Warrior enough for you?
It’s Tuesday, which means countless individuals will spend their lunch breaks racing to the nearest restaurant to purchase tacos for consumption. It also means we’re going to use alliteration as an excuse to dive headfirst into TV Tropes to talk about an amusing literary theme or device that makes entertainment fun. This week, we’re looking at the Proud Warrior Race Guy.
A specific subtrope of Blood Knight, the Proud Warrior Race Guy seeks battle and bloodshed because his culture teaches that doing so is the greatest source of personal honor and glory. This Proud Warrior Race will often be based on one of several real world cultures who are perceived to have acted this way, such as the Samurai, Spartans, Vikings, and Mongols. They are often a Martyrdom Culture. The Proud Warrior Race Guy is almost always a hero. If evil, he will probably be the Worthy Opponent.
“Proud”, in this case, meaning “Psychotically Violent”. Critiques of this position will be met with: “You donotunderstand“. May occasionally overlap with the Always Chaotic Evil race, though the two are usually differentiated by the Proud Warrior having a strict Code-of-Honor, while the Chaotic Evil race has no real rules and does cowardly or underhanded things. If the Code-of-Honor is too alien for humans to understand, or too xenophobic to allow cooperation, then the heroes will treat the two groups as the same. The better sort of Code of Honor will enforce Would Not Shoot a Civilian, although often because civilians are dismissed as too weak and cowardly to be good fighters, and so they get passed over in the search for worthy enemies.
Sound familiar? In the setting of the Expanded Universe, you’ve got the Mandalorians and the Yuuzhan Vong. The Echani from Knights of the Old Republic also fits the bill. I’m sure you can name a dozen examples from other science fiction franchises that features a character or a race of characters that fall under this description. This is a trope you have to be careful with. Go overboard and it comes off as campy. Unless your intention is to come off as campy, then by all means, go overboard.
There’s actually a novel that’s devoted to deconstructing this trope, Starfighters of Adumar by Aaron Allston.
Wedge: “Circular thinking. I’m honorable because I kill the enemy, and I kill the enemy for the honor. There’s nothing there, Cheriss. Here’s the truth: I kill the enemy so someone, somewhere — probably someone I’ve never met and never will meet – will be happy. […] I told you how I lost my parents. Nothing I ever do can make up for that loss. But if I put myself in the way of people just as bad as the ones who killed my family, if I burn them down, then someone else they would have hurt gets to stay happy. That’s the only honorable thing about my profession. It’s not the killing. It’s making the galaxy a little better.”
Now, I dare Wedge to say that to Worf.
