Basic Trope: A ruler lasts a short period of time.
- Straight: Bob is king of Tropestan for six months.
- Exaggerated: Bob is king for a day.
- Downplayed: Bob is king for two years.
- Justified:
- Bob was very old and/or sickly when handed the crown, and died of natural causes.
- Bob was an unpopular ruler and the people deposed him.
- Bob was a Reluctant Ruler from the beginning, and he only really became king because at the time no one else would/could. As soon as he had the chance to formally anoint a successor and Abdicate the Throne, he took it.
- Bob inherited a kingdom on the brink of civil war.
- Bob was less than a year old, and in this setting infant mortality is very high.
- Bob was regent to Charles during the last few months of his minority.
- Zigzagged: Bob is king for five years, which while he could do something, is still a short time in power.
- Subverted: Bob looks like he'll die... but gets better.
- Double Subverted:
- Shortly afterwards he catches a disease he dies from.
- Bob is assassinated.
- Averted: Bob rules for fifteen years.
- Inverted: Bob rules for eighty years.
- Parodied: Bob rules for three seconds.
- Enforced: 'We need to show how brutal kingship here is! Let's have a monarch get killed six months into their reign!'
- Defied: Bob crushes the rebellion.
- Invoked: Bob's barons plot his assassination.
- Exploited: Evil Chancellor Charlie uses it to get the barons to rebel against Bob's daughter and heir Queen Alice.
- Lampshaded: 'That's a very short reign!'
- Conversed: 'Why was his reign so short?'
- Deconstructed: Such a short reign weakens Tropestan.
- Reconstructed: Bob's successor Queen Alice rules for 40 years and brings stability.
- Played For Laughs: No shown king in Tropestan rules longer than a year. When a king reaches their one year anniversary, they are killed in one unfortunate accident or another, and replaced with another unlucky person.
- Played For Drama: After Bob is brutally murdered in a rebellion, his daughter Alice worries the same will happen to her, and she worries about her nobility plotting against her.
