History YMMV / TitusAndronicus

* AngstAversion: There are very few even remotely sympathetic characters in the play (unless you invoke AlternateCharacterInterpretarion) and the few people who are have a bad tendency of getting tortured and exploited. It's also easily the goriest of Shakespeare's plays, featuring copious amounts of dismemberment, cannibalism and general bloodshed, all for a major DownerEnding.

* AngstAversion: There's almost no-one in the play who's remotely sympathetic (unless you invoke AlternateCharacterInterpretation) and the few people who are have a bad tendency of getting tortured and exploited. It's also easily the goriest of Shakespeare's plays, featuring copious amounts of dismemberment, cannibalism and general bloodshed, all for a major DownerEnding.

** Lavinia eventually succeeds in publicly identifying her assailants by using her knowledge of Roman classics and poetry, making references to it to allude to what happened to her, and then marking out the names in the sand despite being disabled, after being shown how to write by her Uncle Marcus to use a stick by moving it with her mouth and body. As such, one can argue that the play celebrates female literacy, high culture, and disability rights, and Titus Andronicus' honor killing of his mutilated daughter is openly condemned in the play.

* RootingForTheEmpire: Titus Andronicus was the general of an invading army into the Gothic Kingdom, and Tamora is a subjugated woman brought in triumph to Rome, and whose pleas for mercy for her son Alarbus is denied for the sake of revenge for Titus' sons (whose death is Titus' responsibility since he started the war). Likewise, for all the evil Demetrius and Chiron do, neither of them are willing to murder their family, and they end up agreeing to spare and hide their half-brother ChocolateBaby at the cost of potentially compromising their lifestyle, whereas Titus kills two of his own children. And in the end, Titus is two-faced and hypocritical enough to bring the Goths to invade Rome for his own revenge.

* RootingForTheEmpire: Titus Andronicus was the general of an invading army into the Gothic Kingdom, and Tamora is a subjugated woman brought in triumph to Rome, and whose pleas for mercy for her son Alarbus is denied for the sake of revenge for Titus' sons (whose death is Titus' responsibility since he started the war). Likewise, for all the evil Tamora and her children do, neither of them are willing to murder their own children, and in the case of Demetrius and Chiron, even they agree to spare and hide their half-brother even if it was a ChocolateBaby and potentially compromising their lifestyle, where Titus kills two. And in the end, Titus is two-faced and hypocritical enough to bring the Goths to invade Rome for his own revenge.

** Was Saturnitus just that much of an idiot that he he didn't realize the chaos that would unfold from first trying to wed his brother's fiancée and then choosing a captured foreign queen instead? Was he being petty by trying to humiliate his brother and Titus after just barely taking the throne? Or was he just savvy enough to realize that needing Titus's backing to claim the throne made him look weak and so he needed some way to publicly humiliate Titus in order to improve his own standing?

* WhatAnIdiot:
** Really, Saturninus? You think it's a good idea to marry a defeated enemy who has sworn revenge right in front of you and elevate her to empress? And then convict the two sons of the man responsible for her son's death based on one piece of evidence that this revenge-sworn Queen of the Goths gave you? This is justified since Saturninus is portrayed throughout the play as an arrogant dumbass.
** Speaking of, why did it take everybody so damn long to give Lavinia a stick so she could scratch the names of her rapists out in the sand? Hell, why didn't she just use her ''feet?'' All her toes are still intact. Or alternatively, why didn't she go and point them out to the guard? They aren't exactly hard to find, being the sons of the empress.

** A major part of the plot of the way, i.e. the identification of Lavinia's assailants happens because she uses her knowledge of Roman classics and poetry and alludes to what happened to her by making references to it, and then marking out the names in the sand despite being disabled, after being shown how to write by her Uncle Marcus to use a stick by moving it with her mouth and body. As such, one can argue that the play celebrates female literacy, high culture, and disability rights, and Titus Andronicus' honor killing of his mutilated daughter is openly condemned in the play.

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: Between the extreme violence (including multiple murder, dismemberment, rape, and cannibalism) and pretty much the whole plot being EvilVersusEvil in a CycleOfRevenge, it’s fair to see why ''Titus'' has never made it among Shakespeare’s most popular plays.

* OlderThanTheyThink: A character getting revenge on a hated enemy by tricking them into eating their own children. While that idea may be most closely associated with ''Titus Andronicus'', it's also a major plot point in the saga of the House of Atreus in [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Greek Mythology]], in which Atreus gets revenge on [[CainAndAbel his brother Thyestes]] by killing his sons and serving them up as the main course in a banquet. Considering how much Shakespeare loved the Classics, the ending of ''Titus'' is almost certainly a deliberate ShoutOut to this. And of course there are the direct references to the story of Philomena from Ovid's Metamorphosis, which this play has a twist on by having the girl lose both her tongue and hands, but finding another way to point out her attackers.

* RootingForTheEmpire: Titus Andronicus was the general of an invading army into the Gothic Kingdom, and Tamora is a subjugated woman brought in triumph to Rome, and whose pleas for mercy for her son Alarbus is denied for the sake of revenge for Titus' sons (whose death is Titus' responsibility since he started the war). Likewise, for all the evil Tamora and her children do, neither of them are willing to murder their own children, and in the case of Demetrius and Chiron, even they agree to spare and hide their step-brother even if it was a ChocolateBaby and potentially compromising their lifestyle, where Titus kills two. And in the end, Titus is two-faced and hypocritical enough to bring the Goths to invade Rome for his own revenge.

** It's possible partially to exonerate Tamora, on the grounds that her child (Alarbus) has been brutally killed and her pleas for mercy have been ignored. Her having Bassianus killed is tit for tat (''see'' NotSoDifferent, ''below''), and most of the other atrocities are committed by Aaron.