The problem isn’t the tropes, it’s the writing: how Mystic Prince has not one, not two, but three fridged mothers, and yet it makes it work.
DISCLAIMER: yes, I am discussing a romantic fantasy manhwa rather than a romantasy novel because I wrote this first for the r/OtomeIsekai but I think my points about tropes and how to use or not use them are valid for both western romantasy as for Asian rofan.
When a story feels underwhelming, uninspired and forgettable, tropes often get the blame. We say that a story is too tropey, or we say that this or that trope are overused, etc.
But it is not really the tropes’ fault. Tropes are on their own just narrative devices (the evil stepmother, the loyal childhood friend, the cursed prince etc) . They are a part of a writer’s toolbox as much as the choice of narrator, the ways the plot can be structured, or the rhetorical figures that can make the writing more poignant.
And even the most overused, predictable trope can become a brilliant element of a story, if the writer is skilled enough.
So, when does a writer use tropes well?
I would like to analyse the way one of the most overused and predictable tropes, the one of the “dead mother as origin story of a character” is used not once, not twice, but thrice in Mystic Prince, and try to explain why it still works.
***WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW***
(Seriously, if you haven’t read Mystic Prince yet, go and do it and come back to my post later.)
Lesson 1: chose the tropes that fit your story, don’t build stories around tropes
The major theme of Mystic Prince is how shitty women’s lives are in this East-Asian inspired fantasy world, how women are used, abused, silenced and discarded. It’s the reason why the protagonist, the FL, is so determined to win the throne and change things.
In this setting, the destiny of the three dead mothers whose stories we are told does not exist in a vacuum, just to provide some emotional scars to their children, but becomes a part of a larger narrative that shows how this world is cruel to women. It is very telling that the three dead mothers are the only mothers who appear in the story. All other women who could have been influential are just missing, because this is very much a man’s world. And this leads us to:
Lesson 2: the more meanings and functions a trope has, the more it will feel integrated to the story and less obviously tropey.
In the case of Mystic Prince, the three dead mothers have multiple functions: they represent a key element of the childhood of their three children, the events who led to their death had a long lasting impact on how the children are as adults, and become part of the narrative of women’s oppression in a patriarchal society.
Lesson 3: if you are going to use a trope multiple times, do it in an intentional, meaningful way.
The three orphaned children of Mystic Prince are the FL, the ML, and the villain, that is, the three most important characters in the whole story. But the author doesn’t stop herself by just giving them a shared background: the symmetries between their pasts, but also the ways the differ (every mother has her own story), and the different ways the children reacted to their mother’s death is used to show why they become the people they are in the present.
Lesson 4: using tropes is fine, using whole pre-made clusters of tropes, not so much.
In otome isekai manhwas the dead mother trope tends to take the shape of: mother dies in childbirth – child gets blamed – father emotionally rejects the baby – everybody abuses the child, that is seen as “unlucky” and contemptible for just existing.
The FL, ML and villain of Mystic prince are all guilty of “killing” their mothers, but they have each their own story, and it doesn’t follow the expected cluster of tropes.
Lesson 5: if you use a trope, subvert it.
All three children are guilty of “killing” their mother. But none of those death are the expected “mother dying giving birth” story.
The FL kills her mother accidentally, when she uses her powers for the first time trying to save her from the abusive father/husband. So yes, for once, we have a child who has really killed her mother, even if unintentionally.
The ML’s story is the one closest to the standard trope, because his mother dies giving birth to him, but with a twist: it’s not the labour killing her, but she is murdered because a political faction doesn’t want her to give birth to the son of the emperor.
And the villain causes his mother’s death by poisoning his father – the man who had abandoned both of them – and letting her take the blame.
But the subversion doesn’t end there. Nobody blames them for killing their mothers, as the expected pattern would predict. Instead the FL very much blames herself, and the ghost of her mother becomes the incarnation of all her self-doubt and feelings of worthlessness.
The ML does not get a relationship with his father, but not because the father blames him, but because the emperor blames himself for his wife’s death and is desperate to keep his son as safe as he can.
And as for the villain, his complete lack of guilt for killing both is parents is the defining moment that makes him a villain.
Lesson 6: if the trope requires the introduction of a secondary character, that character should be fleshed out.
I think this is the main reason Mystic Prince manages to pull the stunt of using the same trope three times. Each mother is not just “the dead mother”. Each of them is her own person. They have names (well, not the FL’s mother, but the others do) and they have their own story before they died, and these stories are very different.
The FL’s mother is the battered wife of a most despicable middle class man, who heroically tries her best to shield her daughters from their father’s violence, and teach them about love, and happiness even in the harshest circumstances.
The ML’s mother is a strong, fearless woman, who lives her own life freely in a world that is so cruel to women, but she can’t survive the plots and schemes of court and dies because of it and ends up entirely erased from existance, a damnatio memoriae that makes the ML’s childhood miserable.
The villain’s mother is a prostitute in a brothel. She is completely broken by the life she has to live and can only stare in the void like a beautiful broken doll, desired and then discarded. In the end, the only love she can show to her child is to refuse to acknowledge him as such, and take the fall for his actions.
Note how this variate characterisation reinforces the underlying theme of the story: there is no happiness for women in an oppressively patriarchal society. They can be prostitutes or empresses, they can marry the good guy, the bad guy, or not marry at all, but they are all doomed to be used, abused, and then silenced and forgotten. Nobody cares.
Lesson seven: deploy the trope at the most appropriate plot beat of the story for it.
And in case of multiple uses, variation is key. This is also done in a very skillful way in Mystic Prince.
The story of the FL’s mother is revealed in a series of progressively more heartwrenching flashbacks (at least three if I remember right) in the first third of the story which culminate into the test that forces the FL to face her innermost demons. And that event marks the moment where she slowly begins to make peace with herself and her guilt.
The ML instead had been stewing on his desire to know something, anything, about her mother for a very long time, and it is this longing that eventually leads him to finally face his father and asks for the truth. And so it is the emperor who tells him (and us), his wife’s story. It’s again a moment of character’s growth and reconciliation, but this time, between father and son.
The villain reveals his motives, and tell his story when his treachery has been revealed and he and the protagonist face off during the climax of the story. Only then we get to see how fucked up he is, and the depth of his crimes. It works very well because the readers are left wondering until then about who the real evil mastermind is and so his “origin story” is necessary to make all his actions understandable.
Moral of the story.
Let’s face the truth: when a story feels too tropey (and not in an intentional, playful way), or too predictable, or we think “ugh, not this trope again”, stop blaming the trope. Blame the actual culprit, the shitty writing and the clearly mediocre writer who wrote it.
When I was reading Mystic Prince, I didn't even noticed that I had been fed three fridged mothers (heaven know how much I hate an unskilled use of this trope), because they felt such a natural part of the story. Only with a cooler header after finishing it I saw the pattern and said "you sneaky, brilliant author, I see what you have done".
And if you have made it to the end of this, thank you for listening to my thoughts about how you do or don't use tropes and indulging my passion for literary analysis.