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A fantasy trope is a specific type of literary trope (recurring theme) that occurs in fantasy fiction. Worldbuilding, plot, and characterization have many common conventions, many of them having ultimately originated in myth and folklore. J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium (and in particular, The Lord of the Rings) for example, was inspired from a variety of different sources including Germanic, Finnish, Greek, Celtic and Slavic myths. Literary fantasy works operate using these tropes, while others use them in a revisionist manner, making the tropes over for various reasons such as for comic effect, and to create something fresh (a method that often generates new clichés).
Many are, unknown to themselves, of royal descent. Even in so fanciful a tale as Through the Looking-Glass, Alice is made a queen in the end; this can serve as a symbolic recognition of the hero's inner worth. Commonly, these tales revolve around the maltreated hero coming into his or her own. This can reflect a wish-fulfillment dream, or symbolically embody a profound transformation.
| + Notable Dark Lords |
| The Lord of the Rings |
| archenemy of Conan the Barbarian |
| The Wheel of Time |
| Star Wars |
| Harry Potter |
| The Dark Crystal |
| DC Comics |
| Marvel Comics |
| the Devil May Cry video game series |
| the Castlevania series |
| Masters of the Universe |
| The Silmarillion |
| The Chronicles of Prydain |
| The Belgariad |
| Soulcalibur |
| The Legend of Zelda |
| Final Fantasy V |
| The Inheritance Cycle |
| "His Dark Materials" |
The villain of the Demon Sword video game is also literally called Dark Lord.
In the Lone Wolf gamebooks, the Dark Lords are a race of powerful evil beings. The protagonists of the Overlord video game franchise are classic Dark Lords in the vein of Sauron. The Dark Lord is usually seen as unmarried, though there has been the occasion when one has attempted to claim a bride.
A common trope is that magical ability is innate and rare. As such, magic-wielding people are common figures in fantasy. Another feature is the magic item, which can endow characters with magical abilities or enhance the abilities of the innately powerful. Among the most common are and .
Self-fulfilling prophecies are amongst the most common forms of magic because they are an often used plot device. Often the effort undertaken to avert them brings them about, thus driving the story. It is very rare for a prophecy in a fantasy to be false, although usually, their significance is only clear with hindsight. Quibbles can undermine the clearest appearing prophecies.
In The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien minimized the use of the word 'magic'; beings who use such abilities tend to be confused when they are described this way by others.
Science fantasy stories often make use of scientifically implausible powers similar to magic, such as . However, unlike true science fiction works, these powers are used in a Pulp magazine manner with no examination of their effects on society, only to create more spectacular effects than science fiction alone can provide. An example of this is the use of the Force by the Jedi in the Star Wars franchise.
This trope is also very important in the setting of many of these fantasies. Writers from the beginnings of the fantasy genre, such as William Morris in The Well at the World's End and Lord Dunsany in The King of Elfland's Daughter, set their tales in clearly derived from medieval sources; though often filtered through Medievalism. J. R. R. Tolkien set the type even more clearly for high fantasy, which is normally based in such a "pseudo-medieval" setting. Other fantasy writers have emulated him, and role-playing and Video game have also taken up this tradition.
The full width of the medieval era is seldom drawn upon. Governments, for instance, tend to be feudalistic, corrupt empires despite the greater variety of the actual Middle Ages. Settings also tend to be medieval in economy, with many fantasy worlds disproportionately pastoral.
These settings are typical of epic fantasy and, to a lesser extent, of sword and sorcery — which contains more urban settings — than of fantasy in general; the preponderance of epic fantasy in the genre has made them fantasy commonplaces. They are less typical of contemporary fantasy, especially urban fantasy.
In role-playing games, "race" typically refers to any sapient species usable as a player character. Older editions of Dungeons & Dragons called the primary non-human player races (dwarf, elf, gnome, halfling, and half-elf, half-orc) "demi-humans." Later games such as Shadowrun use the term "metahuman," and define these humanoid races as subdivisions of Homo sapiens.
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