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[[The Kingkiller Chronicle]] is set to be a trilogy of [[Heroic Fantasy]] books written by Patrick Rothfuss.
Kvothe, the eponymous kingkiller, is a [[Shrouded in Myth|living legend]] after having given up his former life and gone into hiding as the innkeep [[Meaningful Name|Kote]]. He is being sought out by Chronicler, a famous scribe, who wishes to write down Kvothe's [[
* ''[[The Name of the Wind]]'' is the first day. It describes Kvothe's youth with his parents in a band of traveling entertainers, who are killed when Kvothe's father begins to do research into a band of [[Shrouded in Myth|semi-mythical destroyers]] called the Chandrian. He travels to [[Wizarding School|The University]] to not only further his education, but to attempt to learn all he can about them.
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{{tropelist}}
* [[Above the Influence]]: Kvothe finds it best if he doesn't follow up on Denna's request to join her for a swim in the lake after she's been subject to denner resin.
* [[The Ace]]: Young Kvothe excels at just about everything he tries to do, from music to magic to fighting to performing arts. A great portion of the story so far is Kvothe learning various useful skills far more quickly than most anyone in the world. He has difficulty only with things that bore him, like higher math, and extraordinarily difficult things, like Naming. The trope is made palatable by the foregone conclusion that, for all his knowledge and talent, Kvothe has become a failure.
* [[Affably Evil]]: Devi has a reputation as a ruthless loan shark who takes a vial of blood as collateral, giving her the power of life and death over her deadbeat clients. However, she's a young, attractive and perfectly courteous woman who even has a soft spot for Kvothe. It's eventually revealed that {{spoiler|her willingness to harm her deadbeat clients with sympathy is mostly just a scare tactic. She uses it to gain favors, which is what she's really after}}.
* [[All Myths Are True]]: Partially averted. Most of the myths mentioned in the book have some shade of truth to them such as the weaknesses of the [[The Fair Folk|Fae and Mael]]. However, others such as the number of Chandrian and their origin vary from place to place and by necessity some of them must be wrong.
* [[Alpha Bitch]]: Apart from being male, Ambrose fits this to a T.
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* [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]]: Kvothe makes an impression in Vintas as follows.
{{quote|I was one of '''those'''. I meddled with dark powers. I summoned demons. I ate the entire little cheese, including the rind.}}
* [[Artistic License Martial Arts]]: The Adem mercenaries practice a martial art that is so powerful that 10-year-old girls can kick the snot out of men. The Adem also claim that being morally superior makes women better fighters.
* [[Attempted Rape]]: Implied rather strongly with {{spoiler|Kvothe, in a flashback to his beggar-orphan days. He manages to fight them off, and the memory of it saves him from Felurian's mind control}}
* [[Badass Boast]]:
** Kvothe's introduction when he begins to recount his life to the Chronicler
** Bast to Chronicler, later in the first book.
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* [[Beam Me Up, Scotty]]: Things said by other philosophers are often attributed to Teccam.
* [[Bedlam House]]: Treatment in the Rookery is actually quite humane, but the asylum in Tarbean plays this straight.
* [[Berserk Button]]:
** God help you if you do anything that can be interpreted as possibly harmful to the books in the Archive around the [[The Stoic|normally-unflappable]] Lorren.
** Don't forget--Kvothe is telling you his story. You will write it ''exactly'' as he says. Oh, and {{spoiler|[[The Fair Folk|Bast]] ''really'' [[Beware the Nice Ones|wants his master's story told]].}}
** Don't accuse Devi of Malfeasance without proof. It will end badly.
** Don't {{spoiler|pretend to be Ruh and go around kidnapping and raping young girls. There won't be much left after Kvothe is done with you.}}
* [[Beware the Nice Ones]]: "There are three things [[Title Drop|all wise men fear]]: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man." (Of course, does Kvothe really count as a "Nice One"?)
* [[Big Bad]]: Lord Haliax and the Chandrian. However, in the second book it's implied that {{spoiler|the Cthaeh may be [[The Chessmaster]] behind everything.}}
* [[Bilingual Bonus]]:
** Bast calls Kvothe "Reshi". "Rishi" is Hindi/Sanskrit for the composer of Vedic poems/hymns or a 'seer' - a Rishi is understood to be a very wise person.
** Aleph, the briefly mentioned creator-god who Named all things, is probably named after the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Incidentally, the letter aleph is ''silent'' on its own, but it's still a necessary component of many words; for instance, it begins the Hebrew words that mean "fire," "man," "woman," and "earth."
** In both Irish and in-universe, "Deoch" means "drink."
* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: Summed up near the end by Kvothe himself: "Prince Gallant kills the dragon but {{spoiler|loses the girl and the treasure}}." Then again, this is only the beginning of the trilogy.
* [[Black Box]]: There are certain rare items that are usable in Kvothe's time, but cannot be manufactured since they require magic that has been lost. Examples:
** Caesura, as well as other Adem swords, never get dull.
** Kilvin shows Kvothe a pair of cubes called wards that can form an invisible shield. In fact, Kilvin invokes the trope himself to explain why Kvothe's efforts on the Bloodless are useful despite the existence of the wards: unlike the wards, the Bloodless can be replicated.
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* [[Book Ends]]: both books in the trilogy so far have both opened and closed with a prologue/epilogue about "A Silence of Three Parts." Each chapter varies slightly in mood, but they all conclude with "the patient, cut-flower sound of a man waiting to die."
* [[Brick Joke]]: In the [[The Name of the Wind|first book]], Elodin asks Kvothe, "Do you know the seven words that will make a woman love you?" {{spoiler|"I need you to breathe for me." (and also "I was just wondering why you're here," "you know, I could have carried you" and "for all that, she lacked your fire").}} The lesson is that the right words depend entirely on context. As does most of Naming magic.
* [[Call a Rabbit a Smeerp]]: A wide, wide variety of things (and people, countries, currencies, holidays, etc.) all seem suspiciously familiar, but under a different name.
** "Ophalum" / "denner resin", which grows in a tree, but has effects resembling a mishmash of several real drugs, notably opium.
** Even graduate students and post-docs aren't free from being Smeerped.
* [[Call Back]]:
** When Vashet tells Kvothe, {{spoiler|"I will admit, I've never had a student offer himself up for a vicious beating in order to prove he's worth my time,"}} Kvothe replies, {{spoiler|"This was nothing. Once I jumped off a roof." This is a reference to Elodin's test of recklessness in ''The Name of the Wind''}}.
** In ''[[The Name of the Wind]]'', Bast sneaked into Chronicler's room at night and opened a discussion with the line, "We need to talk." Mostly, Bast talked and Chronicler listened. In this book, it's Chronicler's turn.
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* [[The Casanova]]: Subverted--Kvothe discovers that, even though [[All Women Are Lustful]], their idea of what constitutes a working relationship involves more emotional commitment than he can offer.
* [[Cassandra Truth]]: Kote tries to convince one of his friends in the village not to head off to war {{spoiler|by telling him the truth about who he is and why Chronicler is there. He is not believed.}} It's implied that some of the other things the boy has been told (his mother is sick and his girlfriend is pregnant) have also been dismissed.
* [[Cast From Hit Points]]: Using the heat of your blood to power sympathy. Too much can lead to shivers, hypothermia and death. Using body heat in general does this too, and is far safer, but blood sends heat faster.
* [[Character Development]]: One example of major character development is Felurian who was a narcissistic personality when she "met" Kvothe. Even after they came to a truce, her lessons and other nice things she did for him were motivated by how it helped her. However, after Kvothe's ordeal with the Cthaeh, Felurian was moved to genuine pity for Kvothe, something that was apparently so rare for her she hadn't any idea how to comfort him.
* [[Chekhov's Classroom]]: Most of the [[Chekhov's Gun|Chekhov's Guns]] are presented as legend, folklore or instruction from Kvothe's studies.
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* [[Compelling Voice]]: Partial subversion - learning the name of something allows people to use this on the objects that they know the name of.
* [[Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like]]: {{spoiler|Fela}} and Kvothe playfully have an exchange like this after he saves her from horrible fiery death.
* [[Consummate Liar]]: Kvothe, due to his expertise as an actor, which is really just applied lying, after all.
* [[Contemptible Cover]]: Tell me, if you saw [http://media.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2007/oct/pearl_books/wind_200.jpg this cover] without context, would you think it was a serious fantasy book or a romance novel? Luckily, the hardcover came with two covers, the other of which was much more respectable. And upon the release of the 5th edition, we got the cool current cover.
* [[Contrived Coincidence]]: Denna and Kvothe run into each other a whole lot...
* [[Cool Old Guy]]: Abenthy (mentioned to be pushing sixty) speaks the titular name of the wind on his very first appearance, and he's the one who first teaches Kvothe about sympathy. And Bredon quickly befriends Kvothe by teaching him to play a strategy game and giving him advice on how to manuever through court politics. Bredon doesn't seem to care what other nobles think of him, and might even indulge in pagan orgies.
* [[Cool Sword]]: Kvothe has a sword named "Folly" hanging on the wall of his Inn.
* [[Cruel Mercy]]: What Kvothe did with the waterskin in ''[[The Wise Man's Fear]]''.
* [[Crystal Dragon Jesus]]: Tehlu, and the whole religion based on him.
* [[Dastardly Whiplash]]: Played with and subverted. Kvothe remarks several times that Elxa Dal, the Master Sympathist, physically resembles a a classic, foreboding evil wizard due to his outfit, black hair and groomed goatee. Dal turns out to be intelligent, friendly, relatively easygoing, and helpful to Kvothe.
* [[Doomed Hometown]]: {{spoiler|Kvothe's traveling troupe}}.
* [[Double Meaning]]: When he meets {{spoiler|the false Ruh}}, Kvothe makes a series of misleading statements to them that all have a chilling double meaning.
** When Kvothe persuades Anne to let him try the stew before it’s ready, she says it won’t be her fault if he gets stomach ache. He laughs and says, "No, Mother, it won’t be your fault." {{spoiler|It will be his own fault, because he is secretly adding poison to it.}}
** Kvothe declares, "Anyone who does not enjoy this fine stew is hardly one of the Ruh in my opinion." {{spoiler|The false Ruh who eat the stew will not enjoy it, because it is now poisoned.}}
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* [[Exact Words]]: Many of Kvothe's statements to {{spoiler|the false Ruh}} have a [[Double Meaning]], with the implied meaning being a [[False Reassurance]] and the Exact Words being a threat.
* [[Eye Scream]]: After {{spoiler|Lanre's}} betrayal and the resulting devastation, Selitos stabs out his own eye in grief.
* [[The Fair Folk]]:
** Bastas, son of Remmen, Prince of Twilight and the Telwyth Mael
** Also implied to be the root cause of what most people call {{spoiler|demons}}.
* [[Fallen Hero]]:
** Lanre/Haliax.
** Possibly our eponymous Kingkiller as well.
* [[False Reassurance]]: Several of Kvothe's statements to {{spoiler|the false Ruh}} sound like he's completely on board with their behavior, but his words have a dangerous [[Double Meaning]].
* [[Fantastic Drug]]: Denner Resin works suspiciously similarly to opium
* [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]]:
** Edema Ruh are clearly based on Roma, with their lively singing and dancing, their nomadic lifestyles living in caravans, and their unfair reputation as thieves.
** Ademre has a lot of parallels with China. The whole concept of the Ketan is clearly based on the martial art of Tai Chi, and the whole concept of the Adem mercenary and and the schools that teach them parallel the operation of many historical martial arts schools in China. Similarly, the concept of the Lethani is highly reminiscent of Daoism. Moreover, the descriptions of how the Adem language works (it's tonality, and its emphasis on double meaning over precision) also strongly resembles a lot of Chinese languages. To top it all off, the Adem are all known for having the same hair color (sandy, instead of black). However, other traits of the Adem (the sexually liberated culture, the matriarchal society, the use of hand gestures in lieu of facial expressions) don't match China at all.
* [[Fantasy Gun Control]] combined with a form of [[Medieval Stasis]]. There are hints that there was a higher level of technology in the past, among them rusted and unrecognizable hulks in the tunnels and the remains of an extensive sewer system. Something seems to have knocked them back. Sections at the University suggest that science and technology is currently around early 19th century levels, possibly a little better in some areas and worse in others. For example:
** Kvothe knows that steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, rather than something you get from processing iron in a particular way with coke.
** Medicine in general is well developed in the Arcanum; Arwyl and Kvothe know that bleeding a person is almost never beneficial, and Kvothe repeatedly resorts to charcoal to counteract ingested poisons. He can also compute dosages by body weight. In selecting food for Auri, Kvothe knows enough about nutrition to choose the most nourishing things. Simmon identifies the plum-bob drug as "lipid soluble" and knows that this means it will hang around in the body for a while, causing flashbacks. Another character adds that it removes "behavioural filters", very much a late 20th century expression. And people know what proprioception is, despite it being obscure enough in ''our'' world that most people have never even heard the word.<ref>It's the seventh of your five senses--the sixth being your balance from your inner ear--and is what lets you know where your body parts are in relation to each other. Proprioception is what lets you clap your hands in the dark.</ref>
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* [[Hermit Guru]]: Elodin. [[Lampshaded]] by Kvothe on several occasions.
* [[Heroic Fantasy]]
* [[
* [[I Have Many Names]]: Kvothe, quite obviously.
* [[Infallible Narrator]]: Being [[The Ace]] as well as a trained storyteller, Kvothe recollects every detail of his story. Before he's even willing to begin, he demands proof that Chronicler will be able to transcribe every detail perfectly.
* [[Insistent Terminology]]: While many are okay with the common folk referring to the art of sympathy as magic, arcanists among themselves take great pains to point out the large difference between [[The Fair Folk|the fairy tale magic of Fae]] and the more rigorously studied [[Magic A Is Magic A|sympathy]].
* [[The Knights Templar]]: The Amyr seem to be based on the Templars. Also described as being [[Knight Templar|Knight Templars]] in the trope sense.
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* [[Memetic Badass]]: Kvothe himself, in-universe. People are telling tales about him, and getting it wrong due to hearsay distortion, ''in his own inn, to his face''.
* [[Modesty Bedsheet]]: Fela uses one ([[Fan Service|and not very effectively]]) when Kvothe calls upon her in her dorm room late one night.
* [[Mood Ring Eyes]]:
** Bast's blue eyes change as well, brightening and the pupil shrinking based on mood; this is justified however as he's not human in the first place and the change is at least partly the glamour slipping.
** Kvothe's green eyes are observed and commented on multiple times through the book as changing shade depending on his mood. This is interpreted by many readers that his mother, a highborn runaway, was a fae.
* [[Mook Horror Show]]: Near the end of the second book {{spoiler|Kvothe [[Tranquil Fury|dispassionately]] hunts down and kills the false troopers who have kidnapped and raped a pair of girls while pretending to be Ruh (believing he would find this to be normal behaviour).}} Recognising the brutality of what he has done actually gives him nightmares wherein he sees himself as a pitiless monster hunting down his actual family.
* [[Mr. Fanservice]]: Bast, [http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/panel-5.jpg as lampshaded in a comic summary of the novel posted on Rothfuss' blog.]
* [[No Conservation of Energy]]: Averted. One of the main premises of Sympathy is that you need energy, and the weaker the link, the more energy is lost in the process. As already mentioned, when in a pinch, some characters (mostly Kvothe) have used the heat from their own [[Blood Magic|blood]] for an energy source.
* [[Nice Guy]]: Kvothe admires Simmon for being this.
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* [[Punctuation Shaker]]: The University's ranks. At least they confine themselves to just apostrophes, no accents or umlauts lurking about.
* [[Reconstruction]]: The book does a wonderful job of answering [[Deconstruction|questions about the genre]] before they're even ''asked''. For example, the [[Framing Device]] involves Kvothe dictating the story to Chronicler. Well, people can't write as fast as they can talk, but most books just quietly ignore that. Here, however, Chronicler has invented a shorthand cipher specifically for the purpose of allowing him to write faster than people can talk, justifying something so omnipresent we don't even have a trope for it.
* [[Redheaded Hero]]: Kvothe has "true red" hair, rather than than the brownish-orange that most people describe as "red hair." It's his most distinctive feature.
* [[Red Right Hand]]: It's implied that all of the Chandrian have one. Cinder, has white hair, black eyes and a [[Slasher Smile]]. Lord Haliax is described as being totally shrouded in shadow, even in bright light. They also leave signs of their presence in the area, such as flame turning blue, drops in temperature, animals going hysterical, plants withering, etc.
* [[Retired Badass]]: Kvothe fakes his death, moves to small village, opens an Inn, and retires into his "Kote" persona. Notably, he's retired well before thirty.
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* [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money]]: Ambrose. Made especially clear when, to repay a slight, Ambrose {{spoiler|convinces someone to buy the tavern Kvothe works at, just to get him fired}}.
* [[Secret Test of Character]]: Kvothe casually asks {{spoiler|a band of Ruh}} if they know the song "Piper Wit." The fact that they do not confirms to him that they are not who they say they are.
* [[Shout-Out]]:
** A character at the Arcanum using "thaums" as a unit of measurement (for heat in this story) might be a reference to ''[[Discworld]]''.
** At one point he shouts "As above, so below" thinking it a joke that only those in the University would get. This is one of the rules of magic known in the Unseen University in ''[[Discworld]]''.
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** Kvothe leaves Trebon via the [[Firefly|Evesdown docks]].
* [[Shown Their Work]]: Many have lauded Rothfuss for his descriptions of music in his books -- despite this, however, Pat claims that he can't play one to save his life.
* [[Shrouded in Myth]]:
** Starting soon after his acceptance into the University, Kvothe began starting the rumors about himself that would grow into this. By the time he tells Chronicler his story, patrons of the inn are telling tales about him in ''front'' of him without knowing it. Some people even think that he's ''only'' a myth and never really existed.
** The Chandrian, partly because they kill people who learn too much about them.
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* [[Smug Snake]]: Ambrose is smart, charming, capable, and seems like he ''should'' have been able to be a [[Magnificent Bastard]]. However, his pettiness, his glee in picking on people who can't defend themselves, and his insistance on exploiting every last scrap of unearned privilege he's got, is enough to make the readers cheer whenever something bad happens to him.
* [[Stealing From the Till]]: Kvothe's arrangement with the University's bursar allows them both to embezzle money from the Maer.
* [[The Storyteller]]: All over. The Edema Ruh love telling stories (they're a traveling troupe). Skarpi, who told stories in an inn in Tarbean in exchange for money. Cob tells stories at the inn in Newarre. Kvothe is telling the trilogy as the story of his life.
* [[Show Within a Show|Story Within a Story]]: A main theme. Chronicler is writing down Kvothe's story, which contains many more stories that he recites from memory. They often provide [[Info Dump|Infodumps]] on the history of the world.
* [[Sympathetic Magic]]: The more commonly practiced type of magic can be applied to both living creatures as well as inanimate matter.
* [[Those Two Guys]]: Simmon and Wilem.
* [[Title Drop]]:
** All three book titles have already been dropped, though this does not rule out Rothfuss changing the working title of Book 3 at some later point.
** The title of every chapter is usually dropped within a few pages. They serve as [[Chekhov's Gun|Chekhov's Guns]] in that sense.
* [[Tortured Abomination]]: Haliax. {{spoiler|After his lover died, he tried bringing her back, but ended up depressed and suicidal - but unable to die. He ended up insane and now goes around killing anybody who knows his name.}}
* [[Vestigial Empire]]: The Aturan Empire
* [[White-Haired Pretty Boy]]: Cinder. (If by "pretty" we mean "evil demigod who terrifies with a glance and will happily torture you to death unless his even nastier supervisor says it's time to leave...")
* [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity]]: Learning magic puts a lot of strain on a person's mind. This can result in anything from developing minor, temporary personality quirks, to falling into permanent, full-blown, need-to-be-strapped-down-to-avoid-hurting-yourself insanity. People like [[Cloudcuckoolander|Elodin, Auri and Puppet]] fall somewhere in between the extremes.
* [[Wizarding School]]: The University includes the Arcanum, which teaches various magical skills. Some students, however, come to the University just to study Math, Chemistry and so forth.
* [[Your Normal Is Our Taboo]]: The Adem. They have no cultural taboos about nudity or sex but are horrified if anyone were to even think about performing any kind of music in public. This stems from their belief that displaying emotion in public is uncivilized and should only be done in private with those you are closest to, as such their language involves intricate hand signals to get the meaning of your words across. Just raising your voice is extremely rude but showing your emotions with music, with just anyone, night after night for just a few coins would make you the equivalent of the cheapest, most tawdry kind of whore imaginable (calling someone an actual whore though is a great compliment).
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