Basic Trope: Character kills another for being annoying.
- Straight: Empress Alice has one of her courtiers shot for harassing her and being impertinent.
- Exaggerated: Empress Alice shoots the maid personally for forgetting to bring the milk with her tea.
- Downplayed:
- The Empress doesn’t outright kill the annoyance but still punishes them harshly and disproportionately.
- Alice is a reality show contestant and votes to have Bob eliminated for being too loud and annoying. Still disproportionate, but not actually lethal.
- Justified:
- The Empress has spent the last 36 hours leading complex and tense negotiations with the Emirate of Tropestan, her daughter Princess Beatrice has been having an affair with the under-gardener (and making far too much noise in the process), and poor Tibbles has had to be put down. She's overwrought, suffering from lack of sleep, and her temper is fraying.
- Disobeying the Empress or being impertinent towards her is a treasonable offence, and she is well within her rights to demand the death penalty.
- The annoying character was not just being annoying, they were being outright insulting. There is no way a monarch, mad or sane, was going to stand for that.
- Inverted: Empress Alice orders Bob the court necromancer to resurrect Ysabell the court jester because court life is too boring without someone to annoy her.
- Subverted:
- "Guards! Take that man out and shoot him... just kidding!"
- Alice orders an impertinent courtier shot. The courtier simply laughs, beats up her guards, and waltzes off.
- Double Subverted:
- "Actually, take him out and shoot him anyway! I can't stand people with twitching eyebrows!"
- While the courtier is occupied with her guards, Alice pulls out a gun and shoots him herself.
- Parodied: Empress Alice pulls out a BFG and blows Bob's head off for humming.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice may or may not execute someone for being annoying depending on her mood and how valuable said annoyance is.
- Averted: Everybody thinks Empress Alice is going to have someone put to death when she calls the guard, but she instructs them simply to remove them from her sight.
- Enforced: The producers demanded that the audience be aware of just how much of a tyrant Empress Alice is.
- Lampshaded: "Okay, what did this guy do to ensure a death sentence from Empress Alice? Play the banjo wrong or something?"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: The palace guards don't like one of their own and want him offed, so they dupe him into pestering Alice so she'll execute him.
- Defied: "As annoying as you are and amusing as it would be to kill you, it really isn't worth the blow to my PR."
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Someone with a reputation for being incredibly obnoxious declares he's delivering a message to Empress Alice. Later, the heroes find his head on a pike outside her palace.
- Deconstructed:
- Empress Alice comes across as an insane tyrant for killing someone just because they were annoying. Her reputation is damaged because if she'll kill someone over something petty, it pretty much guarantees anyone who ever gets on her bad side or disagrees with her will be killed.
- The courtier Alice shot had critical intelligence to deliver to her, but now that they're dead said critical intelligence is lost. The heroes are able to storm Alice's castle because of her impatient and volatile attitude.
- The nobility and military under Empress Alice realise that she is a Psychopathic Womanchild whose rule will lead the country to ruin, so they plot a coup d'état to replace her with her younger, but more mature sister.
- Reconstructed:
- Empress Alice decides to utilize her reputation. She doesn't actually kill anyone for petty grievances since that was a mistake, but since the people talk about it, they actively put on their best behavior in front of her, meaning that no one annoys her when she talks with them. Over time, her reputation for insane goes away.
- Inquiries into the killing is conducted and it turns out the guy killed was an Asshole Victim who had actively pissed off Empress Alice at the worst possible timing. Alice still gets a bad rep, but it is mitigated by the fact the guy had it coming.
- Played For Laughs:
- Empress Alice kills a Maid for singing offkey, eating all the food and just asking dumb questions to everybody around. After Alice kills her, everybody cheers.
GUARDS! Take That Troper back to the main page! Off with their head!
