Times when A Child Shall Lead Them in fan works.
Crossovers
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: Empress Mercury of the Avatar Isles. When she gets her own lands, she becomes this, as she's 15, and so, not an adult.
- In A Young Girl's Game of Thrones, Myrcella Baratheon becomes the paramount lady of the Stormlands, first, by convincing her uncle Jaime to give her paperwork declaring her as such. Then, she goes to parley with the Stormlords before they can mobilize and uses her blue eyes, along with testimonies from Ser Barristan Selmy and Lord Beric Dondarrion, to sow doubt over the matter of her siblings' bastardry. Half of them remained unconvinced, she challenges the rest to a Trial of Seven, locking everyone in as the religious significance of the challenge renders its outcome unassailable. After she wins, she gives them her uncle's missive and, being proven legitimate and virtuous in the eyes of gods and men, she became one of the highest authorities on the continent at the age of eleven.
- Ash and Petals: Deconstructed. Azula is made Fire Lord at only fourteen (and during war time at that). It does not help her already poor mental state taking such a role at her young age.
- This trope is obviously the case with Pevensies in any Golden Age fic as it is what happens in canon, but Carpetbaggers is an especially interesting case because in the fic, most Narnians — having never seen a human before and being smaller than humans — don't even realize that the Pevensies are, in fact, children.
- In Mosaic
, an Alternate Universe Fic , Suzaku becomes Emperor of Japan at ten years old after his father is murdered by Chinese assassins.
- Raised by Jägers: Radovan Heterodyne, aged ten, was left with the Jaeger Generals while his father was busy with something. Radovan led a raiding party all the way up to Warsaw.Footnote: "Well, at least he didn't cause any real trouble," had been Lord Heterodyne's reaction when he received this report, before casting his attention back to his experimental musical guinea pig assassins.
- In E Pluribus Unum: Peerless Bow, after Geronimmo is killed during the heroes' assassination attempt on Cù Chulainn, the American resistance need a new leader. Of the remaining Servants, Rama has leadership experience but knows that the Americans won't be comfortable following an Indian King, and while Billy the Kid is American he was a lone bandit and has no experience leading an army. Ultimately Ritsuka, a Japanese teenager, volunteers to take command, since as a living human he can better connect with the resistance members than the Servants.
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi / The Untamed
- In A Game for the Fool, five-year-old Wei Wuxian creates his own industry, has an alliance with several small and rural sects and has an independent spy network. Which he still runs in secret well into his teenage years.
- In A Matter Of Age, Nie Mingjue claims to have been twelve years old when he became sect leader, and isn't yet of age during the fic. He was probably only ten when he became sect leader, if Wen Ruohan is correct.
- The Defensive Space Force Ship Requirement: Harry is only 16 when he and Dumbledore's Army walk through the door the Room of Requirement creates and onto their starship. The DA crew proceed to appoint Harry as captain.
- There is later a chapter titled after this trope.
- A Thing of Vikings: His father's death caused Thuggory to become chief of the Meatheads at only 17 years old. He feels constrained by his responsibilities and not ready to be a leader.
- In Sotto Voce: After the sudden murder of her father, Zelda is forced to become queen at only sixteen. She may hold the Triforce of Wisdom, but she's still an inexperienced teenager dealing with more than she can handle. To cover this up, she begins masking her emotions, but this just makes her come off as cold.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- A Diplomatic Visit: As revealed in chapter 26, Queen Scolopidia was the equivalent of a teenager when she had to take the throne for her hive, and is still adjusting.
- If Wishes Were Ponies: When Harry and the Cutie Mark Crusaders are leading Twilight through the portal to Little Whinging, She admits that Harry (who was born in England) and the CMCs (who had repeatedly visited) were the actual experts on what to expect and what to do while exploring. Thus, a chapter is titled after this trope.
- Son of the Sannin:
- Both Ino and Hinata lost their fathers when they were 8 and have replaced them as the official heads of their respective clans by the time they turned 16 (the latter's mother acted as the leader in the interim and continued in an advisory capacity afterwards).
- Kurotsuchi succeed her grandfather as Tsuchikage at the age of 18, which becomes a major issue for her due to the Kage summit happening almost immediately after her inauguration with no time for her to grow into the role.
- Ships Ahoy!: Invoked in Part One. When Oprah visits Portugal, she is caught up in heated political conflict between the reigning queen, Pia, and Senhor Saldanha, the ruler of another country, the latter of whom refuses to cooperate with the former. To make him cooperate, Pia decides to fake her own death and state in her will that she wishes Oprah to become the new ruler in her place as Queen Oprah I of Portugal. The gambit ends up working and pays off at a Parliament session, where Oprah recites things about country borders in African colonies that she doesn't understand nor care about just to toy with Saldanha, which causes him to tell the king of Portugal that he won't stand for a ruler who is nothing more than a child that doesn't know what they're talking about. He eventually concedes and decides to work with Pia upon learning that she isn't actually dead, and Oprah transfers her power as queen back to her.
- Utopia Unmade: Reika/Cure Beauty is only 16, yet she's already queen of the Precure Kingdom.
- Chasing Dragons: After Rhaegar dies from his wounds following the Battle of Tara, the adolescent Viserys becomes the king of the Targaryen court in exile. With the likes of Arthur Dayne and Rhaegar's father-in-law Donys Ratheon acting as regents for the first several years of his reign, Viserys learns how to be a proper ruler, and truly comes into his own when he reaches his majority.
- Forum of Thrones:
- After the death of Alester Arryn, his young son Ronnel is his heir and technically King of Mountain and Vale. However, due to him being a mere child, his mother Sharra rules in his stead, as Queen Regent.
- Years before the story, when she was only fifteen, Kyra Greyjoy commanded a force of grown men on their raid to Bear Island, where she fought against Worland Mormont, the Lord of Bear Island and renowned warrior.
- Queens of Mewni:
- Asteria the Mother of Stars, was crowned queen at sixteen due to a Shotgun Wedding forcing her to marry sooner than expected, and Mewnian tradition of the heir being crowned queen at her wedding. Power remained in the hands of her mother until after Asteria gave birth, though.
- Luna the Child was crowned queen at eight years old due to her mother Eclipsa abandoning her throne. It's because of this that she's regarded the most favorably of all the queens of the Dark Age.
- Technically, speaking, Moon was queen since a few days after her birth, but fearing a repeat of Luna the Child's reign, and fearing that her sister Etheria might try to usurp the throne, Moon's biological mother Sky asked her other sister Comet to serve as Moon's regent until Moon was old enough to rule on her own.
- Star was crowned somewhere between 17 and 19, and it wasn't by her own choice: she was crowned as a punishment to make up for all her actions that caused the War of Two Worlds that decimated most of Mewni's population (including Moon, Eclipsa, and Meteora.
- One of the Queens of Mewni Spinoffs, Mewni's New Generation, would surpass Luna's record by having the five-year-old Velvet the Ruthless crowned, due to her mother dying young and her father being unsuitable as a regent due to ruling his own kingdom.
- In The AllSpark Changed My Life, the OC of Alison Witwicky- a girl from 'reality' who has essentially taken Sam's place in the franchise- is nominated by Optimus Prime to act as the human leader of the Autobot/human organisation COTA, albeit with Will Lennox as the military leader and a series of advisors available to her. Justified in the storyline even when the characters are unaware of her advance knowledge as she has already shown her heroism when she merged with the Allspark, allowing her to see both the human and Cybertronian sides of various issues, and Ironhide himself observes that Optimus became a leader at the equivalent of Alison's age back on Cybertron.
- A Child Shall Lead Them (Transformers): Swoop the Dinobot becomes Prime instead of Hot Rod. Dinobots are canonically younger than the rest of the Autobots (at the time of the 1986 movie, they are twenty years old as opposed to millions of years), and the author's interpretation of the Dinobots gives them a younger mental age than the rest of the Autobots as well. For this reason, Swoop (aka Pterodactus Prime) qualifies for this trope.
- Ma'at: Djer is the Pharaoh, "perhaps five or six years old", of Egypt, and his mother Iti is his Queen Regent until he is of age.
