RINGSTETTEN TROPES

RINGSTETTEN TROPES

Character appearance, personality, and backstory:

• The Beautiful Elite
• Gorgeous Period Dress/Costume Porn
• Nice Hat (oodles of cavalier hats, and, later on, tricorns).
• French Braids of Action/Tomboyish Ponytail/Soldier's Ponytail (left and right since across the first arc: half-way across the 30YW, the dress code changes due to French influence, and short hair is out for military men).
• Slipknot Ponytail (left and right: in dramatic scenes, characters of both sexes tend to untie their queues, or the queues come off by themselves. The Christina drinking game requires a drink for each slipknot queue: two if it's the title character's).
• Girlish Pigtails (the usual hairdo for more feminine maidens, in the form of French braids)
• Regal Ringlets (the usual hairdo for more feminine maidens of higher descent)
• Prim and Proper Bun with Regal Ringlets on the sides (the usual hairdo for more feminine married women)
• Quirky Curls/Messy Hair/Wild Hair (the usual hairdo for the more feminine Miss Kitty, codified by Madame Thénardier, to accentuate the character's status as an outcast: deflowered, unmarried adult female)
• Fire-Forged Friends
• Tsurime Eyes
• Mismatched Eyes/Violet Eyes/Green-Eyed Blonde/Green-Eyed Redhead (common leading character phenotypes, pretty rare in real life)
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer
• Unkempt Beauty (even when growing up as they become badasses or depressives)
• Badass Adorable
• Intelligence Equals Isolation
• Friendless Background/Loners Are Freaks
• Ambiguous Disorder
• Sheltered Aristocrat/Homeschooled Kid/No Social Skills
• Military Brat 
• Circus Brat
• The Ace
• Broken Ace
• Academic Athlete
• Cunning Linguist
• Cuteness Overload
• The Charmer
• Large Ham/Milking the Giant Cow (yet another feature celebrated by the drinking games)
• Occidental Otaku/Extraverted Nerd (often centered on historical figures or literature, becomes an Ascended Fanboy or Fangirl [yet another serial number filed off Cassio]. A particularly dark take would be Charles XII, with his desire to outqual Gustavus Adolphus)
• Heroic B***ard (Liselotte, and, later on, Katja. Christa in Arc 4 will also be one. A male example would be Alois, and also [if the rumour is right] Gabriel in Christina).
• Outnumbered Sibling
• Only Child Syndrome (either of these family structures are a Ringstetten staple)
• Child of Two Worlds/Mixed Ancestry (left and right; too many leading characters are of international descent: the most disturbing example, from Arc 4, would be Christa, Child by Rape of a French officer and a Prussian Miss Kitty's younger sister, during the Napoleonic era).
• Sweet on Polly Oliver/Dropped a Bridget On Him
• Jade-Coloured Glasses
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold
• Chronic Hero Syndrome
• Just Following Orders
• My Country, Right or Wrong/My Master, Right or Wrong
• Hot-Blooded 
• Leeroy Jenkins (even the Savvy Guy Blue Oni can become one under pressure)
• Sacrificial Lion/Mauveshirt/Redshirt (could you pass me the Xanax, pls?)
• Lost Lenore
• Florence Nightingale Effect
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You
• A Glass of Chianti/I Need a Fricking Drink or Drowning Their Sorrows (the leading character usually slips from the former to the latter)
• Blood-Splattered Innocent
• My Name Is Íñigo Montoya
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated
• Worthy Opponent

Young female characters:

• Academic Alpha B*tch/Ojou
• Tsundere (with more emphasis on the tsuntsun part)
• Good Bad Girl (if she is flirtatious; Hedi somewhat fits, Christa may be one too)
• Spirited Young Lady
• Plucky Girl/Genki Girl/Pollyanna/Perky Female Minion
• Strange Girl
• Ingénue
• Little Girls Kick Shins/Groin Attack (the Energetic Girl's stock techniques)
• Hidden Buxom (due to sarashi or to a baggy top)
• Little Miss Badass
• Bifauxnen/Sweet Polly Oliver
• Lad-ette/One of the Boys
• Squadette
• Butch Lesbian
• Lipstick Lesbian (Christina and Ebba, respectively, notch. Also, Christa and Toinette in Arc IV.)
• The Baroness/Iron Lady/Lady of War/Silk Hiding Steel
• Damsel Out of Distress

Young male characters:

• Dude in Distress
• Ill Boy
• Dude Looks Like a Lady (usually, in their younger years: a Long-Haired Pretty Boy Ensign Newbie with a fragile physique typically gives off Bridget vibes)
• Bishónen/Ikemen (tends to age up from the former to the latter) (yet another serial number filed off Cassio)
• Cultured Badass/Badass Bookworm/Cultured Warrior/Warrior Poet/Genius Bruiser (yet another serial number filed off Cassio)
• Prince Charming/Princely Young Man/Old-School Chivalry (yet another serial number filed off Cassio)
• Officer and a Gentleman/Ensign Newbie (yet another serial number filed off Cassio)
• Gentleman and a Scholar/Gentleman Adventurer
• Gentleman Snarker (once s/he has attained a certain age)
• Remittance Man (sent to the war front/university to "see the world," and also to give his caregivers a break; yet another serial number filed off Cassio)
• Conscription/Press-Ganging (characters not introduced as officers or camp-born are often recruited either way: the former [drafted] in Sweden, France, and western Russia; the latter [press-ganged] in Central Europe and the Wild East).
• The Neidermeyer (the Officer and a Gentleman/Ensign Newbie tends to become one as he loses his rose-coloured glasses)
• Yaoi Guys
• Sacrificial Lion/Mauveshirt/Redshirt (could you pass me the Xanax, pls?)
• Disposable Fiancé, of the Bland Perfection kind/Privileged Rival (subverted: this kind of ideal man is always the male lead, one of the POV characters, and gets the girl (if she's not his sister)). And they have flaws that range from left-handedness through arrogance and regret to depression and alcoholism. Only one straight example: Étienne van der Heide [though he has his own flaws: greed and wrath]. And it appears that his descendant René will follow in his footsteps... depending on how you see the leading cast, for both he and Gustav Paul von Ringstetten embody different traits of the trope: René is wealthy and self-confident, yet embodying bourgeois values; while his frenemy is thoughtful and romantic, a believer in old-school chivalry yet introverted and from a now middling noble family. Gustav Paul is the lefty to René's righty, to emphasize it even more. Both of them look good and even effeminate/fragile, until an adult René, the dark-haired one, puts on weight. And it's the Walloon who gets the girl.)
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome/Tall, Dark, and Snarky/Troubled but Cute
• Improbable Weapon User (flagpole, maypole, glass bottle of schnaps or vodka... you name it)
• Molotov Cocktail 
• Glass Cannon (the officer in the leading cast is always this)
• Royal Rapier/Sword and Gun/Dual Wielding (stock weaponry for an officer)
• I Am Not Left- (or, in most cases, Right-) Handed
• Left-Handed Mirror Image (most leading characters being southpaws, there has to be a proportional number of northpaw counterparts)
• Duel to the Death/Throwing the Gauntlet
• Let's You and Him Fight (used a lot, the most notable example at Lützen)
• Humiliation Conga/Trauma Conga Line
• Can't Hold his Liquor/Intoxication Ensues/Not So Above It All (yet another serial number filed off Cassio)
• Laser-Guided Amnesia/Amnesiac Love Interest
• Blood-Splattered Innocent
• My Name Is Íñigo Montoya
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated

Other characters (older characters):

• Grande Dame
• Colonel Badass (the elders are often portrayed as these)
• General Failure (Rehnskiöld, for example)
• Herr Doktor (the regimental surgeon is often one)
• Miss Kitty (often in the fallen court lady, innkeeper, or camp follower version)
• Exalted Torturer
• A Father to his Men (lots of royals and officers fit)
• Sacrificial Lion/Mauveshirt/Redshirt (could you pass me the Xanax, pls?)
• Love Makes You Evil/Love Makes You Crazy
• Lost Lenore
• Royals who Actually Do Something (Gustavus Adolphus, Christina...)
• The Pirates who Don't Do Anything
• A Glass of Chianti/I Need a Fricking Drink or Drowning Their Sorrows (the leading character usually slips from the former to the latter)
• The Neidermeyer (the Officer and a Gentleman/Ensign Newbie tends to become one as he loses his rose-coloured glasses)
• Paid Harem

Setting to take for granted:

• Genius Bonus
• Viewers Are Geniuses
• Reference Overdosed
• Rule of Symbolism
• The Bard on Board: left and right. Take a drink for each Shakespeare reference.
• Swashbucklers/The Cavalier Years/Wooden Ships and Iron Men: left and right. It's early modern military historical fiction after all.
• Fruit Cart/Rule of Pool (or Lake): used left and right. Whenever there is a cart in a marketplace or a lake... well, most times there is one.
• Pastel-Chalked Freeze Frame
• Rope Bridge
• A Crack in the Ice
• Ghibli Hills/Arcadia/Close-Knit Community/Sugar Bowl (to contrast with Lost Woods, PoW Camps, Decadent Courts, Mordor, and the war front)/Scenery Porn (can also be Campbell Country/Überwald, if taken to a more sinister level).
• Walking the Earth/Adventure Towns and Villages/Wacky Wayside Tribes (a given, left and right).
• Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here (Küstrin, and, later on, Vänersvik/Värmland; also, Berezov to Katja. In all cases, it serves as the catalyst for Jumping at the Call)
• North is Cold, South is Hot (the Mediterranean, like in real life, is pretty Dornish)
• Standard Royal Court/Decadent Court
• Dances and Balls (left and right, whether May Day/Midsummer revels or courtly masquerades/soirées).
• PoW Camp
• Aliens in Cardiff (or rather, Fair Folk in Värmland and other obscure locations)
• Humans are Flawed/The Evils of Free Will
• Worthy Opponent
• No Antagonist
• The Beautiful Elite
• Gorgeous Period Dress/Costume Porn
• Nice Hat (oodles of cavalier hats, and, later on, tricorns).
• French Braids of Action/Tomboyish Ponytail/Soldier's Ponytail (left and right since across the first arc: half-way across the 30YW, the dress code changes due to French influence, and short hair is out for military men).
• Slipknot Ponytail (left and right: in dramatic scenes, characters of both sexes tend to untie their queues, or the queues come off by themselves. The Christina drinking game requires a drink for each slipknot queue: two if it's the title character's).
• Girlish Pigtails (the usual hairdo for more feminine maidens, in the form of French braids)
• Regal Ringlets (the usual hairdo for more feminine maidens of higher descent)
• Prim and Proper Bun with Regal Ringlets on the sides (the usual hairdo for more feminine married women)
• Quirky Curls/Messy Hair/Wild Hair (the usual hairdo for the more feminine Miss Kitty, codified by Madame Thénardier, to accentuate the character's status as an outcast: deflowered, unmarried adult female)
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits/Army of Thieves and Whores/Equal-Opportunity Evil (at first only in the 30YW arc; the next arc toned it down but still had French, Scottish, German... exiles at the service of Sweden, not to mention the steppe natives on the Czar's side).
• Dwindling Party (used to great effect, with Anyone Can Die and all)
• We ARE Struggling Together (on both sides of the 30YW, making it look like Westeros)

National tropes:

• Gratuitous Foreign Languages (French, Latin, Russian, Finnish, Gaelic, even Italian and Spanish have been spoken in a Swedish-German canon)
• Cunning Linguist (of course)
• Bilingual Bonus (ditto)
• Painting Frost on Windows
• Phenotype Stereotype (most Northerners are fair of features; Bavarians, Austrians, French, Walloons, Lorrainians, and Rhinelanders tend to be auburn; Mediterraneans and Romany have a "Dornish" dark look in general).
• Dichter und Denker (after all, the Ringstettens are Prussians from Brandenburg)
• Germanic Efficiency
• Germanic Depressive (yet another consequence of loss of innocence)
• Everything Sounds Sexier in French
• Everyone Looks Sexier if French (Jean Bernadotte, Napoleon, Josephine, and Désirée. Even Dési's obstructive brother Étienne Clary. Not to mention the French that have appeared before, including Katja's mum and those in the 30YW. And then there's the Walloons, Francophone Spanish subjects and their descendants born in Sweden...).
• French Cuisine is Haughty (the French set trends for courtly culture up until the Revolution, so this applies to all forms of courtly culture).
• Sexy Scandinavian (though many of them are of German descent!)
• Sensual Slavs (though Alois crosses this with Dashing Hispanic, himself being of raaaather mixed blood).
• Funetik Aksent (Saxon dialect, most prominently. Most non-Saxon characters need an interpreter even in Leipzig [or "Leyptsch"], and the Saxon speech is subbed on screen. Justified in the fact that it's the early modern period... Also, Bavarian and Austrian. Not to mention the Gothenburg dialect and the Värmland commoners' speech.)
• Husky Russkie/The Russkie Suffers Most/Mother Russia Makes You Strong
• Vodka Drunkenski (even Swedes follow suit)
• Make the Bear Angry Again (Charles XII tried and the result was not pretty. Then, the sword-nobility-affiliated right-wing Hat Party had this ambition in order to avenge the Poltava debacle).
• Multinational Team/Equal-Opportunity Evil (at first only in the 30YW arc; the next arc toned it down but still had French, Scottish, German... exiles at the service of Sweden, not to mention the steppe natives on the Czar's side. The fourth arc will star an international army at Leipzig in 1813).

Corruption, warfare, and injury:

• Humans are Flawed/The Evils of Free Will
• War is Hell
• Wasteland Elders
• Florence Nightingale Effect
• After-Action Healing Drama (left and right, of course; after the Lech, Lützen, and Poltava come the most dramatic examples)
• Bandage Wince
• Post-Victory Collapse
• Mortal Wound Reveal (also left and right, frequently stressed with a Pastel-Chalked Freeze Frame)
• Bullet Holes and Revelations (Tilly at the Lech, Gerhard vs. Count Pappenheim, Charles XII's left foot pre-Poltava: all three done in a pretty Hitchcockian way)
• No One Could Survive That
• Only a Flesh Wound/Major Injury Underreaction
• Heal it with Booze (schnaps, laudanum, Riga balm [mulled schnaps], vodka: done left and right, since there are no other painkillers. And also as a disinfectant, setting fire to the injuries afterwards. Intoxication Ensues more than once).
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits/Army of Thieves and Whores/Multinational Team/Equal-Opportunity Evil (at first only in the 30YW arc; the next arc toned it down but still had French, Scottish, German... exiles at the service of Sweden, not to mention the steppe natives on the Czar's side. The fourth arc will star an international army at Leipzig in 1813).
• Dwindling Party (used to great effect, with Anyone Can Die and all)
• Let's You and Him Fight (used a lot, the most notable example at Lützen)
• Worthy Opponent
• We ARE Struggling Together (on both sides of the 30YW, making it look like Westeros)

Ensembles

• Red Oni, Blue Oni 
• Captain (or rather Lieutenant) Smooth and Sergeant Rock
• Left-Handed Mirror Image
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man 
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You (the most usual dynamics among lovers)
• Gender-Equal Ensemble (Four Is Death; Four-Temperament Ensemble; Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl)
• Paid Harem
• Worthy Opponent
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits/Army of Thieves and Whores/Multinational Team/Equal-Opportunity Evil (at first only in the 30YW arc; the next arc toned it down but still had French, Scottish, German... exiles at the service of Sweden, not to mention the steppe natives on the Czar's side).
• We ARE Struggling Together (on both sides of the 30YW, making it look like Westeros)
• Dwindling Party (used to great effect, with Anyone Can Die and all)

The Sinister

• The Fair Folk
• Aliens in Cardiff (or rather, Fair Folk in Värmland and other obscure locations)
• Mordor/Campbell Country/Überwald/Lost Woods
• Decadent Court (the culture counterpart of these natural settings)
• PoW Camp (the other culture counterpart of these natural settings)
• Den of Iniquity/Paid Harem
• Sugar Apocalypse
• Arc Symbols/Arc Words/Arc Numbers (very often 4, combining Four Is Death and Gender-Equal Ensemble. As well as "lieutenant," and "hope," to say two of the most persistant arc words.)
• Rope Bridge
• A Crack in the Ice
• One-Woman Wail
• Ominous Pipe Organ 
• Ominous Latin Chanting/Cherubic Choir/Ethereal Choir
• Ominous Musical Box Tune
• Blood-Splattered Innocent
• Cute and Psycho/Break the Cutie
• Hair-Raising Hare/Killer Rabbit (the ominous sinister path-crossing hare pre-Poltava)
• Tom the Dark Lord (Charles XII)
• Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour (idem)
• Black Cats/Creepy Crows (can be dexter or sinister, the latter bring misfortune)
• Dark and Troubled Past/Freudian Excuse/Backstory Horror
• Love Makes You Evil/Love Makes You Crazy
• Lost Lenore
• Torture Cellar/Locked in the Dungeon
• Renegade Russian (the ostensible antagonist in the second arc, Katja's stepfather)
• A Glass of Chianti/I Need a Fricking Drink or Drowning Their Sorrows (the leading character usually slips from the former to the latter)
• The Neidermeyer (the Officer and a Gentleman/Ensign Newbie tends to become one as he loses his rose-coloured glasses)
• Humans are Flawed/The Evils of Free Will
• Laser-Guided Amnesia/Amnesiac Love Interest
• Fighting Your Friends
• After-Action Healing Drama (left and right, of course; after the Lech, Lützen, and before Poltava come the most dramatic examples)
• Only a Flesh Wound/Major Injury Underreaction
• Mortal Wound Reveal (also left and right, frequently stressed with a Pastel-Chalked Freeze Frame)
• Bullet Holes and Revelations (Tilly at the Lech, Gerhard vs. Count Pappenheim, Charles XII's left foot pre-Poltava: all three done in a pretty Hitchcockian way)
• Ill Boy
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness
• Dwindling Party (used to great effect, with Anyone Can Die and all)
• The Magic Goes Away/Death of the Old Gods (as a consequence of industrialism, it will be a major theme of the 4th arc.)