🤓 Maybe it's because the literature is geared towards young adults … or perhaps it's still the censorship of the Victorian mindset … it could even be that I'm rather provincial in my reading choices … but I don't read a lot of fantasy where the "great evil" of the past that got someone banished or condemned to "damnatio memoriae" is because they committed a horrible sex crime.
🕵️ Imagine trying to find a history of what happened to this lost treasure, or how to cast that weird spell, with the struggle being that the figure behind it all is obscure not just from the ravages of time, but because they were persona-non-grata enough to be removed. Or they were adjacent to such a person, that their records were expunged, or so valueless that they rotted without preservation.
🤔 The only example of this literary device that I think I've read is a tangent in "Perdido Street Station".