Basic Trope: A villain fails to kill a child who is destined to defeat him.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz learns that he will be killed by a descendant of Queen Alice. He sends an assassin out to kill Queen Alice and her entire family. However, said assassin cannot bring himself to kill Alice's youngest child, so he takes the child with him instead. That child, Bob, grows up to lead a rebellion that ends up overthrowing and killing Evulz.
- Exaggerated: Evulz is told that a child of Alice's will be his downfall, and Alice has a large number of children. He kills all except for the one who looks the most pacifistic, believing said child will never have the guts to seek revenge...but said child ends up growing up to be a warrior who has no problems killing at all, and is strong enough to storm Evulz's castle by himself.
- Downplayed: Evulz does things that make it more likely that Adam, the child he believes will be his downfall, will die accidentally, but only knows that someone who looks like Adam will be his downfall. However, it turns out that Adam had an identical twin named Steve, who sees Evulz mess with Adam's parachute before Adam died while skydiving after his parachute failed on him, and Steve takes Evulz's down.
- Inverted:
- A knight of Alice's kills Evulz and his family, but the youngest member escapes. That member grows up to be Dictator Despair.
- Alice's family line dying out will doom Emperor Evulz so he must keep her alive at all costs.
- Subverted:
- Evulz goes and does the deed himself, and makes sure that no one is left alive.
- Evulz checks the prophecy himself and Rules Lawyers out of it by letting the kid defeat him at chess.
- Double Subverted:
- However, he forgot to make sure that all of Alice's children were there, and the one that wasn't there, John, ends up growing up into the warrior that kills him.
- The prophecy doesn't accept that shortcut.
- Parodied:
- Evulz kills all of Alice's family save for a baby he deems harmless. However, as he's turning to leave the room, the baby suddenly grows into an incredibly powerful warrior, who proceeds to kill Evulz on the spot.
- An oracle explicitly tells Evulz that he will be killed by Queen Alice's youngest surviving child should he leave any alive. Evulz replies "yes, but do I really have to kill such a young child?"
- Zig-Zagged: Evulz murder the child and gets away scot-free... except that the genocide galvanized the people against him in the name of the now-martyred Bob, so in a way Bob did bring about his downfall.
- Averted:
- No prophecies involving a destined child are spoken.
- There are no children.
- There are no villains.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "You hear that someone MIGHT be a threat in the future and you work up a genocide on their entire linage?! And you think somehow no one is gonna get mad enough to rise up and come after you?!"
- Invoked: Evulz sires the linage that is destined to defeat him, as his colossal ego won't allow him to be killed by anything less than his own flesh and blood.
- Exploited: Bob garners popular support by describing Evulz's attempted genocide.
- Defied:
- Evulz considers killing Alice and her family to eliminate a threat later down the line, but realizes that he has no way of knowing if he truly killed all of Alice's family, so he instead decides to just make sure that they're on his good side and won't oppose him when he enacts his plan.
- After learning that a descendant of Queen Alice's will be his downfall if he continues with his current plans, Evulz decides to just change his plans outright to something that Alice and her family will not oppose.
- Evulz creates outright laws against this thing. Creating or spreading a prophecy of imperial assassination is declared highly illegal incitement or plot of treason or mass murder. If the Gods wish to spread it they will have to do it with overt miracles instead of just visions. To placate the priesthood for the blasphemous aspects involved the directive will also call for sizable annual donations/sacrifices.
- Evulz directly marries into Queen Alice's dynasty. If his descendants still sit upon the throne, he has won and done his duty to family and empire as far as he is concerned.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Evulz kills Alice and her family, and makes sure that he has eliminated all the loose ends. He goes on to conquer the world.
- Evulz kills Queen Alice before she has a chance to have any kids.
- Reconstructed:
- However, a cousin of Alice's, who had a very close familial bond with Alice, steps forward and takes Evulz's down. Turns out that Evulz only killed Alice's intermediate family, but forgot about her other relatives.
- Turns out that while Alice didn't have any biological kids, she was a stepmother to a child her husband had from another marriage, and said child was very close to Alice.
- Played For Laughs: Seeking as little bloodshed as possible, Evulz befriends Alice and her family so they won't turn against him during his rule. He becomes a second father to Alice's kids especially. However, the children (or just one of them) are very careless, and end up killing "Uncle Evulz" in an accident.
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