The Warlord Chronicles/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternate Character Interpretation: The whole book does this to numerous characters as opposed to their traditional portrayal. Also, Derfel very grudgingly admits at one point that his personal view of Lancelot could be clouding how Lancelot comes off in the story
  • Complete Monster: Gundleus deserves a special mention. Casually killing your betrothed and her baby and then raping another woman and ripping out one of her eyes earns someone a place in the Special Hell. (Right next to the people who talk in movie theaters). Also, Dwirnach more than warrants a mention as well.
    • King Mark deserves the title as well, marrying young women, abusing them for a couple of years, and then having them murdered. Even though he gets only one scene in the trilogy, it will make the reader utterly loathe him.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Why didn't the character of Derfel appear in medieval Arthurian myths? Because he's Lancelot. The medieval Lancelot reads like a Composite Character of this Lancelot and Derfel, having both Derfel's mystical upbringing by a sorceress and status as Arthur's champion, and Lancelot's homeland and betrayal. Gwenevere and Ceinwyn seem to have been given the same treatment.
    • Derfel actually does appear in a number of early Arthur stories as a knight who becomes a monk, but his role is minor, and he's dropped from all the modern adaptations.
  • Fridge Logic: In the first book, when Derfel and Galahad are sent on a mission to see King Gorfydyd, the King, as an insult, directs them to sleep in the women's hall, rather than in the men's, the implication being that they aren't warrior enough for the honour. This Troper isn't the only one who thinks bunking two muscular young enemy warriors in among the ladies (including the king's own stunningly beautiful daughter Ceinwyn) is a potentially disastrous idea, right?
    • Well, no-one said Gorfydyd was clever...
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Guinevere.
  • Tear Jerker: Damn it, if you don't cry when Dian is killed, then God help you, because you have no soul.