Basic Trope: A villain’s main goal is to return society back to a previous state.
- Straight: Count Robert, the main villain of the series, believes that societal change has made Tropestan a worse place, and wants to revert to an older system.
- Exaggerated:
- Robert wants Tropestan to have the societal structure it had 2,000 years ago.
- Robert is A Nazi by Any Other Name who wants to purge progressive societies and benign Commie Lands with his Right-Wing Militia Fanatic and bring back The Social Darwinist world.
- Evil Luddite
- Downplayed:
- Robert believes a very recent change (read: it happened less than a year ago) has gone badly, and his goal is to undo it.
- Robert is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who doesn't do anything very evil, but still conflicts with the heroes.
- Justified:
- Count Robert was in a privileged position under the old system, and has a personal reason for restoring it.
- Alternatively, the new system is currently failing to do its job, so people have a reason to restore the old system.
- The work is Historical Fiction about a time where there was a major social change and harsh reaction to it, such as the French Revolution or the Russian and Spanish civil wars.
- Inverted:
- Good Old Ways
- Outdated Hero vs. Improved Society
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized
- A major societal change is depicted as outright destructive, and Robert is the main hero attempting to restore the more pleasant and just status quo ante.
- Subverted:
- Robert's ideal society, despite how often he throws around words like “tradition”, is nothing like any past society.
- Robert has disturbing reactionary beliefs, but it turns out that he is an Actual Pacifist who won't turn to violence to support his cause.
- Double Subverted:
- … although he projects his own beliefs onto the past.
- Eventually Robert turns to violence, justified by Insane Troll Logic.
- Parodied: Whenever the heroes or his minions remind him of something remotely new, Robert goes on a Rambling Old Man Monologue about how "When I Was Your Age... we didn’t have to deal with this newfangled nonsense..." etc.
- Zig-Zagged: The villains and the heroes both want to end the status quo and revert to an older system.
- Averted: The antagonists are Dirty Communists, Bomb-Throwing Anarchists, or some other sort of revolutionary movement.
- Enforced:
- The writer is writing a cautionary tale of nostalgia clouding someone’s vision.
- The producer holds to progressive or generally left-wing (even communist) views, and wants to send a message about reactionary or right-wing politics.
- Lampshaded: "Robert, things may have been better for you before, but it wasn’t so for everyone else!"
- Exploited: The Dirty Communists take advantage of fear of a “reactionary threat” to justify their actions to the people.
- Defied: One of Robert’s henchmen warns him that just copy-pasting a previously existing system won’t be sure to work, so he should come up with his own plan. Robert takes this advice to heart.
- Invoked: A villain calls to mind the "good old days" to rally henchmen to his cause.
- Discussed: "Let me guess, Count Robert wants to bring back a world where he had power, right?"
- Conversed: "Sometimes you have to wonder if, with all these reactionary villains, the writers are trying to make some kind of statement."
- Implied: Robert is mainly a Generic Doomsday Villain running on Despotism Justifies the Means. However, the bare hints of motivation we get contain complains about the "degeneracy" of modern society and a fair amount of nostalgia.
- Deconstructed: Because most people lived under the older system and know it was replaced for a good reason, Robert can't fund any support and thus doesn’t do much.
- Reconstructed: Robert can take advantage of those who were too young to remember the older system. Much like him, his followers are more motivated by pseudo-nostalgia than anything else.
- Played for Laughs: Robert is trying to restore a societal order that didn't even exist.
- Played for Drama: Robert restores the regime he likes. Then we see how his reconstruction plays out from Adelaide's point of view. She ends up driven back to cooking and cleaning, whereas before she was getting a good education and planning to become a polymath.
Back (yes, back) to Evil Reactionary.
