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SRBrant Since: Nov, 2019
Oct 20th 2023 at 9:20:35 PM •••

I think the old quote I picked is better. Of how the nobility are meant to devour peasants. It sums up the trope perfectly, thoroughly and without it becoming a thick brick of letters.

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DoktorvonEurotrash Since: Jan, 2001
Feb 7th 2024 at 12:42:24 PM •••

There is a General Page Quote discussion thread in the Projects: Long Term/Perpetual forum, you can bring it up there.

For the record, I agree with you. The current quote is villainous enough, but you can't tell that it's supposed to be about aristocracy.

It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird
SRBrant Since: Nov, 2019
Feb 7th 2024 at 1:48:25 PM •••

Should I just go ahead and change it?

DoktorvonEurotrash Welcome, traveller, welcome to Omsk Since: Jan, 2001
Welcome, traveller, welcome to Omsk
Feb 7th 2024 at 12:40:55 PM •••

Cut:

If a trope is averted, it didn't happen. No need to list it.

It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird
DoktorvonEurotrash Welcome, traveller, welcome to Omsk Since: Jan, 2001
Welcome, traveller, welcome to Omsk
Jun 29th 2022 at 12:22:47 PM •••

  • Bollywood: Practically every movie has some sort of evil maharajah, sheikh, or count as the antagonist. There is the added bonus of them often being an evil Christian.

General example about an entire country's film industry. Concrete examples, please.

It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird
DoktorvonEurotrash Welcome, traveller, welcome to Omsk Since: Jan, 2001
Welcome, traveller, welcome to Omsk
Mar 23rd 2022 at 1:26:48 PM •••

Feels odd not to have an entry on Darkest Dungeon when it's the image source, but since I haven't played the Crimson Court expansion, I think the entry should be left to someone who has.

It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird
LordGro Since: May, 2010
Jun 10th 2021 at 11:29:40 AM •••

Pulled this entry:

  • Where to start in Black Butler? Pretty much all the aristocrats (which is a lot; the entire series is filled with them) are really messed up - Ciel included. And despite the Gaussian Girl memories shown of Ciel's parents, it's pretty obvious that they had... problem (most notably his father, who shows that he definitely isn't nearly as nice as was believed before and, according to Word of God, contributed to Ciel's twisted personality because of it).
    • Hell, the band of elites headed by the Phantomhives that patrol the Victorian underground straight up call themselves The Evil Noblemen. And Queen Victoria herself isn't even an exception to this (overt in the anime, though in the manga it's currently more ambiguous).
Besides containing lots of Word Cruft and violating Example Indentation, it also is an Zero-Context Example. Characters' names (Ciel, Queen Victoria, Phantomhives) are not context. Vague phrases like "really messed up", "not nearly as nice as believed", "isn't even an exception to this" are not context. The fact that some characters call themselves "Evil Noblemen" does not at all explain how they are Evil Nobleman.

Let's just say and leave it at that.
SeptimusHeap MOD (Edited uphill both ways)
Mar 20th 2021 at 11:11:14 AM •••

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Misused, started by kjnoren on Mar 28th 2012 at 8:39:50 PM

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
SeptimusHeap MOD (Edited uphill both ways)
Mar 20th 2021 at 10:41:48 AM •••

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Needs Help, started by gallium on May 9th 2014 at 10:21:06 PM

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
dochylodude Since: Apr, 2015
Nov 15th 2020 at 9:32:23 AM •••

Hey, so I'm trying to figure out death tropes for attacking nobles for a setting that includes narrative causality as a rule. Is there some clichéd way to kill off a grasping duke or unjustly invading baron?

I get the sense that being judged by the king, the god(s), or being torn apart by a mob are the common ones, but they're not likely to happen mid-campaign on the battlefield.

Canidaemon I found porn! Since: Aug, 2010
I found porn!
Aug 20th 2010 at 3:30:44 PM •••

Do the rich upper class count as Aristocrats for this trope?

The most egregious example are the "Evil Rich Dudes" who torture for fun (Hostel).

I'd hesitate to place it on Corrupt Corporate Executive as their antics aren't tied to where they work, but on them being upper class.

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JimCambias Since: Jan, 2011
Jan 25th 2012 at 1:45:45 PM •••

The key difference is that Aristocrats aren't just rich, they're part of a hereditary upper class. They're "better than you" simply because of their DNA and aren't shy about saying so.

jatay3 Since: Oct, 2010
Jan 21st 2013 at 11:20:43 AM •••

Close enough, though American style "old money" isn't quite the same thing. Aristocrats tend to at least theoretically be part of a warrior caste which is why a shift in military technique away from esoteric martial arts and toward easily learned military skills(from cavalry to hoplites among the Ancient Greeks)often reduces the power of the aristocracy. They are less needed.

jatay3 Since: Oct, 2010
Feb 10th 2013 at 8:33:39 AM •••

Also the whole thing makes more sense when one realizes that aristocracy in Europe and a lot of other places stemmed from several sources:

1) Successful warlords needed someway to pay all their warriors especially if they intended to go into retirement rather then continually raiding. There wasn't enough gold but there was plenty of land and plenty of peasants to collect rent from. As an extra said warlord could bribe other warlords into surrendering by making sure their families had a place in his system.

2) The Seven Samurai in fact was based on real events. Real peasants often made protection deals with warriors. Except in real life most "samurai" would get a pretty sharp bargain from the peasants; and perhaps many of them felt that this wasn't so harsh a demand under the circumstances.

3) Or more crudely, one tribe conquered a lot of other tribes. The serfs were simply the "other tribes". That is why the word "free" is descended from the word "frank" because of course franks were the tribe that won in france, and the language was carried over by the Normans.

To put it another way it wasn't originally an ideological belief that one person's birth made him better. That was retrospective. It was really a series of political moves in the past that left a tight knit group of people holding power, most of whom forgetting the original reason for their position.

Those circumstances were absent in America. By the time the English colonists arrived wealth had been coming into the middling classes for hundreds of years and the gunpowder age had made war less dependent on arcane martial arts that could only be mastered by not doing anything else. And the most important sources of wealth were in trade rather then plunder by then. Not to mention that land was cheap in America; Americans habitually treat it as a commodity in a way which would probably shock many Europeans to this day. Any peasant could have as much land as a baron if he was willing to work for it and defend it, which gunpowder allowed him to do. Thus the reason there was little or no aristocracy in America was because the conditions for it had disappeared long ago. Americans talk of their freedom, not unjustly, but in a way it was Europeans who did the heavy lifting to make freedom a viable proposition.

Because of all this, "aristocrat" is not simply a synonym for "rich". It means member of a guild of Military Brats that was extended for centuries and only lost it's power when conditions changed enough to make that practical.

Edited by jatay3
GreatPonyNui Since: Jan, 2012
Jun 12th 2012 at 2:22:34 PM •••

wait, ever since Baron von Munchausen we have been seeing good barons that just happen to be a bit detached, could we note this.

ps. The red link club should remain the absolute tier of destruction and these new blocked pages are a sheer abuse of power.

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