Written by the Winners/Playing With

Basic Trope: The winners of a conflict retroactively glorify themselves and vilify the losers.
 * Straight: The Empire attacks and conquers The Kingdom. The historians later present The Kingdom as Mordor who planned to release The Plague, so The Empire acted purely in self-defense.
 * Exaggerated: The Empire is the lone global superpower and The Kingdom is a tiny but resource-rich speck of land on the other end of the globe. Everybody believes that The Kingdom was a real threat so The Empire was justified in attacking it.
 * Justified: My Country, Right or Wrong on the historians' part.
 * Inverted: The Empire doesn't give a damn about its image, so the conquered kingdoms get to write what the future generations know about it.
 * Alternatively, due to any number of reasons (like the Empire having no written records or having those lost), the only accounts avalible ARE those written by the losers.
 * Subverted: Centuries after the war, the historic research reveals that The Kingdom really was as evil as the imperial historians truthfully depicted.
 * Double Subverted: ...except that that historical evidence was forged, too.
 * Parodied: Just because they can, the imperial historians write that The Kingdom was populated by one-legged, two-headed people with flowers for hair who fought with golf clubs.
 * Deconstructed: The Empire tries to rewrite the history of a recent war but its citizens lose patience at such blatant lies and spark a rebellion.
 * Reconstructed: ...after the coup, the rebel leaders glorify themselves and vilify the previous government even further.
 * Zig Zagged: The Empire sets out to rewrite history, but their blatant lies spark off a rebellion and lead to a coup. Following this upheavel, the rebel leaders glorify themselves and vilify The Empire. Most citizens are aware of this, but don't care because they hated The Empire anyway. ...However, eventually some of the nastier things the rebels did to defeat their enemies come to light, including acts that make them Not So Different. This creates a rift between those demanding the full truth be told and those who prefer to ignore those travesties because they ultimately benefited from them. This leads to another revolution, the former heroes are overthrown, and the new rebellion sets out to ensure their image remains clean...
 * Averted: The history of a conflict is written by an impartial observer (possibly by an even stronger superpower).
 * Enforced: "Just to show how evil The Emperor is, let's give him a Propaganda Machine for Blatant Lies!"
 * Lampshaded: "History is written by the winners, remember?"
 * Invoked: "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."
 * Defied: "This folder contains the full truth I discovered about the war. Over five hundred such folders are currently on the way to every major publishing house in the world."
 * Discussed: "If we die now, his truth will be the only one remaining."
 * Conversed: "I mean, what's the point of fighting in the first place, if they cannot win and will be remembered as villains for all eternity thanks to the winners' propaganda?"

Back to Written By the Winners.