Basic Trope: An Ax-Crazy and incompetent authority figure.
- Straight: Alice is the empress of her country. She is also unhinged, ungodly incompetent, and irrationally moody and treats her subjects and subordinates like trash.
- Exaggerated: Alice, a teacher, is bad at teaching and constantly abuses her authority by sexually abusing her students and is afflicted with a god complex.
- Downplayed
- While a reasonably competent empress, Alice does have a habit of engaging in cruel and unusual acts from time to time.
- Alice is pointlessly cruel and sadistic to her followers, however, she is also ruthlessly competent and tactical, keeping her forces in line through fear.
- Justified:
- Alice is a sociopath who cheated her way to the throne.
- The Imperial Court is a Deadly Decadent Court full of scheming nobles who are happy to resort to assassination or other underhanded means to get their way. Anyone who tried to rule this court without already being a psychopath would either get killed off or go nuts from stress and paranoia.
- Alice always wanted to see the extent that a ruler can go with their power.
- Alice only cares about ruling, everyone else be damned.
- After centuries of Royal Inbreeding and isolation from consequences, the Royally Screwed Up phenomenon has reared its ugly head with Alice.
- Alice's parents were comparatively good rulers, but they weren't good parents, and Alice is The Wrongful Heir to the Throne.
- Inverted: Alice is The Wonka — her madness makes her a more competent ruler, letting her see solutions very few ever see.
- Subverted:
- Alice may seem to be Ax-Crazy, but in fact, is a Reasonable Authority Figure. The rumors of violent insanity were Malicious Slander spread by her enemies.
- Alice may be informed as Ax-Crazy, but she is both Not Evil, Just Misunderstood and has Authority in Name Only.
- Alice LOOKS Ax-Crazy, but later turns out to be Obfuscating Insanity as a means of making others scared of what she might do, as part of a Xanatos Gambit.
- Alice is extremely malicious and sadistic, but is also extremely intelligent and capable at her job. That is how she manages to keep her role as empress.
- Double Subverted:
- But that was a façade to hide her unhinged tendencies.
- But then she starts Becoming the Mask.
- Parodied: As soon as Alice becomes Class Representative, she begins going insane and demanding the most absurd things from her student body.
- Zig Zagged: Alice is actually a terrifyingly effective general and great at rallying her men with xenophobic rhetoric. Unfortunately she is horrible at keeping a self-sustaining empire stable and running without an external threat or target to raid to sustain her forces.
- Averted:
- Alice is neither Ax-Crazy nor incompetent at all.
- Alice has a realistic portrayal of mental illness and a realistic skillset for an empress.
- Enforced: "We have to show kids that not all rulers are like the ones that they hear about in fairy tales."
- Lampshaded: "Seriously has there ever been a sane emperor or empress who claims to be divine?"
- Invoked: Alice's advisors (who may or may not be her childhood friends and/or drunk at the time) encourage her to take full advantage of her absolute power.
- Exploited: One of Alice's advisors, seeing how mentally ill and incompetent Alice is, convinces the Senate to take part in an assassination plot, seeing as how the people would be glad to have Alice off the throne.
- Defied:
- Alice, sensing that she might go off the deep end as she continues ruling, seeks psychiatric help in order to curb her more savage desires.
- She may have a slave follow her around all the while whispering "Remember that you're human."
- After some self-reflection, Alice realizes that she does not have to be like every other emperor before her. This realization leads to her being able to calm down and become a Reasonable Authority Figure.
- Alice specifically hires ministers under her who can point out where her ideas would lead, and who can brave enough to be Honest Advisors or even to play Devil's Advocate against her so as to prevent her from abusing the power she has.
- Discussed: "Did you hear that our empress just appointed her horse as a senator?"
- Conversed: "Our empress has been collecting seashells as prisoners!" "What? Seashells?! She's gone mad, I tell you!"
- Implied: During public appearances, Alice is all smiles and sanity. But those disturbing rumors about her private practices had to come from somewhere...
- Deconstructed:
- The reason why Alice is mentally ill is because of the stress of being the ruler of an entire country; everyone from the commoners to the Senate, and even her immediate family, holds high expectations of her, and her fears of not living up to those expectations is what drives her over the edge.
- Alice has an epiphany about the consequences of her actions; stricken with grief and remorse at how she has turned her own countrymen against her, she takes a dagger and decides to end it all.
- Reconstructed:
- Realizing that her actions are not endearing her to the people, Alice steps down and lets one of her other family members become ruler.
- Alice is just a puppet empress, with a higher council regulating all the important aspects of the empire. And they actively exalt her madness as part of a Batman Gambit meant to paint their country in a bad light, so their enemies end up underestimating their true strength.
- Played for Laughs: Alice is Ax-Crazy and incompetent but also an Extreme Doormat. Any of her subjects can make her do what they want, making her an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain.
- Played for Drama: Alice's state is a sign of the start of a decline. While her ancestors were competent a precedent for political marriages to enlarge territory caused a decline that will only in tragedy for both her and everyone in her empire. Even 'good' outcomes will result in a bloody multilateral civil war.
- Played for Horror: Alice is running her country to the ground by ordering her troops to Rape, Pillage, and Burn their own country and casually crucifying anybody and anything that cares displease her (it's a good day when there's only a dozen dead people), and we see all of this in its utterly unmitigated "glory".
Go back to The Caligula, heathen, or I shall have you dipped in gasoline, set on fire, and used as my night light!
