39,327
edits
prefix>Import Bot (Import from TV Tropes TVT:Main.HordesFromTheEast 2012-07-01, editor history TVTH:Main.HordesFromTheEast, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license) |
(update links) |
||
(8 intermediate revisions by 2 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
They're strange. They're foreign. [[Captain Obvious|They come from the East.]] Maybe it's because they're [[
This trope arose a long time ago from bad experiences and sometimes just general xenophobia. While the more bigoted aspect of the trope is [[Values Dissonance|no longer fashionable]], it still survives thanks to [[Follow the Leader]] and the need for an easy source of danger and [[What Measure Is a Mook?|disposable enemies.]] Internal life of the hordes isn't usually depicted much, if at all. They are foreign, they are evil, and [[Law of Conservation of Detail|that's all that matters.]]
"The East" comes from the typical placement of the "others" in [[Real Life]] Western Europe. The usual candidates for the hordes include Mongols, Muslims, Huns, Hungarians, Scythians, or Russians, or [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture
A culture can even be on both sides of the trope. Russians are a source of Hordes for Western Europe, but they themselves endured Mongol control for some centuries - it's a popular trope in Russian folk tales.
The
Some cultures have their own tropes involving attacks from a particular direction. For example, an attack would have always come from the North/West in China, from the North-West in India, and from the North in Rome. Another variant is to have hordes ffom [[Grim Up North|up north,]] Vikings or Norse barbarians.
{{examples
== [[Literature]] ==
* ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', probably the [[Trope Codifier]] for this trope in the fantasy genre: "And the drawing of the scimitars of the Southrons was like a glitter of stars". The humans alligned with Sauron aren't treated as [[
* ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'': the Dothraki. Luckily, the main focus civilisation is across the sea from them, and they're a determinedly non-seagoing people, but they're a constant worry for the city-states on the eastern continent.
* ''[[Nightrunner]]'' series: the invading Plenimar... of course from the east.
* ''[[Nineteen Eighty
* The [[Humans
* The title character of ''[[Conrad Stargard]]'' prepares for, and wages, a defensive war against the Mongol invaders of Poland.
* Deconstructed with the Aiel from ''[[
* Played straight with the Angarak nations in ''[[The Belgariad]]''. Subverted in the [[Sequel Series]], ''The Malloreon'', which shows that once [[God of Evil|Torak]]'s influence is removed they're [[Not So Different]] from everyone else.
== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[A Woman In Berlin]]'' depicts hordes of dumb, rampaging Russian soldiers raping the women of Berlin during the occupation there at the end of WWII. Unfortunately, this was very much [[Based
== [[Propaganda]] ==
* [[Nazi Germany|Nazi propaganda]] used this trope extensively to try and raise morale in the later stages of the war, depicting Russians as a barbarian destructive invasion. [[Gone Horribly Wrong|This resulted in panicked refugees impacting German army logistics]]. The [[Captain Obvious]] solution of opening the Western front (to get Americans instead of Russians) was not tried; the [
** Also, British/American propaganda played this up in describing the Germans as such, particularly during [[World War
== [[Real Life]] ==
* Hordes from the east did, in fact, attack Europe and the Middle East (and India and China, but it is "hordes from the north" in ''their'' case) with startling regularity for most of human history. They include Indo-Europeans, Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, Avars, Magyars, Pechenegs, Kipchaks, [[
** The [[Useful Notes/Native Americans|Native Americans]] point of view on the European settlers...
== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]] V'' addon ''[[Exactly What It Says
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[
* Parodied in ''[[South Park]]'', where the owner of the City Wok restaurant is commissioned to build a wall around the city, only for portions of it to be repeatedly destroyed by a tribe of Mongols.
Line 46:
[[Category:Otherness Tropes]]
[[Category:Villains]]
[[Category:
[[Category:
|