Chosen Hero Elitism

Quite liked how they handled it in Morrowind. You were prophesized, but werent. All the ghosts in Azura's cave were just as much the Nerevarine as you are, except they died while completing the prophesy.

But being rich isn't what made Jonathon or any of his descendants heroes. That was something they earned by kindness or their courage.

I always wanted a setting where everybody talks about the Legendary Heroe's linage, and how special and unique it is/was. Then it turns out the dude was just the best man for the job and the lineage thing was made up for morale reasons.

They were explicitly of noble blood, though.

MFW movie fags actually think pipe weed means marijuana. It's just tobacco ya dumbasses but tobacco doesn't sound fanciful enough for tolkiens writing style.

The divine right of kings is quite appealing. I keep saying that we should have a king or emperor, not for the sake of the government but as an uncorruptible, perfect symbol that the whole country can rally around to end this plague of division.

Then again, I dream of conquering a third world country and bringing it out of poverty and onto the global stage as its king, and suffer from some pretty bad memory loss, so I might actually be a time traveling colonial soldier.

>Everybody knows a defining trait of a Hero is a significant birth

I want to contest this claim, because after thinking about this for some time, this trope seems nowhere near as common as you seem to imply. In fact it seems that the inversion of this idea (the prophecy was made up all along) is far more common.

This, usually he's still the "chosen one" which means he is the only one who can save the kingdom because magic.

It probably helped. Dio was poor as fuck, and filled with an immense bitterness towards the world.

So, that Dwyane Johnson Hercules movie?

Noble lineages start and end with an anonymous grunt stabbing someone in the back with a pointy bit.

Great moments are what make great men, the rest is just the legend that gets hyped up around you after you've already become important.

> implying user watched that movie
> implying anyone watched that movie
> implying you watched that movie

>get literal tones of gold from the dorfs

It was two small chests! One of silver and the other of gold.

Also, who cares if Legendary Magical Peasant With Blood of Kings kills the Demon Lord Astragolarth? The real thing oppressing the kingdom for years has been Duke Fried's taxes, and now that Amanda Cobbler the cobbler's daughter has led an army successfully to take the capital and put his head on a pike, she's in charge and will get to invent legitimacy for her dynasty. And if that fails she'll just marry off herself or her children to Legendary Swordsman so that even by the old dynasty's standards her line, once her unique genius and cult of personality is gone, will be legitimate in terms of blood and magic destiny.

A half-meter cubed box of gold is about two and a half tonnes.

Not that user, but I watched it and it was fuckin' sweet.

I did watch that movie. On a streaming site. Two hours of my life I'm getting back, but at least I can be satisfied the chucklefucks who made it didn't get a dime from me.

I'm NOT getting back

What the hell.

Heroes aren't born, they are made.

An old Magic Card, from like second edition, had "You don't have to step forward to be a hero. Everyone else has to step back." or something. I think it is very true.

All it takes for anyone to be a hero is them not stepping aside.

I've always liked it better when the hero isn't the one chosen, but the one who steps up (well, and actually succeeds). It's a nice literary plot device for there to be some kind of fate or something, but I've always been a fan of a hero who has to step up to the challenge.

There's variations as well, the hero's initial stepping up might get him noticed, and therefore "chosen" by some power or another, or they might exhibit some form or combination of character and traits that make them worthy of the choice, but ultimately still have to go through the trials necessary to receive whatever it is that makes them the chosen one.

But inheriting that fate for no reason and not really having a problem with it is kind of dumb. Even Aragorn had to step the fuck up and take back his title, rightfully commanding the armies of the dead and holding their oath fulfilled because it was in his inherited power to do so as king. Still, he did have to make those choices, despite some good counterpoints.

They didn't ship him off with a meter-meter-meter cube of solid gold, user. A small chest, so a dwarf or hobbit even, was probably half that width and half again as short in width and height, made of loose golden objects stacked more loosely rather than fit together like Tetris blocks.

Memory, Sorrow and Thorn kind of did this.

"Fated hero" and "hero by birthright" are both pretty good. In theory I like how Exalted sort of kinda ish separates them into genres:

Hero by fate
Hero by birthright
Hero by survival
Hero by Faustian pact
Hero by gang rape
Hero by luck
Hero by series of increasingly rarefied reincarnations

The powers tie into this usually only indirectly or bizarrely, if at all, however (for example, you are the hero of fate, so you can fire chickens out of a crossbow with deadly effect, a housecat can bear your weight comfortably and you can stand on its back to move at breakneck speed, and you can tie a city to your waist to drag it around).

>Bilbo and Frodo
They were wealthy gentlemen whose prestigious family tree included a general who invented the sport of golf by decapitating a goblin-chief (with a club!) so hard that the head flew across .a field and into a rabbit-hole.

Having a significant birth or lineage is a common trait for heroes, but it is not definitive of heroes in general. I think it's common both because it's a convenient reason for the events of a story to elevate an seemingly-unexceptional person to heroic deeds, and because revealing a significant inheritance is fantasy itself. After all, who doesn't dream of being heir to great power or riches?