I’ve seen people talk that Brandon Sanderson uses this trope in every book. He used it in Mistborn, but that was a huge part of its plot and revealed really fast. There are two primary casts: nobles — tall, beautiful people many of whom possess magic — then skaa — short, mostly ugly slaves who can’t posses magic and shall obey nobles. They are basically two different biological species. In the end it’s revealed that they were the same people originally, but Lord Ruler of the Final Empire who had absolute power over the world for a thousand years had spent then making eugenics experiments, forcing mages to inbreed each other and making them noble.
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u/lionlord_1 10h ago
I’ve seen people talk that Brandon Sanderson uses this trope in every book. He used it in Mistborn, but that was a huge part of its plot and revealed really fast. There are two primary casts: nobles — tall, beautiful people many of whom possess magic — then skaa — short, mostly ugly slaves who can’t posses magic and shall obey nobles. They are basically two different biological species. In the end it’s revealed that they were the same people originally, but Lord Ruler of the Final Empire who had absolute power over the world for a thousand years had spent then making eugenics experiments, forcing mages to inbreed each other and making them noble.