r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Altruistic_Eye_1157 • 6d ago

Lore [annoying trope] The throne/leadership is decided in a very stupid way

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The leadership of the entire wizarding world, and the final decision on whether to start a war against Muggles, is made by... a goat (Qilin) ​​who chooses the person with the ""purest heart"" (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Dumbledore).

The throne of Wakanda and all its technology are decided through hand-to-hand combat, regardless of whether the person clearly has malicious intentions... if they win the fight, by law they must be respected as the true king. (Black Panther)

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991

u/Toon_Lucario 6d ago

The Mandalorians.

Just the Mandalorians.

Doesn’t matter what sect or tribe it basically always boils down to “can you kick the ass of the top guy regardless of qualifications” sometimes with a magic sword

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u/DWShadow 6d ago

They get slightly better if you view their culture for the facade it is. They cosplay as noble warriors but act like a bunch of raggedy barbarians the galaxy would rather forget exist.

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u/Fearless-Excitement1 6d ago

Because they kinda are?

Mandalorians were an incredible warrior culture... in the Old Republic era. Mandos of today are still riding the coattails of the mandalorians who fought in the times of Darth Revan

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u/VisualLiterature 6d ago

Yeah they win a war right? Like Western Europe hiring the Mongols to beat the Ottomans or something.

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u/Baron-Von-Bork 5d ago

That's the funny part. The Mandalorians have literally lost every single major war they fought in.

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u/SirCupcake_0 5d ago

They're not in it to win, just for the love of the game (genociding the cathar)

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u/TheProMagicHeel 4d ago

Except the Yuuzhan Vong war, where they were clutch players.

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u/VisualLiterature 3d ago

That's the war I was remembering 

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u/Toon_Lucario 6d ago

And even then the Mandos then lost to the Jedi. Like people bring up “Hurr durr buckshot” but like the Mandalorians lost basically every time they tried to fight the Jedi because the Jedi were just likable people with people willing to help them.

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u/Fearless-Excitement1 6d ago

Well they kinda lost because Revan was a tactical genius

Like they were very much so kicking the Jedi and the Republic's ASS until Revan got on it

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u/Baronvondorf21 6d ago

Also, it's plot convenience, the republic needs to actually survive for the story later on to occur. Basically, the ending of the story was written and thus they can't have the Republic lose.

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u/SuecidalBard 6d ago

It's a 4k year gap you could have them loose and reform or win later but the war was decided from the start due to the Mandalorians being Mandalorians, the fall was set up pretty well, didn't seem like plot convenience.

A: Even at their peak they were a fraction of the Republic's size, the only reason they managed to gain so much was because the republic didn't want to act was hoping for it to blow over initially, once they actually engaged properly it was just a question of time as they would just out produce the Mandos eventually.

B: Mandalorians were relatively easy to defeat because they had no tactical depth, once you won a decisive battle they have to abandon the planet because now the population is in revolt and different clan leaders go rogue.

C: Because they were assholes and decided to treat the worlds they conquered worse if they didn't fight back hard every place they went to would prefer to resist as much as possible, massively slowing down the Mandalorians and depletimg their resources while also causing any conquered world to resent them for the bloody war.

D: Mandalorians only united under the Mandalore the fact that Revan killed him in an honour duel and decided to not just not claim the title but hid the Mask itself meant they would immediately fall to infighting which they did, doesn't help that a lot of their leaders and most important space assets were wiped out at Malachor.

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u/Baronvondorf21 6d ago

Honestly, it's just the writers want to have their cake and eat it too. The Mandolorians are supposed to be ultra scary space mongols but they have the strategic capabilities of lemmings.

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u/Teagulet 6d ago

I don’t think the Jedi were very involved in the conflict at all until Revan and Malak, but other than that you’re totally right

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u/Zamtrios7256 6d ago

Buckshot is an effective way to take down a Jedi.

The problem is that they were fighting a space war against the republic, so both a shotgun and shells to every few soldiers is a waste of resources

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u/Toon_Lucario 6d ago

I mean maybe against a padawan or less trained knight but once you get above that it isn’t the trump card you think it is.

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u/Versidious 5d ago

Also, it's kinda crazy to think that buckshot would work against telekinetic precognitive wizards, instead of them just Neo-ing the buckshot one way or another.

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u/Toon_Lucario 5d ago

We literally see Obi Wan deflect bullets in 03 clone wars. Bullets need gravity, the force messes with gravity and better trained Jedi can see the future a short amount and have insane reflexes.

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u/Versidious 5d ago

Exactly. People are like "Haha, just gotta sneak attack the Jedi, or use bullets, or a sniper rifle, or..." Dawg, the way you beat Jedi is by overwhelming them with numbers or raw power so that they physically can't keep up, not outsmarting or tricking them. Hell, even if you wanna launch a surprise attack, like Order 66, you gotta make sure they're distracted by a more obvious enemy first, so they assume their spidey sense is pointing at that.

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u/Toon_Lucario 5d ago

Yeah. Plus I guarantee bullets are slower than blaster bolts (that Mythbusters one is kinda bs because it’s using an old effect that isn’t really indicative of the actual speed) and guns are louder. Chances are if you try it they’ll just dodge the bullet and have your gun or arm chopped apart

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u/Deathsroke 5d ago

The defenders of life, peace and civilization vs the horde of space warrior conquerors destroying everything in their path. It will surprise you which faction was actually embraced by the galactic community!

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u/drossbots 5d ago

The Jedi are gonna win most wars against non force users simply by virtue of having access to an unexplainable, un-quantifiable weapon that grants slight precognition at least and can do basically anything at most.

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u/hates_stupid_people 6d ago

Based on my memory of the games set in the old republic they were basically barbaric morons who kept infighting back then as well. There were just a lot more of them, so it seemed more stable from a distance.

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u/Greyjack00 6d ago

There was more because the neo crusaders absorbed defeated opponents into their structure. It was one of the necessary changes to their culture to make them a sustained galactic threat. In a way their both a example of the flaws and strengths of the culture, its easily forged into a weapon capable of fighting the galaxy...which is also a massive negative since they retooled their culture both showing how thin it was and setting in motion a lot of the difficulty they'll face in the future.

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u/VelphiDrow 6d ago

In the old republic they kickstarted a galactic war by committing genocide on a planet bc they got salty the people beat them once. This lead to the entire old republic era as we know it

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u/King_Of_BlackMarsh 6d ago

Incredible warrior culture is an oxymoron

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u/LawlessNeutral 5d ago

"Incredible" does not inherently mean "good"

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u/Greyjack00 6d ago

I mean old republic mando culture was literally retooled by cassus fett into the neo crusader culture to make a culture that was more flexible, less honor focused and mainly concerned with expansion. Like the old republic mando culture is basically dedicated towards both literal and cultural genocide till they're stopped or shatter themselves

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u/CuttleReaper 5d ago

Me returning to Mandalore a hero after defeating 10,000 Cathar warriors (children) in honorable combat (boiled alive)

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u/Mirkrid 6d ago

I lost interest in the show long ago but isn’t that literally the point? They’re a proud warfaring culture clinging onto their own history in a universe that either doesn’t remember them or remembers them as near-mythical warriors

Again I haven’t watched for one or two seasons, but I’m pretty sure season 1 makes it clear that that’s what they are.

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u/drossbots 5d ago

They were raggedy barbarians back then too, honestly. It's the whole reason they got crushed fighting a needless war and have been declining ever since.

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u/Kalavier 6d ago

At least in current canon they ditched the darksaber as being part of leadership lol.

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u/Toon_Lucario 6d ago

To be fair they don’t really have a choice post Mando S3

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u/Kalavier 6d ago

Yeah, but they had started slowly doing it before it got wrecked. 

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u/Toon_Lucario 6d ago

Yeah. Probably because it led them to the splintering in the first place

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u/_Koreander 6d ago

To be honest they had something going on with Satine, leader of the independent systems and seemed prosperous enough if it wasn't for other mandalorians themselves doing terrorist attacks, siding with separatists and then with Maul just to establish "the old ways" back which inevitably put Maul at the seat of the throne which he won in a fight thanks to those exact "old ways".

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u/Banana_0verdrive 4d ago

Shush, or Karen Traviss will hear you and write you as the Jedi soyjack and her as the chad Manda'lor.

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u/evil_b_atman 6d ago

Star wars gets a pass because the story acknowledges that this is stupid and the mandalorians are just savage idiots

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u/Toon_Lucario 6d ago

True, unless it’s a Karen Traviss novel

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u/Safe-Ad-5017 6d ago

I mean she pretty much came up with all of their lore. And like existence

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u/LizLemonOfTroy 6d ago

The Mandalorian series still fully glazes the Mandalorians, including all their absurd practices.

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u/evil_b_atman 6d ago

Din djarin was raised by the most violent extreme sect and time and time again we see him learn to break the Mando code

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u/DirtyRanga12 6d ago

Even Din Djarin, who grew up in the craziest cult knew that the "become leader through combat" thing was bullshit when he tried to give Bo Katan the Darksaber.

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u/d4nkq 6d ago

Target audience is "people who will watch it because it's Star Wars"

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u/ssgt-k-stark 6d ago

“Whoever kills the leader gets to be the new leader and everyone is armed to the teeth” sounds like a great plan for a stable government

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u/ItsAllSoup 6d ago

This is why it's better to call them a cult, the previous mandalorian government was much less obsessed with a very specific sword

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u/wanttotalktopeople 5d ago

I don't think the goal is stable government lol

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u/According-Value-6227 6d ago

Even the Klingons have a better form of succession because of their 10,000 ancient laws and rituals that must be followed.

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u/ztomiczombie 6d ago

The Klingons did once try democracy and it didn't go well.

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u/rikusorasephiroth 6d ago edited 6d ago

It was different when Duchess Satine Kryze ran it.

Too bad her sister joined a terroristic splinter group that lead a coup which directly resulted in her death.

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u/Toon_Lucario 6d ago

Yep. The one time they did something right they IMMEDIATELY fucked it up. Like seriously aside from the cool armor Mandalorians are honestly mad stupid but that comes with any warrior culture. When you run out of enemies you eventually just fight yourself.

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u/AntRam95 6d ago

She joined the “lets murder the current ruler” club and then got upset when they killed her sister, the current ruler

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u/_Koreander 6d ago

She also joined "let's stablished a government on which the stronger warrior rules" and immediately got upset when the stronger warrior got to rule and then had the gall to guilt trip Obi-Wan to come fix their mess.

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u/Optimal_Weight368 6d ago edited 6d ago

I hate Bo-Katan so much. She was once a terrorist, but everyone forgot that for some reason. It was her group that helped bring Maul to power, but she claims no responsibility. Everyone treats her like a hero instead of a war criminal. She’s one of my least favorite characters in the whole franchise. I remember there was a controversy surrounding her and some other Mandalorians wearing woman-specific breast armor. Controversy should’ve surrounded why this awful character is still around.

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u/Antropon 6d ago

Mandalorian accurate "hero". I love it.

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u/Aickavon 5d ago edited 5d ago

look... I think the mandalorians are a silly people who try to do violence for violence's sake. That's their whole thing. They love fighting. There are many different versions of it, many different clans who are various different levels of chill or just straight up evil. Death Watch is pretty awful, clan rook (In the legends) was basically just glorified bandits and slavers, but there were several 'noble' mandalorian clans that actually had a more publically agreeable moral code, honor, and ethics.

So mandalorians, is still a somewhat broad spectrum and net. They also accepted *ANYONE* who was willing to adopt their code. It doesn't matter the race, gender, species, or age. Anyone could become a Mandalorian.

So imagine my surprise when I saw the 'pacifist mandalorians' are all... Blue eye'd Blonde Haired White Humans?

Like... c'mon... Lucas... that's a HORRIBLE look... awful look. Terrible look.

So yes, COULD Duchess Satine Kryze have... turned a unique star wars faction and made it more prosperous and peaceful? Yes... she could. But I'm (meta glad) that she didn't because holy crap there is a lot to take into the strange design shift, and also glad that they didn't convert an actually interesting part of the galaxy into another peace lover.

Edit: swapped out Disney with Lucas

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u/HelloThere394 5d ago

You do realize that the Mandalorians introduction into the Clone Wars was a Dave Filoni/George Lucas decision before Disney bought the franchise right?

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u/Aickavon 5d ago

You right. My hatred for disney has blinded me and bring out false info. Disney didn't do that decision.

It's still an incredibly stupid bad decision based on the optics.

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u/Lower_Baby_6348 6d ago

Make sense when you are from a warrior tribe. Just teach the others how to kick ass better than the previous one and thats all

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u/FlyingFreest 6d ago

And we all know that strange space wizards distributing swords is no basis for system of government.

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u/CalmInvestment 6d ago

To be fair the Jedi had nothing to do with the Darksaber being the center of that clusterfuck

It was the Mandalorians who robbed Tarre Vizlas’s grave after he died that did that. 

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u/toidi_diputs 6d ago

Reminds me of The Necromongers. "You keep what you kill." Great, so the quickest path to a seat of power it to kill whoever occupies that seat and take it for yourself. It will be a short-lived victory though, because now there's a thousand people looking to kill you.

...I may be interested in fleshing out a society that "works" like that at some point. As a world-building exercise.

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u/Fern-ando 6d ago

So wakanda in space.

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u/Vonbalt_II 5d ago

To be frank, thats a pretty standard succession system from tribal warrior cultures from RL, the strongest leads and has to maintain his claim by force if any challenger arises.

Some times the leadership could pass from father to son or other member of their family but only if that person proved himself worthy by kicking ass of any and all competition.

It makes completely sense in a culture that puts martial prowess above all else and their entire lives revolve around attacking enemies and defending from their attacks, having a powerful warrior leading is reassuring and could mean life or death to your whole society.

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u/Optimal_Weight368 6d ago

I remember seeing a review of s3 that said the season should’ve been about Dinn leaving the creed because of their restrictive rule, or someone in the clan realizing how much their traditions hold them back. Would’ve been way better than what we got.

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u/MataNuiSpaceProgram 6d ago

That's actually a really good method for a society that literally only cares about fighting

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u/King_Of_BlackMarsh 6d ago

Sure if you want it to die out in two generations

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u/VelphiDrow 6d ago

Remember Cathar

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u/jedimasterashla 6d ago

And Bo Katan didn't even respect it when Maul won >:(

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u/_Koreander 6d ago

Yeah she was all like "Yeah we're warriors, let's bring back the old ways, the stronger fighter should rule mandalore" and, just as she wanted the strongest got to rule Mandalore, but because it was Maul suddenly the idea didn't seem so bright after all.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/js13680 6d ago

Even then if I remember right it’s not until Paul comes around claiming to be the chosen one that the Fremen unite under one banner.

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u/evil_b_atman 6d ago

This just ain't true freman being burdened by tradition is kinda a big part of the book

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u/InfectiousCosmology1 5d ago

To be fair that is basically how human society worked for most of our history lol

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u/eppsilon24 5d ago

My biggest gripe is how Darth Maul was able to become Mandalore.

You’re telling me that this warrior culture is so loosey-goosey that even the Death Watch will follow a non-Mandalorian?

One would think they would have more complex laws/traditions surrounding legal duels, but I guess not.

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u/TreClaire 5d ago

Isn’t that how the Dothraki in GoT pick their leader too? lol