female characters.
** Female characters also--as evidenced by Marian after trying to teach Jaenelle (whose excessive power has odd effects on this particular mundane task) to boil eggs.

* KarmicDeath: Villain deaths tend to be very messy. (Given the amount of MoralEventHorizon crossing, this is also pretty necessary.)
** Ahem. YourHeadASplode: Used in the sense of "Splortch means No!" by Daemon and then later Jaenelle, who are both plagued by violations of their respective sexual boundaries.

** Mind you, Theran did get what he wanted. Kermilla got what she deserved.
** Also, see FateWorseThanDeath for that of Briarwood's "uncles".

* NotAMorningPerson: Jaenelle Angelline is a delightful person before her first cup of coffee. ''Not''.
* ObviouslyEvil: Dorothea, Hekatah, Kartane, Greer...
* OneManArmy: Lucivar. Saetan, Daemon and Jaenelle too, but they fall more under the PersonOfMassDestruction category.

* PersonOfMassDestruction: Jaenelle. Initially she can't figure out how to lend her power to fighting the war because if unleashed she'd [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt wipe out everything.]]
** Also Saetan, Daemon, and to a lesser extend Lucivar, who not only have extremely potent power, but also have seriously lethal tempers and protective male aggression up the wazoo hardwired into their psyches.
* PolitenessJudo: The easiest way to redirect any male, but especially an upset/angry one, is to ask them for help, as one [[{{Muggle}} landen]] girl proves.
** The setting's rules of protocol in general are designed to keep them all from killing each other as much as possible.

* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: Lucivar, as an [[ProudWarriorRace Eyrien]]. Also Andulvar, for the same reason.

* ShroudedInMyth: The High Lord of Hell and Cassandra especially.

* TookALevelInDumbass: Theran Grayhaven, epically in ''Shalador's Lady''. He's stubbornly obsessed with getting a glamorous Queen because that's what he believes his land (not to mention, what HE, the last Grayhaven) deserves, which leads Theran to trivialize all of the unglamorous Cassidy's hard work and accomplishments because she doesn't fit his image of a 'proper' Queen. Instead, Theran falls for the [[AlphaBitch vivaciously beautiful, but spoiled Kermilla]], and ends up constantly making excuses for or trying to rationalize away Kermilla's blatantly selfish and inconsiderate behavior as he tries to make her Queen of Dena Nehele.
** Partially justified by his reaction to Kermilla. All Warlord Princes have an instinct to "belong to" and submit to a particular Queen. Unfortunately, Theran is drawn to the selfish and vain Kermilla. According to his new Queen, "Theran is not a bad human. He is just male and foolish. And confused."
* TookALevelInJerkass: Falonar. In ''Queen of the Darkness'', Falonar is depicted as a proud but loyal Eryien. But two years later, in the novella ''Shades of Honor'', Falanor suddenly becomes a nasty, scheming, power-hungry class-obsessed StrawMisogynist and [[FantasticRacism hardcore Eryien bigot]] who uses treachery and drugs in his attempts to manipulate and eliminate his much more powerful rival, Lucivar. This is all explained as Falonar hiding his true nature from everyone (including Witch, somehow) when he first came to Kaeleer.
** This is actually explained in the series, although not directly referenced in the story. Before being allowed to run free in Kaeleer, each immigrant is required to serve in a local Queen's court for a specified amount of time - in Falonar's case, as a Warlord Prince, it was 5 years. The length of time is explicitly there because with the Blood, their personality is so strong that it is impossible for them to maintain a mask or facade for the entire length of time. This is merely the system working as intended - Falonar (and the others that sided with him) true personality finally breaks through, and he is dealt with.

* TrapIsTheOnlyOption: Lucivar's [[IHaveYourWife wife and kid]] get captured. Lucivar deliberately walks into the trap. Saetan receives word that his son has been captured. Saetan deliberately walks into the trap. Surreal hears that these people have been captured and gets ready to deliberately walk into the trap, but is thankfully intercepted by Daemon, who makes ''plans'' before he [[strike:walks]] [[OhCrap saunters]] into the trap.

* TrueCompanions: Jaenelle's powerful but eclectic band of friends.

* UnstoppableRage: The anger of male Blood (and Jaenelle) is a tangible psychic manifestation of power. Some unleash it more readily than others.
** Other witches as well, but they rise to the killing edge less easily and are much more merciless when they do, so the males make sure to take care of it. Jaenelle just has a [[BerserkButton whooole lot of triggers]] so she shows what happens when a witch gets that pissed off.
* ViolentlyProtectiveGirlfriend: Jaenelle. Also, to a lesser degree, Marian.

** TranquilFury: If someone's tangible psychic manifestation of power should happen to "go cold", you may as well not even bother to run.

* SatanIsGood: Saetan (duh). And can be seen too with his sons Daemon (demon) and Lucivar (Lucifer), as well as Mephis (Mephistopheles) if one wants to keep the play with words.

* PoorCommunicationKills: Make up almost half of the last book.
** And the poor communication is plot-relevant and necessary.
** Though less so in the sequels. Daemon and Jaenelle seem to have at least one instance of this in every book released after ''Queen of the Darkness''. It's perhaps justified in ''Dreams Made Flesh'' since [[spoiler:Jaenelle has had to recover from her DiscardAndDraw in ''Queen of the Darkness''.]] After that one, it just gets tedious.
*** In ''The Shadow Queen'' at the very least, the only example I can think of was caused by consideration for Daemon's fragile psyche, and it was shortly hashed out with sensible conversations practically within a chapter.
** Jaenelle has a habit of cutting this off at the knees by getting pissed and sensibly demanding answers from the source.

** GullibleLemmings: Dorothea tries to pass off a lifetime of unrestrained evil as her having been the victim of manipulation by the High Lord of Hell... and people are willing to believe it.
*** This sort of falls in with a phenomenon in RL: i.e. "the devil made me do it!" The High Lord of Hell is pretty much a bogeyman.

* GenderRestrictedAbility: Women are explicitly far more powerful than men. Only two men, Saetan and Daemon, are Black Widows. Men cannot rule territories.
** Daemon is a ''natural'' Black Widow. Saetan learned the Black Widow Craft from Cassandra. One does not have to be born a Black Widow to become one.
** Actually, 'explicitly more powerful' is not true in the magical sense. It's a matriarchal society, but Jewel strength is about even.
** Men actually ''can'' rule territories, it's just really, really unlikely; Saetan (and later Daemon) is the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan after making a deal with the Dhemlan Queens in both Terrielle and Kaeleer to keep Dhemlan safe. While the Queens might grumble about being ruled by a male, they aren't going to argue the perks of having the protection of a Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince.
*** Especially since it is explicitly acknowledged and known by just about everybody that court or no, they serve Jaenelle.
** It's pointed out in several instances that the Queens "grumbling" about being ruled by a male is usually less because of personal dislike of men, and more because males linked to the darker jewels tend to be overly hormonal doomsday devices. A Warlord Prince who has ties to a strong or intelligent Queen is easier to pull away from the killing edge.

* CardCarryingVillain: Most of the villains are 100% evil with no attempts at redeeming features or a full personality.
** Largely the two main villains. ''Most'' of the villains are explored more--Alexandra, Phillip, Lord Jarvis...
*** Phillip and Alexandra aren't villains since they don't really do anything really evil. They're more the foolish and naive type, unwilling or unable to see what's happening in front of them. Phillip is especially pathetic because he doesn't have any real power or strength to do much. He's more "evil by inaction."
*** Phillip and Alexandra send a child who tells them she's being hurt back to the people hurting her. Alexandra is a rapist. They both plan to lie about their child's mental capacity so they can kidnap her. ''What part of this is not villainy?''
*** Alexandra never actually raped anyone. She comments once or twice that she's "availed" herself of willing males in another Queen's court, but when she's at home she hasn't slept with anyone since Philip quit being her Consort because he fell in love with her daughter. The "willing" in front of the "male" kinda puts rape out of the question, although this troper does admit the definition of a "[[SexSlave willing male]]" can be rather skewed in Tereille.
*** Alexandra raped [[SexSlave Daemon]]. Or at the very least sexually assaulted him, if you're the sort of person who requires penetration to be involved for it to be considered "rape."

* ApocalypseHow: In ''Dreams Made Flesh'' it is revealed that in his living days Saetan [[spoiler: snapped and executed a regional/metaphysical annihilation on an entire island city-state, leaving memories but not a single scrap of evidence that it existed]]. This scared everyone, including him, so much that it is used to justify both his insistence on following the laws and the fact that his name is used to scare children fifty thousand years later.

** Jaenelle. Titian. Surreal. Also Karla; when [[spoiler: fatally poisoned, she manages to cut her poisoner in half before collapsing]].

** A short story in ''Dreams made Flesh'' explains why Saetan never made more of an effort to get Daemon and Lucivar returned after they were taken as children. [[spoiler: It's because when he lost a child earlier in life, he let himself get so angry at the presumed killers that he wiped out an entire ''country''.]]

* BlessedWithSuck: Jaenelle can do things no member of the Blood had ever dreamed of... and it makes her life hell. It alienates her entire family, causes her to be sent to an asylum periodically where she's [[spoiler: sexually assaulted and tortured]], her entire family as a child believes she's insane and more than halfway convince her of it, and it renders her completely incapable of a variety of basic tasks.

** It also [[spoiler: reduces her to the normal levels of power within the blood; she's the one that makes this happen. Recently they revealed that her power could potentially be restored by breaking the spell she put in place to restrict it, but since they had to rebuild her body it's doubtful she would survive being its vessel again.]]

* FateWorseThanDeath: Jaenelle casts a spell that causes the "uncles" who visited Briarwood to suffer [[spoiler: [[LaserGuidedKarma all the rapes and tortures they inflicted on the little girls]]]] there--and makes sure it doesn't kill them; death would be too easy.

* LaserGuidedKarma: In ''Shalador's Lady'', both Theran and Kermilla. Theran gets the powerful and dazzling Queen he wanted, but [[spoiler:she's a Green-jeweled [[TalkingAnimal Sceltie Queen]] who happens to be Vae's aunt]], while the narcissistic Kermilla [[spoiler: is allowed to survive, but is trapped for over a year in the illusion of a decidedly ugly woman]].

* ArcWords : "Briarwood is the pretty poison. There is no cure for Briarwood." Explained to the reader, not to the victims of said pretty poison.

* BewareTheNiceOnes : Inverted. Incredibly powerful, incredibly ''dangerous'' people are often shown to be vulnerable to emotional moments, physical weakness, and fits of hysterics. Saetan, stated to be one of the scariest motherfuckers out there, gets knocked flat a lot. Despite this, [[AvertedTrope none of them]] are [[BadassDecay at all fluffy]]...

* BigDamnHeroes : [[HotBlooded Lucivar]] attempts this at the smallest provocation, much to the annoyance of the women he serves. Jaenelle hands out rings to her nearest and dearest whose purpose is to call in the cavalry.

* BlackmailIsSuchAnUglyWord : “Oooooh, that’s a harsh word. But I won’t quibble about it.”

* CapitalLettersAreMagic : The series is chock full of it. The Blood, the Craft, the Jewels, the Winds, and so on and so forth.

* CoolHouse : The Hall and its subsidiary estates.

* DespairEventHorizon : Several characters get forcibly thrown across it.
* DirtyBusiness : Saetan executes people and feels terribly about it, not least because their evil stench gets in his clothes and hair. Daemon, while playing the Sadist one last time in a gambit to rescue his father and brother, admits that even he can't keep his lunch down.

* GenderRestrictedAbility : Women are explicitly far more powerful than men. Only two men, Saetan and Daemon, are Black Widows. Men cannot rule territories.

* HeroicBSOD : Falling into the Twisted Kingdom is a magical form of this, but characters have the normal type as well.

* INeedAFreakingDrink : Male characters are frequently driven to this by the antics of female characters.

** Ahem. YourHeadASplode : Used in the sense of "Splortch means No!" by Daemon and then later Jaenelle, who are both plagued by violations of their respective sexual boundaries.

* LimitedWardrobe : Daemon wears a black suit and white silk shirts for apparently most of his 1,700 year lifespan. {{Lampshaded}} by his valet, under duress, to Daemon's dismay.
* LongBusTrip : Cassandra disappeared, only to be mentioned in the finale as [[spoiler:dying with the rest of the demon-dead]].

** GullibleLemmings : Dorothea tries to pass off a lifetime of unrestrained evil as her having been the victim of manipulation by the High Lord of Hell... and people are willing to believe it.

* PortalNetwork : The Gates between the Realms, as well as the dark Winds. One of Jaenelle's rule-breaking abilities is to traverse the spaces between the ordinary Winds, jump back and forth between the Realms, and build a theoretically impossible bridge into Hell.

* TrapIsTheOnlyOption : Lucivar's [[IHaveYourWife wife and kid]] get captured. Lucivar deliberately walks into the trap. Saetan receives word that his son has been captured. Saetan deliberately walks into the trap. Surreal hears that these people have been captured and gets ready to deliberately walk into the trap, but is thankfully intercepted by Daemon, who makes ''plans'' before he [[strike:walks]] [[OhCrap saunters]] into the trap.
* TraumaCongaLine : Most of the protagonists have this inflicted on them. It sometimes takes the form of DeusAngstMachina wrought by the villains.

* UncannyValley : In-universe example. Jaenelle, being not quite human, disturbs some people when they see her as Witch. The darkness of her power also makes her relatives uneasy, even before one of them sees her true form. As a child, her eeriness is attributed to a disturbed mind, and her grandmother later thinks that she must go beyond that and into complete insanity.
* UnstoppableRage : The anger of male Blood (and Jaenelle) is a tangible psychic manifestation of power. Some unleash it more readily than others.

** TranquilFury : If someone's tangible psychic manifestation of power should happen to "go cold", you may as well not even bother to run.

* FantasyGunControl.

* GargleBlaster : Gravediggers

* TheMagocracy

* MegaNeko: Kaelas, the Arcerian cat. Described as "[[AmericanCustomaryMeasurements eight hundred pounds]] of feline fury".

** As well as Jaenelle herself, as of ''The Queen of Darkness''.

* NoBadassToHisValet: The relationship between the [=SaDiablo=] family and the Hall's servants is this. They prefer it like that.

* NoBadassToHisValet: The relationship between the [=SaDiablo=]family and the Hall's servants is this. They prefer it like that.

** Also Saetan, Daemon, and Lucivar, who not only have extremely potent power, but also have seriously lethal tempers and protective male aggression up the wazoo hardwired into their psyches.

** Also Jaenelle, as of ''The Queen of Darkness''.