History Literature / Dragaera

* AllForNothing: In ''Yendi'', it's revealed that [[spoiler: Norathar is and always has been the Dragon Heir]], which was not changed by the titular Yendi's plotting. That means [[spoiler: Adron ''wasn't'', and therefore could never have won his civil war.]]

** The other thing Vlad doesn't take well is having his people screwed with. Sethra Lavode gets away with [[spoiler: setting up one of his people to get his attention]] once, because she's Sethra Lavode. Vlad recalls that he almost put a knife in Daymar's eye when the Dragaeran scanned his underling's thoughts. On both occasions, however, he became friends with the offending party, so he doesn't completely lose control.

** And of course, inverted with Vlad, who has only casual relationships until he falls in love with the woman who bests him. [[spoiler: Fatally. Though he gets better.]]
* BetrayalInsurance: [[spoiler: A ''lot'' of Vlad's actions and NoodleImplements in ''Hawk'' turn out to be this, as he suspects (correctly) that the Jhereg will try to kill him as soon as they've got what he proposes to trade for the cancellation of their contract on his soul.]]

* TheBusCameBack: In ''Tiassa'' [[spoiler: Savn, somewhat if not completely recovered.]] Timmer from ''Orca'' also makes an appearance.

** In the early books, Vlad mentions Spellbreaker's tendency to change its length as appropriate for however large an area he's using it to shield in a fight. [[spoiler: ''Dzur'' provides an explanation when Godslayer, into which Spellbreaker is incorporated, turns out to be a MorphWeapon.]]
** In ''Paths of the Dead'', Piro's [[spoiler: falling in love with Ibronka]] is foreshadowed by his conversation with Krytaan about girls, as Piro [[spoiler: is more interested in finding a brave girl - the signature trait of Dzur - than in appearing brave to impress one]].

* GainingTheWillToKill: Inverted in ''Orca'', when death-on-two-legs Sethra Lavode reassures Vlad that she'd decided long ago that [[spoiler: keeping her alternate identity as Kiera secret]] was ''not'' worth taking a life for. She's quite willing to kill for honour or necessity or a cause, but not for that.

* GodWasMyCopilot: [[spoiler: Sethra to Vlad while in her Kiera persona]]

* KansasCityShuffle: In ''Hawk'', Vlad arranges a meeting with Jhereg leaders to try to arrange an end to their pursuit of him. [[spoiler: They quickly discover and negate the spell on the meeting room that would've compelled them to be agreeable, but don't find out until too late that Vlad's actually setting them up to get busted by Khaavren for threatening Imperial security.]]

** Zerika IV and her Easterner lover Brimfrod/Lazslo, while not actually married as such, suffer from this. Grita leaks knowledge of their relationship to the Lyorn Heir, who [[spoiler: promptly withdraws his support]]. However, after the war, it's not such a problem because everyone who knows either doesn't care or refuses to insult their lawful Empress. (Vlad at one point has a chance to ask about it, but has problems with how to phrase the question; Zerika decides to 'answer' anyway and says she considers Lazlo a soulmate.)

** Even more true of [[spoiler: Zivra, although the foster parents who raised her in secrecy until she could claim her Phoenix heritage weren't exactly poor.]]

** Happens to Grita in the Khaavren Romances, when she's approached by a group of highwaymen, and eventually recruits them to be her thugs. [[spoiler: ...and again later when she runs out of uses for them and kills the leader.]]

* PlotTailoredToTheParty: Played with in ''Hawk'', in that virtually ''everyone Vlad knows'' contributes in some way to his scheme to get the Jhereg off his back: [[spoiler: Daymar inspires the idea and provides the egg and wand; Kragar provides a safe place to stay; Kiera, the lockpick and information; Morrolan, the smoke-sphere; Aliera, healing for Kragar; Sethra, someone to build the stairs; Cawti, her uncharacteristic agreement to go into hiding; Sara, the euphonium; Perisil, the quotation from Dragaeran trade law; and Khaavren, the plan's final twist. Loiosh's and Rocza's help is vital, and Lady Teldra wakes up in time to consciously do her part. The Empress and Warlock intervene on Vlad's behalf after the park ambush, ensuring he's still alive to ''come up'' with the plan. The Demon ends up ''saving'' Vlad after plotting to kill him for years. Even characters who don't actually appear in the novel help out, albeit indirectly and/or symbolically: Norathar provides a safe place for Vlad's family to hide; both Savn and Vlad Norathar inspire Vlad to save, then recruit the young cutpurse; and Noish-pa's fencing lessons from decades ago give Vlad his strategy.]]

* SecretKeeper: As of ''Orca'', Vlad knows that [[spoiler: Kiera is actually Sethra Lavode]]. Played with in that, while he and [[spoiler: Kiera/Sethra]] both know that he knows, they maintain the facade even during private conversations, as it helps the latter maintain the role and helps Vlad keep the two personas straight in his head. (It doesn't stop him from obliquely joking about it, such as [[spoiler:telling Sethra that he picked up a habit of biting his thumb from Kiera, when everyone knows [[BlatentLies he's lying his ass off]]]].)

* SherlockScan: Khaavren and Aerich take turns doing this to [[spoiler: Chaler's corpse]] in ''Five Hundred Years After'', to Tazendra's mystified amazement.

** In ''Iorich'', four-year-old [[spoiler: Vlad Norathar]] is seen playing with the low-tech, soft toy equivalent of a Transformer.

* SillyReasonForWar: Morrolan goes to war with Fornia in ''Dragon'' over the theft of a fairly worthless sword; lampshaded numerous times by Vlad, who can't understand it and feels like the OnlySaneMan even though he's in the war for an similarly stupid reason. Subverted when he suggests the alternatives, like assassinating Fornia or stealing it back or negotiating, and all of his ideas are shot down immediately. Later justified by Sethra by explaining that both Morrolan and Fornia are ambitious Dragonlords with a common border - war was inevitable, the sword was just a convinient pretext for both of them. [[spoiler: Fornia wanted also to fight with the sword against a Great Weapon to reveal the Great Weapon hidden inside the sword, but that was just a bonus.]]

* StartOfDarkness: ''The Baron Of Magister Valley'' is a stealth example for [[spoiler: Vlad's old Right Hand boss, the Demon]].

** [[spoiler: Tazendra's parents allowed themselves to be killed by Shaltre's mercenaries rather than be captured and forced to tell where they'd hidden young Aerich.]]

** Sorcery, teleportation included, is suppressed on Greenaere as a natural phenomenon, as its bedrock is rich in Phoenix stone. [[spoiler: Lucky for Vlad, this isn't true for ''pre-Empire'' sorcery.]]

* ThanatosGambit: A double example in ''Jhereg'': [[spoiler: Mellar's scheme is to get himself assassinated at Castle Black by the Jhereg, thus insulting Morrolan and setting the Dragon and Jhereg Houses at each others' throats. Countered via the same trope by Vlad and his friends when they trick Mellar into (temporarily) killing ''Aliera'', thus rescinding his rights as Morrolan's guest.]]

* ToHellAndBack: The gateway to the afterlife for Dragaerans is a physical location that mortals can enter. Some Dragaerans become undead and walk back out again. Mortals have walked out of the Paths of the Dead twice so far. [[spoiler: That's not counting another two Dragaerans known to have been ''conceived'' there, Tethia and Devera, who may not entirely rate as "mortal" as a consequence.]]

* TroubleMagnetGambit: [[spoiler: In Jhereg. Kiera uses her pickpocketing skills to replace Mellar's regular daggers with Morganti daggers (which destroy the victim's soul). Aliera then picked a fight with him and got stabbed, causing Mellar to panic and flee Morrolan's castle, allowing Vlad to kill him. Mellar didn't know that Aliera's soul was protected by her sword, allowing her to be resurrected.]]
** Subverted in ''Tiassa'', when everyone only '''thinks''' Vlad has possession of [[spoiler: the silver tiassa]]. The Jhereg-cultivated belief that he's got it still gets a lot of trouble heading his way.

** [[spoiler: Vlad. He learns that most of his life's choices have been influenced by Verra and Sethra in order to make him useful. In ''Issola'', Sethra even states outright that facing the Jenoine in their own place in order to rescue Morrolan and Aliera is "the kind of activity Vlad is trained for." It is not yet clear if he is [[LaserGuidedTykebomb targeted]] against the Jenoine, or an all-purpose Tykebomb.]]
** Possibly also the case with [[spoiler: Devera, who actually engineered ''her own conception'' at Verra's instigation]].

* UnstoppableRage: Tazendra at the end of ''Sethra Lavode'', after hitting her RageBreakingPoint. Paarfi notes that this is a Dzur trait in general. While usually, Dzur [[BloodKnight enjoy themselves immensely]] in a fight, once you manage to get one ''really angry'', they become about ten times more dangerous. Tazendra, despite having been imprisoned in a stasis spell and being severely injured, curb-stomps the hell out of her opponent. [[spoiler: A freaking ''Jenoine''.]]

* ''Lyorn'' (Upcoming; 2024)

* WeAreAsMayflies: Most Easterners in Dragaera don't live long past 60, while Dragaerans live for thousands of years. Powerful Easterner witches can live hundreds of years, while undead Dragaerans can exist pretty much indefinitely.

** All the chapter titles in ''Vallista'' are {{pun}}s riffing on the titles of classic gothic stories, such as [[Literature/TheTurnOfTheScrew The Turn of Disacru]] and [[Literature/TheMysteriesOfUdolpho The Miseries of Odelpho]].

* UnderworldRiver: The Deathgate Falls flows from a mundane river into the Paths of the Dead, the spiritual otherworld where souls are judged in between reincarnations. It's common DueToTheDead to send bodies over the Falls; living people can also enter the Paths that way, but the Falls are an EldritchLocation of no fixed height and they don't allow a return trip.

** The [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep Sorceress in Green]] uses magic to continue looking young and attractive.

* TheUnderworld: The Paths of the Dead.

* ICallItVera: All the Great Weapons have official names. Vlad, however, insists on referring to [[spoiler:Godslayer]] as [[spoiler:Lady Teldra]], and for good reason. (Given that there's a goddess actually ''called'' Vera, one wonders what would happen if someone decided to name a weapon after her....)

* ICallItVera: All the Great Weapons have official names. Vlad, however, insists on referring to [[spoiler:Godslayer]] as [[spoiler:Lady Teldra]], and for good reason.

* InsistentTerminology: There is a group of weapons known as Great Weapons; ''Issola' helps explain why they are important.

* {{Genderbender}}: Drien, one of Morrolan's ancestors, is said to have changed sex at some point in his/her life. S/he lived so long ago that nobody's sure which sex Drien was originally.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Some aspects of the world had not been completely fleshed out when Brust wrote ''Jhereg'', resulting in a little bit of weirdness on rereads. For example, the Phoenix Guards are simply called Imperial Guards, and the Furnace is simply the sun. Vlad also seems to characterize assassinations a lot more lightly than they're taken in the rest of the series, implying that you might get assassinated simply as a warning. Kragar refers to Mellar's late mother as "a whore" as if it's disgraceful, yet "tag" work is shown by later books to be unstigmatized in Dragaeran society, with Kragar himself ''dating'' one of Vlad's sex workers.

* OverlyLongGag: The forward for ''The Baron of Magister Valley'' has a Dragaeran historian give a short critique of the work and then spend the rest of the forward complaining that the publishers demanded that the essay reach a certain word count or else he won't get paid.

* ICallItVera: All the great weapons have official names. Vlad, however, insists on referring to [[spoiler:Godslayer]] as [[spoiler:Lady Teldra]], and for good reason.

* SillyReasonForWar: Morrolan goes to war with Fornia in ''Dragon'' over the theft of a fairly worthless sword; lampshaded numerous times by Vlad, who can't understand it and feels like the OnlySaneMan even though he's in the war for an similarly stupid reason. Subverted when he suggests the alternatives, like assassinating Fornia or stealing it back or negotiating, and all of his ideas are shot down immediately. Later justified by Sethra by explaining that both Morrolan and Fornia are ambitious Dragonlords with a common border - war was inevitable, the sword was just a convinient pretext for both of them. [[spoiler: Fornia wanted also to fight with the sword against a great weapon to reveal the great weapon hidden inside the sword, but that was just a bonus.]]

** Mario Greymist's reputation as an unstoppable, undetectable assassin qualifies, as "Mario did it" is apparently the default HandWave for the Phoenix Guard if they can't solve a murder case.

* NobleTongue: Serioli is this in this series, although not only is it not at all like Latin, it is a StarfishLanguage that is painful to listen to.

* BackFromTheDead: Fairly routine; as long as the person's central nervous system is intact and they weren't killed with a Morganti weapon or left too long before it's attempted, revivifying someone is just a matter of an admittedly expensive spell. The ease with which revivification can be achieved and the sure certainty of an afterlife is important in maintaining sympathy for most of the protagonists. The people they kill might not always have deserved it, but at least they're not ''dead'' dead.

* FiveManBand: [[TheHero Khaavren]], [[TheLancer Aerich]], [[TheBigGuy Tazendra]], [[TheSmartGuy Pel]], with Mica as TheChick.

* ToHellAndBack: The gateway to the afterlife for Dragaerans is a physical location that mortals can enter. Some Dragaerans become undead and walk back out again. Mortals have walked out of the Paths of the Dead twice so far.

* FantasticFirearms: Gun-like magitek weapons appear from time to time in the series. Starting out, we have musket-like magical guns just as likely to rip off a soldiers fingers as they are to kill an enemy. Further along are "Flashstones," which slap enemies with a curse that makes them ''explode;'' however, a wizard develops a spell that destroys these weapons [[StuffBlowingUp quite enthusiastically.]] And it's a HerdHittingAttack that can hit an entire army at once.

* BalefulPolymorph: The fate of the Dzur warriors who have challenged Sethra Lavode and never returned is to be changed into animals by her. She says so herself.

** Dragaerans can live for thousands of years. Sethra Lavode is tens of thousands of years old.

* BigLabyrinthineBuilding: Both the old Imperial Palace in Dragaera City and its successor in Adrilankha take this UpToEleven, being bigger than many ''cities''. Vlad gets lost repeatedly in the latter, and Tazendra in the former.