History Literature / TheSecretOfPlatform13

* FamilyFriendlyStripper: The complicated plan involves Gurkintrude replacing a [[BellyDancer dancing girl]], in order to distract the people. The usual dance number is a striptease where the light is switched off exactly when the last veil could fall. The very prim and proper fey consents to the plan, but insists on wearing her very long, very decent underwear under the seven veils, just in case there's a problem with the light switch. Hilarity ensues.

* HarpingOnAboutHarpies: The harpies are depicted as half-woman, half-bird creatures as is usual for the trope. They also carry handbags whose contents are mysterious, but smell ''very'' bad when opened. They serve as the Island's police force of sorts, and they're brutally efficient at it.

* HaveIMentionedIAmADwarfToday: Melisande is a water nymph, not a mermaid. She keeps pointing to her feet to prove it.

* LimitedDestinationTime: The gump is only open once every 9 years for a full day, if someone from the Island doesn't make it through the gump by the end of the day, they're stuck until it opens again; which of course happens to the prince at the beginning, starting the plot of the book

* SelfPunishmentOverFailure: [[SameSexTriplets Lily, Rose and Violet]] defy orders by taking the infant Prince through the gump; he winds up getting kidnapped, and he can't be recovered until the gump opens again in nine years. The King and Queen are too nice to punish the nurses, so they move into a cove and punish themselves by eating nothing but rotting food, sleeping on hard rocks and constantly dipping their body parts in freezing water. When the rescue part finally goes to retrieve the Prince they wait right by the gump with a big box of bananas, desperately waiting for when their punishment can end.

* GoodIsNotNice: The harpies, hags and other monsters on the Island, who serve as something like a police force--if you do something wrong, ''they'' deal with you, and chances are you'll never repeat your mistake.

* TheGoodKing: What the monarchs of the island has traditionally been. The rescuers immediately think Ben must be the Prince because he's so hardworking and polite, and he must obviously understand that a king is the servant of his subjects. They're terribly disappointed when they realize they've got the wrong boy. [[spoiler: Good thing their first instinct was right.]]

* HarpingOnAboutHarpies

* SameSexTriplets: Lily, Rose, and Violet.

* AdultFear: One of the reasons the nanny fights so hard to stay alive is that she knows full well she's the only person left to protect Ben from Mrs. Trottle. [[spoiler:After she dies, two very creepy men are sent by Mrs. Trottle to forcibly take Ben to a BoardingSchoolOfHorrors.]]
** As horrible as Mrs. Trottle is, she gets subjected to this trope when she finds out that a group of strange people have been secretly meeting her son and trying to convince him to run away with them. Her first assumption - which is not unreasonable - is that they were planning to kidnap him. (In fact, their plan B, aka "bop and sack", technically ''is'' kidnapping, although they believe they're returning him to his real parents.)