Basic Trope Description: An important or famous person disguises themselves as a commoner and walks among them.
- Straight: King Bob disguises himself as a common beggar and goes out into his capital's streets to listen to the citizens.
- Exaggerated: King Bob disguises himself as a sewer rat to get to know about the lives of his citizens.
- Downplayed: King Bob disguises himself as a wealthy merchant and goes out into his capital to listen to the citizens.
- Justified: In the monarchy, you can't criticize the king freely. King Bob nevertheless wants to know what his people really think about his policies.
- Inverted: Charlie, a common beggar, disguises himself as the king and intrudes into the castle.
- Subverted: Bob's disguise is revealed in public.
- Double Subverted: Bob, a silver-tongued manipulator, manages to convince everyone that he isn't the king and goes back into his castle.
- Enforced: This is intended to be an Establishing Character Moment for Bob to explain why he is The Good King: he is close to his people.
- Averted: King Bob never goes out to play a normal citizen.
- Zigzagged: Sometimes to looks like if Bob is the king, sometimes not.
- Parodied: Bob is revealed because he is wearing his crown.
- Lampshaded: "I think this beggar was the king. He looked very similar to him."
- Discussed: "I should go outside in commoner clothes and try to listen to my people." "No, my liege! This is dangerous!"
- Conversed: "Very clever by Bob. He really tries to be a good ruler."
- Defied:
- One of the kingdom's laws (loony or otherwise) explicitly forbid the King from doing this.
- The chancellor (either out of paranoia or malice) explicitly increases security in the palace to prevent the King from sneaking off, tells guards to always keep the King in sight, prevents the King from keeping clothes that would be useful for infiltration, and to the help he tells that any that help the King avoid his duties will be dealt with.
- There is an agreement from the kingdom’s denizens to regard anybody who has a passing resemblance to the King as the King. Every once in a while this leads to snafus and swindlers getting away with mooching, but the general consensus is that it's best to lose some bread to a thief than everything to a mistreated King.
Back to King Incognito, and be sure to be nice to every misfortunate person out there. You may never know if it's actually a person of royalty.
