Deltora Quest/Fridge

• Fridge Brilliance - Lief means "heir"... and "loved", of which he is both.
  • After Doom hits his head and is rambling about his history after leaving Del, he uses the phrase "dear heart", used by Jarred to Anna in Part 1 of The Forests of Silence, subtly hinting at the truth that he is not Endon, as the scene implies, but Jarred.
• Fridge Horror - The Shadow Lord based most of his plans and traps on legends or things that actually happened. Considering that he faked a sister for Jasmine means that Anna might have been unknowingly pregnant when she was killed.
  • On another note, think carefully about the Ols. Supposedly, there's various tests to see if the people you think are on your side are really Ols, primarily the three-day test. But this doesn't work for higher than Grade 2 Ols. At any slow moment when Leif has has guard down and thinks the Shadow Lord's threat is over, the Ols can sneak in, replace Jasmine or Barda, and kill him off in his sleep. In a deeper level, how can you trust anyone? Even if they aren't Ols, the second plan of the Shadow Lord is mind control snakes. Anyone can be working for the Shadow Lord.
• Fridge Logic - Did Jasmine's parents just never tell her their names?
  • If the tribal leaders of the Masked Ones were actually descended from the bloodline of Ballum, King Elstred's younger brother, wouldn't that mean that Bede is Lief's heir, and not Marilen? A possible explanation for this plothole is that Ballum's line ended at some point, either through adoption or other means, but that would utterly mess up the explanation for why Bede looks like Lief in the first place!
    • Easy answer to that one - Marilen is said to be only one of several identified living relatives of Lief's - and thus potential heirs. He picked her out, that's all.
    • Ballum's very existence causes problems, seeing as how it seems to contradict canon; remember, the reason that Lief had such trouble finding an heir was that part of the Rule was that the current King or Queen would have one and only one child. Adin was supposedly the only one who had multiple kids, which is why Lief had to trace his bloodline all the way back to Adin's time, and then down the bloodlines of one of his 5 original children. If any of the kings or queens had multiple children with the blood of Adin, his job would have been a lot easier - but if they didn't, that means that King Elstred couldn't have had a younger brother.
  • Why on EARTH didn't Sharn and Endon have more than one kid? If you have to have a blood heir to make your MacGuffin work, ideally wouldn't you want as many as possible?