History Literature / TheLastUnicorn

* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: [[spoiler:Lir sacrifices his life protecting the unicorn from the Red Bull, and is resurrected by the unicorn afterward... but the unicorn cannot stay with him, leaving him as heir to a throne he doesn't want, ruling over a wretched people in a land he hates, with no more joy in his rule than Haggard ever had. His only reward is that the unicorn will remember his love for all eternity]].

Their quest takes them to the barren lands of the embittered King Haggard, master of the Red Bull, and his naive foster son Prince Lír. It is here that the unicorn, superior and aloof to all mortals, is [[HumanityEnsues transformed into a mere human]], taking the name "Lady Amalthea", forced to see and suffer human weakness and emotion firsthand.

** Lír is the only one to make even a single sound of mourning for [[spoiler:King Haggard's death]].
* AllTakeAndNoGive: King Haggard. Beautifully demonstrated when the unicorn is first turned into a woman, and both Haggard and Lir look into her eyes. Lir's eyes reflect the light radiating from her eyes, while Haggard's reflect none of it back, as if hoarding it away somewhere.

* BabiesEverAfter: Hagsgate is afraid to have children because of the prophecy that their prosperity depends on Haggard, and one of their children will bring him down. At the end, when it has been fulfilled, Prince Lír urges the people of Hagsgate to start families.

* BerserkButton: For the unicorn, being confused for a horse, or compared to a mortal in any way. [[spoiler:The death of Prince Lír by the Red Bull]].

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The Last Unicorn finds and frees her fellows, but at a price. As a human, the Lady Amalthea falls in love with Prince Lír. Returned to her immortal form, she can no longer stay with him (or even feel love anymore), so she leaves both her love and her two human friends behind to return to her home in the lilac wood. Even sadder, however, because she has experienced love, aging, and regret--experiences foreign to "pure" unicorns--[[BlessedWithSuck she is no longer as innocent and aloof as others of her kind, separating her even from her own species]].]] And yet, as sad as these things may be, she thanks Schmendrick for them. It is a good thing [[spoiler:to have known love]].

* ChildlessDystopia: Hagsgate, due to a prophecy that a child from the town would bring down the king. [[spoiler:And it turns out to be true. Haggard adopted his son Lír as a baby, when he found the abandoned infant on a street in Hagsgate surrounded by a group of cats trying to keep him from freezing to death. Lír unwittingly causes Haggard's downfall by enabling the unicorn to defeat the Red Bull.]]

** Lír starts off as a lazy schmuck, but eventually rises to become a hero (to impress Amalthea), [[spoiler:fights the Red Bull, [[HeroicSacrifice lays down his life to save the unicorn,]] and becomes King.]] In the sequel, [[spoiler:he dies saving a small girl from a griffin.]]

-->'''King Haggard:''' ''(to Amalthea)'' Your eyes! Your eyes have become empty as Lír's, as any eyes that... never saw unicorns.

* FunctionalGenreSavvy: Several characters, particularly Lír, who makes a much-quoted speech about the proper order of things during the climax of the story.

* GoThroughMe: Lír to the Red Bull, twice. Tragically, he doesn't survive the second time.

** Lír displays this trait when warned by Schmendrick not to chase after the unicorn. He then realizes that ''that'' path is the one that leads to Haggard's dissatisfaction and tyranny.

* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:That would be Lír. Twice ... again, alongside Malka in Two Hearts. Leaving The Unicorn to make the heartbreaking choice of who to save ...]]

* HerosMuse: Amalthea to Lír.
* HiddenDepths: Haggard has sent away everyone except the absolute minimum staff in his castle, because he won't keep anything around that doesn't make him happy. There are so few people left, in fact, that he and Lír have to help with the cooking and doing shifts on guard duty. However, this indicates that doing these things actually ''does'' make Haggard at least a little happy. If they didn't, he would be happier with the extra employees (which makes sense - having work he needs to attend to is better than just sitting on his throne all day doing nothing).
* HistoryRepeats: The story reveals that Lady Amalthea/The Last Unicorn and Lír are not the first [[InterspeciesRomance unicorn and human couple to be romantically involved]]. A male unicorn lost his immortality, fell in love in a mortal woman, they lived happy, [[TrueCompanions grew old and died together]].

* IncorruptiblePurePureness: Unicorns, Molly, and Lír.
* IndifferentBeauty: The Lady Amalthea, who is aware of how ethereally beautiful King Haggard, Prince Lir, and the four guards find her, but couldn't care less and barely sends them a glance.

* KnightInShiningArmor: Lír.

* LeaveYourQuestTest: Amalthea tries to back out just before the final battle. Her lover, Prince Lír, is an experienced hero and insists that it can't end this way -- even though if she stayed human they could marry and be happy together. The same event could also be considered a test for ''him''.

* LegacyCharacter: When Lír declares he will find the Unicorn at any cost at the end, it's noted he looks like Haggard for the first time. Schmendrick advises against it.

* LoveMakesYouCrazy: After the day has been saved, Lír decides to look for the Unicorn. Schmendrick tells him not to, and briefly Lír's rage turns him into Haggard Jr. He realizes before it's too late that it would be a fruitless, self-destructive search.
** Amalthea's love for Lír also counts, because in loving Lír she comes to completely forget her past and true self as a unicorn, though she recovers some of it before the end.
* LoveMartyr: ''Oh, Lír.''

* MayflyDecemberRomance: Prince Lír and the unicorn... sort of. As Lady Amalthea, she's as human and mortal as he is, and when she's turned back into the immortal unicorn she can no longer feel love for him, but he still loves her all the same.

** Lír isn't just a PunctuationShaker - anyone versed in Irish mythology would recognise the name as that of the Irish ''sea'' god, most prominent in ''Literature/TheChildrenOfLir'', in which his three children are turned into swans and bound to three lakes, for three hundred years each per lake.

* NotSoDifferent: Discussed. The Lady Amalthea initially has no interest in Lir because she sees that he wants her just as the Red Bull did, and it frightens her. [[spoiler:After she is restored to a unicorn]], Prince Lir demands to know where she is and states that he must have her, and for a moment he looks just as Haggard did.
* OddlySmallOrganization: Since Haggard removed anything that didn't make him happy from his castle, his court consists of himself, Lír, a court magician, and four septuagenarian men at arms. And because they're so short-handed, every one of them, including the king and his heir, have to take turns guarding the castle, cooking meals, and cleaning the place.

* PainfulRhyme: [[invoked]] Lír's love poetry to Amalthea uses this as a form of StylisticSuck (since his poetry is ''supposed'' to be terrible):

* ThePowerOfLove: The desire to be someone worthy of Amalthea's love spurns Lír to change from a lazy coward into a GenreSavvy hero.

* ProphecyTwist: Haggard's previous magician, Mabruk, tells Haggard, "You have let your doom in by the front door, but it will not depart that way!" [[spoiler:We assume that he's referring to Amalthea (and maybe that's all that he realizes). But Haggard's doom is actually caused by Lír, whom Haggard adopted as a baby and, one would presume, brought him into the castle via the front door. If Lír hadn't sacrificed his life, the unicorn would have just gone into the sea and would not have fought back against the Red Bull.]]

* ReallyWasBornYesterday: Amalthea. Haggard and Lír discuss this trope when they see her approaching the castle.

* ScrewDestiny: Just before the final encounter with the Red Bull, Lady Amalthea [[spoiler:wants to back out, marry Lír, and live happily ever after--Lír is the one who insists that the story can't end that way.]]

* TakingTheBullet / DivingSave: [[spoiler:Prince Lír jumps in front of the charging Red Bull to save the unicorn, killing the prince instantly.]] Cue BerserkButton.

* TookALevelInBadass: [[spoiler:Seeing Lír face down the Red Bull fills Schmendrick with magic permanently, turning him from an IneptMage to TheArchmage. He is even able to turn a human being into a unicorn, a feat his master Nikos himself was unable to perform.]]

* TheWisePrince: Lír, after he's changed by having been in love with Amalthea.

* OlderThanTheyLook: Schmendrick. He was [[CursedWithAwesome cursed to stop aging]] by Nikos, under the condition that he find out who and what he was. [[CaptainObvious It's implied that he's much older than he looks. WordOfGod says he's anywhere from 40 to 60.]]

* TheMindIsAPlaythingOfTheBody: The unicorn's frightening personality change following her transformation. The narration even starts referring to her and 'the Lady Amalthea' after calling her 'the girl' for the first part of her stay in the castle.

* DeathOfPersonality: [[spoiler:The 'Lady Amalthea' personality essentially dies when Schmendrick restores the unicorn to its' rightful form.]]

* TheMindIsAPlaythingOfTheBody: The unicorn's frightening personality change following her transformation.

* BerserkButton: For the unicorn, [[spoiler:the death of Prince Lír by the Red Bull]].

* HarpingOnAboutHarpies

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Molly Grue, all but stated to be this.

* WildWilderness

* ByTheEyesOfTheBlind: The skull.

* JustLikeRobinHood: Captain Cully and his outlaw gang certainly aspire to be, but instead are quite the opposite. They rob the poor because they can't fight back, and pay off the rich to turn a blind eye.

* LoadBearingBoss: King Haggard.

* NakedOnArrival: Due to an aversion of MagicPants, this is the unicorn's human form at first sight.

* ThePardon: The king pardons the outlaws at the end.

* QuestForTheRest

* VillainousBreakdown: King Haggard has one at the end.

* WantingIsBetterThanHaving: This is King Haggard's FatalFlaw, and it even extends to Hagsgate, his town. Everything comes easily to him (and the town doesn't have to work to earn a living) but because everything comes so easily, nothing is satisfying (and the town is basically a prosperous craphole.) Probably one of the reasons why unicorns still interest him is that there's one last unicorn out there he's never captured.

* TookALevelInBadass: [[spoiler:Seeing Lír face down the Red Bull fills Shmendrick with magic permanently, turning him from an IneptMage to TheArchmage. He is even able to turn a human being into a unicorn, a feat his master Nikos himself was unable to perform.]]

* CapturedSuperEntity: Mommy Fortuna, owner of a traveling circus-cum-freak-show, had captured by magic the Harpy Celaeno. The monster had sworn revenge and makes all possible things to escape, while the witch drains herself of power and ages herself quickly to still hold her under magic tether.

* ShownTheirWork: Unicorns are not "horses with horns", and the book acknowledges that. The unicorn is a creature mashup like a griffin or hippocampus: she has deer legs, cloven hooves, a lion's tail... But she has an old, wild grace that makes all her contradictory parts work.

* AlasPoorVillain: InUniverse example. Schmendrick, in spite of his loathing of Mommy Fortuna, weeps after she is killed by the harpy.
** Lír is the only one to make even a single sound of mourning for [[spoiler:King Haggard's death]].
* AnachronismStew: Intentionally, in the same vein as ''Literature/TheOnceAndFutureKing'', there are references to tacos, trains, magazines, [[Literature/ChildBallads Francis James Child's ballad collection]], etc. in a medieval-Renaissance-Arthurian-whatever age.

* FunctionalGenreSavvy: Several characters, particularly Lír, who makes a much-quoted speech about the proper order of things during the climax of the story.

* HarpingOnAboutHarpies

* PainfulRhyme: Lír's love poetry to Amalthea uses this as a form of StylisticSuck (since his poetry is ''supposed'' to be terrible):

* BabiesEverAfter: Schmendrick urges the people of Hagsgate to start families.

* ChildlessDystopia: Hagsgate, due to a prophecy that a child from the town would bring down the king. [[spoiler:And it turns out to be true. Haggard adopted his son Lir as a baby, when he found the abandoned infant on a street in Hagsgate surrounded by a group of cats trying to keep him from freezing to death. Lir unwittingly causes Haggard's downfall by enabling the unicorn to defeat the Red Bull.]]

-->'''King Haggard:''' ''(to Amalthea)'' Your eyes! Your eyes have become empty as Lir's, as any eyes that... never saw unicorns.

* FunctionalMagic: Wild magic, exclusively. Mostly because Schmendrick starts off with a talent he can't control.

** Lir displays this trait when warned by Schmendrick not to chase after the unicorn. He then realizes that ''that'' path is the one that leads to Haggard's dissatisfaction and tyranny.

* LegacyCharacter: When Lir declares he will find the Unicorn at any cost at the end, it's noted he looks like Haggard for the first time. Schmendrick advises against it.
* LoveMakesYouCrazy: After the day has been saved, Lir decides to look for the Unicorn. Schmendrick tells him not to, and briefly Lir's rage turns him into Haggard Jr. He realizes before it's too late that it would be a fruitless, self-destructive search.
** Amalthea's love for Lir also counts, because in loving Lir she comes to completely forget her past and true self as a unicorn, though she recovers some of it before the end.

* WildMagic: Schmendrick does not so much control the magic he uses, as acts as a conduit for it to do what is ''necessary'', which is not the same as doing what he ''wants''.
* WildWilderness

* TheWisePrince: Lír

* PunctuationShaker: Lír. Now would it have made any difference if he had been named just Lir? ([[RuleOfThree Lìr?]] [[HeavyMetalUmlaut Lïr?]] [[OverlyLongGag Lîr?]] OK, you're right, the books title is not "The Last Unicode".)

* [[CallingTheOldManOut Calling The Unicorn Out]]: "Where have you ''been?!''"

* [[IJustWantToBeNormal I Just Want To Stay Normal]]: Amalthea begs Schmendrick not to change her back into a unicorn.

* {{Deconstruction}}. ''And how''. All of the characters [[FunctionalGenreSavvy know they're in a fairy tale]], and the fairy tale itself mocks, parodies, subverts and plays straight FairyTale tropes.

* DeadEyes:
-->'''King Haggard:''' ''(to Amalthea)'' Your eyes! Your eyes have become empty as Lir's, as any eyes that... never saw unicorns.

* AscendedFangirl: Molly Grue never slept a whole night through because she kept waking many times to see if the unicorn she was dreaming about was still there. Now she's on an adventure with the last unicorn in the world to help her find her kind.
* AlasPoorVillain: InUniverse example. Schmendrick, in spite of his loathing of Mommy Fortuna, is brought to tears at the sheer horror and brutality of her death by the harpy.

-->'''Schmendrick:''' With a word and a wave, he [Nikos] transformed the unicorn into a handsome young man, who woke, and seeing the astonished bowmen gaping there, charged upon them and killed them all. His sword was of a twisted, tapering design, and he trampled the bodies when the men were dead.

** This is foreshadowed by a story Schmendrick tells about his own teacher Nikos turning a unicorn stallion into a human man. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, Nikos could not reverse the spell, and the unicorn/man died in comfortable old age. The protagonist unicorn is horrified.]]

* ShownTheirWork: Unicorns are not "horses with horns", and the book acknowledges that. The unicorn is a creature mashup like a griffin or hippocampus: she has a lion's tail, a goat's beard and cloven hooves.

%%** King Haggard. %%Context?
** The harpy tries to kill the unicorn right after she frees her, but thankfully turns her attention to Mommy Fortuna and her assistant instead.
** Molly ''begs'' Schmendrick to use his magic to save the unicorn from the Red Bull, but immediately turns on him and calls him an idiot after he does so.
*** She does say she didn't expect him to save her by turning her into a human girl.
** The Lady Amalthea also displays this after they go to live at King Haggard's court, calling Schmendrick a fool for working as his court jester, even though the whole reason he does it is to buy her time to search for her people, which she doesn't use because she's too busy moping about her [[HumanityEnsues unwanted humanity]]. Even Molly calls her out on it.

** Lír isn't just a PunctuationShaker - anyone versed in Irish mythology would recognise the name as that of the Irish ''sea'' god, most prominent in ''Literature/TheChildrenofLir'', in which his three children are turned into swans and bound to three lakes, for three hundred years each per lake.