History Main / StrangePondWoman

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[[quoteright:300:[[MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/violenceinherentinthesystem_122.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:300: The '''real''' reason why [[KingArthur Arthur]] is King of the Britons is that he'll beat the crap out of any peasant who doesn't pretend to accept the idea that he deserves to order everyone around just because some StrangePondWoman was kind enough to [[ShamCeremony distribute a sword to him]]. Come see the violence InherentInTheSystem!]]

->Listen, [[EmpoweringLakeLady strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords]] is no basis for a system of government!
-->-- '''Dennis''', responding to King Arthur, ''{{Monty Python and the Holy Grail}}''

A StrangePondWoman is a person who hands out authority or power... but the authority is not valid, and the power is questionable at best. The StrangePondWoman is not mythical, except maybe in the sense "just a myth, doesn't even exist". She is not mysterious, except maybe in the sense "chooses to obfuscate her shortcomings or true motives".

For example, she might give any passing-by wannabe hero his own personal certificate that he's the one true and only TheChosenOne... and this will make him feel very proud, until he realizes that she is handing these certificates out like popcorn.

Maybe she's a cynical scam, maybe she's insane (or pretending to be). Or maybe the Pond Woman was an EmpoweringLakeLady until the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_sink_realism forces]] of RealityEnsues tore her from the pedestal of HighFantasy by someone who dared to question the concept of the Divine Right of Kings. The one to dismiss her could be the hero himself, or it could be the people around him not recognizing the authority she has given him. It could also be the audience reacting in this way because the plot is some kind of parody or subversion, or simply [[WorldLimitedToThePlot poorly written]]. And it just might never be clear what she intends, raising the question of whether she did exactly what was effective for what was needed.

In either case: If she gives you a {{MacGuffin}}, it's really just a MagicFeather. Or vice versa. If she holds a ceremony, it's really just a ShamCeremony. If she gives you a divine blessing, she's actually not favored by any legitimate deities, much less a deity herself -- assuming she even exists. Since the status of Pond Woman is all about lack of legitimacy, a primary way for angels and deities to fill this role is to not exist in the first place. In some fantasy settings, the true churches have a lot of trouble weeding out such misplaced faith.

Named after a political speech, an anarcho-syndicalist ridiculing the concept of Divine Right, in a famous scene in MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail. Not to be confused with the DoctorWho character [[KarenGillan Amy Pond]], however strange she may or may not be.

When it comes to religion and politics, one person's EmpoweringLakeLady is another's StrangePondWoman and vice versa. We are supposed to accept the rule of King Arthur just because some watery tart threw a sword at him? Isn't it more likely that people "respect" "The Lady of the Lake" and her choice of king because King Arthur's knights and soldiers will kill them if they don't? Come see the violence {{inherent in the system}}!
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!!Examples

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[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
* ''KeroroGunsou'': In one story Tamama pretends to be a god (angel in the Funimation English dub) after being caught by a boy practising soccer. While he did help the boy become more confident he gave some rather strange advice, especially in the manga and English dub, not to mention teaching the boy a soccer kick fueled by resentment.
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[[folder:Comics]]
* The Guardians of the Universe in ''GreenLantern'' that formed the Green Lantern Corps. Consider for a moment that they gave ''themselves'' that title. While they mean well, they generally refuse to show any hint of humility or [[TheSpock emotion]]. They also have a tendency to cover up things they feel ManWasNotMeantToKnow (Parallax, the massacre of sector 666, Agent Orange, the Blackest Night prophecy, the White Entity), and those coverups have an equal tendency to come back and bite them in the rear.
* In ChickTracts, false gods and other devils often fill this role, offering people what the victims already have or what the devils can't provide. Especially God-as-worshipped-by-catholics-and-muslims gets portrayed this way a lot.
* In ''{{Fables}}'', Cinderella is quite disillusioned with the fairy godmother, who did set him up with that jerk "Prince Charming" in spite of already knowing about his trail of failed marriages.
* In ''Cinderella's Sister'', the "fairy godmoter" is all about hurting young women's selfesteem so that they will desirer more expensive clothes, cosmetic surgery etc. And she's not a real person either, merely an advertisement mascot.
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[[folder:Films -- Live Action]]
* Discussed in ''{{Monty Python and the Holy Grail}}'': The peasant Dennis didn't vote for King Arthur, so why should he accept King Arthur's rule? Because some strange woman lying in a pond distributed a sword? Or is it truly because Arthur will have him silenced if he don't pretend to go along with that logic? Come see the violence inherent in the system! ("Help, help, I'm being repressed!") (And yes, several sections of the trope description were lifted from this movie).
** In this particular story, it appears that King Arthur actually WAS ruling by Divine Right. Then again, why should someone accept God's will? The story doesn't address whether Dennis is a FlatEarthAtheist who doesn't believe God exists, or if he simply doesn't care.
* In ''ABeautifulMind'', John Nash is getting increasingly erratic orders from the government agent who made him a KnightInShiningArmor against the evil communist conspiracy. [[spoiler: The questgiver is actually a delusion, caused by John's schizophrenia.]]
* In ''TheExorcismOfEmilyRose'', an angel gives the titular character blessings and tactical updates in her war against the devil. While psychiatry (in the movie as well as in RealLife) is convinced that Emily was insane and that it was wrong of her priest to advice her to stop taking her medication, the movie makes it [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane ambiguous]] whether the battle was all a matter of insanity (making the angel a StrangePondWoman who helped Emily destroy herself) or a real battle between spiritual forces (making the angel a EmpoweringLakeLady who helped Emily defeat the devil and [[TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth move on to a better place]]).
** Even if she was insane, the movie indicates that maybe her faith was more important anyway. Emily herself was positioned to play this role for people looking for some confirmation of spirituality in the modern world; the movie suggests that if her faith had this positive effect on the world, maybe that was more important and the sacrifice she made would still mean something even she was actually crazy.
* In ''KungFuHustle'', a street bum sells Sing an overpriced kung-fu manual in a flashback, which sees our protagonist down the road of misery and failure. The bum appears at the end of the film, after Sing has defeated the Axe Gang and the Beast (with no help from his sham manual), trying to sell an array of kung-fu manuals to another unsuspecting kid.
** Subverted since [[spoiler: the technique he used to defeat the Beast came from the manual. Sing just needed his chi flow corrected to use it properly.]]

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[[folder:Literature]]
* In TheWizardOfOz, the Wizard is ultimately proven to be this, giving out {{Magic Feather}}s as if they was real gift. (However, the gifts are symbolic. Thus they should be considered real in the film version, which was AllJustADream.)
* In TheBible, Satan arguably fills this role as he's tempting Jesus with empty/meaningless promises in the desert.

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[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* Played for maximum tragedy & angst in the StarTrekVoyager episode ''Course Oblivion''. The episode start out in such a cheerful manner, with Captain Janeway performing a marriage ceremony between Paris and Torres. "By the power invested in me by the United Federation Of Planets", she says... So far so good, right? [spoiler:The problem is that she isn't captain Janeway, she's a doppleganger with amnesia. The UFP does not know she exists, much less having invested any power in her. Everything she is, including the position of captain that she is so proud of, is a lie.]]

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[[folder:Music]]
* In Clawfinger's song "God is dead," a unspecified audience is accused of killing each other on behalf of a deity they dreamed up in their own nightmares, the legitimacy of their holy wars against each other reduced to self-absorbed lunacy. Mistaking one's own fantasies for the voice of God might explain how some people who believe in the same God also believe that he want them to kill each other in his name.
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[[folder:Puppet Shows]]
* Madame Trashheap started out as one in the early episodes of ''FraggleRock'', doling out simple adages that the Fraggles interpreted as wisdom and giving away useless items claiming they were magical but were really {{magic feather}}s. Early on, she began to develop true oracular powers, often bordering on the omniscient, and could even do real magic (like the time she made all the radishes disappear).
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[[folder:Real Life]]
* Some fraudulent online institutions fit this trope.
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[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* ScarredLands: One of the lesser ChaoticEvil gods is fake. The Chaotic Evil overgod killed but then pretended to make him a God so that his followers would pray to the overgod who slayed him while believing that it is him they serve. Why? ForTheEvulz, of course. And all the poor minions get for their faithful service is the horrors of Hell.
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[[folder:Video Games]]
* In computer [=RPGs=] and [=MMORPGs=], badly written questgivers act as [[StrangePondWoman Strange Pond Women]]: Their excuses for giving magical items to the heroes are flimsy at best, and the items gets replaced soon enough anyway. When the character gets a medal or a title, it's almost always cheapened by the fact that every single character can be "the one and only" who did that particular feat of heroism.
** In ''{{World of Warcraft}}'', this was played with as the Argent Tournament was introduced. It turns out that strange sword-distributing strange woman can be found all over the lakes of the northern continent.
** Another noteworthy WoW example is the wise old ogre who crowns the character king or Queen of Ogri'La. Since the quest is a group quest and was quite popular back in its days, it rarely took long until a new batch of five new kings & queens was publicly announced by the same old ogre.
* Uncle Rupee in ''Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland''.
* Lady Yunalesca in FinalFantasyX filled a role similar to this. For a thousand years she assisted summoners with the pen-ultimate step of their pilgrimage to obtain the Final Summon by [[spoiler: turning one of their guardians into it]]. Turns out, this is all a vicious, endless cycle of death destruction (and she knew it) and that her authority comes from her dad being the BigBad that controls and recreates the monstrous Sin these summoners sought to destroy once and for all. Fortunately, the heroes reject her offer to "help" them, destroy her to end the cycle of pointless sacrifice, and TakeAThirdOption instead.
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[[folder:Web Animation]]
* The first episode of the web animation ''[[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/doraleous-and-associates Doraleus And Associates]]'' deals with a strange (emphasis on ''"[[CloudCuckooLander strange]]"'') pond lady (actually called "Lady of the Lake") who guarded the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Zephyr]] [[SwordOfPlotAdvancement Blade]] in waiting for TheChosenOne to wield. She handed out increasingly random things like a tiny dagger, a biscuit and a branch, and asked Doraleus to use [[strike:it]] them to fight an incredibly deadly beast hidden in the darkness, until Doraleus got fed up and left. Later on, it [[SubvertedTrope turns out]] that while she's clearly insane, the [[spoiler:branch really was the Zephyr Blade]]!
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[[folder:Web Comics]]
* ''{{The Order of the Stick}}'' features two different kind of Strange Pond Women. Both are of the scam artist kind, but different kinds of scams.
** An Angel "of pure Good and Law" clears the heroes' names, making them innocent of a very serious crime in the eyes of an order of Paladins. However, the trial is just a ShamCeremony, and the "angel" is just a manipulative ghost disguised as an angel.
** The evil trio who tempts V takes on the role of EmpoweringLakeLady, but subverts the role to snare the wizard. V is manipulated into accepting a price S/he doesn't understand (rather than admit that his/her own power had failed yet again) and is tricked to believe that s/he has an excuse to let hir more destructive tendencies run wild without accepting true responsibility for the havoc. Also, the power they give is tainted and fatally flawed in itself, not at all what V had imagined "Ultimate Arcane Power" to be, as revealed when [[spoiler:s/he tries to take down Xykon and gets schooled by the vastly more powerful lich]].
** Well, V. had lost control of the strongest part of the empowerment by the time he/she took on Xykon. She was also much less skilled than he was, trying to batter down his defenses with pure force.
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** Well, V. had lost control of the strongest part of the empowerment by the time he/she took on Xykon.