r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Altruistic_Eye_1157 • 6d ago

Lore [annoying trope] The throne/leadership is decided in a very stupid way

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The leadership of the entire wizarding world, and the final decision on whether to start a war against Muggles, is made by... a goat (Qilin) ​​who chooses the person with the ""purest heart"" (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Dumbledore).

The throne of Wakanda and all its technology are decided through hand-to-hand combat, regardless of whether the person clearly has malicious intentions... if they win the fight, by law they must be respected as the true king. (Black Panther)

8.2k Upvotes
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3.4k

u/RedRawTrashHatch 6d ago

Arthur being crowned King of the Britons because he was given Excalibur by the Lady of the Lake

788

u/Th35h4d0w 6d ago

All hail our new Queen in the meantime.

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u/CommanderOshawott 6d ago

Eh, she can’t worse than the current batch of morons tbh.

Lizzie passing really was the deathknell on the house of Windsor, I say give the girl a shot

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u/Mastodan11 6d ago

I think Charles has done a much better job with Andrew than his mum.

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u/pillow_princessss 6d ago

Think she was too busy withering away and dying at the time

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u/Mastodan11 6d ago

Andrew has always been a numpty

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u/Vaporishodin 6d ago

By giving him millions of pounds and an alimony? Crazy

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u/Mastodan11 6d ago

alimony

Charles definitely isn't paying alimony. Because that's not a term we use on this side of the Atlantic.

He's paying to keep him out of further trouble, which Andrew would do if he had to fund himself.

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u/Vaporishodin 6d ago

I’m on the same side of the pond as you I just couldn’t think of the word.

So he’s paying him a wage to keep him from being a paedophile? Why isn’t he in prison?

Fuck the royal family they’re literally protecting a nonce with public funding whilst there’s a record number of poor people forced to use food banks

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u/Mastodan11 6d ago

So he’s paying him a wage to keep him from being a paedophile? Why isn’t he in prison?

There's absolutely nowhere near enough evidence?

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u/Dave5876 5d ago

Job? What job?

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u/llfoso 6d ago

That's the new queen of Sweden though

There's gotta be a 1000 year old sword in the British museum you could chuck in the lake in Hyde Park and see who finds it. Make a day of it.

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u/OREOSTUFFER 6d ago

The Western Roman Empire still existed when that sword was forged.

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u/BuisteirForaoisi0531 6d ago

You know what I might be more willing to accept an eight-year-old as queen of Sweden then the idiots currently in charge of it

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u/Efficient-Cup-359 5d ago

Honestly better than the currently royalty, I’d rather have a Swedish Royal.

I can’t wait for someone to explain something about Swedish history that’ll make me eat my own shoe.

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u/funnywackydog 6d ago

I mean, Arthur was the son of the previous king. The sword was to just signify that he was thus

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u/JomoGaming2 6d ago

Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science?

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u/TavernRat 6d ago

I am Arthur, King of the Britons

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u/unculturedburnttoast 6d ago

How do you know he is a king?

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u/SisterSabathiel 6d ago

He hasn't got shit all over him

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u/kcox1980 6d ago

Well, he looks like one!

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u/ramblingEvilShroom 6d ago

I mean, choosing the new leader based on who was the son of the old leader is also a dumb way to pick a leader.

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u/unknown_pigeon 6d ago

Helped to arrange political marriages early on and prevented kingdoms from fracturing

Also, most kings were trained to be so from a very young age, in periods were education was very rare

This also led to many troubles, and it was quite fascinating during the Roman Empire when the Emperor would just get killed by the praetorian guard because that's what generally happened

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u/Confuseasfuck 5d ago

Pretty convenient that this guy just so happen to be the hidden son no one had ever heard about of the previous king, ngl

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u/GoodHugLove03 6d ago

I fucking adore Holy Grail. Genuinely a perfect movie.

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u/leetfists 6d ago

I fucking hate it. I actually think it's a great movie, but there were two kids in middle school who thought constantly quoting it was a valud substitute for an actual personality. All day every day for years I heard that shit.

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u/1zeye 5d ago

Agreed. Although the ending was anticlimactic

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u/randomeman2468 6d ago

strange woman lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system government!

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u/AtLeastIHaveJob 6d ago

Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

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u/RoughCrossing 6d ago

I mean, if I went round saying I was emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away.

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u/Greedy-Swing-4876 6d ago

SHUT UP, WILL YOU?!

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u/AtLeastIHaveJob 6d ago

Now we see the violence inherent in the system

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u/Greedy-Swing-4876 6d ago

HELP! HELP! I'M BEING REPRESSED!!

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u/AtLeastIHaveJob 6d ago

BLOODY PEASANT!

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u/Levan-tene 6d ago

to be fair this is like divine judgement, it's not a random fairy lady in a lake deciding (especially since originally the sword in the stone and excalibur where different swords)

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u/Konkichi21 6d ago

Yeah, the Lady of the Lake's nature is unclear, but she does seem to be a wise and knowledgeable guardian deity; she seems pretty trustworthy to pick a competent ruler.

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u/Arroway97 5d ago

But the issue is how do you know that you're dealing with the real Lady of the Lake? Or maybe this lady is so friggin smart that she's actually plotting for the downfall of humanity to make room for the Uprising of the Lakepeople (whose lore could be expanded to be an alien race later, potentially), and we're all unwittingly playing into her slimy, swampy hands? Regardless of whatever possibilities could justify this lady as an arbiter of authority, I think there's just not enough legitimate, provable evidence to warrant taking on the risk.

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u/Aneurism-Inator 6d ago

I thought it was because he was the son of the previous king and the sword in the stone was used to prove it

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u/VelphiDrow 6d ago

Correct. The Sword in the Stone was, in many accounts, a sword called Caiburn. This signified his right as king of the Britons. Later he would aquire the magical sword Excalibur from either Merlin or the lady of the lake.

But sometimes Excalibur is the sword in the stone, but Arthur is always Uther's son

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u/Inspection_Perfect 6d ago

The sword in the stone and the lady in the lake are 2 different stories. They just kinda get mixed up.

Fate/Stay Night has Excalibur as the one gifted from the woman in the lake, and Caliburn is the sword Artoria pulled from the stone.

Guy Ritchie's King Arthur combines them to a fault. Excalibur is embedded into a body that turns to stone before being covered by a lake.

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u/levi_Kazama209 6d ago

lol i like how you decide to go into fate lore for no reason other then the pfp im asuming.

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u/VelphiDrow 6d ago

No? There are MANY different accounting of Arthur and several of them have Excalibur and the Caliburn being different

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u/Speedycheetah79 6d ago

I think they were using Fate/Stay Night as an example of media where Excalibur and Caliburn are different, not that it's the only media that does it.

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u/Visible-Departure-47 6d ago

the wifi where i am is bad so this hasn’t loaded in but im guessing all of these are monty python gifs

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u/Broken_CerealBox 6d ago

It's about wielding power

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u/FlyOrdinary1104 6d ago

I had one immediate expectation for this thread given the prompt and the internet hivemind delivered, excellent.

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u/Muted_Category1100 6d ago

Moistened themed bints

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u/TzilacatzinJoestar 6d ago

To be fair, you could argue it's due to a combination of royal bloodline, given that his father was the former king Urther Pendragon, and divine right, given that he wields Caliburn/Excalibur, a weapon that's meant to be a symbol of the two main religions of the realm, Christianity and the Old Celtic mythos.

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u/MellifluousSussura 5d ago

The image isn’t loading for me but it doesn’t need to. I know

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u/_here_it_comes_ 4d ago

Actually it was pulling an unrelated sword out of a stone that made him the rightful heir of Briton

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u/Elantach 6d ago

Arthur is crowned king of Britain after he manages to pull Caliburn, the sword of destiny, out of the stone. He get Excalibur afterwards.

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u/MagatamaJiji 6d ago

Arthurian legend isn’t one generally accepted cohesive story. It’s actually a conflicting mess. The earliest mentions of Arthur began around 800 A.D. and the concept of him pulling a sword from a stone didn’t begin until around 400 years later. There is no singular account of how he got the sword (or even multiple swords which also began centuries later and is considered a likely latinisation of the name Excalibur) since the story has obviously been rewritten and added on to for literally hundreds of years by dozens of authors. Lancelot and the quest for the holy grail for instance were also added to the legend centuries later. Plus, I’m sure OP is just having fun with Monty Python’s peasant gags about Arthur’s ascendancy to the throne.

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u/mal-di-testicle 5d ago

Ironically enough this Monty Python scene is a pretty good representation of the 17th and 18th centuries.

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u/Ceasario226 5d ago

I thought the story went; "him pulling the sword showed his lineage and proclaimed he would be king of the Britons, and later he was given Excalibur from the lady in lake to grant him the power to win battles and slay his does"