The Alliance

What La Résistance must eventually grow into if it wants to survive.

The Alliance is the Five-Man Band of political entities: A group of smaller nations that band together for added political strength, economic assistance, shared technology, or just because The Empire is breathing down their necks. They may not be all that powerful alone, but together they may be able to match The Federation, or at least give them the edge they need against The Empire, if they join them.

In Science Fiction, this can be a motley collection of different races, a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits that mostly stopped shooting at each other when someone bigger started shooting at all of them. Luckily they manage to put aside any racial hatreds and band together in time to survive. Even if the aggressor is humanity, in the case of the Anti-Human Alliance.

In Fantasy, it will stereotypically consist of the Five Races, perhaps with multiple human Fantasy Counterpart Cultures to bulk out the numbers. Expect them to be run by a Cosmopolitan Council.

Another mostly-good entity that is at worst neutral, some Alliances may have one or more evil members that joined only because their deal with The Empire fell through, or because they happen to hate The Empire far worse than they dislike the other members. Keep your eye on them once the war is over.

Sometimes, given time, The Alliance will last beyond the conditions that gave rise to its formation and evolve to become The Federation, or The Empire, depending on where you're sitting on Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism.

This is to whom Gondor Calls for Aid. It may be the result of a Genghis Gambit.

Anime and Manga

 * After deciding that normal rebels are not enough, Lelouch Lamperouge forms the La Résistance. When La Résistance is not enough, why, he forms The Alliance of course. The Alliance meaning starting from China all the way to the European countries.
 * Axis Powers Hetalia: The Allies.
 * The Three Ships Alliance / Clyne Faction in Gundam Seed.
 * Technically speaking, the Three Ships Alliance are not the only alliance in the Cosmic Era. ZAFT (which stands for Zodiac Alliance of Freedom Treaty) is one as well.
 * Ditto the Earth Forces, which are not a unified political entity like in other Gundams, but rather a military coalition of five or six global superpowers, headed by the Atlantic Federation. There are also several Earth powers that do not side with the Earth forces and remain neutral (Orb being the most prominent), and even one that supports ZAFT (the Oceanic Union).

Comic Books

 * In the Marvel Transformers comics, the writers seemed to increasingly put the Autobots and Deceptions in positions where the two sides had to team up against some mutual threat including, but not limited to, Underbase-powered Starscream, Galvatron, the Swarm, the Cybertronian Empire, the Scraplets, the demons who live under the surface of Cybertron, Flame and his 'undead' army, the Quintessons and, most infamously, Unicron (several times). In fact, when Scorponok died in the defence of Cybertron from Unicron, he had a cool death scene and Optimus Prime mourned him as a friend. This approach won the approval of the faction of fans who preferred the idea of the Decepticons as free-thinking anarchists rather than being purely 'evil'. That said, these alliances inevitably collapsed whenever the greater enemy had been defeated.
 * Inverted in Shakara - The Alliance forms to stop The Empire from curtailing their evil ways.
 * In the Archie comic version of Sonic, a military alliance between the Mobian Kingdom/Republic of Acorn and the Human United Federation has been created at the issue 130 in order to put up a solid fight against the mighty Eggman Empire.

Film

 * The Rebel Alliance in Star Wars is halfway between La Résistance and this trope. In the Expanded Universe, they get all the way there, becoming the New Republic. Eventually they make peace with the main faction of what's left of The Empire, and according to some of the latest books they merge with it into the Galactic Federation.
 * In the prequels, a villainous example was the Confederacy of Independent Systems, or Separatist Alliance. Made up of the Trade Federation, Banking Clan, Techno Union, Commerce Guild, and Retail Caucus, they were, as their names suggested, an alliance of Mega Corps headed by corrupt leaders motivated mostly by greed, although Palpatine was secretly guiding them for his own reasons.
 * If the Expanded Universe is any guide, the Rebel Alliance may be The Alliance by the time of the movies. Specifically, it states the Alliance to be a grouping of several different resistance movements, the largest (all led by former Republic senators) being those from Alderaan, Corellia and Chandrila, who band together under the Corellian Treaty (as seen in The Force Unleashed).

Literature

 * In Terry Brooks' Shannara series: the Freeborn Alliance, an alliance between the elves, dwarves, and the free human cities.
 * In the early Drizzt Do'Urden novels, the so-called Ten-Towns of Icewind Dale are

"You can build a perfect machine out of imperfect parts."

- Coalition Victory card flavor text, Magic: The Gathering

supposed to be a form of The Alliance—but more often than not, they're fighting each other. The only thing that can force them to set aside differences is a combination of a massive outward threat and a little mind controlling magic. By the later books, the towns are prospering individually and so don't need to fight amongst themselves, allowing their political situation to be more temperate and easygoing.
 * The good guy Fantasy Counterpart Cultures in David Eddings' Belgariad.
 * The Weave in Alan Dean Foster's The Damned trilogy.
 * In Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, Rand al'Thor wants to unite the world in an alliance against the Dark One and, later, the armies of the invading Seanchan. Rand finds his job extraordinarily difficult because the rulers of the nations think he's crazy, or don't believe in the Dark One, or like the idea of an alliance but think they should be in charge. In fact, the entire series (particularly from Book 3 onwards) can be read as a subversion of the idea that a hero can snap his fingers and ally the entire world on his side in five seconds flat. It's a bit more complicated than that...
 * Of course, by Book 11 Rand has indeed managed to get about half the continent on his side by basically conquering most of them with fire and the sword, and has been reduced to trying to ally with the Seanchan (who've conquered most of the other half) as a purely pragmatic measure of survival in the face of the Dark One's threat. In book 12,.
 * Also, in the backstory, the Covenants of the ten nations during the Trolloc Wars.
 * In the Backstory of JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the Last Alliance Between Men and Elves.
 * The Free Peoples, the alliance between the human kingdoms of Gondor, Rohan and Dale, the elven kingdoms of Lothlórien and Mirkwood, the dwarven Kingdom of Erebor, the Ents of Fangorn forest, The Great Eagles and the hobbits of Shire, was founded during the War of the Ring as a response against Sauron's quest for conquest.
 * In The Silmarillion, Maedhros tries to create one of these, but it is destroyed through treachery.
 * The Mongol nation in the Conqueror books starts off like this. Initially, the Wolves, Olkhun'ut, Kerait, and Temujin's wandering tribesmen unite against the Tartars, and in the second book they draw in the rest of the Mongol and Turkic tribes against their Chin oppressors. In the third book, the Arabs, Afghans, Bedouins, Turks, Turmen, and Ghorids form an alliance under Jelaudin against the Mongols.
 * The Lost Fleet has an alliance of three space-faring nations against the Syndicate Worlds.
 * In Honor Harrington, the decades before the start of the series proper were primarily occupied with the steady expansion of the People's Republic of Haven, which was invading and occupying all the single-system polities along its frontier. The Star Kingdom of Manticore, whose economic wealth and strategic location made it an inevitable target, formed an Alliance with several other star nations in the path of Havenite expansion. This is usually referrd to as the Manticoran Alliance, as Manticore possesses the most advanced and efficient military and industrial complex in the alliance, and struggles to combat the much larger Peoples Republic of Haven, whose sheer size still looms over the alliance.
 * Later on, this gets kicked Up to Eleven --
 * The Alliance for Democracy from The Domination series, composed of the Americas, the British Isles and Oceania, as a direct counterpart to Complete Monsters / The Empire that is the Domination of the Draka.
 * In Technic History the Poliosotechnic League is an alliance of corporations to protect trade in space. It's loose nature comes from the fact that political ambition costs money and they are after all merchants.

Live Action TV

 * The League of Non-Aligned Worlds, and later the Interstellar Alliance, in Babylon 5.
 * The ISA is the more fitting example. The League was never really had enough cooperation and may have even had actual fighting between members at times.
 * The Independents in Firefly tried to do this against ... well, a group calling itself The Alliance. The Independents lost horribly, setting the stage for the series.
 * The Tau'ri, Tok'ra, and Jaffa alliance against the Goa'uld in Stargate SG-1. (In other words, humans, Puppeteer Parasite snakes who bother to ask permission, and what are effectively human-shaped incubators for baby snakes, fighting snakes.)
 * In the backstory, the Alliance of Four Great Races between the Ancients, Furlings, Asgard, and Nox. At present the alliance is broken: the Ancients are ascended, the Furlings are a Noodle Incident nonentity, and the Nox are Perfect Pacifist People with their entire (known) civilization on one planet. The only member of the alliance with any remaining strategic importance are the Asgard.
 * During the Ori arc, the Tau'ri, Jaffa, and Asgard are allied against the Ori.
 * Star Trek: Before becoming The Federation, Earth and its allies worked together in an informal alliance, and by the end of Enterprise were planning to create a Coalition of Planets.
 * Also on Enterprise, the collective Xindi races had an Alliance among themselves. Theirs functions no better or worse than Alliances whose member species don't all share a name or homeworld.
 * The Mirror Universe equivalent was the Cardassian-Klingon Alliance that overthrew the Terran Empire. This being the Mirror Universe, the Alliance was really no better than the Empire.
 * The "Federation Alliance", a tripartite pact between the UFP, the Klingon Empire, and the Romulan Star Empire against the Dominion in the later stages of Deep Space Nine.
 * In the book series Star Trek: Typhon Pact, many of the second-tier powers form their own alliance. After the Borg War, featuring the end of the Borg, the Federation and the Klingons were severely weakened. The Romulans, Breen, Gorn, Tholians, Kinshaya and Tzenkethi, having seen the value in cooperation during the desperate conflict, formed the Typhon Pact to become the new superpower.
 * The Alliance in Doctor Who, made up of pretty much all of the Doctor's enemies who conspired to seal him in an unescapable prison to prevent the end of the universe, which they believed would be caused by the Doctor.
 * In Game of Thrones, Robert's Rebellion, which gathered four of the seven Great Houses against the King, and brought an end to three hundred years of House Targaryen rule.
 * The Migar Council on Tracker, although there were six worlds involved instead of five.

Table Top Games

 * During the Second Galactic War in Star*Drive, the Freespace Alliance and the Profit Confederation both fall under this, though more neutral than good. At least they weren't any worse than the rival Expansion Pentad.
 * The Tau Empire from Warhammer 40,000, comprising the Tau, Kroot - though these are technically mercenaries with no ideological interest - Vespid, Gue'Vesa, Nicassar and Demiurg. Considered as such because they are the only faction with significant allies who are not of their own species. Incidentally the "nicest" of the factions, compared to everyone else who usually shoots first and asks questions later never when they find out that bullets don't work on you.
 * True, the Tau foreign policy is to immediately ask new races to join their near-theocratic and strictly regulated and enforced empire, which is ruled with an iron fist by the unquestioned ruling caste. If the race says no, the Tau point every gun in their arsenal at the race and ask again, very politely. If that doesn't work, the Tau bombard the planet from orbit and invade, enforcing compliance with re-education camps, sterilization, and, within the Tau themselves, biologically based mind control. Given all that, they're still far and away the brightest and most idealistic race in the WH40k universe, since nobody else bothers to ask first, nor are they nice enough to conquer the populace. Nearly everyone else eliminates it and moves their own in.
 * If the Imperium is pretty sure that you're human or some form of stable abhuman and you're not tainted with Chaos, then they'll just introduce the Imperial cult. They don't really care what sort of planetary government you have as long as you recognize the authority of the Adeptus Terra and the Emperor, making them the sole "exception" to the omnicidal aspect of most factions. Of course, anything positive would ruin all the GRIMDARK.
 * The Ravenloft setting acquired one of these relatively recently, with the Treaty of Four Towers. No, the member nations aren't really buds, they just all speak Mordentish and are scared to death of invasion by Falkovnia.
 * Magic: The Gathering gives us the Coalition, an alliance of all the peoples of Dominaria to fight the Phyrexians. They even have multicolor-themed mechanics, such as domain (card gets stronger the more basic land types you have), kicker (pay something extra to get an extra effect play a card, but sometimes that extra is off-color), multicolor cards, and off-color casting costs.
 * Forgotten Realms: In addition to the aforementioned Ten Towns of Icewind Dale, the setting has the Lords' Alliance further south. This is a group of city-states along Faerûn's west coast (including fan favorites Waterdeep and Neverwinter) that have banded together for mutual protection. Alliance troops get screentime in both Neverwinter Nights games.

Video Games

 * Ace Combat 4 has ISAF, the Independent States Allied Forces, fighting against the evil totalitarian government. Strangely enough, no effort is made to show any different countries or borders on the map: either the enemy controls an area, or ISAF does.
 * That may be due to the aforementioned evil government being Erusian occupation forces; ISAF is, as its name indicates, a military alliance of all other countries on the Usean continent (the setting of the game), which at the beginning of the game has been pushed back to a small island just off the eastern coast.
 * In Final Fantasy VI, the Returners, a resistance group opposed to The Empire, ultimately join forces with the Kingdom of Figaro and the city-state of Narshe.
 * Mass Effect has the Citadel Systems. The rules are set by three seemingly unelected politicians from three set races. All other races just get ambassadors that petition these leaders. Anyone who doesn't want to play belongs to the Terminus Systems, which is a bit like an evil alliance.
 * The Terminus Systems is a geographical term - the actual governments within the Terminus hate each other. The Council is just afraid that they will all pull an Enemy Mine if they ever tried to exert control.
 * The Human government of Mass Effect is actually called the Systems Allaince. However, it is more like The Federation in terms of government.
 * Even the Systems Alliance started as a subversion, being an agency junior to The Alliance on Earth which was forced to take control of the situation when Earth unexpectedly found itself in an interstellar war and the governments on Earth couldn't agree over who should be in charge of leading the fight. After the dust settles, everybody agrees to just let the Systems Alliance keep running things off-planet.
 * The Alliance of Free Stars in Star Control.
 * The Alliance in Starlancer and Freelancer which consists of mostly European and North American member nations. It is fighting the "evil" Coalition, consisting of Russian, Chinese, and Middle-Eastern states.
 * The Suikoden games often feature one of these: the Jowston City-State Alliance in the second, the Grasslands tribal alliance in the third, and the Island Nations in the fourth.
 * Fire Emblem gives us the Laguz Alliance in the tenth game, formed of different variations of shapeshifters: beasts, hawks and ravens. Although they should have kept closer eyes on the raven king.
 * The aptly-named Alliance in World of Warcraft starting from Warcraft II, and the Horde as well post-WarCraft II. A rare case of two Alliances fighting each other.
 * Well, post WarCraft 3, when the Undead Scourge who were "awake" joined as the Forsaken.
 * Also, the Alliance and the Horde were allies in WarCraft 3. In fact, in World of Warcraft, it's technically a COLD war, meaning both parties just kinda look menacing and take no official military action.
 * Apparently changes in Wrath of the Lich King, where Varian Wrynn, King of Stormwind returns and declares war on the Horde.
 * More changes in the new expansion Cataclysm, where what amounts to the second Sundering (Or the 2012 movie) causes both sides to wage open war on one another for resources. An example of this is Warsong Hold actively deforesting Ashenvale and attacking Astranaar, the Night Elf town and quest hub.
 * In Maple Story, one of them is formed when the player finishes part of his or her main questline, at around Level 70, with the purpose of opposing the Black Mage. The initial Alliance consists of the Explorers, the Cygnus Knights, the Resistance and the Heroes; later, the Nova race, the Temple Keepers of the Temple of Time and the members of the Sengoku also join.
 * The Guild Union in Tales of Vesperia.
 * The Backstory of Halo's Covenant has them forming as a surprisingly benevolent alliance (benevolent when you look past their highly militant religious dogma which demands either conversion or extermination, no middle ground). Though in the time of the Human-Covenant war the Covenant is basically The Empire.
 * And, in the German version of the game, they are called "Die Allianz", which translates as "The Alliance".
 * Deconstructed in Exit Fate. The Alliance was formed in the game's Backstory out of 5 bickering minor nations, and while the highly competent and Lawful Good Chancellor Ryan has managed to keep the country together for the last forty years or so, it's gotten incredibly corrupt and the bickering is almost as strong as it was to begin with.
 * Basically inverted in Gratuitous Space Battles, where "the Alliance" is a hive of insects out to exterminate all bipedal life.
 * Free Space has the Galactic Terran Alliance in the first game, which is fighting the Vasudan Parliamentary Empire. When the Shivans interrupt the war with their own attack, the two form an uneasy truce and fight the Shivans together. This truce eventually serves as the basis for the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance in the sequel.
 * Airforce Delta Strike has the Earth Defense Alliance Forces (EDAF).
 * Wing Commander has the Terran Confederation, which in the Expanded Universe functions as a blend of The Federation and The Alliance, with various alien worlds eventually choosing to join the Confederation in order to benefit from the protection of the Terran Space Forces. Later on, several of these alien worlds (as well as several groups of human colonies) choose to secede and form their own smaller alliances against the Kilrathi after it becomes clear that Earth cannot or will not look after their best interests.
 * By the fourth game, The Price Of Freedom, the Confederation becomes a darker version of this Trope, due to a conflict between the Confederation and the Union of Border Worlds, one of the groups of human colonies that chose to secede during the war.
 * The X-Universe has two of them: the loose "Commonwealth" between the 5 main races, functioning like a United Nations, and the alliance between the Argon Federation (a human faction) and the Kingdom of Boron.
 * Escape Velocity:
 * The Rebels in the original are essentially an Expy of the Star Wars Rebel Alliance, with the Confederation playing the role of The Empire.
 * In EV Override, the United Earth government started life as a defensive alliance against the Voinian Empire, and is now somewhere between this and The Federation.
 * During the later part of the UE storyline, an alliance aimed at the Voinian Empire is formed between the UE, . By Word of God, it sticks together after the end of the war, and ends of expanding and solidifying.
 * In EV Nova, the Auroran Empire is a loose confederation of warrior houses.
 * In four out of seven storylines, an alliance is formed between the Rebellion,, aimed at the Bureau, in different circumstances and with different outcomes (though one way or the other, it lays the groundwork for the re-unification of humanity).

Webcomics

 * The Royal Crown Coalition in Erfworld is an alliance of royal sides devoted to destroying The Empire of Lord Stanley. Of course, the Alternate Character Interpretation would say that they're a group of religious fanatics who are only oppose Stanley because he challenges their beliefs about the superiority of royalty.
 * Erfworld book one is essentially a Deconstruction of both this trope and of The Empire.
 * In A Mad Tea Party, Earth's ramshackle governments team up with some aliens to fight the giant alien robots.

Web Original

 * In The Gamers Alliance, there is the Grand Alliance which has been formed several times to fight against various forces of evil. Although it does have its share of heroes, there are also more morally grey and even evil members who use the Alliance for their own gain.
 * Decades of Darkness has the Restored (British) Empire and the South American Amistad.
 * The Chaos Timeline has several of them. After all, it coined the term "anti-X War", as in "Anti-French War" and other wars, all of them ending with a victory of the alliance.
 * Look to the West: The cartographer's nightmare known as the Holy Roman Empire coalesces into a few dozen chunks. This is the direct result of the invasion by Racist-Steampunk-Revolutionary-France. German nationalism is just starting to come about.
 * It's mostly replaced by the Concert of Germany.
 * The Gungan Council has a faction named the Alliance, a combination of Jedi and rebels, naturally fighting against the Galactic Empire and Sith.

Real Life

 * The polis of Sparta was formed by an alliance of four nearby villages in response to other towns becoming larger and wielding more power and influence. In time, their identity as Spartans subsumed the identities of the original villages.
 * The Allies likely contributed to codifying this trope... when writers remember they had allies.
 * The Axis by contrast was a subversion. There was no alliance. There were cobelligerents(people who were at war with the same people at the same time but fighting their own war with no attempt at cooperation) and clients(people who were more or less pressured into the whole thing).
 * The idea of a number of smaller states uniting against common adversity is also present in Mastering the Art of War, an essay written by the Three Kingdoms era strategist Zhuge Liang and later edited by Ming Dynasty general Liu Ji, as a follow-up to the more famous The Art of War. A case is made that it is preferable to ally with a group of smaller states against a rival state of equal or greater power, namely because the smaller states pose less of a threat to you than a single homogeneous one.
 * NATO, though if you ask people from Russia or Serbia, they probably see it as The Empire
 * Even then, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has been more a loose coalition with wildly different viewpoints on things.
 * The seventeenth century had The Grand Alliance, which was essentially "everyone else in Europe vs. France". The two came to blows in the Nine Years' War of 1688-97 (also called the War of the Grand Alliance). Despite the odds, the French managed not to lose too badly.
 * The American Revolution—13 colonies without much in the way of military might individually, banding together against the British Empire—is also a real-life example of this trope. Even after the war, it was common to view the new United States as a loose alliance bound together by trade and military ties until the time of the Constitution, and even to a degree afterward. (The saying is that only after the Civil War was it proper grammar to say "The United States is" instead of the "The United States are.")
 * The British Commonwealth of Nations is a fairly loose alliance. Though the different members are quite free to make their own policies, the Commonwealth as a whole has traditionally stood together against common enemies during wartime (such as during World War II).
 * A note on that last point: while in World War I the Commonwealth was still The British Empire—and would thus be simply ordered into battle by London —by World War II, the "white" colonies--Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa—were more or less independent of British foreign policy—by virtue of the Statute of Westminster 1931—and could have elected to stay out of the war if so they wished. They did not.
 * Note that while this was something of a moot point as regards Australia and New Zealand—the Japanese were planning on attacking their sub-colonies in the Pacific and even Australia itself—Canada and South Africa (and particularly Canada) could have just ignored the war if they wanted to. As it happens, the Canadians were a major component of the British Empire forces in the Allied campaign in Western Europe (having responsibility for Juno Beach on D-Day), and supplied urgently-needed supplies such as food and armament during the Battle of Britain.
 * Finally, we must admit that the largest colony--British India—did not participate in the war entirely by choice. Mahatma Gandhi, ever the pacifist, advocated that India stay out entirely. Another section—representing a majority of Indian National Congress members—agreed that India should help Britain, but on condition that Britain give India independence during or after the war. Finally, a substantial number of Indians joined Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army, which was allied with the Japanese. And of course, the other British colonies—particularly those in Africa—had absolutely no voice in the matter at all.
 * The Triple Alliance, the military alliance between Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, during the War of the Triple Alliance against Paraguay. The war started when Paraguay's president Francisco Solano López thought that Brazil was threatening the Balance of Power in South America due to their military support to the Colorados rebels in the Uruguayan Civil War and decleared war on Brazil on Uruguay's behalf. Brazil made then an alliance with Argentina, whose lands were occupied by the Paraguayans when they refused to allow them to cross through the province of Corrientes, and later with Uruguay, when the Colorados finally took over. Their combined force would later crush the Paraguayans, killing Lopez himself and reducing half of Paraguay's population.
 * Three of the last Indian tribes to fight the United States were the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. What do the Sioux call themselves, and the other two in this group? Lakota or Dakota. Lampshaded a few decades later, when the town of Germania, Iowa renamed itself Lakota.
 * The Holy League of 1571 during the Fourth Ottoman-Venetian War. When the Turks invaded the Venetian island Cyprus, Pope Pius VI founded the alliance in order to aid the Venetians against the Turks. He got Spain, Genoa, Tuscany, Parma and the Knights of Malta to join the alliance and together, they won the Battle of Lepanto. Unfortunately, the alliance didn't last after the battle and Venice was forced to give up Cyprus to the Turks.
 * The different coalitions fighting against France during the Napoleonic Wars. Fearing that Napoleon Bonaparte would conquer the whole Europe and make France into a superpower, the several nations of Europe joined together in different alliances with each other in order to be able to fight back the French. The main architect of the coalitions was Great Britian, and with them they got Sweden, Russia, Prussia, Austria, The Two Sicilies, Portugal, Netherlands, Brunswick, and later, Spain. Of course, France had its share of allies as well: Denmark-Norway, Ottoman Empire, Spain (before the French betrayed them), Warsaw, Italy, Naples, Swiss Confederation, Confederation of the Rhine, and even Russia, Prussia and Austria for a short time.
 * The Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group, or ECOMOG, the West African correspond to NATO. ECOMOG is a military alliance between West African nations, with the similiar goal of NATO to defend any nation that might end up being attacked. Since Africa is a more warring continent than Europe, ECOMOG has been involved in more conflicts and missions than NATO. One of them has been the Sierra Leone Civil War. When the Sierra Leonean government was overthrewed by RUF's allies in the Sierra Leonean military, a huge force of West African troops, under Nigerian leadership, came down to help the government to push back RUF. In 2002. they succeeded.