I have a few:
- Chosen ones, fate, destiny, &c. When you get down to it, a story with these themes is one where a single person or handful of people is ontologically, cosmically better and more important than everyone else. It's eerily similar to that right-wing meme about how "most people are just NPCs" (though I disliked the trope before that meme ever took off).
- Way too much importance being given to bloodlines by the narrative (note, this is different from them being given importance by characters or societies in the story).
- All of the good characters are handsome and beautiful, while all of the evil characters are ugly and disfigured (with the possible exception of a femme fatale or two).
- Races that are inherently, unchangeably evil down to the last individual regardless of upbringing, society, or material circumstances.
The monarchy being good.
"we must restore the beautiful pure good monarchy that has been replaced by the evil conniving regent" aka the plot of dishonored
Ocarina of Time
The princess who has literally magic knowledge directly from the gods is a dick to nomadic horse archers. She gets her shit wrecked as would be expected in that scenario. Then some immortal demon twink has to do war crimes
Was she a dick? She was a child when her father was a dick to them, but their leader took over and most of them disavowed him and she played an active part in the rebellion against him.
how dare
Tbf I always thought Dishonored was specifically thinking about this fucking guy
Who did in fact suck dick
Is the monarchy depicted as good in Dishonored? Its been so long I can't remember. I thought Corso only saw it that way because of his personal relationship to them.
I mostly remember it being a stabilizing factor, rather than actually good. Jessamine isn't a poet king but people have enough to eat and the plague was mostly contained.