and now, Oglaf inspired rambling about fantasy tropes and old TSR products
So... you know the cover to Dragonlance Adventures, with Tanis Half Elven triumphantly seizing the crown from Lord Ariakis? This many years later it turns out what that was about is that canonically Tanis shivs Ariakis at Kitiara's request to save Laurana or something like that. As a kid who'd read all my Dad's 60s vintage DeCamp/Carter edited Conan books I was totally convinced that fantasy succession of power involved single combat with the prior king and that in this case Tanis was going to seize the Dragonarmies for his own.