Are prophecies something that destroy history?

[Erdin_Vil]

Are prophecies something that destroy history?
Doesn't knowing that something was predestined from the beginning of the work make everything that was done before in vain?
It takes away all the weight of the decisions, and renders useless everything that the character has worked hard to build. Because logically, no matter what he did, it would all end up the same.

 

[Lloyd]

Prophecies in the context of novels are usually a literary device ment to confer divinity onto someone. This trope originates from Jesus fulfilling the prophecies of the old testament which at the time and today many people took as proof of him being God.

 

[georgelee5786]

As per Oedipus Rex, yes

 

[Paul_Tromba]

No

 

[Tempokai]

No, as it is the karma that's been made along the way towards that point decides what will happen in the future. Sure, the demon king dying from a sword of a hero in far future will happen, but how it will play is entirely different matter. Macbeth is the good example.

 

[Thraben]

I prefer to think of two types of prophecy, 'Intended' and 'Made'.

Made prophecy is an event or series of events that WILL happen, and as such could be considered to have already happened, making them history, in the sense of your question.

Intended prophecies are the more interesting type to me, stuff that should happen, and if it doesn't the consequences for the setting will be severe.

A 'made' prophecy FORCES the hero to kill the demon king, and as such the hero defeating the demon king becomes the backdrop for everything else going on around that historical event. Like watching a period piece set around WW1, WW1 is going to happen, and the audience knows how it ends, so getting invested in the lives of the wives sending soldiers off to war and of those soldiers dreading it is good dramatic storytelling.

An 'intended' prophecy presents the way history is supposed to play out, then asks the characters at the center of the prophecy if they're bad enough dudes to kick fate in the nuts, apocalypse come what may. For example, the hero decides that the demon king ain't shit and becomes a much bigger bad guy in order to achieve one of their own goals, or the hero sets out to kill god just to prove that fate doesn't own him. In this case, prophecy is the 'intended' way for the story to play out and perhaps even the most likely or most preferred way, but not the only way it can happen.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

But you already made the choice that caused everything. You can't change the past.

 

[Zagaroth]

My setting doesn't have guaranteed prophecies. Guaranteed prophecies are one part self-fulfilling and one part fate-twisting in order to make an event happen, no matter how improbable. See: Oedipus Rex

That leaves two others: Predictive and Luck Blessing.

Predictive sees the pattern of things that are happening, and foretells key moments in time where things could diverge along one path of history or another. They are usually vague enough that you can't figure out far in advance exactly what is going to happen, but give enough information that a careful person can begin prep work (including information gathering) to push events onto the better path with the appropriate moment comes and they finally figure out what the prophecy actually meant.

Luck Blessing prophecies are somewhat rarer. They require a significant amount more effort on the part of a deity and twist luck around the target in order to fulfill the future that the deity wishes for the favored person. These can be tricky; one of the three most powerful deities in my setting had a luck blessing twist itself to fulfill the wish, but not in the way that the goddess wished and in a longer-term manner after introducing some interim problems. Simply put, she pushed too hard, and the universe pushed back. But she's also not known for having a delicate touch and really should know better by now.

Technically, Luck Blessings can be inverted into curses, but inflicting a specific doom is going to increase the chances of something going wrong.

Most deific curses are instead related to their domains. The goddess of the sun might curse someone to be allergic to sunlight, while the god of shadows could curse someone to cast no shadow and have other shadows avoid them. If you walk under an awning at a market stall to do some trade, and the shadow of the awning twists to leave you in sunlight with no shadow of your own, it's going to be obvious whose displeasure you have earned. Also, good luck trying to hide by ducking into someplace dark. Oh, and no, a hood is not going to keep your face concealed.

 

[BigBadBoi]

Most prophecies are intentionally vague. Hell there are prophecies that are self fulfilling like Oedipus.

 

[ACertainPassingUser]

Prophecies are technically "extremely accurate and precise predictions".

Of course, prophecies in real life is quite debatable.

But, this is not real life. This is your world inside the writing. You can decide whether to make the prophecies to be precisely accurate, being somewhat accurate, not so accurate, being not accurate after some event, or simply not an actual prophecy becaud eits actually a secret code or part of a spell to activate magic spell or something.

Thats your authority as an author.

The rest of the work, is trying to convince your audience with the appropriate narration and explanations that your character understand.

A.k.a convincing your reader of your story.

Will your prophecy destroy history ?

That's also your decision.

You can be creative and write that the legendary prophecy is strong enough that it manages to destroy history or something.

Or usually it just add more content or filler word into the history, in my opinion.

And usually, in stories involving prophecies, usually prophecies didn't add that much to the story at all. Not even if it's a spoiler or important missing piece.

For a person, or a character, they will be affected by prophecies, because they dont know abiut the future. But for us, the readers, we can just flip or scroll the pages for the future, therefore. We're not that interested in prophecies, unless is dxciting or somewhat affceting the plot.

 

[GlassRose]

Are prophecies something that destroy history?
Doesn't knowing that something was predestined from the beginning of the work make everything that was done before in vain?
It takes away all the weight of the decisions, and renders useless everything that the character has worked hard to build. Because logically, no matter what he did, it would all end up the same.

Depends on the prophecy to a degree. Prophecies are often vague, and the exact meaning is often unclear until it has been fulfilled.

But also, it's not like knowing that 'the good guys win' ruins the story. That's almost every story, everyone is expecting that from the beginning. What matters is how the characters get there, the struggles they overcome, how they change and grow and come into conflict with each other and how that shapes them and who they are and their path. A story is about the journey, not the destination. You could compare it also, to life itself. Life is about the journey, not the destination. The destination is immutable. Death. And then being forgotten. It WILL happen, it's only a matter of time. That doesn't stop people from caring about what happens before that.

Plus, prophecies (except for a certain subset, the kind enforced by the abstract, god-like entity/force of 'fate' or 'destiny') don't force things to go a certain way, they don't write fate or make anyone do anything. They are predictions, it's knowledge of what will happen, but what actually makes that stuff happen isn't the prophecy, it's the characters (sometimes the prophecy is responsible for pointing the characters in the right direction, self-fulfilling prophecies, but it's still the choices and effort and power of the characters that make it happen). If the characters didn't fight and give their all, they would fail.

The caveat being, if that is the case, the prophecy wouldn't have been made in the first place. So really, a prophecy is more a guarantee that these people will put in the effort even with the seemingly guaranteed nature of the future, and that the effort of these people will be rewarded- unless it's a fallible prophecy, where the future-sight is limited somehow, like only showing a likely future, or is more of a guide to a desired future than a prediction, or where the prophecy would have come true, but by gaining knowledge of the future, the future changed, resulting in, essentially, a self-defeating prophecy.

Of course, when prophecies are handled unskillfully by the author, it can seem like the only reason things are happening is because fate and coincidence is bending over backwards to make it happen, because, "The prophecy!", even if the prophecy isn't justified as the kind where fate/destiny itself is backing it up to make it happen (or even if it is justified that way, but still handled poorly) and at that point it devolves into an obnoxious form of plot armor. However, a fate-type prophecy, handled well, can be really interesting.

Prophecies have interesting effects on characters, where they struggle with the implications of being a prophesied something, and either struggle against destiny or feel like they can't, or they get warped by feeling like no matter what happens victory is assured because of the prophecy, and all of that can be really interesting from a reader's perspective. Times where the characters in-universe make false assumptions about the nature of the prophecy, (fate vs prediction), and struggle with that, possibly making mistakes based on that false assumption- all delicious story material.

So actually, I've changed my answer. "Not in the slightest". Or rather, no more than any other trope or literary device can cause damage to a story's effectiveness when handled incompetently.