History ComicBook / OnceAndFuture

* HappilyAdopted: [[spoiler:Rose is not the Chandras's child by brith, having been adopted after her adoptive parents failed to concieve a child on their own. This, combined with her mysterious parentage, makes her eligible to draw the sword in the stone become the queen of Britain, a heroic King Arthur who opposes all of the other Arthurs.]]

** When Galahad makes off with the Holy Grail, no one is fast enough to catch him. But when Rose removes the sword plaguing the dragon that Lancelot defeated, she accidentally invokes the story of this trope or its even older prototype. The dragon then aids them in chasing down Galahad by allowing the heroes to ride its back. [[spoiler:After taking on the role of King Arthur, she once again calls upon the dragon to rescue Duncan from Merlin.]]

* FightingIrish: Bridgette moved from Ireland to Britain when she was 15 and slain vampires across the country until she ran out of vampires. Once Duncan gets into the family business, he soon finds that he has a knack for it even though he doesn't ''want'' to have a knack for it.

* GreenThumb: [[spoiler:Robin Hood represents the will of the British isles itself. As a result, he's able to cause vines to sprout from the corpses of those he shoots with his arrows.]]

* HappilyAdopted: [[spoiler:Rose is not the Chandras's child by brith, having been adopted after her adoptive parents failed to concieve a child on their own. This, combined with her mysterious parentage, makes her eligible to draw the Sword in the Stone become the queen of Britain, a heroic King Arthur who opposes all of the other Arthurs.]]

** Rose takes on the role of Gawain in ''Literature/SirGawainAndTheGreenKnight'' so Duncan wouldn't have to. She later invokes [[AndroclesLion Androcles]] by accident when removing a sword from the dragon defeated by Lancelot. [[spoiler:She then becomes King Arthur when she draws the Sword in the Stone on account of her mysterious parentage as a HappilyAdopted child.]]

* ElementalEmbodiment: "Of the lake" is taken seriously, [[spoiler: when he appears Lancelot is basically a silhouette opening on to a lake bed, fish can be seen swimming in him and there are reeds growing from his feet. He also has a water sword.]]

* FlamingSword: {{Inverted}} Lancelot of the Lake has a sword made of water.

* HappilyAdopted: [[spoiler:Rose is not the Chandras's child by brith, having been adopted after her adoptive parents failed to concieve a child on their own. This, combined with her mysterious parentage, makes her eligible to draw the sword in the stone become the queen of Britain, a heroic King Arthur who opposes all of the other Arthurs.]]

* KnightInShiningArmor: His affair with Guinevere aside, Lancelot continually strives to be the perfect knight. He will AlwaysSaveTheGirl, will not allow unarmed innocents to come to harm, and will take on any threat for the sake of his lord, Arthur. [[spoiler:Of all the knights in the story, only Lancelot sides with the people after being removed from his service to Arthur. As per Lancelot's own words, protecting people is what a knight does, or at least, what he should do. At the end of the story, he sacrifices himself to burst Leir's heart and shower the waters of forgetfulness upon all of Britain, thus removing the Otherworld.]]

** [[spoiler:It's revealed that the Briton Arthur was once a mortal man killed on the battlefield. His most loyal subject wrapped him up in the story of King Arthur to revive him. But the new Arthur remembers nothing about his mortal life, something only Merlin knows.]]

* MagpiesAsPortents: DoubleSubverted. Issue 13 opens with a magpie flying down and interrupting Bridgette's smoke on the care home's deck. Then the otherworld light show kicks off and it's joined by five other magpies and Bridgette recites two versions of old rhyme and asks if she's in for Gold or Hell, only to be told it's the latter. So Bridgette shoots four of them and says now it must be either joy or mirth, only for one magpie to tear the throat out of the other and say she's in for Sorrow.

** Rose takes on the role of Gawain in ''Literature/SirGawainAndTheGreenKnight'' so Duncan wouldn't have to. She later invokes [[AndroclesLion Androcles]] by accident when removing a sword from the dragon defeated by Lancelot.

* ProtagonistCenteredMorality: Not for the modern protagonists but Bridgette notes that King Arthur is often remembered as the hero-king who united the Britons and beat back the foreign invaders. People often forget that he went to war with a European empire and crushed it. Once King Arthur rises from his crypt, the first thing he does is slaughter the English nationalists who resurrected him for being Anglo-Saxons before declaring that he's reclaiming Briton for the Britons.

* OffWithHisHead:
** As per the story, this is the fate of numerous men who are confronted by the Green Knight, who lops their heads off with an axe.
** [[spoiler:King Arthur rips Boris Johnson's head off on national television after the latter reveals the Holy Grail, "healing the land" and merging Britain with the Otherworld.]]

* AllMythsAreTrue: Bridgette makes it very clear that the stories are not "real", but they're very much "true" in the otherworld. While the story primarily focuses on the folklore of Britain, [[spoiler:Greek mythology pops up after the United Kingdom is plunged into the Otherworld thanks to Roman influences in the region.]]

* AnOfferYouCantRefuse: Bridgette has a tendency to make others, even her own grandson Duncan, cooperate by pointing a gun at them.

* AnAxeToGrind: The Green Knight shows up with an axe to lop off the heads of any who refuse to accept his challenge. Said axe is also used to lop off his own head should someone take him up on his offer.

* KnightInShiningArmor: His affair with Guinevere aside, Lancelot continually strives to be the perfect knight. He will AlwaysSaveTheGirl, will not allow unarmed innocents to come to harm, and will take on any threat for the sake of his lord, Arthur. [[spoiler:Of all the knights in the story, only Lancelot sides with the people after being removed from his service to Arthur. As per Lancelot's own words, protecting people is what a knight does, or at least, what he should do.]]

** [[spoiler:After sitting on the Siege Perilous, Galahad is lost to the story, not recognizing his mother Mary and referring to her as "Elaine"m "Nimue", and "Witch". Although she is able to use the Holy Grail to restore him to his original form, he [[DyingAsYourself dies not long after he recognizes her again.]]]]

** [[spoiler:Mary acts as Elaine to become a mother to Galahad with Lancelot, but then takes on the role of Nimue in her quest to restore Galahad's humanity and original identity.]]

* ImNotAHeroIm: As more and more of her BigScrewedUpFamily comes to light, Bridgette reiterates that she is ''not'' a good person and Duncan grows more disillusioned with her as the story goes on. Her brutal, uncompromising methodology helps her kill monsters and save people, but she hurts just as many as she helps. [[spoiler:At the end of the series, everyone has their memories of the story wiped away by the River Lethe except Bridgette, who vomits the waters up thanks to a note she left for herself. She [[GiveHimANormalLife stops herself from telling Duncan and Rose from doing the same]], but admits that if things went to hell again, she'd drag them both right back into it.]]

* HappilyAdopted: [[spoiler:Rose is not the Chandra's child by brith, having been adopted after her adoptive parents failed to concieve a child on their own. This, combined with her mysterious parentage, makes her eligible to draw the sword in the stone become the queen of Britain, a heroic King Arthur who opposses all of the other Arthurs.]]

** When Galahad makes off with the Holy Grail, no one is fast enough to catch him. But when Rose removes the sword plaguing the dragon that Lancelot defeated, she accidentally invokes the story of this trope or its even older prototype. The dragon then aids them in chasing down Galahad by allowing the heroes to ride its back.

* BlunttNo: This is Arthur's response to the Green Knight's offer to play a game. [[spoiler:Arthur punctuates it by splitting the Knight in half with Excalibur.]]

-->--'''Rose''' and '''Bridgette''' ''on the nature of stories''

* FlatNo: This is Arthur's response to the Green Knight's offer to play a game. [[spoiler:Arthur punctuates it by splitting the Knight in half with Excalibur.]]

* OnlyTheChosenMayWield: Only those who meet the criterion of being a grail knight may seek and touch the Holy Grail. Galahad was explicitly raised by Elaine for this purpose. [[spoiler:Duncan was also raised to be a Percival, making him eligible to seek the Holy Grail.]]
* OnlyThePureOfHeart: Excalibur may only be loaned by the Ladies of the Lake to knights who are unarmed and pure of heart. [[spoiler:Duncan meets all the criteria, borrowing Excalibur to journey into the other world and retrieve the sword's sheath to save Bridgette, who shot herself to become a surrogate FisherKing.]]

* YouNeverDidThatForMe: {{Discussed}} in issue 14. Needing to get information from Iain the white nationalist, who's dying from a grievous gut wound inflicted by the Green Knight, Bridgette makes like she's going to torture him. Instead, she shows a kind and empathetic side of herself as she gets the needed information before Iain dies from blood loss. This behavior flabergasts Duncan, who asks why she is never like that for him now or when he was growing up. Her answer?
-->"If you had your guts bleeding out over the floor, I would be."

* YouNeverDidThatForMe: {{Discussed}} in issue 14, Needing to get information from Iain the white-nationalist who's dieing from a grievous gut wound Bridgette makes like she's going to torture him instead she shows a kind and empathetic side as she gets the needed information before Iain dies from blood loss. This behavior flabergasts Duncan. He asks why she is never like that for him now or when he was growing up, she replies

* KnightInShiningArmor: His affair with Guinevere aside, Lancelot continually strives to be the perfect knight. He will AlwaysSaveTheGirl, will not allow unarmed innocents to come to harm, and will take on any threat for the sake of his lord, Arthur.

The scabbard of Myth/King Arthur's sword has been found, and Bridgette fears that someone will be trying to resurrect him. It's said King Arthur will return in Britain's DarkestHour, but never trust a prophecy that can be taken in two ways. After all, it never said anything about him ''rescuing'' Britain... Let alone that this Britain is ruled by Arthur's old enemies, the Anglo-Saxons, by now.

The scabbard of King Arthur's sword has been found, and Bridgette fears that someone will be trying to resurrect him. It's said [[Myth/ArthurianLegend King Arthur]] will return in Britain's DarkestHour, but never trust a prophecy that can be taken in two ways. After all, it never said anything about him ''rescuing'' Britain... Let alone that this Britain is ruled by Arthur's old enemies, the Anglo-Saxons, by now.

* PopculturalOsmosisFailure: Duncan is a major example: as he's an English doctoral student but focused on ''modern'' literature, he's out of his depth with the Arthurian mythos, thereby making him a good AudienceSurrogate.

* DependingOnTheWriter: The King Arthur here is the one from Briton culture. [[spoiler:A Norman Arthur who is aesthetically closer to a KnightInShiningArmor later appears to challenge his Briton counterpart, and a third Arthur has recently made his presence known as well]].

* TheoryOfNarrativeCausality:

* WeHardlyKnewYe: [[spoiler:The capitalistic steampunk King Arthur(s) of the modern British Empire is quickly slaughered by Robin Hood and his Merry Men, with Little John flinging Duncan, Bridgette, and Rose inside via a log being used as an arrow. Then then shoot up most of the knights inside in the confusion while Robin himself takes out the kings with three arrows as promised.]]

* MultipleChoicePast: The characters in the stories are all shaped by the ways people told them. Additions over the years by writers and bards can cause the characters to get mixed up about their own identities and histories. King Arthur recognizes Galahad as his greatest knight, but is baffled when he lays eyes upon Excalibur or when Bridgette brings up Lancelot.

* MagpiesAsPortents: DoubleSubverted. Issue 13 opens with a magpie flying down and interrupting Bridgette's smoke on the care home's deck. Then the otherworld light show kicks off and it's joined by five other magpies and Bridgette recites two versions of old rhyme and asks if she's in for Gold or Hell, only to be told it's the latter. So Bridgette shoots four of them and says now it must be either joy or mirth, only for one magpie to tear the throat out of the other and say she's in for Hell.

The scabbard of King Arthur's sword has been found, and Bridgette fears that someone will be trying to resurrect him. It's said [[Myth/ArthurianLegend King Arthur]] will return in Britain's DarkestHour, but never trust a prophecy that can be taken in two ways. After all, it never said anything about him ''rescuing'' Britain...

* MagpiesAsPortents: DoubleSubverted, in Issue 13 opens with a magpie flying down and interrupting Bridgette's smoke on the care home's deck. Then the otherworld light show kicks off and it's joined by five other magpies and Bridgette recites two versions of old rhyme and asks if she's in for Gold or Hell, only to be told it's the latter. So Bridgette shoots four of them and says now it must be either joy or mirth, only for one magpie to tear the throat out of the other and say she's in for Hell.

* Myth/RobinHood: [[spoiler:Shows up in issue 24, Bridgette comments that he's equally dangerous even if he's on the side of "the people". She describes him as an old legend, even older than King Arthur, when "all this land was forest" and that [[DontGoInTheWoods something in the wood could mess you up fierce.]] He's the physical representation of rebellion against any who would claim dominion over the British Isles. As such, Bridgette calls upon him to attack the King Arthurs while she makes use of her insistence on joining the Merry Men to speed up the passage of time so she can get to December 26th more quickly]].