Grey morality becoming a trope

A cliché is not the same thing as a trope. To use TV Tropes' definition: "Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means 'stereotyped and trite.' In other words, dull and uninteresting." Tropes can be overused, yes, but that doesn't mean they're all boring. They're storytelling devices. You can use them straight, subvert them, invert them, or avert them as you please.

So, no, I don't think grey morality is becoming a trope (or a cliché, for that matter). It's always been a trope, and it's just coming into focus more and more recently.

 

I don't disagree with you. Black/white morality is every bit as valid a device as grey/grey morality. Or black/grey, white/grey, black/black... etc.

 

One of the reasons I designed my worlds the way I did was to explore aspects of black, grey, and white personality types.

I asked myself: suppose you had a type of wizard that was always evil, or at best dark grey. Could that be made to work? Hence the Darkborn, and their polar opposites, the Godborn, paragons of healing and protective magic. Then I asked could two such radically different types work together? What common bonds might they share? And that gave rise to Enrick the Godborn, and his half sister Edith the Darkborn. Then, because I was dabbling with Lovecraftian themes even then, I asked 'suppose there was a general campaign against demons and Lovecraftian abominations. Now, even though they were a nasty bunch, might not those leading the opposition to these beings try to make use of Darkborn? (as well as Godborn) Fight fire with fire, gain unique intelligence, and so on.

The other thing which plagued me for a long time was the whole concept of experience points in AD&D and like games (my stories back then made heavy use of game mechanics.) A friend of mine came over one day and flipped through a few of the handbooks (he was more into the game than I was). He looked up 'Kobolds' in the Monster Manual, then the experience point tables for fighters and a couple other classes. 'Damn,' he said. 'Kobolds are worth seven XP each. To get to fourth or fifth level, you'd have to kill several tribes of kobolds.'

That stuck with me, and highlighted something else that bugged me. In old style AD&D, XP came from pretty much just two things: killing monsters and treasure - which much of the time belonged to somebody else. Characters didn't receive XP for other things. To me, it seemed reasonable a bard would gain XP for each performance or song learned, a priest for attracting converts, and mages for deciphering arcane lore. But that wasn't how things were set up (back then, might have changed since.)

So I started to incorporate this into my writing. You have a character whose been through a lot: killed a bunch of people, seen people he cared about get killed, and more of the same in the future. How long before said character turned into a monster? Could he be redeemed? And such issues remain part of the core of my writing.

 

No.

We have only just begun to explore Gray.

In the states it's spelled with an a, not an e.

Not sure where you hang your hat, just a friendly observation.

 

Something else that influenced my thinking, and to an extent my writing. Many years ago, when I could still be termed 'young,' I chanced across a pile of 'New Age' books dealing with reincarnation and spiritual development. Two concepts seemed core to the whole:

1 - Types of souls (Seven - Artisan, Sage, Warrior, King, Slave, Priest, Scholar) each with their own root inclinations as to how they see the world and act within it.

2 - Ages of souls, based on a rough total of incarnations and life lessons learned (Infant, baby, Young, Mature, Old, plus a couple of special cases) Rule of thumb was the younger souls tended towards rigid, structured outlooks, frequently including binary (black and white) thinking. The more mature souls tended to see things in shades of grey, getting to the true core issues. Younger souls were more 'me' oriented, which progressed to 'me making a mark' to the gradual realization of a sort of spiritual tapestry and acceptance of differing ways of doing things.

 

GRRM seems to have become a significant example of the grey morality implementation in fantasy. He's not the first obviously but the popularity of the TV show and his books has certainly put it at the forefront.

Grey morality and black/white morality can both be implemented poorly.

I'd hate to see books judged harshly because they aren't following the GRRM character design approach.

Some characters may be flawed but do a very good job at hiding it, so their outward appearance might seem somewhat one dimensional. Obviously people have self-interests that can sometimes take precedent over a more ethical approach to living their lives, but not everyone is constantly shifting back and fourth between being self-serving and selfless.

Someone that is portrayed as being perpetually stuck in a grey morality sounds boring to me. Heroic deeds and sacrifice are a part of fantasy.