Line #19 Literature/TheOutlawsOfSherwood


1	[[quoteright:125:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/outlawsofsherwood.jpg]]
2	''The Outlaws of Sherwood'' is a retelling of the Myth/RobinHood legend by Creator/{{Robin McKinley}}. It deliberately {{deconstruct}}s the figures and setting, trying for historical accuracy and psychological plausibility, as well as unusual attention paid to the matter of privies.
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4	!!This novel provides examples of:
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6	* AccidentalAimingSkills: Robin is usually a fairly poor archer, but early on in the novel he has a stroke of very good (or very bad, depending on your perspective) luck with his bow in an impromptu shooting match with Tom Moody. The second part of this instance leads to the AccidentalMurder described below.
7	* AccidentalMurder: How Robin winds up an outlaw.
8	* ActionGirl: Marian, Eva, Sibyl, [[spoiler:and Cecily]].
9	* AllergicToRoutine: Will Scarlet. Many people also think this why King Richard went off to the Crusades.
10	* ArrangedMarriage: Will's sister Sess ran away from one of these, and Marjorie was rescued from one.
11	* BeautifulDreamer: Robin watches over and admires Marian while she's unconscious from her injury sustained by Guy of Gisbourne.
12	* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Hurrah! They defeat the sheriff, the {{Official Couple}}s all make it out intact and committed, Robin is named heir to a wealthy Saxon landholding, and all of the outlaws are pardoned... sort of. King Richard's (actually pretty realistic) punishment for their technically criminal behavior is to ''conscript them into UsefulNotes/TheCrusades,'' thus separating them from their beloved homeland for several years (and that's if they survive). Even Much and Alan, who were crippled in the last battle, choose to come and work in the king's service.]]
13	* BowAndSwordInAccord: Will is proficient with both weapons, though we don't see much of his sword work until the FinalBattle.
14	* BrokenBird: Aethelreda.
15	* TheCavalryArrivesLate: Sir Richard only arrives after the battle with Gisbourne is finished, but does provide welcome refuge and medical aid.
16	* ChildhoodFriendRomance: Robin and Marian.
17	* ChronicHeroSyndrome: Notably (for a Robin Hood story) averted; with one or two exceptions, Robin is very pragmatic about which causes he decides to aid.
18	* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Alan-a-dale has hints of this. Marjorie notes that he would be content to live off tree leaves if they would nourish him to keep writing romantic songs. There are frequent references to his tendency to drift around playing his lute regardless of the surrounding circumstances.
19	* DefeatMeansFriendship: How Robin and Little John are acquainted.
20	* FeudalOverlord: The sheriff is a classic villainous example, along with all the lesser Norman landholders. Sir Richard of the Lea is a rare beneficent example of one.
21	* ForestRanger: The "king's" foresters fit this trope, despite that most of them, when compared with the outlaw band, are only marginally more competent at it than the average peasant.
22	* HeroicBSOD: Sess has one of these during the weeks leading up to her wedding to Sir Aubrey; Sir Richard [[LampshadeHanging talks about]] having had one when his mortgaged lands were to be seized by the sheriff.
23	* HistoricalDomainCharacter: UsefulNotes/RichardTheLionheart at the end, with more historical nuance than is often the case when Richard appears at the end of a Robin Hood tale.
24	* ImprobableAimingSkills: Many (but not all) of the outlaws are a much better shot than anyone else, though it's [[JustifiedTrope justified]] by lots and lots of practice and their specially-made longbows.
25	** In the beginning of the novel, Robin is thinking about how he knows people who can not only sight accurately with a bow, but seem to always know when a gust of wind is coming that might throw off their aim and adjust for it; he is lamenting that he is ''not'' one of these people. (It's implied that Marian, on the other hand, is.)
26	* LineOfSightName: Much thinks that Robin should have a more distinctive name; Robin pulls his cloak up against the ever-present rain and dryly suggests "Robin of the Hood". Much accepts this as the best he's going to get.
27	* LoveConfession:
28	** From Robin to Marian immediately following the BeautifulDreamer sequence, while simultaneously [[AnguishedDeclarationOfLove "apologising for [his] arrogance and stupidity."]] It [[RelationshipUpgrade graduates quickly and happily into a marriage proposal]].
29	** Another from [[spoiler:Little John to Cecily]], [[AnguishedDeclarationOfLove very anguished]], on the battlements of Sir Richard's manor.
30	* TheMedic: Friar Tuck, despite not actually living with the outlaw band, is their go-to healer for anything more serious than scratches.
31	* NoSenseOfDirection: Almost everyone falls prey to this in Sherwood Forest, to the point where the preferred method of finding the outlaw camp is to wander into the forest, promptly get lost, and wait to be rescued (or captured) by Robin Hood.
32	* OneOfTheBoys: Marian.
33	* AProtagonistShallLeadThem
34	* RagtagBunchOfMisfits
35	* RefugeInAudacity: Sir Richard purports that this might be how the outlaws can get the king to listen to them:
36	--> The Lionheart has some sympathy for boldness ... and little sympathy for greed.
37	* RichesToRags: Will Scarlet, Cecil, Marjorie. In Robin's backstory, his nobly-born mother married a penniless forester.
38	* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: Robin wants to embark on one of these after Marian is wounded by Guy of Gisbourne; the FinalBattle descends on him before he has the chance. After it's over and there are many unheroic dead, he feels guilty for his "passion".
39	* RunawayBride: Marjorie, when her true love shows up at the altar to stop her ArrangedMarriage.
40	* RunawayFiancee: Cecily is fleeing from an ArrangedMarriage with a Norman lord more than twice her age.
41	* RunawayHideaway: Greentree becomes the kind that other runaways run away to, to Robin's perpetual chagrin.
42	* SamusIsAGirl: [[spoiler:It's Cecil''y'', actually.]]
43	* SecondPlaceIsForWinners: Uses the traditional Robin Hood story of an archery contest set up to lure Robin in by using a golden arrow as the prize, and comments in passing that the other contestants are likely to miss their shots to win the lesser, more practical prizes of livestock. (This being an unusually pragmatic version of Robin, he has no interest in the contest at all, demanding to know what on earth he'd do with a golden arrow.)
44	* ShelteredAristocrat: Played straight with Marjorie, who is horrified to learn that the outlaws live in moveable shelters rather than a house. Will has hints of this at first--Robin is particularly nervous that he'll play this trope straight--but it is soon averted. While Cecil did throw up the first time he saw a stag being gutted, it's later revealed he also hated the trappings of noble life.
45	* ShroudedInMyth: Robin Hood. Among other things, Robin is quite possibly the ''worst'' archer in the band; all his famous trick shots turn out to have been dumb luck or have actually been performed by one of the other Merry Men and attributed to him. Near the end, a character who's been listening to all the Robin Hood stories says he's disappointed that Robin isn't ten feet tall and able to knock down walls with his voice.
46	* SpeakNowOrForeverHoldYourPeace: The line itself is never said, but Robin and the band crash Marjorie's wedding with a BigDamnHeroes moment.
47	* StarvingArtist: Alan.
48	* SweetPollyOliver: [[spoiler:Cecil(y).]] Someone ends up SweetOnPollyOliver.
49	* TrueCompanions: The outlaws. At the end of the book, [[spoiler:King Richard offers several of the outlaws the chance to stay in England; every one of them chooses to accompany their comrades to Palestine.]]
50	* TwiceToldTale
51	* UnableToSupportAWife: Robin periodically angsts about this, and it's the primary reason he puts off revealing his feelings to Marian. [[spoiler:Resolved (and {{lampshaded}}) in the end when the king makes him heir to Sir Richard's lands.]]
52	* UnresolvedSexualTension: Robin and Marian get plenty of it. There's also a particularly acute one-sided case of it between [[spoiler:Cecily and Little John, before the SweetOnPollyOliver thread is resolved]].
53	* WholesomeCrossdresser: Any female member of the outlaw band, for practical reasons; {{lampshaded}} with Sybil and Eva, who even an outsider looking for women doesn't initially recognize as female. Especially notable is [[spoiler:Cecily]], who has more than one reason for applying this trope.
54	* WoundThatWillNotHeal: References a less uncanny version of the trope when King Richard says that the climate in the Holy Land means wounds don't heal like they should.
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Context Literature / TheOutlawsOfSherwood