Basic Trope: An Action Girl who is graceful on the battlefield.
- Straight: Bella is an Action Girl, but is also very swift and elegant even while fighting.
- Exaggerated: Every single move Bella takes, she ALWAYS does it with remarkable grace and femininity.
- Downplayed:
- Bella is a female MP who has a courteous and professional demeanor and is good at her job. Usually she deals with no foe more dangerous then drunks. Sometimes she is expected to do things like processing captured partisans in a war zone. She is more a cop than a soldier, but she still is quite effective and respected.
- Silk Hiding Steel
- Justified:
- Bella was once a dancer before receiving her weapon.
- Bella only uses long-distance weapons or pole-arms because she knows her height and weight put her at a disadvantage against taller, stronger opponents. Being graceful also ensures that she's less likely to leave herself open or stumble/fall.
- Bella is a member of a secret sorority that teaches its own style of martial arts as part of its Women's Mysteries.
- Bella is a Warrior Poet who emphasizes her grace and beauty as an act of defiance of the horrors of war and/or as an expression of her people's martial traditions.
- Bella is a Four-Star Badass who has the ablitity to be ladylike because she's in a leadership position, not a grunt.
- Bella is a Combat Aestheticist.
- Inverted:
- Non-action Badass Pacifist
- Bella isn't so much graceful and elegant on the battlefield as much as chaotic, reckless, and brutal/brutish.
- Subverted:
- Bella, known for her graceful movements, also leaves a swath of bloody carnage behind.
- While Bella is graceful in a fight, she still is The Klutz and faceplants every now and then.
- Bella looks the part but is nowhere near as competent as she looks. It's mostly to prevent a fight in the first place.
- Bella fights so gracefully, until something hits the crotch area and 'she' winces in pain. Bella is a guy.
- Double Subverted:
- Later on, her murder scenes become beautiful and full of sparkles.
- Bella may not be a Lady of War, but her retainer Christina IS, to a superlative degree.
- Bella is a Dude Looks Like a Lady. He still is extremely graceful in combat like an actual Lady of War, that eventually Even the Guys Want Him due to how beautiful he fights, and even the Tomboy bruiser Alice gets jealous at how pretty he fights.
- Or alternatively, she just faked the whole 'wincing at crotch area' to drop everyone's guard. Beautiful carnage resumes.
- Or the reaction was genuine — Groin Attacks can be nearly as painful to women, too. Nevertheless, she quickly recovers, and beautiful carnage resumes.
- Parodied:
- Bella wears a ballerina outfit while massacring a bunch of Mooks.
- The enemy seeing Bella in her ballerina outfit are enchanted by her beauty and fall down helpless on the spot.
- Zig Zagged: Bella's grace comes and goes, depending on whether she's in a one-on-one duel or a hack-and-slash melee.
- Averted:
- Bella is polite, but brutal on the battlefield, or she is just as direct and blunt in social interactions as she is while fighting.
- Bella is a Combat Pragmatist.
- Enforced: "War Is Hell, but I still want our heroine to be sympathetic."
- Lampshaded:
- "I may be feminine, but I can still kick butt and take names!"
- "We've been on campaign for eight months and haven't seen a woman in all that time. She could look like a she-troll and we would think her a lady."
- Invoked:
- Bella is a conscript of high rank and makes every effort to keep her grace and poise, lest she descend to the level of the mere peasant.
- Bella enrolls in the Pacifist Dojo which teaches her to behave like a Proper Lady and fight gracefully.
- Exploited:
- "Hey boss, I just heard, all the men have left on campaign leaving no one but the princess and her ladies in waiting. The Good Kingdom should be easy to conquer."
- Bella is a military leader, and her elegance has propaganda value.
- Bella's grace and composure make her presence on the battlefield deeply unnerving to the other side.
- Defied: Bella refuses to learn this method in favor of something more Boring, but Practical.
- Discussed: "Wow, Bella! I never knew murder could look so glam!"
- Conversed: "When watching Bella, I am conflicted between cheering on her kicking ass or drooling over the beauty of her carnage." "I am absolutely certain that the reason she seems 'elegant' is because the show decides to lavish us with special effects while censoring all the spilt blood."
- Implied: Bella is a warrior who is certainly far more graceful than expected when off the field.
- Deconstructed:
- Bella's grace and poise look out of place in contrast to the ugliness of battle.
- Bella's grace and poise make a disturbing contrast to her Ax-Crazy nature.
- The battlefield is chaotic and bloody in nature. The blood stained on Alice's attire accumulates as she fights day after day, and the once poised and graceful combatant gradually deteriorates into an undignified, shell-shocked mess.
- Reconstructed:
- But even her comrades begin to accept that the beauty she contributes to combat helps them deal with the uglier scenes.
- Bella's grace and poise while slaughtering entire battalions was intentional on the part of her parents and caregivers, who had decided that if they couldn't entirely neutralize her Ax-Crazy tendencies then instilling in her a sense of proper form and a set of rules to follow was their best chance at corralling it into the least harmful avenue (to themselves, anyway) they could think of. Bella herself is a Reluctant Psycho who is, at an intellectual level, aware of her situation and does her best not to harm those she truly cares about. Besides, a fighter as skilled and deadly as Bella would be a huge help against their enemies just on her reputation alone.
- The refinement of manners instilled in Bella is meant to be a means by which to stave off PTSD, or at minimum give her mental state a means to recover between battles. Dresses can be washed, sewed up, or just replaced outright a good deal easier than Bella herself.
- Played For Laughs:
- Played For Drama: Bella developed her elegant technique to counter the barbaric warrior who slaughtered her family. When she finds him, she intends to skillfully disarm him before enjoying an extended period of revenge.
The Lady of War's not for burning. I mean you could try, but you'll just end up on the business end of a naginata.
