Misused: Aristocrats Are Evil

Since this is one of the most general tropes about Aristocracy, there are lots of examples in the list without any motivation why the aristocrats are evil, or where the aristocrats are hardly evil (at least no less or no more than the population at large). Simply having kings or nobles in the work seems to be reason enough for some works to be listed.

I laughed at the Duke Nukem example.

Could you please show some examples in the future?

A few examples:

Megalex (Kings/Comics): doesn't give a motivation, though the wick makes it clear why.

Alice in Wonderland (Kings/Literature) lists several aversions.

The Deryni works (Kings/Literature) gives a grabbag of examples, most of which seems like perfectly nice people.

The Dukemon from Digimon (Dukes/Anime) is listed as "definitely good".

It doesn't help that the description isn't about one trope, but rather several. It gives Counts Are Creepy, Barons Are Bad, Dukes Are Decent, Viscounts Are Vile, Earls Are Elderly, et c.

Do you mean zero context examples? If so, some might best be moved to Blue Blood.

EDIT: Yeah, move those to Blue Blood.

edited 28th Mar '12 11:55:16 AM by DragonQuestZ

^ Yes, there are quite a few of them around, or where a given work is listed as "this guy is evil, but this guy is an inversion/aversion".

Eg the Vorkosigan Saga and Honor Harrington books definitely lists both types.

Started pruning, but it'll take a while to check all the wicks (817 of them...). And the intro and the structure of the article makes me worry that the problem will simply crop up later - it's extremely wordy and gives up a huge list of subtropes.

There are now 834 wicks. This is growing, not shrinking. Is there any interest in pursuing this?

edited 29th Apr '12 5:57:59 AM by ccoa

I know I'm a bit late to this discussion, but I just wanted to check that untitled evil people who are simply rich don'tcount as this trope?

To me, this trope is about a work where either all or a majority of the aristocrats are evil, OR where the only evil characters happens to be aristocrats (the latter provided that there are non-aristocrats with strong roles in the story).

Being rich is not evil, so this trope doesn't apply.

I'm currently going doing some pruning on the inbounds, but I think one thing that will help long-term is to do a redirect from "Aristocrat" (and maybe "Aristocracy") to Blue Blood.

Right now, the problem with bad links and examples are growing because this is the most visible trope about Aristocrats, instead of Blue Blood. A re-direct would hopefully help.

857 wicks left.

I agree with kjnoren that a trope like this should only apply when being aristocratic is a pretty reliable signal that a character is a villain, or vis a versa. If they're only evil about as often as non-aristocrats, then it shouldn't count.

In other words, do the same thing here that we're doing with Reptiles Are Abhorrent.

Modern version of this seems to be The Rich Are Evil. (Aristocrats are pretty much gone) Anything on that?

I don't think that's actually a trope - Wealthy Businessmen Are Evil possibly is, but generally not "the rich" in general.

It would be separate from this anyway.

How is the cleanup going?

I would think that it is really about Aristocracy being evil. That is, if it has a villain who is an aristocrat that doesn't make it this. But if it has Anvilicious passages about the evils of aristocracy it would be, especially if it doesn't say there are advantages to aristocracy as a balancing feature.

Doesn't have to be anvilicious, either.

I've been considering whether it might be a good idea to split this into Aristocracy Is Evil and Evil Aristocrat (or something along those lines).

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Thirding.

Small bit of work, but I zapped the aversions from the trope page, since AAE isn't an Omnipresent Trope.

Clocking.

Going to raise my previous suggestion again.

That split makes sense, but a) I am not clear on the difference and b) there are 932 wicks to rename.