Series / The 10th Kingdom

Once Upon a Time is Now.

"My name is Virginia...and I live on the edge of the forest!"

—Virginia begins her tale

Take just about every well-known Western Fairy Tale, myth, legend, oral history, and fantasy story known to man. Cross them with screwball comedy, an epic Hero's Journey, fantastic (for television, anyway) special effects, and a lot of surprising twists. Add a dash of tragedy and mystery, a sprinkling of some rather serious (or should we say, ''Grimm''?) issues, and some great British casting, and what do you get?

Not the Wicked Stepmother's potion, but the 2000 NBC/Hallmark miniseries The 10th Kingdom.

Virginia Lewis (Kimberly Williams-Paisley), a down-on-her-luck New York City-based waitress, and her ne'er-do-well janitor father Tony (John Larroquette), are accidentally dragged out of their boring, miserable lives when they cross paths with a golden retriever (actually an enchanted prince) and an ex-convict werewolf (actually, half-wolf) — one fleeing his stepmother the Evil Queen (Dianne Wiest), the other working for her (sometimes). Complications and hi-jinks result, as magic spills over into New York (the Tenth Kingdom of the title), and soon the foursome end up via magic mirror in the world of the Nine Kingdoms, where fairy tales are real but "Happy Ever After didn't last as long as we'd hoped." Pursued by vengeful Trolls and their odious father, and Rutger Hauer as a typically villainous but effectively chilling Huntsman, they must chase after the magic mirror and wend their way in and out of the lives of many fairy tale characters (always with a twist) in order to find their way home again.

Oh, and restore the prince to his throne, save the Kingdoms, learn a few valuable lessons, and discover some secrets that will resolve past tragedies. Something for everyone!

Not to be confused with The Twelve Kingdoms, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, or any of the several works named Seven Kingdoms.

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This TV miniseries provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Relish the Troll King. Upon hearing that his three children were captured without killing any enemy soldiers, he yells out, "Who wants to be whipped first?!" He wasn't just bluffing, either: after hearing that he's dead, the troll siblings cheer each other up by reminding each other that this means "No more beatings!" That said, they're still clearly upset when he dies and swear revenge on his killer (the Evil Queen uses this to her advantage and frames Virginia for the crime, telling them "the girl" poisoned him).
• Actor Allusion: Wolf is in trouble in Little Lamb Village, but Tony says he'll be able to help—he used to be a lawyer. Tony is played by John Larroquette, who also played D.A. Dan Fielding on Night Court
• Addictive Magic: The magic shoes of invisibility. The Troll King appears to already be suffering from a crippling addiction to them at the story's outset, and Virginia falls under their spell very quickly. Somewhat deconstructed as well: the Troll King has an established shoe fetish and Wolf thinks Virginia just has a strong desire to be invisible, shrugging it off himself. Played with and lampshaded in that one of the pieces from the soundtrack is actually entitled "Addicted to Magic"...but instead of playing during anything to do with the magic shoes, it appears when Wolf tempts Tony with the magic bean, during the Dog Prince's Urine Trouble scene, and when the magic mushrooms are tempting Tony to eat them in the Deadly Swamp.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Subverted. Wolf does get the girl in the end, but being a bad boy didn't help, and after his disastrous initial encounter with Virginia he spends a good part of the series reading self help books to reform himself. Played straight however with Sally and the shepherdesses, it seems. However, they're implied to be more an example of Really Gets Around, and directly accused as such at one point.
• Alliterative Name:
  • Prince Wendell Winston Walter White.
  • Wolf uses one with the Peeps. Warren Wolfson.
• All Trolls Are Different: Trolls are human-sized, ugly, with overdone mullets, and an obsession with leather. Especially shoes. It isn't clear if the shoe fetish is a racial trait or not: all of the Trolls who exhibit it are immediate family. Despite their human size, they are incredibly strong. At one point one was hit by a car, leaving a deep indent in the front of the car but barely moving the Troll. And they can read.
• Almost Kiss: Used when they get to the appropriately named Kissing Town, where love is literally in the air in the form of CGI butterflies. The first time is at Snow White's coffin, then later on the balcony, but thanks to the Rule of Three Wolf finally gets one the third time.
• Ambiguously Gay: Lord Rupert's sexual interests are never brought up, but his behavior is Always Camp.
• And the Adventure Continues: After returning home, Virginia mentions in passing that even though she and Wolf were able to live "happily ever after" for a short while, another crisis in the Nine Kingdoms broke out, with her stating that this was just "the First Book of the 10th Kingdom".
• Another Dimension: The world of the Nine Kingdoms to ours (and vice versa), linked via Magic Mirror. The scene where Prince first crosses over to New York (as well as when Virginia and Wolf return there at the end—but no other time) displays a whole series of mirror frames the traveler smashes through, implying there may be a whole network of alternate dimensions, mirror worlds, and alternate universes. (One rather exceptional Fan Fic, ''Reality'', made use of this notion by having the Wicked Stepmother continually try and change the course of events through different "shard" worlds splintered off by the power of her mirrors). The original VHS artwork, as well as the opening title sequence shown in the page picture, invokedreflects this by making the New York skyline and the fantasy world of the Nine Kingdoms literal parallel images in the water. It's a very interesting design motif that sadly didn't get pursued in the actual story. Whether it would have been in sequels, we'll never know.
• Apple of Discord: The Trolls are holding Virginia captive, and Wolf throws a box into the room. The note says that it's a present for the strongest, bravest Troll. Cue all three knocking each other out.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When the Trolls walk towards the Queen's cell in the prison, three signs pop up which say, in order of appearance: "Absolutely no communication with the prisoner", "Absolutely no physical contact with the prisoner", and "No food beyond this point". Considering who the Queen is, that third one makes quite a lot of sense, actually.
• Artifact of Attraction:
  • The Troll King's magic shoes again—the longer you have/wear them, the more you want to keep wearing them. This seems to depend on the user, the Troll King and Virginia get it hard but Wolf shrugs it off. Possibly because shoes that make you invisible are less valuable to animals or people who rely more on scent.
  • Magic items in general are implied to be this, and the more useful they are to you, the more addictive they are.
• Asleep for Days: Virginia, after the adventure ends. See Heroic BSoD for details.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Relish the Troll King. After seeing him not only continually abusing his children, but also spending most of a month attacking the Fourth Kingdom, ravaging the countryside, and imprisoning/flogging/slaughtering its people, it's quite satisfying to see him get poisoned by the Evil Queen (after rather stupidly consuming apples from the grove where he goes to parlay with her), then be decapitated.
  • Sally Peep is a downplayed example. The shepherdess is most certainly unlikable from the first moment she's encountered, not only hitting on Wolf despite him being interested only in Virginia but also acting like a smug Alpha Bitch for nearly her entire screen time—mostly due to her family's great wealth and status in the village making her feel entitled to all the attention and praise, though she also comes across as rather vain as well. So when she ends up dead, it's difficult to muster much sympathy. However, her flirting with Wolf is actually inadvertently encouraged by him (thanks to the moon being full), while Virginia has yet to reciprocate Wolf's interest. And while Sally's reaction to losing the shepherdess contest is another mark against her, knowing that the Peeps are so fortunate only because they've trapped the magic well water for only their own use makes her retaliation against her grandfather rather cathartic. Threatening to kill her if she tells anyone about the well, and then actually doing so after she destroys it, is also played for the disturbing drama it rightly should be; knowing her last word was to shriek her grandfather's name is rather heartbreaking.
  • The Gypsies are also portrayed as this, mainly due to the Curse they cast on Virginia and the fact that they traffic in sentient creatures. Plus their matriarch insists on giving Virginia a fortune telling when she tries to politely decline and drags out some painful memories. After seeing the malice with which the Gyspy Queen curses Virginia, and how much despair she's driven to by it, it's hard to feel too sorry for them as they get killed by the Huntsman. That said, there is at least some sympathy shown, even to the Queen crying over one of them, and her grandson who was also revealed to be a half-wolf, and had bonded with Wolf, is completely innocent but dies anyway. So this example is also somewhat downplayed.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Wolf is extraordinarily distracted by food.
• Auction: Thanks to the old Elf revealing what it really was (and receiving his reward for it), the Magic Mirror ends up being sold at one of these in Kissing Town. The heroes rush in with the money they'd earned gambling at the local casino...only to have the Huntsman pull a Whammy Bid on them thanks to the money he stole from the Elf. This of course leads into a reverse Hostage for MacGuffin situation, where the Huntsman will smash the mirror unless they give him Prince for the Evil Queen. Trying to find a way around that, it turns out, just makes things worse.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: A very interesting subversion: the crowning of King Wendell goes off with all the pomp and circumstance you could hope for, with tons of rich courtiers and royals in attendance, a panoply of gorgeous decorations and architecture, and a rousing final speech just prior. But not only does the royal toast which follows this end up seemingly killing all the guests, but it isn't even really Wendell being tested or crowned, it's the Evil Queen's dog under a spell. There is, however, a genuine version of the trope later when, after the heroes have saved the day, they're all given medals and other rewards.
• Awful Truth: In the final episode Virginia finally remembers why her mother left - she tried to drown Virginia and ran away. Tony knew the whole time but couldn't bring himself to tell her and noted Virginia didn't seem to have remembered the event, presumably because she blocked such a traumatic event from her mind.
• Babies Ever After: Played with at the end. At the same time that he is asking her to marry him, Wolf tells Virginia (who is completely unaware of anything unusual) that she is pregnant with their "wolf cub", claiming that he "just knows these things". But, as she says at the end, they did not have a Happily Ever After just yet, as there was more trouble ahead of them in the Kingdoms very soon.
• Badass Longcoat: The Huntsman.
• Banister Slide: Fake!Prince Wendell at his coronation ceremony.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: See Literal Genie, particularly the swamp example.
• Because Destiny Says So: Played with.
  • It is apparently Virginia's destiny to stop the Evil Queen, save all the monarchs of the Kingdoms, and restore Prince Wendell to his rightful throne, but the whole reason she is able to do so is because the Queen is her long-lost mother, so thus she has a special advantage; this might even be seen as her responsibility, a personal problem she must clean up after. She is also receiving help from her Spirit Advisor, Snow White, and at least part of her motivation in doing so is simply so she can get to the Traveling mirror and go home. Yet to judge by the Gypsy Queen's fortune she has "a destiny that stretches way back in time", and Snow White tells her that Wendell "needs you to save his kingdom, we all do," so you get the feeling there's something rather arbitrary about all this. The fairy godmother does do a very good (if slightly anvil-on-head) job of comparing her life to Virginia's to explain why she "found the right person." On the other hand, Virginia would never have come to the Kingdoms if Wendell hadn't knocked over the mirror when running from the Trolls and Wolf, then gone through it, there is no indication how or why the mirror ended up in the basement of a prison, and Christine becoming the Evil Queen was made possible by the Swamp Witch having a mirror which opened to New York. So clearly some sort of organizing principle seems to have guided the plot. By the end, after killing her mother in self-defense with the poison comb, when Wolf tells her it was not her fault, even Virginia seems to buy into it by saying the fateful words: "It was my destiny..."
  • One possible explanation as to how the mirror ended up in the basement of a prison is that the Evil Queen mentions to fake!Wendell that Snow White's Evil Stepmother once had five castles, and one of the prison guards mentions that the stuff in the basement of the Snow White Memorial Prison is from before the SWMP was a prison. It's possible that the prison was one of her castles, and that it was turned into a prison after her exile. Not only would that explain why a magic mirror just happened to be in the basement, it would also make for delicious irony that the Swamp Witch's apprentice was imprisoned in her mistress' former castle.
  • It is very strongly implied throughout the story that Virginia is actually a reincarnation of Snow White. She has the look—dark hair, pale skin, very blue eyes, and her mother left her when she was young. (Her mother being a combination of both the kindly figure who died and the Wicked Stepmother, since Christine tried to drown Virginia in a moment of madness, but Virginia still makes it clear she loved her mother very much and Christine reciprocated—even as the Evil Queen, she kept wanting to let Virginia go even though she didn't know why. The original Evil Stepmother was manipulating Virginia's mother into carrying out her revenge.) Snow White appears only before Virginia and guides her on her journey and Prince Wendell tells Virginia that on the day Snow White left, she left him a rose and told him they would meet again—just in another form.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: While in the dungeons of Wendell's castle, Virginia and Tony come across a carved message, in German, left by Wilhelm Grimm.
• Big Applesauce: The portal which opens between our world and the world where fairy tales are real is, of course, located in New York's Central Park. What makes this miniseries a particularly striking example of the trope is how the opening titles quite conspicuously, and jaw-droppingly, magically morph New York City into a fantasy land to suggest the crossing over of magic into the real world. The sequence, quite justifiably, won an Emmy. To watch the sequence, go here.

• Bond One-Liner: The Queen, after poisoning all of the guests at "Wendell's" coronation.
  Queen: Anyone for seconds?
• Book Ends: "My name is Virginia, and I live at the edge of the forest."
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Wolf's list of self-help books. Granted, he picked the last one up by mistake.
  Wolf: Don't worry, I'm not who I used to be. I've had extensive therapy. I realize I have been using food as a substitute for love and I have the books to prove it - "Breaking the Cycle", "Heal Yourself in 7 Days", "Stop Blaming Yourself, Please, and "Help for the Bedwetting Child", which I picked up by mistake.
• Burn the Witch!: The Little Lamb Villagers' answer to the wolf problem. Truth in Television for people once believed to be werewolves (since most werewolves were also believed to be witches who received their new shapes as part of a Deal with the Devil), though how a Real Life historical attitude ended up in the Kingdoms is...thought-provoking. (See Fantasy World Map.)

• Cassandra Truth: At the coronation, the Dog Prince breaks down and confesses that he's really just a dog. Sadly for him, the crowd believes he's being metaphorical and humble, claiming he doesn't deserve the crown.
• Catchphrase:
  • Wolf has two: "Huff Puff" when he's excited or surprised and "Oh, Cripes!".
  • The Troll children like to shout "Suck an elf!" when annoyed.
• Cave Mouth: The cave entrance is not just a dragon's head, it's an actual dragon's head.
• Chalk Outline: Parodied—after Sally Peep is murdered, the location of her body is outlined in chalk, including her shepherd's crook. The Novelization lampshades this by having Tony reflect in his thoughts: "They were nothing if not thorough."
• Chewing the Scenery: Wolf, on the day/night of the full moon, is eager to eat everything in sight, particularly the scenery.
• Cliffhanger: Not as many as you might think, since not every commercial break was at an exciting, momentous development. The endings of each of its five parts, however, do all count. Part 1 ended with the Evil Queen revealing she was the apprentice/successor of Snow White's stepmother (aka the Swamp Witch). Part 2 ended with the capture of Virginia by the Huntsman, Part 3 with the revelation that the mirror was now at Auction at a price they could never pay, and Part 4 ended when Virginia and Tony realized the Queen was Virginia's mother. And Part 5 ends with mention that there was soon another crisis in the kingdoms.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Parodied by the Troll children with Virginia (complete with Burly refusing to accept her confession because that went against tradition, and wasn't as fun), but played horrifyingly straight with Relish and the red-hot shoes, as well as Tony getting beanstalk lashings. The first got interrupted and the second used a Discretion Shot / Distant Reaction Shot, but even so...
• Commie Land: The Ninth Kingdom is run by a "Dwarf Union," with a banner that includes red figures and crossed pickaxes, and they even call people "comrade." Them insistently referring to Dragon Mountain as "our mountain" also becomes hilarious in hindsight due to memes.
• Courtroom Antics: Virginia exclaims, after Wolf has practically incriminated himself while being grilled by the Judge, "Your Honor, my client is suffering from post-menstrual tension!" Wolf's existential self-defense is "Ohhhh, I'm twisting everything I'm saying!"
• Courtroom Episode: In Little Lamb Village, Wolf is placed on trial for the murder of Sally Peep.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Tony defeats all three super-humanly strong troll siblings in a running battle during the finale.
• Cutting the Knot: The father accidentally stumbles upon this when dealing with a frog who is giving them an Only Smart People May Pass moment involving two doors, one leads to where they need to go, the other horrible doom. He picks the frog up, rants at him for these needlessly stupid puzzles, then throws the frog in one of the doors. The loud explosion that follows clues them into which door they need to go to.
• Darkest Hour: Kissing Town, and just afterward on Dragon Mountain: Believing Wolf to have lied to her and used her, Virginia turns down Wolf's marriage proposal and walks out on him, causing him to return to the Evil Queen's service in his despair. Or so it seems. Tony, after getting drunk and being trapped in the Huntsman's tower, causes the Magic Mirror to fall off the roof and smash into a thousand pieces. With the Troll King dead, the Evil Queen's plan is back on schedule and the Dog Prince looks like a hero; meanwhile the real Wendell is losing his mind and becoming more doggy. The Huntsman is still after Virginia and Tony, the latter cursed by seven years' bad luck, and the Troll children, freed from gold, are also after them thanks to the Evil Queen telling them Virginia killed their father.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Wolf turns out to be a hero by the end, but along the way he still displays a number of darker traits which get used to their advantage.
• Deadly Scratch: Snow White's poisoned comb kills within seconds from the slightest injury. In their final confrontation, Virginia grabs it from the Queen and scratches her with it, leaving them just enough time for a Dying Truce.
• Deadpan Snarker: Tony, Wolf, Virginia, Prince Wendell, the Evil Queen, the prison warden... pretty much everybody, really.
• Death by Irony: The Huntsman. And for that matter, the Queen.
• Death Equals Redemption: Not entirely, but for all the horrible, evil acts she had done, Wendell does ensure that Christine's body is treated with dignity and respect, most likely of his gratitude to both Virginia and Tony.
• Decapitation Presentation: The Queen cuts off the Troll King's head. Fake Wendell holds the head out the carriage window as they ride through the village.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Virginia shows traits of this due to being left by her mother, and the Queen, her mother, is finally proud of her daughter as she lays dying
• Despair Event Horizon: Though she was apparently mentally unstable beforehand, Christine had a complete breakdown after nearly drowning her young daughter. She immediately ran away which led to her discovering the portal to the Swamp Witch’s lair and subsequently becoming the Evil Queen.
• Distant Reaction Shot: To Tony being given fifty beanstalk lashes, complete with increasingly distant shots of Snow White Memorial Prison.
• Distressed Damsel: Though sometimes subverted.
• Dope Slap: The queen gets all three Troll children in one swing.
• Double Agent: Wolf was actually working for the Queen, but only to fool her so he could save the poisoned guests and eventually Virginia.
• The Dragon: The Huntsman is the Queen's Dragon. Relish the Troll King was supposed to be this, but went out of control quickly.
• Dream Sequence: Virginia and her father have an extremely bizarre and disturbing example of this, complete with the ghost of Snow White doing her level best to snap them out of it. Christine's usage of the poisoned comb on her little girl's hair is particularly chilling, while the weird Electra-complex suggested by Virginia being Tony's wife (not to mention Wendell the dog as her brother—or is that prophetic?) is just plain odd. But what do you expect from something inspired by eating magic mushrooms? Of special note (something which appears throughout the miniseries) is the emphasis on the decidedly more grim aspects of fairy tales...
• Driven to Suicide: The dog in Wendell's body nearly hangs himself because he's unhappy in a human body. Poor thing.
• Dying as Yourself: The Queen finally remembers everything and reverts to her pre-madness personality...right after Virginia is forced to mortally wound her in self-defense.
• The Dying Walk: How the Queen reacts to being hit with her own poison.
• Easily Forgiven: Despite having every reason to hate her mother, Virginia still loves her and is genuinely horrified when she realized that she scratched her mother's neck with the poisoned comb, thus killing her.
• Ear Worm: The Trolls discover The Bee Gees while in "The 10th Kingdom", and subsequently can't get the music out of their heads.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: For all the crap he goes through, the poor dog prince is able to return to normal and Wendell decrees that he will get to live out his life in luxury with "a mountain of bones".
• Embarrassing First Name: Juliet The Blind Woodsman. Tony remarks that it's no wonder a man with such a name turned into a sadist who gleefully beheads people.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Despite being abusive and dysfunctional to the extreme, the Troll King Relish and his children genuinely love each other. He explodes with rage when the Queen threatens to kill his children, and after he dies, they immediately swear vengeance against Virginia, who they were tricked into thinking was his killer.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The Huntsman. He'll massacre an entire gypsy camp, shows almost no regret for killing his own son, and does pretty much everything the Evil Queen asks of him, but apparently poaching just pisses him right the hell off. Although this could just be a case of not wanting anyone to steal from his forest, or that only he is allowed to poach there.
• Evil Overlooker: Relish, the Troll King, on the front cover of the DVD set.
• Evil Overlord: The Queen.
• Exploding Closet: Happens to Wolf with a broom closet near the end when he, Tony, and Virginia are looking in Wendell's palace for the Evil Queen's room of Magic Mirrors. Played with in that as a wolf his senses should have told him it was the wrong room, except at the time he was actually working for the Queen (but only to fool her so he could save the poisoned guests and eventually Virginia), so he did this on purpose to keep anyone from being suspicious.
• Fairy Tale Free-for-All: The Nine Kingdoms (the titular "Tenth Kingdom" represents our world) were founded by the heroes and heroines of the classic Grimm fairy tales (who didn't so much write the stories as stumble upon said world and steal the stories). Only the Third, Fourth and Ninth Kingdoms were physically seen in the miniseries, but representatives from most of the others made cameos.
• Fake Defector: A particularly well-done example in Wolf, who seems to change sides at the speed of light. Only in the very end do we find out whose side he had been on.
• False Rape Accusation: When Wolf is put on trial for the murder of Sally Peep, one of the other shepherdesses falsely claims that he'd previously attempted to forcibly "touch" them. (In reality, they approached and aggressively flirted with him, and he never touched them.) When Virginia and Wolf call her out for the obvious slander and imply that she Really Gets Around, the judge accuses them of using the "she was asking for it" defense.
• Fantastic Arousal: Wolf's tail. See the entry on "What Do You Mean, It's Not For Kids?".
• Fantastic Racism:
  • The half-wolves. Granted, wolves are predators and are traditionally viewed as evil and vicious (at least sometimes). But the at-times over-the-top words and actions of the Little Lamb Villagers (and Wendell) can leave one feeling a bit ill. (Which was surely the intended effect—just an example where the writer did their work a bit too well.) Choice examples:
    • From the rigged trial (itself hearkening back to the legal woes of many a black man in the South between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Era):
      Virginia: Look at my client! Is he a killer? No! But he is a stranger, and stranger equals wolf, and wolf equals killer. Is that what we're saying?
      Judge: Very well put, on to the sentencing!
    • After Virginia agrees to defend Wolf:
      Virginia: I don't think he killed anyone!
      Tony: That's what you want to think. There's a dead girl out there, that could've been you! He's a wolf, that's what wolves do!
      Wendell: That's the first intelligent thing you've said, Anthony.
    • At the same time, Sally and the other shepherdesses' (all noticeably Caucasian and mostly blondes) lustful pursuit of (dark-haired) Wolf despite his fake surname and his bushy wolf tail suggests the supposed irresistible temptation of an exotic race... while the Peep boys' apparently violent defense of their sisters' purity, and Wendell's assumption in Kissing Town that Wolf would "have [Virginia] on her back before you can say Happily Ever After" resonate far too strongly with the sort of black-man-rapes-white-woman fears exemplified in The Birth of a Nation (1915) to be coincidence. Again, this would be simply a very pointed way of addressing racism in a fantasy setting, the entire point of this trope—in this case, in order to make it relevant to any children in the audience. Basically, Simon Moore showed his work, and the fact the treatment of wolves/half-wolves comes off as so disturbingly familiar is due to the blatant, but entirely necessary, use of this trope to make a point. Scott Cohen, the actor playing him, is also Jewish, another possible influence as Jewish men have suffered from the same reputation in Europe at times (up to and including being lynched on dubious charges of rape, along with the blood libel against Jews generally).
  • It is played at first as if the Gypsies are also guilty of this, but once Wolf reveals the Gypsy Queen's grandson is also a wolf, he is accepted happily among them. Ironically, Wolf was the one who seemed to indulge in Roma stereotypes when warning Virginia and Tony as they came into the Gypsies' camp.
• Fantasy World Map:
  • On the wall of Snow White Memorial Prison, so that both the hapless heroes Trapped in Another World and the viewers can learn exactly what the Nine Kingdoms look like. Unlike most versions of the fantasy map, it displays places which are never visited in the miniseries, since the story remains confined to the Fourth Kingdom (with brief forays into the Third and Ninth). It also has the amusing location marker "You Are Imprisoned Here" — this becomes a slight Running Gag in the Novelization with a map in Kissing Town marked "You Are Romantically Here" — and has the interesting feature of being remarkably similar in outlines to Europe... a feature which has led to some interesting theories among the fandom, ranging from the Nine Kingdoms having diverged from our timeline centuries ago to our world being a nonmagical, cursed offshoot of the Kingdoms.
  • According to Simon Moore, if any of the sequels he'd planned to write had been allowed to make it out of Development Hell, they would have involved visits to or taken place entirely in each of the other kingdoms. The first sequel, which was to be called House of Wolves (about Wolf's past), would have been set in the Second Kingdom, Red Riding Hood's.
• Felony Misdemeanor:
  • The three Troll children, thanks to their love of shoes and leather, consider it a terrible crime when shoes are "very badly cared for—scuffed and cracked and neglected", and Blabberwort tells Virginia so. Lampshaded in the Novelization, first when Virginia notes Blabberwort's tone "suggested she had committed mass murder" and then when she decides they weren't "bent on destruction, only on defending shoes".
  • Clayface the Goblin is in prison for "carving". Tony worries that this means carving flesh, but Clayface is only ever seen carving figurines.
• Forced Transformation: Both Human and Dog Wendell are transformed into the other by the Queen's magic, and both are unhappy about their respective new forms.
• Fortune Teller: The self-styled Gypsy Queen. Interestingly, we see her use three different forms of it—Tarot cards for Tony, palm-reading for Wolf, and scrying for Virginia (with a bit of Sympathetic Magic thrown in through a lock of her hair). Of course Tony's fortune consists of nothing but gaining and losing wealth and a whole series of fictitious cards painting him out to be an idiot. (The only real one, the Fool, might have been misread thanks to Hollywood stereotypes, since Tony does turn out to later have some Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass traits.) In the Novelization she even says "I see nothing more beneath the surface"—whether this is completely accurate or an example of the fortune teller being misled by her own first impressions is left to the reader to decide. Wolf and Virginia's fortunes, in any event, are insightful and correct, with his predicting the future (albeit taken out of context to cast him in the worst possible light) and hers hinting at her Dark and Troubled Past and Because Destiny Says So heroine status.
• For Want Of A Nail: About half way through the second episode Tony interrupts Wolf when he's talking to the Queen in a mirror. If Wolf hadn't managed to turn the mirror over he and Virginia would have known about Wolf's conflicted loyalties far earlier. And if he got a good look at the Queen's face it's very possible he would have have recognized her as his ex-wife and Virginia's mother. Assuming he told Virginia straight away this would have probably lead to them breaking off their quest for the mirror and confronting her far earlier. Virginia would have wanted to see her... if only to get answers to all the questions she had about why she left and how she ended up in the Nine Kingdoms.
• Fractured Fairytale: Let's just say that the very first indication in-story that we'll be exploring a world based on fairy tales is the onscreen locator telling us we're at the Snow White Memorial Prison...and it just gets more twisted and tongue-in-cheek from there.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: The Queen makes her pet dog Prince switch bodies with Prince Wendell, which is what gets the entire plot going.
• Fruit Cart: While in New York, a police car takes out several outdoor book stands and a fruit cart for good measure.
• Gag Penis: Sally Peep mistakes Wolf as having one when she sees the bulge in the back of his pants caused by his tail.
• Genre Savvy: Subverted—for a miniseries which purports to deconstruct fairy tales, surprisingly few characters seem to possess this trait. Street smart Virginia certainly doesn't, other than when she realizes that "everyone in this place is crazy!" And unsurprisingly, most of the times he attempts it, Tony fails woefully. The one character who does play it straight fairly consistently is, naturally, Wolf. Exhibit A, his knowledge of fairy tale endings: "We either live happily ever after or we get killed by horrible curses." Exhibit B: his explanation, after Prince gets turned to gold, that "things have a way of bouncing back here"...only to admit, when confronted by Tony, that he was "just saying that" and proceeding to tempt Prince with a stick with delicious snark. Exhibit C: his stopping Tony from eating an apple at Snow White's cottage, because it probably grew from the one that poisoned her.
  Tony: What is it with you people? What kind of twisted upbringing did you have? You know, why can't you just say, "Oh, that'll be a hundred gold coins"? Why does it always have to be, "No! Not unless you lay a magic egg, or count the hairs on that giant's ass"?
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Averted in that the "Golden Age" is referred to several times in which the Nine Kingdoms prospered under the rule of their queens, and we specifically never see anything but wisdom, goodness, and heroism from Snow White and Cinderella. It is played straight, however, with the Evil Queen. Nowhere is this more apparent than when she reveals herself to the servants in Wendell's castle.
  Evil Queen: If asked, you will say that your master, the prince, has returned and is well. If I hear one whisper, one rumor that anything is amiss, I will kill your children in front of you... Tonight, every king, queen, emperor, and dignitary throughout the Nine Kingdoms will be attending Prince Wendell's coronation ball. The evening will proceed as planned, with one tiny exception—we are going to murder all the guests.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: The Troll children.
• Grail in the Garbage: The mirror which allows passage between our world and the Nine Kingdoms turns up for dirt cheap at an auction. When the auctioneers find out what it can do, however... It was also this to begin with, since it was first found amid piles of junk in the basement of Snow White Memorial Prison, something which is never explained.
• G-Rated Drug: Played straight and lampshaded with the Trolls' use of dwarf moss (it makes one "see fairies" and all that).
• G-Rated Mental Illness: Played with. Christine is described as having been mentally ill and was "getting worse and worse." No specifics are given about the illness, but her homicidal tendencies toward young Virginia are disconcerting to say the least.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The original Evil Queen. In addition to her role in the tale of Snow White, she was the one who drew Christine Lewis to the Nine Kingdoms and mentored her into becoming her successor so Christine could finish her work.
• Happily Ever After: An in-universe principle, but one which also comes true for Wendell and, to some extent it seems, for Wolf and Virginia.
• Heel–Face Turn: Wolf.
• Heroic BSoD: After killing her own mother in self defence and realising what she has done, Virginia goes into a version of one of these - she falls asleep for almost 2 days from both physical and emotional exhaustion.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • The Huntsman gets hit in the heart by the magic bolt from his magic crossbow.
  • The Peep Family, who stole the magic well water that belonged to their town and used it for their own gain for decades, didn't count on Tony and Virginia finding out and using it to their advantage in the Shepherdess contest. And much later, Sally Peep, utterly embarrassed at having lost, gets back at her grandfather (whom she blames for her loss) by destroying the well water's hiding place. She planned to reveal her family's secret to the town, but Wilfred killed her. She tried screaming his name but everyone who heard it thought she was saying "wolf", so naturally they were planning on executing Wolf. Tony and Wendell discover what really happened and out Wilfred and the entire family to the whole town. Wilfred admits what he did with no other available option, Sally's mother goes into a homicidal rage and tries to kill Wilfred, and a riot breaks out. The next day the town seems all right, but the Peeps aren't heard from again.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs:
  • The fairy tale universe has some interesting cover-ups for swearing. The Trolls are fond of the phrase "Suck an elf!", the phrase "What in the fairying forest?" is heard at least twice, and Mrs. Merrypip uses "Fruit of the forest!"
  • Cinderella apparently went through "magic surgery".
• Holding Out for a Hero: The Fourth Kingdom's entire defense strategy seems to be "let the prince take care of it". When the Trolls invade while he's missing they put up no resistance whatsoever. Relish even comments that war's much more fun when there's no enemy. Thankfully, the Troll army turns out to be similarly limited.
• House of Broken Mirrors: Interesting variation: the mirror in question was not smashed by the person looking into it, or in order to keep from seeing something terrible (it was a simple accident), and because of this it is no longer magical. However, considering the point this happens in the narrative (the smashing of the mirror itself keeps the characters from getting back to our world, their princely companion is losing his mind in the dog body he's been trapped in, and Virginia just learned (she thinks) that Wolf didn't love her and so she has left him), having the heroine see her shattered reflection in the pieces they've managed to gather is still extremely symbolic.
• Hypocrite:
  • The Peep family. They call Virginia a cheat during the shepherdess contest, but they had been cheating for years because they blocked up their village's wishing well.
  • Also Wolf, a victim of Fantastic Racism, having prejudices against Gypsies. ("Do not refuse anything they offer you, but do not consume anything you haven't seen them eat first.") Granted, that particular band ends up placing a Curse on Virginia, but that is only because she frees the magic birds and ruins their livelihood...
• I Always Wanted to Say That:
  • Acorn says this when he tells Virginia to go into the cellar.
  Acorn: Maybe what you seek is down there.
  Virginia: What do you mean by that?
  Acorn: I don't know. I just always wanted to say it.
  • Wolf also says this in regards to asking Virginia to drop her long hair so he can climb it.
• I Can't Believe I'm Saying This: At Snow White's cottage.
  Tony: Now here's something I never thought I'd be asking: what happened to Snow White after she married the prince?
• I Choose to Stay: Tony, mainly because of the consequences of his Genre Blind wishes have left him in major legal trouble back home in New York City. Ironic, considering for most of the series he was absolutely determined to get back home.
• Idiot Ball: The Dwarves of Dragon Mountain Store their magic mirrors all lined up like dominoes, just waiting for someone with bad luck to destroy them all.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Although never actually spoken, it is heavily implied (and even nearly subverted) during the scene at the Huntsman's treehouse, when Wolf is about to kill him with the magic axe and Virginia stops him.
  Virginia: No! We can't kill him.
  Wolf: Of course we can, he'd kill us!
  Virginia: That's not the point, he's helpless!
  Wolf: Exactly why we should kill him now!
  Virginia: Wolf, no!
  Wolf: Awwww, he's gonna come after us!
  Virginia: I don't care, we're not killing him.
  Wolf: You're gonna regret this moment.
  • And of course, he's right.
• I'll Take Two Beers Too: Two examples, both from the Grill on the Park. One diner, there with his wife, orders a slew of drinks and dishes, then follows this up with "And my wife will have..." Meanwhile Wolf's order of lamb with six glasses of warm milk highlights his Big Eater nature.
• Ill-Timed Sneeze: How the Huntsman catches Virginia.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Wolf tries to cook and eat Virginia's grandmother, but the stove's a bit too small. Well, he is the grandson of the Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood. Later, however, he confesses he was just playing. Given the playful nature of wolves that he exemplifies, this is believable, though he does get very tempted by the shepherdesses, in more ways than one. This is primarily due to them arriving in the town at the absolute worst time for him to be around sheep and such, though, with the full moon bringing out his wolfish side.
• Implacable Man: The Huntsman.
  "I move slowly, but I always get what I want."
• Important Haircut: Virginia has a Life-Saving Haircut.
• Improbable Hairstyle: Ironically Virginia's long hair is completely justified - a Gypsy Curse that prevents it from being cut and makes it grow at an accelerated rate. However the short hair she ends up with raises a few questions. Since it was cut with an axe, it's surprisingly even. And Wolf acts as if getting it that short was an accident - yet to get it that way he'd practically have to be dangerously close to beheading Virginia. Virginia should also have been well able to cut the hair herself so one wonders why she got Wolf to do it. (Perhaps this is intended to show that this axe is razor sharp and can be operated like normal razor, this way it is a bit heavy for Virginia, of course. And Wolf tried to get his fingers as close to her head as possible, no doubt).
• Intoxication Ensues: Despite being told by the fairies to not eat anything in the forest under any circumstances, Tony and Virgina eat the wild mushrooms. They get giggly, pass out, and end up in a strange, joint nightmare.
• It Tastes Like Feet: Subversion. Tony tastes baked beanstalk (no, not baked beans. BEANSTALK). "It tastes like an old mattress!" "No, it doesn't. Old mattresses have a sweaty, meaty taste."
• Jerkass: Prince Wendell, at the beginning (he gets better through his time as a dog), and plenty of minor characters encountered throughout the kingdom. The Troll King also.
• Kangaroo Court: With a jury made up of sheep in this case.
• Karmic Death: A number of characters throughout, minor and major. From major, The Troll King, killed by the Queen while attempting to backstab her; the Huntsman, killed by his own magic crossbow (which he even fired the time it killed him); and the Queen herself, of course, killed by a poison comb, after attempting to poison the royalty of the Nine Kingdoms and making poison her weapon of choice in general. For minor, Wilf Peep is strongly implied to have been killed by Sally's mother after Tony revealed he killed her.
• Keystone Army: The Troll King's armies conquer about half of the Fourth Kingdom in Wendell's absence, if the maps are to be believed, but the entire invasion apparently collapses after their king dies.
• Kindness Button: It wasn't a good idea for Virginia to free the talking birds, as it gets her cursed by the gypsy matriarch, but when one of them mentions she has babies waiting for her at home and they will starve without her, it clearly hits too close to home for Virginia for her to ignore.
• Knights and Knaves: Parodied, lampshaded, and otherwise completely hung out to dry. Oddly enough this is still completely in the spirit of the original, since the puzzle as presented here contains a logical contradiction^note the guardian explains the rules then ends with "I always lie", which neither someone who always tells the truth nor someone who always lies would be capable of saying and cannot be solved normally.
• Lampshade Hanging: Constantly, mainly on the absurdity of the fairy tales the characters encounter for real.
• Lampshaded Double Entendre: Invoked by Virginia when she tries to defend Wolf during his trial and suggests that the Peep girls are the easiest shepherdesses in the village. Cue shocks from most of the people present, as well as quite a few giggles from some of the other shepherdesses. Of course, it seemed to do more harm than good, considering what this "trial" really was.
• Large Ham: Wolf, most certainly, and also the Troll King and his children. The Queen mostly averts Evil Is Hammy and is normally underplayed and calm, outside of a couple of scenes.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The swamp seems to work this way, in a truly disturbing way of forcing the Idiot Ball onto people. You get warned explicitly not to eat or drink anything, avoid doing so when the food is literally begging to be eaten, and then unexplainably forget every single warning given to you. Then when you remember the rules, you forget that you've already broken them.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Virginia gets pregnant by Wolf with no intent to.
• Literal Ass-Kissing: Because of his wish, Butt-Monkey Tony has his boss follow him around and continually try to do this. Tony ends up having to shoo him away frequently. The rest of Murray's family eventually shows up and ends up giving him the same treatment. It doesn't help that at least one of the Murrays must have been something of a brown-noser already, since he insists on kissing Tony's ass repeatedly. (Or could that also have been covered under the "and be my slaves forever" part?)
  Tony: No, no! Once was enough.
• Literal Genie:
  • Tony's dragon dung bean fulfills this trope to a tee: his first wish of making his landlord and his family become his slaves included the phrase 'and kiss my ass'...so every single Murray family member insists on doing exactly that with obsessive attention. The beer in the fridge is indeed neverending, to the point of making it explode, the vacuum he asked to 'clean the entire house' follows the directions to the letter (including trying to vacuum up the curtains), and even the beneficial wish of being able to speak to Wendell the dog is limited to only Tony being able to hear him, since he said "I" rather than "we". And when he wishes for money, it is stolen from the bank, and the cops are quick to track it down.
  • This also occurs later in the Deadly Swamp (because Tony never learns):
  Fairy #1: Oh look, they're all chained up! That can't be helping!
  Fairy #2: Would you like to be separated from each other?
  Tony: More than you can imagine.
  (the fairies cast a spell, making their manacles fall off; Tony and Virginia each look around, only to find they're alone in different parts of the swamp)
  Tony: Hey! When I said we wanted to be separated, I didn't mean literally!
• Literal Transformative Experience: The immature Royal Brat Prince Wendell gets usurped, transformed into a dog, and chased out of the kingdom. The Break the Haughty experience, combined with being forced to cooperate with and rely on others for the first time, forges him into a much better person by the time he regains his human form and throne.
• A Little Something We Call "Rock and Roll": In a "shepherdess contest" which includes a singing portion, Virginia goes with "We Will Shear You" (in the style of Queen's "We Will Rock You").
• Love at First Sight: Implied with Virginia and Wolf's first encounter. Instead of being in pain or angry, Wolf treats the vase being bashed over his head like it's nothing and grins.
• Love Is in the Air: The entire purpose of the ludicrous Kissing Town, which makes this trope quite literal, since not only are there magical hearts floating everywhere around every happy couple getting married, but every time Virginia seems ready to dismiss Wolf as a love interest, in swoop the hearts to change her mind and turn her into a hopeless romantic. They even form a gigantic heart over the pair's heads when they share their first kiss.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Inverted, see below.
• Luke, You Are My Father: Virginia has to tell the Evil Queen that she is her long-forgotten daughter.
• Mage in Manhattan: The Trolls, but only for a short while.
• Magic A Is Magic A: Despite the fact that in part one, Wendell's transformation into a dog and of the dog into him is shown through a now-somewhat-dated but still effective slow-morph, his later restoration at the end of the series occurs in only a few split seconds while he and the Dog Prince whirl around in each others' arms and then fly apart with a burst of magical sparkles. The only explanation for this sudden change in the speed of transformation is an attempt to show off the special effects, most likely as a minor example of the Rule of Cool. (More dramatic, after all!).
• Magic Mirror: Lots of these. Besides the main set of mirrors that the Evil Queen has ("mirrors to travel, mirrors to spy, mirrors to remember, mirrors to forget, mirrors to rule the world!"), people can use them like videophones. The Huntsman even has a small pocket mirror that acts as a video cellphone! At one point, the heroes are shown to a mirror which answers questions, and finds that that particular kind of mirror is incapable of even understanding a question that isn't spoken in rhyme.
• The Man Behind the Man: Or in this case woman behind the woman, since it's the Swamp Witch behind the Queen.
• Methuselah Syndrome: Cinderella, complete with humorous implications.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: After a while, Prince Wendell becomes dumber and starts to think and act like a dog, while the dog also slowly starts thinking more like a human (but never quite gets it), although the latter may simply be training.
• The Mirror Shows Your True Self:
  • Inversion: the Queen uses a hypnotic mirror which shows her merely standing behind Virginia, when in fact she is strangling her. It isn't until Virginia glances to the side and sees the truth in another mirror that she is able to break free.
  • Played with when Wendell, Tony and Virginia get lost in the dwarves' mines. As Wendell stands in front of the Truth mirror, it shows his human form instead of his dog form; while this is something the audience (and Tony and Virginia) already knew, it was not known to the dwarves, which is critically important in keeping them all from being sentenced to death for trespassing.
• Missing Mom: Christine is even stated to be missing. Until we find out she's the Evil Queen.
• Mood Whiplash: The entire first disc (or third, roughly) is very goofy and humorous, but the second grows far more dark to the point that the Troll children are the only steady comic relief. Though they're out of commission for awhile.
• Most Common Card Game: The aristocrats at the casino play Happy Family and Snap.
• Move Along, Nothing to See Here: Used when the rich elf dies. Made more amusing by the exact wording used:
  Sheriff: Move along, nothing to see here...just a dead elf, wings ain't flapping anymore...
• Mushroom Samba: Via the magic mushrooms in the Deadly Swamp. Literally, since they sing and sway.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Virginia after she kills her mother, the Evil Queen. She even says the trope name (minus the "my God").
  • Not spoken, but Virginia's mother's reaction when she realized that she was trying to drown her own daughter says it all.
  • Later on, Christine also acknowledges her horrible actions as the Queen. Her final words before dying "I sold my soul," sums up her feelings of regret.
• Mysterious Parent: Virginia's mother, who is the Evil Queen.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Virginia frees the magic birds from the Gypsy camp, so they won't get eaten and used in youth and beauty spells—and what does she get for her troubles? A curse of hair that never stops growing, which ends up getting her captured by the Huntsman. Sure, taking away the Gypsies' livelihood after they had shown the travelers hospitality (sort of) wasn't a wise move on her part, but it certainly doesn't seem fair to punish her for being sympathetic to a Talking Animal. Of course the Gypsies immediately get Laser-Guided Karma courtesy of the Huntsman...but so does the young wolf-boy, who never did anything wrong. Grim, indeed.
• Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: In an odd variation, despite living in the Big Applesauce, Virginia thinks to herself (in voiceover narration) on the way to work at the beginning of the miniseries that she knew "nothing exciting was ever going to happen" to her and "some people just lead quiet lives". Cue her running into a golden retriever on her bicycle who is actually a transformed prince from the world of fairy tales, and...
• Novelization: Co-written under the pseudonym Kathryn Wesley, by the husband and wife team of Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith, and based on an earlier version of the screenplay. See Trivia for more details.
• Oddly Small Organization: Tony appears to be the only employee in his building. This means that despite only officially being a janitor, he's also expected to maintain the plumbing, electricity, and elevators. The miniseries does imply (and the novelization makes it clearer) that Tony's position comes with the apartment, which is not exactly typical of janitors, but in general it seems likely from the condition of the building that Murray is just that much of a cheapskate, insisting Tony do all that work for the pay of one job so he wouldn't have to hire anyone else.
• Offing the Offspring:
  • Virginia's mother tried to drown her daughter when she was younger. She tries to choke her to death several times later too. Although the last example is done without her pulling away in horror at her actions.
  • invoked Also, Wilfred Peep kills his own granddaughter to keep from having the secret of the family's magic well revealed to the town. If you listen closely to the mob after Sally's killer is revealed, her mother, quite justifiably, screams her intention to kill him in retribution.
• Oh, Crap!: Wolf often exclaims "Oh, cripes!"
• One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: Virginia and Wolf have a single tryst, from which she gets pregnant.
• Only One Name: Wolf. Oddly, because of him being a werewolf this also makes him an example of Species Surname (just without the first name).
• Only Smart People May Pass: Though on one occasion this is subverted — confronted with two doors and told by a toad that one is the right door and the other "will lead to a horrible death," Tony angrily picks it up, decries how stupid the whole scenario is, and throws it through a door at random. It explodes, so they take the other door. Oddly enough this is the only logical solution, since the version of Knights and Knaves it gives is unsolvable (the toad gives the rules ending with "I always lie", meaning the rules themselves are in doubt). Alternatively, the "I always lie" rule might only apply once the puzzle has properly begun (his descriptions of the doors certainly are truthful), in which case Virginia and Wolf are majorly overthinking a very straightforward puzzle.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Though conspicuously beardless. And apparently Communist. (Which considering what hard workers they are, and how much they would surely hate being exploited and looked down upon, makes a twisted kind of sense.)
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Though admittedly we only meet a half-wolf, not a true werewolf. To judge from Wolf, Nine Kingdoms wolves do not seem to be vulnerable to silver, change only on the three nights of the full moon, and while changed have no control over their actions and no memory of what they have done. They also seem to be afflicted by the 'take on lupine mannerisms and characteristics' aspect of this trope, since Wolf is constantly scratching at his temple, whines and whimpers and growls, nuzzles Virginia, and scrapes the ground with his feet to cover his tracks—although this may merely be a product of actor Scott Cohen's enthusiastic character immersion. What makes the half-wolves interesting is the twists: they always possess tails, even in human form, which change size with the time of the month and apparently act as erogenous zones, and explicit reference is made to the female cycle by how Wolf starts gaining PMS-like symptoms as the full moon approaches and, when fighting the change, ends up with...cramps. Still more interestingly, it is never truly explained what the term 'half-wolf' actually means. Are they the literal product of a coupling between a full wolf and a human, and this is what grants them their ability to change forms? Or is it merely a euphemism for werewolf, which could be considered a half-wolf because they can also appear as humans? Or is it even possible, taking into account the prejudice against them in the Kingdoms, that the term is meant to be parallel to mulattos, quadroons, and octaroons in the real world—so if a half-wolf had a child with a human, their offspring would be a quarter-wolf, and so on? Wolf's sole Transformation Sequence during the miniseries is inconclusive, since all we see is him becoming a typical Lon Chaney Wolf Man. According to Simon Moore, however, Wolf was intended to become a Dire Wolf, but they didn't have the budget for such special effects. What this says about the nature of half-wolves isn't clear.
• Out-Gambitted: The Troll King arrives early for his meeting with the Queen in an orchard to position his men to ambush her. The Queen had already been there hours before to poison all the apples, even choosing a poison that would take just long enough to kick in at the dramatically appropriate moment.
• Parents as People: Tony, while he does love Virginia, is too selfish and greedy to really pay attention to her. Her mother Christine, abandoned the family when Virginia was only 7, though in fact she fled in horror after in a manic episode she tried to drown Virginia in the bathtub, and the Swamp Witch, aka. Snow White's Step-Mother, sensing her mental instability reached out to her, pulling her into the Nine Kingdoms and instructing her on how to enact her revenge upon the House of White, and in essence mentoring Christine into become the new Evil Queen. Due to this, Virginia has deep rooted trust issues, but after her adventures in the Nine Kingdoms, she learns to make peace with both of them.
• Pedestrian Crushes Car: A troll wandering around New York City is hit by a car; he suffers no injury, but the car is badly damaged.
• Pet the Dog: In the finale, the Evil Queen initially wanted to let Virginia go after supposedly poisoning the royal guests in the hall. Virginia believes that the reason may be that the queen still loves her daughter, despite everything she's done to her.
• Plot Device: The Magic Mirror.
• Poison Is Evil: Especially when it's used in apples and an ancient comb. Unsurprising, considering the source material.
• Pretty in Mink: After the climax, Virginia talks about her mother having a fur coat, and would rub the fur against Virginia's cheek as she told her stories.
• Prince Charmless: Wendell starts out this way, spoiled, selfish and arrogant. However as Snow White suspects, his stint as a dog teaches her grandson the humility and kindness it takes to be The Good King when he is turned back into a human.
• Prophecy Twist: Parodied in-universe when one of the dwarves blatantly makes one up on the spot for something that had just happened. The other dwarves get a laugh out of it, but poor Tony is just confused.
• Punny Name: Done with a surprisingly subtle touch: if the romantic leads should marry, Virginia will be Virginia Wolf. However, considering that, of the two, she's the only one with a surname, it's more likely that Wolf would become Wolf Lewis.
• Quirky Mini Boss Squad: The Troll children. From the very beginning of the series, when the Evil Queen sends them to capture Prince Wendell in his dog body, they prove to be rather lackluster in their abilities, with their only major threat factor being their superhuman strength and Virginia and Tony being just normal everyday New Yorkers. Throughout the rest of the series, they continually chase the characters, popping up again and again to cause trouble after easy defeats, until finally removed from the plot for a while by being turned into gold. Eventually this is undone (by Tony's bad luck, it is implied), and thanks to the Queen making them think Virginia killed their father while they were out of commission, they once again resume the pursuit. While they manage to be a little more effective this time (mostly because they have the Huntsman's help), Virginia and Tony still are able to escape them from them while the Huntsman is sleeping (as they're too busy singing "Night Fever"); it isn't till the very end that they make for real adversaries, and by that time Tony has leveled up enough he can take them out.
• Redemption Equals Death: For the Evil Queen, since it also frees her from Mind Control / Demonic Possession.
• Rescue Romance: Subverted: Wolf believes his rescue of Virginia from the Trolls will earn him her love, but she refuses to trust him because, as she points out, "You tried to eat my grandmother!"
• The Reveal: The Queen is Virginia's mother. See also Luke, I Am Your Father above. Made particularly well done because the few bits of Foreshadowing relevant to it were very subtle. The Backstory about Christine seems on first viewing to be merely setting Virginia up as yet another protagonist dealing with Parental Abandonment issues, not a Missing Mom who will actually become directly relevant to the plot; the fact the Queen has another Traveling Mirror (and thus could conceivably have come from Earth) is only noticeable using Freeze-Frame Bonus or if the viewer is paying very close attention (and is revealed in the narrative only a short time before her identity is); and the "strange feeling" Virginia gets in her cell could easily be chalked up to magic.
• Revenge: The Queen's plan is enacting this upon the Nine, particularly the Fourth Kingdom of the House of White, in the name of her Mistress and Mentor the Original Evil Queen.
• Rich Bitch:
  • Or, rather, a rich son of a bitch — Prince Wendell, that is. And for most of the miniseries, that's quite literal.
  • Virginia's Grandmother as well.
• Right in Front of Me: While defending Wolf in court, Virginia gets a seemingly bright idea: the real criminal is a man who was wearing a wolf mask for the village festivities the day before; the victim's shouts of "Wolf!" were directed at him. Virginia proceeds to call the 'criminal' all sorts of names... until she is told that the judge was wearing the mask and her argument falls flat. The real killer was Wilfred Peep, and the victim was actually shouting "Wilf!"
• Rock Bottom: After Virginia finds out Wolf spent all the money he'd won at gambling on dinner instead of buying the Traveling mirror, she walks out on him, thinking he's a selfish bastard who doesn't really love her. Feeling depressed, she sits down on the steps, and says aloud that at least things can't get any worse. At exactly that moment, her father Tony, climbing around on the roof, drops the Traveling mirror, and it smashes into a million pieces right at Virginia's feet. This is a fairy tale land we're talking about, and breaking a mirror has its consequences...
• Rule of Funny: The Oaf and the Buffoon aren't real tarot cards.
• Running Gag: After entering New York and discovering what Earth culture was like, the three Troll siblings come upon a CD boom box with the Bee Gees' Saturday Night Fever soundtrack in it. Upon hearing it, they immediately become instant fans, toting it everywhere with them and singing along as loudly and annoyingly as possible until the batteries on the boom box die. They attempt to explain the music and its origin to their father, with genuinely hilarious results — although the usage of the Bee Gees' full name as the Brothers Gibb, hardly common knowledge, seems rather out of place, especially coming from such moronic characters who can't even read properly. (See: East Eighty-onest Street.) Presumably this was included in order to avoid being obvious or to make it funnier (and it works); possibly also a nod to "the Brothers Grimm", famed collectors of fairy tales. They then proceed to continue singing the song for the rest of the miniseries.
• Scarily Competent Tracker:
  • The Huntsman.
  • Wolf is shown to be a superior tracker to the Huntsman, nearly able to camouflage Virginia and Tony well enough to fool him. Wolf says this is because the Huntsman is a highly trained and skilled tracker, but lacks the animal senses that Wolf himself uses.
  • Falling behind Wolf are the Troll kids. While they may be stupid, they show a remarkable amount of tracking skills and manage to dog the heroes whenever they aren't a golden statue.
• Scenery Porn: The Nine Kingdoms portion of the miniseries was filmed for the most part on-location in Europe. Notable examples would be the castle and surroundings which double as Snow White Memorial Prison, the countryside used for Dragon Mountain and its approach, and Krimml Waterfall which doubles for Snow White Falls.
• Second Place Is for Losers: Sally Peep is sure of this.
• Self-Harm: One of the troll kids begins cutting himself after hearing that their father was killed.
• Sequel Hook: In Virginia's closing narration she mentions that another Crisis in the Kingdoms called her and Wolf back to the Nine, and ends her tale as "this is the end of the first book of the Tenth Kingdom". Nothing came of it, though. The writer Simon Moore has had the sequel written for years but hasn't been able to get it made yet.
• Shaming the Mob: Tony in Little Lamb Village, thanks to evidence provided by Wendell. And it's damn effective.
• Short Cuts Make Long Delays: Lampshaded. There are two roads leading to Wendell's castle, and the pair of unlikely heroes are on foot: they must choose whether to take the long and pretty path or the short and scary path. "Virginia, don't you think there's a chance that it's going around something? But... but one path has trees, and the other... argh!" They take the scary path.
• Single-Issue Psychology: Subverted and lampshaded: Wolf's issues with food, love, and his animal urges are hilariously sent up in scenes with a New York Jewish psychiatrist, and after only one session (which he later describes to Virginia as "extensive therapy") he suddenly pronounces himself a changed man and produces "the books to prove it," consisting of several titles of real, well-known self-help books. However, Wolf only shows the beginning of change (acknowledging that he has the problem) and several times shows that he is still a slave to his stomach. Later, the others read passages that relate to each of them, but show no immediate changes. Similarly, but much more darkly, the source of the Evil Queen's wicked nature seems to stem from one event: once it is revealed that she is actually Virginia's missing mother, Tony then reveals that she attempted to drown Virginia as a little girl because she was 'sick and getting worse and worse', a rather vague statement of mental illness. And it was this instability that made her easy prey for Snow White's Wicked Stepmother.
• Skewed Priorities: From the first meeting of Wendell's privy council, after they have been discussing Wendell not stopping in Beantown, his conspicuous absence and lack of communication, and the Evil Queen's breakout.
  Lord Rupert: Now to the real crisis. There is a shortage of bluebells throughout the Kingdom, my color scheme for the coronation banquet will have to be completely rethought.
• Sophisticated as Hell:
  The magic mirror being consulted can only hear rhyming verse.
  Virginia: Our mirror's smashed - what can we do? Where the hell are the other two?
• Spirit Advisor:
  • Snow White. She calls herself a fairy godmother, but also freely admits she is actually dead (something which is never really stated about fairy godmothers). Only Virginia and Wendell (the latter either because he's gone doggy at the time or because he's her grandson) can see and speak with her—Tony cannot. She later appears in Virginia's dreams. According to the Novelization, she was also disguised as the old woman from the forest who gave them a lesson in solidarity and warned them of the Huntsman, and the little Cupid girl from Kissing Town who told them where to find the cart which had taken the mirror away.
  • Mirroring this, the Swamp Witch (Snow White’s Wicked Stepmother) acts as an advisor to the Evil Queen.
• Spoiled Brat: Sally Peep is a realistic example, since she comes from a family who always win and have the best of everything, so she doesn't take losing very well - Virginia was even perfectly happy to leave the Peep family with the trophy and prize money as long as she could have the magic mirror, but obviously this doesn't work.
• The Starscream: Relish the Troll King swiftly becomes this, since he doesn't have the patience to wait for the Queen to carry out her Xanatos Gambit. And, to be fair, because he got tired of her constantly ordering him around like a Mook and giving him headaches and hemorrhages with her Magic Mirror summons.
• Stealth Pun: See Punny Name.
• Stop, or I Shoot Myself!: The fake prince threatens to hang himself and screw up the Queen's plans if she doesn't turn him back into a dog. The queen quickly realizes the material he's using won't actually hold his weight and pushes his support away, causing him to choke briefly before it tears.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Tony questions the gold watch he receives from Mrs. Murray as "not being one of those cheap imitations". This same suspicion is brought up by the Tooth Fairy when Tony tries to pay him with it.
• Superstition Episode: Tony breaks a whole roomful of magic mirrors, and immediately starts to suffer from bad luck - starting with losing his way, and ending with literally breaking his back.
• Surrounded by Idiots: The Troll King, who is fairly clever and competent (though no match for the Queen), is supported only by his dimwitted children and soldiers. He doesn't seem happy about this lack of competence in his henchmen. (In the Novelization, when one of his advisors questions why they were in the apple grove so long before meeting the Queen, Relish thinks to himself that this Troll was no longer his advisor, though "he didn't know that yet".)
• Swamps Are Evil: The Deadly Swamp. Not only is it the home of the Swamp Witch (Snow White's Wicked Stepmother), it has mischievous fairies that enjoy being "naughty" to travelers and magic mushrooms which tempt people to eat them...after which they fall asleep and are consumed by the swamp.
• A Taste of the Lash: Tony's punishment for trying to break into the Governor's office with the copied key. What is particularly odd, considering the history of flogging in Britain and Simon Moore being British, is that there seems to be no consequences to this: the very next time Tony is shown he doesn't seem to be unduly suffering, nor is he ever shown favoring his back, nor is it ever mentioned again in the miniseries. Either despite Tony's cries beanstalks aren't particularly painful (note that in Real Life whipping can kill at forty lashes), or this is another example of straddling the line between What Do You Mean, It's for Kids? and What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids? due to it being a Bowdlerized Fairy Tale world.
• Tempting Apple: The Queen's Spirit Advisor suggests she use poison apples to gain the upper hand. She follows through by poisoning an entire orchard of apples to kill the Trolls.
• Tempting Fate: See Rock Bottom.
• These Hands Have Killed: An "almost killed" variation—in flashback, after nearly drowning her own daughter, Christine runs sobbing into Central Park and stares in horror at her hands.
• Too Dumb to Fool: Subverted. The village idiot repeatedly mentions that Prince reminds him of someone, causing Tony to think this trope is in effect and he sees through the spell. It turns out he just meant a similar-looking dog.
• Torches and Pitchforks:
  • Unsurprisingly, this happens in Little Lamb Village after Sally Peep's murder, first when the crowd captures Wolf and then after he is found guilty and about to be burned at the stake. Interestingly (and somewhat realistically, since once people's tempers are riled it's a lot easier to change their target by redirecting their rage) the crowd ends up turning on Wilfred Peep after Tony proves his guilt.
  • Happens again in Kissing Town, of all places, after Tony breaks the magic mirror and everyone runs him, Wendell, and Virginia out of town to keep his bad luck from causing them trouble. Especially notable because just a short time before, this same crowd had been celebrating the return of "Wendell" and the death of the Troll King. Apparently it is very easy to stir one of these up in the Nine Kingdoms.
• Torture First, Ask Questions Later: Burly, Blabberwort and Bluebell have Virginia strapped to a chair with the intentions of torturing her for information on her "kingdom". When she makes it clear that she'll tell them anything they want without torture, they make it clear they plan on torturing her regardless.
  Burly: This could be a long torture session.
  Virginia: I'll tell you anything you want to know!
  Burly: Torture first, then you talk. It's better that way. Rush a torture, ruin a torture.
• Trailers Always Spoil: NBC was notorious for doing this during most if not of all of their miniseries "events", but a particularly egregious example occurred twice: just after the suspenseful scenes in which Virginia and Tony were trying to buy the Traveling mirror at auction, the trailer revealed that it gets broken, and right as we're wondering if the heroes will get to the ball and stop the Evil Queen's plot in time, the trailer revealed all of Wendell's guests collapsing from poison. Next commercial break then shows us both the same guests awakening, revealing they weren't really dead and Prince and Wendell switching back—though granted, this was the point of the journey and surely expected by that late in the game. About the only major plot point not revealed by the trailers, thankfully, was that the Evil Queen was Virginia's mother. Not to mention Wolf stopping the Huntsman from killing Virginia at the end.
• Transformation Sequence: For Wendell/Prince.
• Transformation Trauma: For Wolf.
• Two Roads Before You: Boy, howdy...
  • One scene features Virginia and Tony deciding which path to take to their destination. One road takes 39 miles and the other takes 13. The 39 mile path is a pleasant road that cuts through the countryside lined with trees. The 13 mile road on the other hand is through a thick dark wood. Virginia chooses the 13 mile road. Tony's reaction to her decision is priceless. Then of course, we learn that the 13 mile road leads into the Deadly Swamp. In the Novelization this is explained by Virginia receiving a dream from Snow White, giving her more information about the poisoned comb she had earlier told her to find (that it would be "in a grave"); but since this didn't make it into the final script, it isn't clear why she would take the shorter, more dangerous-looking route (other than being in a hurry to get to the castle, and Genre Blind).
  • Another scene features two doors with a frog. The frog tells Virginia, Tony, and Wolf that one door leads to safety and the other leads to a horrible death. The frog also tells them that they must ask him one question, but he always lies. When Virginia and Wolf can't decide in time, Tony asks the frog why there would be a door with a great death behind it, picks the frog up, and throws him into the door on the left, wherein the frog is consumed by flames.
  Wolf: I guess it's the other door!
• Uncertain Doom: In the first episode, while he still appears 100% ravenous and murderous, Wolf corners Virginia's coworker in a small room to force information out of her, and she is never seen again, leaving the implication at the time that he assaulted and/or ate her. While he vaguely apologises for trying to kill Virginia and her grandmother, Virginia never knows this happened so it's never explained.
• Unusual Euphemism: "Suck an elf!" Although this could be very wrong sounding...
• Urine Trouble: The Dog Prince with a pillar, early on when he is still resisting the Queen's "human training".
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Subverted. For the first half or so of the miniseries (before the Queen's Xanatos Gambit is fully revealed), a case could be made that both the Troll King and the Huntsman act as this, since the Nine Kingdoms otherwise come across as a silly, funny, and not particularly threatening place (aside from the Third). As more of the Queen and her plans come out, and as the heroes travel and become exposed to the underbelly of the Kingdoms and the ramifications of certain fairy tales and attitudes, it seems much grimmer indeed, to the point of being a Crapsaccharine World.
  Wolf: The days of Happy Ever After are gone. These are dark times.
• Wacky Marriage Proposal: Wolf's proposal to Virginia. Not only does he preface the evening, when Virginia initially tries to weasel out of dinner, by saying he "spent a lot of time planning this spontaneous evening", he: has a song composed especially for her, played by a string quartet on the roof of their carriage (which is filled to overflowing with flowers); rents an entire restaurant just for the two of them, with a meal consisting of 13 main courses; and purchases the most expensive engagement ring he can find—a magical singing ring with a saccharinely cute cherub face and shimmering, bell-like voice which extols the virtues of their love to Virginia. She turns him down out of outrage when she learns he spent money they could have used to accomplish their goals on the proposal instead. At the end of the miniseries, he tries again, in a much more restrained manner, and she accepts.
• Werewolf Theme Naming: Wolf.
• Wham Line: When Virginia asks Snow White's mirror who the fairest in the land is, The Queen appears to her and Tony, leading to Tony in horror to state, "Christine! Oh my God! That's your Mother!"
• What Are You in For?: Tony is technically arrested for being found in the Queen's cell (wearing handcuffs) when everybody awoke to find her gone. When asked though, he says that he was arrested for a bank robbery. Which is technically true, he was arrested on Earth for the robbery before fleeing through the Magic Mirror. It also leads to the Black Comedy responses from his cellmates: Clay Face the Goblin, who first asks him if he likes carving and shows him the little statue he's making, is in for carving...and Acorn the Dwarf is in for aggravated assault—"I'm very easily aggravated!"
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • We never actually see what happens to the Troll siblings. The novelization reveals that they were originally going to be put to death, but Tony pleads for them and they are returned to their kingdom to rule as the Troll King is no longer living. A deleted scene reveals that they did originally film something along the lines of this. Funny enough, it was a blooper scene that was shown during the credits of the Making of featurette.
  • We never find out what happened to the Peep Family after Wilfred Peep is revealed to be Sally's killer, and that the family had stolen the magic well water and hoarded it for themselves for decades. Chances are, they either fled the town in shame, they were banished, or some of them might've been jailed. Wilfred is pretty heavily implied to have been killed by Sally's mother.
  • Clayface the Goblin abruptly drops out of the narrative once Tony escapes prison, after giving Tony a startlingly prophetic carving. According to the Novelization, which was based on an earlier version of the script, he was originally going to be the one encountered at the Swamp Witch's cottage rather than Acorn although with the prophetic carving still left unexplained, interestingly enough.
• Where the Magic Went: This series posits that The Brothers Grimm were Multiversal travelers who discovered the Nine Kingdoms. Upon returning to Earth, they wrote books of fairy tales, which were actually true accounts of the people they met in that world (which implies an Alternate History where none of these fairy tales were known on Earth until the Grimms wrote them down in the 1800's).
• The White Prince: Wendell. Quite literally.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?:
  • Something of this comes through in the Troll King's impatient, sardonic, and contemptuous attitude to the Evil Queen when she continues to pursue her plan to train the Dog Prince as an imposter, take over the Fourth Kingdom, and then through him rule the Nine Kingdoms as the power behind the power—since his modus operandi is to invade and take the kingdom by force. In a perhaps delicious twist, the Evil Queen eventually decides, after receiving advice from her own dark Spirit Advisor, to heed Relish's advice...by using it against him with a handy bit of poison after he has become too large a thorn in her side.
  • Also invoked by Wolf when they have the Huntsman at their mercy. Virginia stops him from doing it. Justified, since Virginia doesn't want to be a murderer.
• Wicked Stepmother: The Queen to Prince Wendell. Snow White's shows up as the Swamp Witch.
• With This Ring: Conflict arises when Wolf spends all his money on a magic engagement ring with a sentient, singing pearl on top. Virginia is upset that he didn't use the money to buy the mirror they've been chasing the entire series. See Wacky Marriage Proposal.
• Wolf Man: Wolf. Duh.
• World's Most Beautiful Woman: When Virginia asks Snow White's Magic Mirror who is the Fairest in the Land, the mirror shows her and Tony the Queen in response, which Tony recognizes as his long lost wife Christine, who in New York society was noted for her grace and beauty.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • The Huntsman inadvertently killed his own seven year old son to prove his worthiness to the Queen. Later, he kills an entire Romani camp including an innocent half-wolf boy.
  • It's also heavily implied that the Queen killed an entire family including a young girl because the Dog Prince told them too much about her plans. Not to mention that she tried to drown her own daughter years before becoming Queen. She also threatens the entire castle staff during Wendell's coronation that if any of them reveal the truth, she will kill their children in front of them.
• Wrong Genre Savvy:
  • Tony assumes that because he's in a fairy tale world, the name of the blind axeman who demands he guesses his name to get a magic axe must be named Rumpelstiltskin. He apparently failed to grasp the all-important fact that they were in the world where the fairy tales took place, not in the fairy tales themselves.
  • Something of a running gag is that he and Virginia know and understand the Lighter and Softer modern versions of the fairy tales (implied to be the Disney versions), but this is the world where the original versions happened.
• Xanatos Gambit:
  • The Queen's main plan would be one of these, with even a bit of Xanatos Speed Chess thrown in: originally she clearly intended to hold Wendell prisoner while training the Dog Prince, with his escape necessitating the involvement of Wolf and the Troll children (to ensure he did not warn anyone of her plans or find a way to switch back) but her training plan continuing without a hitch. This plan, in turn, was meant merely to allow her access to Castle White and the chance to poison all the ball guests; whether or not the Dog Prince succeeded in passing his tests, was crowned, or even fooled anyone was only a smokescreen to keep anyone from becoming suspicious until the toast could be performed, so in the end it didn't really matter what happened to the prince—she would win regardless. Explained by the fact she had seven years in prison to plot it.
  • Her method of dealing with the Troll King is an even better example: after using a threat to his children (whom she didn't even have) to get him to agree to a meeting, if Relish had agreed to withdraw his armies and cease threatening the Fourth Kingdom, her plans would be back on schedule. But if he didn't agree and tried to kill her, she planned to poison him, counting on his greed and gluttony (as well as being Genre Blind—meeting the protege of Snow White's stepmother in an apple orchard?) to be his undoing. This not only eliminated his threat to the kingdom (and Wendell's advisors signing away sovereignty so she couldn't use the Dog Prince's coronation for her murder spree), it provided an "act of bravery" to present to the courtiers at the ball. And when Relish revealed he had arrived early and broken her demand to Come Alone, she in turn revealed she'd arrived even earlier, and the poison was thus there to eliminate not just him, but his soldiers too. So again, no matter what happened, she won.
• You Shall Not Pass!: Tony does this when the heroes are pursued by the Trolls in the castle, eventually defeating all three.

---

"I'd like to say that Wolf and I lived happily ever after, but our lives were almost immediately interrupted by another crisis in the Kingdoms. But that's not this story, this story is done. And, when you live every day with all your heart, then you can be "happily ever after" even if it's only for a short time. My name is Virginia...and I live on the edge of the forest. And this is the end of the First Book of the 10th Kingdom."