Full-Circle Revolution: Difference between revisions

== Anime ==

* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'': This is basically Rossiu's character arc after the [[Time Skip]]. While Simon's a popular figurehead, Rossiu is the one that gets things done. When the [[The Call Knows Where You Live|plot restarts]], his [[Heroic Resolve]] starts to buckle under the weight of [[The Chains of Commanding]]. He keeps [[Shoot the Dog|making unpopular decisions]] until {{spoiler|he reaches the [[Despair Event Horizon]] and [[Driven to Suicide|attempts suicide]].}}

* In ''[[Saint Beast]]'', Zeus overthrows the tyranny of [[The Old Gods]] and subsequently becomes a tyrant in their place leading to another (failed) rebellion by the protagonists.

 

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* ''[[Young Indiana Jones (TV)|Young Indiana Jones]]'': The History of Mexico from about 1860 to 1930, as summed up in the second episode:

* The title character of ''[[Sabrina the Teenage Witch (TV)|Sabrina the Teenage Witch]]'' used her magic to turn the [[Alpha Bitch]] Libby into [[Karmic Transformation|the kind of awkward nerd Libby always mocked]], but Libby-the-nerd adapted far better than Sabrina imagined she would and led the school geeks to social power, and they became just as vicious as the cheerleaders and jocks were.

{{quote| '''Libby:''' Let me tell you about power - how to get it, how to keep it.}}

* ''[[Baldurs Gate|Baldur's Gate 2]]'' has Mazzy Fentan telling a tale about this kind of revolution to [[Rebellious Princess]] Nalia in an attempt to curb her idealism about revolutions towards the noble class of Amn.

* ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]'': About midways through the game, John Marston, the [[Player Character]], travels to the unruly Northern Mexico, and soon realizes that he must help the ambitious [[Rebel Leader]] Abraham Reyes and his army with overthrown the dictatorial local government in order to further his own goals. In the epilogue, {{spoiler|Reyes moves on to attack Mexico City and manages to overthrow the president, after which he becomes a tyrant and doesn't change Mexico for the better in the slightest, which really is not that surprising, considering that he was already an egomaniac obsessed with personal glory when John met him.}}

** {{spoiler|[[Word of God]] claims that this isn't the case: the "assertiveness" upgrade simply fixes his programming that until now forced him to obey the orders of ''anyone'', meaning you some random raider can't just walk up to Yes Man and take over Vegas himself.}}

* This seems to be the central conflict of ''[[Fable III (Video Game)|Fable III]]''. Your brother, the King, rules with an iron fist and taxes his subjects brutally. Then you overthrow him... {{spoiler|and find out the reason he was throttling the country was because an [[Eldritch Abomination]] is making its way towards Albion, and he needs the treasury fully stacked to make sure the army is well-prepared for its arrival. This gives you the option of either going back to his style of government (the "Evil" option) or instituting reforms for the subjects that will empty the treasury and divert money from the army, resulting in lots of death when Mr. Nasty shows up (the "Good" option). Needless to say, many players [[Take a Third Option]] and grind professions and/or invest heavily in real estate to fill the treasury themselves.}}

* The European Revolutions of 1848 were like this. Pretty much every European country had a pro-democratic revolution, but things only really changed for the better in two small nations: Denmark and the Netherlands. Europe as a whole didn't become democratic until well into the twentieth century.

** That's not quite accurate. Yes, the Year of Revolutions was a bust. But by the turn of the twentieth century, every European country except Russia, the Ottoman Empire and a few others had some form of parliamentary democracy. In fact, [[World War One]] actually snuffed out some democracies.

* The Philippines suffered from this after the U.S. helped them overthrow Spain, which had colonized them a few hundred years before. They then had to endure being a colony of the U.S., along with enduring a blood rebellion against U.S. occupation that dragged on for 11 years, and was pretty much the Afghanistan war of the early 1900's.

** American occupation brought progress the Philippines wouldn't have achieved had it stayed a Spanish colony.

* This trope even exists in healthy democracies, where the favoured form of revolution is by the ballot and not by the bullet. There have been many, many times where an immensely unpopular government was swept out by a new and somewhat over-idealistic opposition promising radical change, only to continue their predecessors' policies once they sat down to effectively govern.

* This is what happened with Iran: the US-supported brutal monarchy of the Shah was overthrown by a revolution that brought immense hopes of independence and justice. Then [[Gone Horribly Wrong|the Islamists came out on top of the revolution and imposed Sharia law]].

* The same thing happened in Mexico after the supposedly liberal Porfirio Díaz took power. The old aristocracy was simply replaced with an even more brutal plutocracy, and while the cities became modern, small towns were squeezed out of existence and their former denizens became de facto serfs living with inescapable debt in haciendas (they were even called peons).

* Ancient China actually had a name for this trope: the "Dynastic Cycle." Essentially, it was the idea that an empire would rule until it became disapproved of by the gods, who would show their disapproval by some cosmic event (say, a lunar eclipse). Following this, the people would rise and a new empire would begin, and the whole thing would happen all over again.

[[Category:Politics Tropes]]

[[Category:Full Circle Revolution]]