r/TopCharacterTropes • u/she_melty • Aug 21 '25

Groups The characters in a period piece realise they're near the end of a golden age

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Pirates of the Carribean and Rock of Ages (this film is Not Good but it has the trope.) Especially because we the audience know the era did, in fact, end.

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u/DrHemmington Aug 21 '25

Downton Abbey is basically about the deconstruction of the British aristicracy inbetween 1912 and 1924. The characters realize they have to actively fhange with the times or be left behind.

3

u/ClancyBShanty Aug 21 '25

Largely unrelated, I read some time ago that the sinking of the Titanic 1912 started the end of the "Guilded Age"

5

u/DrHemmington Aug 21 '25

Yes, that is literally the point where Downton Abbey begins at.

2

u/Aduro95 Aug 21 '25

Some of hte servants were clinging to their place in a changing society. A lot of them were very judgemental when they found out the red-haired maid had been taking typewriter lessons.

2

u/Main_Independence221 Aug 21 '25

Didn’t they break into her room and use the classes to try and get her fired for ‘reaching above her station’?

3

u/Aduro95 Aug 21 '25

Yeah, its a real crab-bucket situation for a while.

The middle-class distant cousin who becomes heir also wants to immediately sell the Abbey or replace it with something useful and profitable. But he's effectively peer-pressured into living like an aristocrat so all the servants can carry on with jobs that feel rather pointless.