This page is for tropes that have appeared in I, Claudius (the series, not the novels).
For the rest:
- 0% Approval Rating: Tiberius desperately wants approval and love, but his subjects do not like him at all. As a result, he virtually abandons ruling Rome and leaves Sejanus to do all the work. Sejanus is also disliked for being an upjumped tyrant. Tiberius deliberately chooses Caligula to succeed him because he believes he will be remembered more fondly by contrast. This more or less fails in the short term. Caligula is hated by his peers, but the commoners don't seem to know or care about his personal excesses.
- Abusive Parents:
- Antonia never shows Claudius any affection, and openly refers to him as an embarrassment. Even so, she does respect him, admonishing her daughter for laughing at him when he is prophesied to protect Rome one day. She also still does her best to raise him despite her cold-heartedness, especially when others (particularly Livia) would have preferred he had been left to die of exposure as an infant.
- Livia apparently intended to poison her son Drusus, but he succumbed to his injuries first.
- Actually Pretty Funny:
- Claudius and his brother Germanicus discuss the fact that the former's new wife is beautiful, but also a head taller than him. Germanicus quips that she's a head taller than everyone and they suppress a laugh while Claudius says it's not funny. Queue the brothers exploding into laughter.
- Caligula's habit of giving his Praetorian guards Embarrassing Passwords for the night, such as "Give Us A Kiss" or "Touch Me Titus." Granted, the Praetorian guards aren't that amused, but Claudius and at least one of Caligula's German guards seem to be.
- Adaptation Explanation Extrication:
- John Rhys-Davies' character, Macro, plays a key role in the downfall of Sejanus and accession of Caligula, and then disappears without explanation, although it's implied that he died since Caligula mentioned that he considered giving Cassius his command. In the book, Caligula soon got suspicious of him (probably correctly, for once), tricked him into giving up the command of the Praetorian Guard by promising to make him the governor of Egypt instead, and then had him arrested and forced both him and his wife to commit suicide.
- We don't hear about the fate of Claudius' son from his first marriage, or what happened to Helen after her mother, Livilla, attempted to poison her. However, in the book the series is based on their fates are elaborated on: Claudius' son gets betrothed to a daughter of Sejanus, and a few days later Livia, angered that she wasn't consulted about the matter, has him murdered. As for Helen, after deaths of Sejanus and Livilla Tiberius shows his contempt for her by forcing her to marry a very vulgar fellow named Blandus. She nonetheless survives reigns of both Tiberius and Caligula; at the beginning of the reign of Claudius she conspires against him with Scribonianus and Vinicianus, and gets executed after Scribonianus's rebellion against Claudius fails.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: In the novels, Herod Agrippa is briefly mentioned but doesn't appear in person until the sequel, at which point Claudius talks about him being a childhood friend and playing an important role in previous events. The novel lampshades the use of Remember the New Guy? In the TV series, a Pragmatic Adaptation is done wherein Herod is "written into" scenes from Claudius' earlier life, rather than appearing out of nowhere like in the novels.
- Adapted Out: The series omits Claudius' daughter Claudia Antonia and her husband Gnaeus Pompey.
- Ailment-Induced Cruelty: Exaggerated by Caligula. He was already an unpleasant person prior to becoming Emperor, but shortly after taking the throne, he came down with a very serious illness, possibly malarial meningitis. He recovered, but had descended into madness, suffering delusions of godhood and keeping everyone around him in fear for their lives due to his insane behavior and capriciously murderous whims. He caused so much chaos that he was only Emperor for 4 years before being assassinated by his own bodyguards.
- Alas, Poor Villain:
- Livia and Sejanus, in spite of their crimes, become figures of sympathy in their final moments. Livia, who's destroyed countless lives to ascend to godhood, is reduced to a pitiable old woman on her death bed whom the main character (whose father, brother and friend she's either killed or admitted to having planned to kill) can't help feeling sorry for. Sejanus has slandered and murdered decent people in his quest for power, but after seeing what happened to his kids, you can't help feeling bad for him when Macro says of his children, "They've gone on ahead of you, my friend. Like a good many others," before ordering the guards to kill him.
- Caligula, despite all his horrible deeds, have a surprising amount of sympathetic moments. His madness is clearly a source of suffering and torment for him, and in a coversation with Claudius, even seems aware of his insanity, and him marrying the much older and lower born Caesonia because she actually loves him, which is much needed after his horrible murder of his sister Drusilla, who he seems to have truly loved, and whose name is his last words
- All Jews Are Ashkenazi: There are two Jewish characters in the series. While Herod looks like a Middle-Eastern Jew and speaks about the same as any Roman, the innkeeper Gershom speaks with a heavy Yiddish accent through the Translation Convention to convey that he's Jewish.
- Anachronism Stew: During a riot in Rome, Livia warns the mob agitating for the restoration of the Republic, "Do you want Gauls and Huns knocking at your doors?" Realistically, no one in first century Rome would have even heard of the Huns, whose first contact with the Romans wasn't until the late fourth century.
- Ancient Rome: First century of The Roman Empire.
- And Another Thing...: Livia's "Don't touch the figs."
- And This Is for...: Caligula forces the senators to prostitute their wives. When a senator finally gets close enough to assassinate the emperor he says, "This is for my wife, butcher!"
- Anyone Can Die: Literally anyone. Just count the named characters who have a natural death. And (most of it) is Truth in Television.
- Arc Villain: The series can be divided up into small arcs each helmed by a major villain.
- Livia is the first of them as her schemes to make Tiberius emperor drive the plot and lead her to kill so many of his rivals and potential rivals.
- While Tiberius isn't necessarily the best person, the one running the show as the main antagonist during his reign is Sejanus. Sejanus's ambitions and manipulation of Tiberius form the backbone of the dictatorship.
- Following Sejanus is Caligula's reign of terror. His cruelty and debauchery make him one of the most monstrous in the series.
- The final arc villain is Messalina. Though Claudius is running the show, his wife's manipulations cause a more covert state of paranoia amongst the people as she can use her political power to send people away or have them executed.
- Arranged Marriage: More the rule than the exception, as the children are married off young for political reasons (in particular, marrying Livia's descendants to Augustus's). Most of these end badly, but then, there aren't many happy marriages in this story. (Augustus/Livia was a love-match, and it doesn't end well.)
- Artistic License – History:
- The source novel is heavily based on the works of Gaius Suetonius, a historian whose books Robert Graves personally translated into English. Suetonius was more or less the second century equivalent of a gossip columnist whose primary interest was in selling lots of books, leading to his "histories" being among the most sensational and lewd accounts of the Julio-Claudians. Needless to say, pretty much everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt, but especially Livia's portrayal as a conniving serial poisoner.
- Silanus claims that Messalina is a 17 year-old girl. She was actually much more older at the time (in her mid-twenties).
- Caligula certainly didn't cut open the belly of Drusilla and eat his baby like the god Kronos. It's called into question whether they even had an incestous relationship in Real Life.
- In the series, Castor and Livia die shortly after each other. In reality, they died six years apart.
- Awesome Moment of Crowning: Subverted with the least awesome crowning in history, as the Praetorian Guard, rampaging through the palace after the murder of Caligula, finds Claudius literally hiding behind a curtain. They immediately proclaim him emperor, his protests of "I don't want to be an emperor! I w-w-want a rep-p-public!" notwithstanding. Apparently this was basically how it went down in Real Life.
- Back for the Finale: Augustus, Livia, Antonia, Tiberius, and Caligula appear in the final episode in Claudius' hallucination, all of whom had died in earlier episodes.
- Bait-and-Switch: In the final episode, Nero and Agrippina burn the book that Claudius has been writing over the course of the series. It is then revealed that Claudius had already anticipated this, and made a second copy and buried it.
- Balancing Death's Books: Invoked by Caligula. During an illness that would end up with Caligula believing he was transformed into a god, a sycophantic senator announced to all who would listen that he begged to the gods to take his life if it would spare Caligula's. Caligula got better, and then told the senator he wouldn't allow him to commit perjury by refusing to keep his vow.
- Based on a True Story: The series dramatizes several decades in the early Roman Empire, though the validity of many plot details are based on sketchy history at best.
- Be Careful What You Wish For:
- Livia spends years scheming and poisoning her relatives to ensure that Tiberius succeeds Augustus as Emperor. However, when Tiberius finally does become Emperor he is bitter and depraved, and despises Livia so much that he virtually disowns her.
- Agrippinilla similarly schemes to put her son Nero on the throne, yet he turns out to be as bad as Caligula, if not worse, and Sybil informs Claudius that eventually he'll kill his mother and bring down the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
- Berserk Button: Mention Agrippina's name around Tiberius and he'll want to murder everything in sight. (Sejanus was able to press this button whenever he wanted to get rid of a political enemy who might have had even the loosest connection to her.)
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Julio-Claudian dynasty. King Herod himself lampshades this and derides the entire family as a gang of lunatics.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Messalina, who deceives her husband Claudius by acting innocent and loving as possible. She's actually a sex-crazed conniver, who uses her power to sleep with as many men as possible. At one point, she even goes so far to marry one of her lovers and plan to take over The Empire with him while Claudius is away. After Claudius hears of this, he's first too distraught to believe it, but later executes her.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Most of the better characters of the series, Claudius included, are still morally iffy people. Germanicus may be the only "white" character in the show, and look where that got him.
- Black Widow: Livia poisions her husband Augustus, her granddaughter, Livilla poisons her husband Castor, while her great-granddaughter Agrippinilla poisions her husband Claudius. Guess it just runs in the family.
- Bodyguard Betrayal: Caligula is done in by his Praetorian Guard.
- Book Ends: The last episode has a scene almost identical to the symposium which opens the first, with Claudius in Augustus's couch and Britannicus in Marcellus's place, complete with flower crown. Counts as foreshadowing given Britannicus's fate.
- Brother–Sister Incest: Caligula and Drusilla. "And you know how I love my sisters..."
- Cadre of Foreign Bodyguards: One of the difficulties faced in assassinating Caligula is the large contingent of German guards he has around him. He apparently didn't trust his native-born Praetorian Guard and military officers very much (with good reason, as it turned out).
- The Caligula: John Hurt as the Caligula. And he is magnificent.
- Caligula's Horse: The original.
- Carrying the Antidote: A good reason for this trope. Two notorious poisoners meet.Martina: I never bothered much with antidotes.
Livia: Well you never know, one day some fool of a slave will get the bowls mixed up. - Cassandra Truth: Postumus figures out Livia's whole plan, but by then he's been framed for rape and Augustus declares it to only be an attempt at an insanity plea.
- Chewing the Scenery:
- Augustus, unsurprisingly:IS THERE ANYONE IN ROME WHO HAS NOT SLEPT WITH MY DAUGHTER!!!
Quinctilius Varus, WHERE ARE MY EAGLES!?note - Also Tiberius:Bring me a VINE BRANCH!! This Queen needs flogging before she goes!!
- Asinius Gallus had one of the most memorable moments of scenery-chewing in the history of television theatre. His final words, before he passes out from his torture, glisten with such venomous and toe-curling contempt that it is hard not to wince:You are a lesson in history to me, Sejanus. Of how a small mind without scruple, married to limitless ambition, can destroy a nation full of clever men. YOU ARE A REMINDER THAT, ABOVE ALL, MANKIND NEEDS A SENSE OF SMMMELLLLLL.note
- Augustus, unsurprisingly:
- The Chains of Commanding: By the time Tiberius becomes Emperor, he's too old to care.
- Cheshire Cat Grin: Macro for Sejanus when the bomb drops in "Reign of Terror".
- Cold-Blooded Torture: A common Roman way of dealing with one's political enemies, if one just doesn't have them poisoned or stabbed outright.
- Corrupt Politician: They are everywhere. In something of a subversion, the emperors are the least corrupt.
- Augustus is a boisterous friendly chap who wants the best for Rome but is somewhat naive and prone to explosions of anger when he is wronged.
- Tiberius is a puppet of his mother Livia. He initially wants to be emperor, but by the time he gets his wish and Livia dies, he no longer cares about power and retires to a life of sexual excess and perversion.
- Caligula is The Caligula. Not corrupt, rather an Ax-Crazy Narcissist with a Hair-Trigger Temper and delusions of godhood.
- And then there's poor old Claudius the crippled half-wit. A Reluctant Ruler and puppet of the political forces around him. Or is he?
- Cradle To Grave Character: The series depicts Claudius' entire life from birth to death.
- Crazy Sane: When Caligula asks Claudius, quite seriously, if Claudius has considered that Caligula might be insane, Claudius replies, "I think you set the standard of sanity for the whole world." Given everything he's seen, he's only half-joking.
- Creepy Child: Caligula is portrayed this way. He becomes partially responsibly for the murder of his father when he was just hitting puberty.
- Curtain Camouflage: Claudius is hiding behind one when he is crowned emperor.
