Exiled to an Island

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
They must've screwed up big time to deserve this.

You've just done something incredibly embarrassing – not embarrassing to you, but to the higher-ups. And you're too important or visible to be fired (or, in earlier centuries, killed). What happens? You're Exiled to an Island in order to get you out of the way, out of the limelight, and out of the higher-ups' hair.

Why an island? Islands are difficult to get to and difficult to leave, which means that people exiled there have much less influence than they had when they were on the mainland. Reporters are far less likely to hop on a boat and spend a large fraction of a day chasing after one person on an island when they could be spending the same amount of time interviewing more than one person on the mainland.

In fiction, this is often either backstory or a Beginning Trope. Less often, it's an Ending Trope. It's rarely an event that takes place in the middle of a series.

Sci-fi stories can achieve the same effect with an exile to a far away, inhabited planet (preferably one whose biosphere resemble actual islands) - even though this doesn't have the same cultural impact that exile to an actual island does.

Subtrope of Reassigned to Antarctica, where the exile isn't necessarily to a literal island. Contrast with Punishment Detail, where the exile is intended to be punishment for a crime instead of politically-motivated (or the equivalent). Not to be confused with Exiled to the Couch.

Examples of Exiled to an Island include:

Anime and Manga

  • Sister Princess begins with Wataru Minakami being sent to Promise Island for high school instead of the high-status, high-pressure Tokyo high school that he expected to attend.
  • In Code Geass R2, Zero makes a deal with Britannia to let him be exiled to an island off of China instead of killed.

Comic Books

  • In Asterix in Corsica it's established that the vast majority of the Romans stationed in the titular island were transferred there as a means of punishment. The only people there who don't fall into this category are the naive, over-eager and aptly named Legionary Courtingdisastus (who volunteered to go to Corsica due to "good chances of promotion", an action which makes the men he's later given command of think he's completely insane), a Corsican that hit his head and joined the Roman Army and (probably), the governor's crack troops.

Film

Literature

  • The Avatar Chronicles: Violence is seen as absolutely despicable in the colony, and merely the act of striking another human is enough to warrant exile onto a small island.

Live-Action TV

Oral Tradition, Myths and Legends

  • Greek Mythology has Philoctetes, who was either bitten by a serpent or accidentally scratched by one of Heracles's Hydra-venom-tipped arrows before the siege of Troy. Philoctetes was not caused pain by the scratch, but the never-healing wound stank like a mountain of corpses, which was unbearable during a prolonged siege, as there was no way to escape it. Philoctetes was exiled to an island, taking the quiver of Hydra-venom-tipped arrows with him (they were his property, having been a gift from Heracles). When the gods tell the Greeks that the only way the Trojan War can be won is with his bow, the Greeks swallow their pride and beg Philoctetes to return.

Tabletop Games

  • The West End Games Star Wars roleplaying game stated that the Rebel Alliance did this to their prisoners by dumping them on unpopulated (but habitable) worlds with the materials to make a self-sufficient agricultural society. It was impossible for the prisoners to be detected and rescued by fellow Imperials (scanners detected modern energy signatures or much larger populations) and freed the Rebels from actually having to support them.

Video Games

  • It is hinted in The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion that most or all of the soldiers stationed at Fort Frostmoth are there because of punishment. It's a freezing island filled with werewolves, naked barbarians, tree-women, and undead warriors.
  • The Isle of Despair in Arcanum is a Penal Colony that also happens to hold Maximillian, the true king of Cumbria, after he was deposed by his younger brother.

Real Life

  • This was a popular way for Japanese emperors to get rid of daimyo that had become politically dangerous - Japan has many, many islands.
  • There is somewhere worse than mainland Alaska in the U.S. Military. An island called Shemya in the Aleutians, a group of islands off the coast of the Alaskan Peninsula. According to legend, the wind never drops below 60 knots, the temperature never rises above -20 C and there's a 10-foot visibility fog 300 days of the year. Primary duty there is clearing the runway of obstructions. Every time someone left, they took a rock with them so someday there would be no more island and no would ever have to go back. Or so that legend goes.
  • Celtic Saint Columba started his career as a Monk of noble birth. He was exiled from Ireland for embarrassing his superiors by taking part in a clan feud and set up shop on the island of Iona.
  • Napoleon Bonaparte was subject to this twice. First to Elba, which he escaped from, and then Saint Helena, which he did not and eventually died on.
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