For what it’s worth, the DARKSWORD series was built around a prophet who accurately foretold that, lo, there will be born to the Royal House one who is Dead yet will live, who will die again and live again; and when he returns, he will hold in his hand the destruction of the world or its salvation.
Said prophet keeled over right after saying “world”.
IIRC that’s not quite how it played out; Paul and Leto II both foresaw that prescience itself and the centralization of the Empire required by dependence on Spice would ultimately doom humanity to stagnation, and extinction by a number of possible routes. Leto’s rule as God-Emperor was designed to give humanity a hatred of central control at the race-memory level, and to breed humans invisible to prescience. In parallel, he permitted his enemies to produce devices to replace Guild navigators, as well as synthesizing Spice. Thus when he was eventually killed, humanity exploded outward in the Scattering, never to return to central control and eliminating prescience itself.
Anakin Skywalker was supposed to “bring balance to the Force”. Eight movies later, I still don’t see how his fall to the Dark Side, becoming Darth Vader, and murdering all the Jedi accomplished that prophecy.
Before Anakin, the Good Side was all-powerful. After Anakin, the Dark Side wiped out most of the Good Side. But at the end of RotJ, Vader comes back to the Good Side, and things seem to be balanced somewhat with the Emperor and Vader apparently dead, but the dark side potentially threatening Luke in the future and it being unclear whether the Jedi could recover. I think that’s what they were going for with that “prophecy”.
I think “Chekhov’s gun” principle is at work here. I don’t think you intentionally craft a story around a prophecy in a world that expects that prophets have actual prophetic powers and not have the prophecy come true in some way. That’s not good literature/drama. One would really have to be writing a satire or deconstruction to be able to get it to work. I don’t know of any satires related to prophecies.
At the end of the prequels, there were two Jedi and two Sith. Balance!
Surprised no mention yet of Game of Thrones / A song of fire and ice.
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Plenty of prophecies seem to have come true (Cersei’s kids, various three-eyed raven BS), but plenty have been wrong too.
e.g. Daenery’s child would be the “stallion that mounts the world”…not sure what that means exactly but probably not being stillborn.
And predictions of Stannis winning great battles were seen in the flames at least twice.
I would argue that Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality features one of these, in regards to the prophecies about Harry that he would end the world. While Dumbledore spends the entire book threading Harry through the prophecy’s edge, the threat is ultimately undone by an Unbreakable Vow not to cause the end of the world. And we see it in action when Harry was about to do something that would cause problems, and was unable to do it.
It makes sense to me, given the theme of rationality beating out magical thinking. The attempts by fans to say he dramatically changed the world counts as “ending the world” are not satisfying.
Sure, but how about in worlds where magic doesn’t work?
This is giving me Bard’s Tale flashbacks. Would explaining the basic Chosen One problem be spoilers?
In Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, it is repeatedly stated in the 2nd volume that the young hero must get the Quest Object to the young heroine’s wizard father or all is doomed. In the third volume, the young hero has the Quest Object, but never gets it to the wizard father, and doom doesn’t come close to happening.
I think “Chekhov’s gun” certainly must apply to prophecies, but only as far as “something has to happen because of it”. It could be something surprising, like a plot twist, or it could come true. In fact, I think the “Chekhov’s gun” principle might NOT be satisfied if there was a prophecy that came true, but it came true for no apparent reason and didn’t really affect the plot.