Fantasy stories where Royal Blood gives you Superpowers.

[MithrandirOlorin]

I find this topic interesting to analyze.

On the one hand if you're going to have genetically inherited Superpowers or Magical Affinities be a thing in your fictional setting. It actually seems far more plausible to me that they would become the ruling class rather then the X-Men based standard of making them oppressed minorities.

However on the other hand real world Hereditary Monarchies have been justified by claims that the Royal Bloodline descends from Demigods or when Christianized have some God granted miracle power to vindicate their Divine Right. So doing this in a Fantasy or Sci-Fi story can intentionally or not seem like vindication of actual Royalist beliefs.

"The hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known." from The Lord of The Rings is the most directly based on the real world equivalent. The Royal Touch associated with both French and English Kings. And yeah the Inklings more then any other famous writers of Fantasy were Medievalists in their real world politics. More recently the Royal Touch has been cited by Da Vinci Code supporters as evidence that the Merovingians descended from Jesus.

In Game Of Thrones and the Novels it's based on the Targaryen ablity to control Dragons is the source of their Divine Right to rule. People who liked how the last ended tend to paint the complainers like Lindsay Ellis as the ultimate White Feminists who suddenly support Hereditary Monarchy when it's a White Woman. Those critics have in fact made it clear it's about the character development, and suggesting Targaryen madness is simply biological determinism does not actually disagree with Eugenics.

A lot of old 19th Century Novels that don't have fantastical elements do involve lost heirs to titles of Nobility, where the lost rightful heir is identified by same Heirloom or Birthmark. I can see how it would make sense when translating those tropes into a Fantastical setting to use some sort of Super Power or Magical Ability instead.

In Attack On Titan those with royal blood can alter memories and it seems also command Titans, or help Titan Shifters control Titans. And indeed Krista/Historia's arc over the course of Season 2 and the first part of 3 is the best Return of The Queen arc I've seen so far.

But I want to talk last about something more obscure.

Aldnoah Zero an Anime from 2014 I watched recently on HBOMax. It's a Real Robots Mecha show using a lot of tropes codified by Gundam. But in Gundam the super powers that exist for the purpose of limiting the ability to pilot Gundams to specific people are more like Childhood's End (even calling them Newtypes seems to play on language from that book). But in this show it's an ability the Royal Family of the Martian Empire was given by some technology of an ancient lost Martian civilization, but that they can also loan to others making them Nobles. When The Princess does this it tends to be by Kissing them on the Lips.

So this show unlike a lot of Mecha does wind up seeming like a straight forward endorsement of Royalism. The key to making Peace in the end is getting the good Royal on the Throne.

It also reminds me how a lot of the concepts related to Courtly Love in old Chretien de Troyes style Medieval Romances kind of resemble the modern Internet concept of Simping. In this Anime whether you're a good guy or a bad guy isn't determined by which side of the War you're on, but whether or not you're Simping for Princess Asseylum.

Those are the four that popped into my head right away as I decided to make this post. Feel free to comment with other examples you find interesting.
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[Thebestoftherest]

OR how Luke is a strong jedi due to his blood as oppose to hard work.

[MithrandirOlorin]

OR how Luke is a strong jedi due to his blood as oppose to hard work.

My subject here is specifically Royal Bloodlines.

[Independent George]

Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn has a really interesting take on it. Allomancy and Ferruchemy are both heritable, and powers have explicitly gotten weaker over generations as the talents are diluted over time. Allomancy is confirmed to be divine in origin, being sourced from the essence of one of that universe's gods; it gets weaker as that essence is finite, and is dispersed over time. All of the unfortunate implications of this are explored in the second series, which is set at a roughly Victorian level of technology, with villains that are pretty much Victorian eugenicists. Without revealing any spoilers, the villains follow the logic of heritable superpowers to its natural (and horrfying) conclusion.

The Knights of the Cross in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files are all descended from monarchy (and not by coincidence), but that lineage alone does not make a Knight. In a Q & A session, Jim Butcher answered that (1) ancient Kings tended to have lots and lots of descendants, and (2) it was not a matter of divine right but duty - the King and the Land being one means that their descendants have a duty to fulfill, but also the free will to refuse it. Being a Knight is explicitly shown to be a huge burden that, in turn, can only be born willingly.

[McAvoy]

OR how Luke is a strong jedi due to his blood as oppose to hard work.

I would argue that he did have to put in hard work just like his father to become a Jedi. Certainly Luke had a more of crash course than Anakin though.

Royal bloodline would be ahem... Rey and her Palpatine bloodline.

There is a bit of fan speculation about Delenn and Duhkat from B5 having a bit of a bloodline coming from Valen. Duhkat being the only one having facial hair. He coming from the bloodline of Valen who is a Minbari not of Minbar. Who we all know was a human. Since we know that Minbari to human transformation didn't make Delenn fully human. Maybe the process of Sinclare didn't make him fully Minbari. So his descendents carried the bloodline of having facial hair.

[phantom000]

What about the princesses from She-ra? Although they might not count as the power supposedly come from their runestone, but it seems like only the princess/queen has the power, so I don't know.

Also, this thread makes me think of Dune or Code Geass where the royal houses are supposed to be the result of a eugenics program to create superior leaders.

[ProfessorDetective]

Dragonhouses from Eberron and their hereditary dragonmarks, which give them affinities with certain types of magic, leading to a dungeonpunk industrial revolution. Though, 'royalty' in this case is more 'CEOs' than 'kings/queens'.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

King Arthur

edit: Really though I think Obi-Wan Kinobi is King Arthur in a role playing sense.

[KuudereKun]

Naturally I couldn't help but bump this after seeing Rebel Moon.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Sith lords I think support a practical notion of power by a monarch of sorts. They tend to resemble noble lords though. Then when you consider Anakin and Rey….

Really it seems like what you’re asking about, just a less problematic allegory.