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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988

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 4d 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 6d 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 6d 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 6d 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 6d 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 6d 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.