Martyrdom Culture: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those who might find the idea abhorrent, see [[Living Forever Is Awesome]], [[Lovable Coward]], [[Immortality Seeker]].

 

 

Please exercise caution in writing examples, especially in the [[Real Life]] section, as it has the potential to develop into edit wars.

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* In ''[[Double Arts]]'', the Sisters are an order of teenaged girls trained as sympathetic healers of a deadly disease. They have a heightened resistance to the disease, but because they absorb the symptoms of their patients, they are shunned by society and few of them live to be twenty years old...and yet they go about their work cheerfully and willingly, and many of them openly consider it to be an honor. This freaks the male lead out severely, particularly as he gets to know {{spoiler|and love}} one of the Sisters.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* An old martial arts movie where a student at a martial arts school bows before the masters and a visiting champion. The champion proceeds to kill the student, and two younger students silently remove the body. It is explained that to die in the process of creating such a great master is an honor that students would compete to obtain.

* In the [[Monty Python]] film ''[[Life of Brian]]'': the Judean People's Front "crack suicide squad." They attack by killing themselves.

'''Brian''': You silly sods! }}

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* The Sword Cult/Cult of Steel in Richard Adams' ''Horseclans'' novels has this attitude as part of its code of honor.

* In the ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' novels this became a big problem for new god of the dead Kelemvor when he tried to be more rewarding of heroism as people starting committing heroic suicide with alarming regularity and effective death cults started popping up. The experience was sufficiently troubling that Kelemvor eventually changed his alignment from Neutral Good to Lawful Neutral and after he couldn't be bothered to really care.

* Averted, strangely enough, with the [[Star Wars|Mandalorians]]. They're fine with dying in battle, but are rather pragmatic about it. They revere those who live long enough to raise families and pass on their ways. Their [[Battle Cry]] translates to "Today is a good day for someone else to die!"

* In ''[[The Lost Fleet]]'' series, after spending a century locked in a [[Forever War]], both sides are churning through troops so fast that they actively promote [[Honor Before Reason]] mindsets, lacking the time and will for any proper military training.

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* Klingons and the Jem'Hadar from ''[[Star Trek]]''. The first lot are (of course) your Viking <small>[[Recycled in Space|IN SPACE]]</small>, and the other lot were genetically engineered and conditioned from birth to be violent and drug addicts.

* The "Kamikaze Scotsmen" sketch from ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]''.

** Examples being the Harvelle's self-immolation delaying tactic and Bobby's choice to, when choosing what part of himself to stab with a demon-killing knife in the one second he had control, choosing right through the gut into his spine, instead of the thigh like a sane person. He spent the rest of the season paraplegic.

** The Winchesters are apparently especially firm in this belief, as well as prone to martyrdom, but in addition to that the show has a whole subtextual line looking back to Sam's first death, which was being stabbed [[In the Back]] by a man whose life he had just spared. It was stupid and achieved nothing as such, but he died honorably in the context of living on his own terms, and compared to all the other deaths in his family it was, in retrospect, a pretty good one. No being a ghost, no being dragged or jumping into Hell, no compromise with evil or loss of self...

* The Khanate of Orion in Task Force Games' ''Starfire'' game.

** Also the Rigellians, who regard ramming their ships into enemies as a perfectly valid combat tactic.

 

== [[Theatre]] ==

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

** By ''Halo 3'' {{spoiler|the [[Proud Warrior Race|Elites]] have changed sides as they find the Humans they were previously fighting against more to their liking}}.

** Among the Elites, there is the position of Arbiter, a rank which disgraced Elite commanders can be given to go on suicide missions and die as the will of the Prophets. The irony should not be lost that {{spoiler|the last Arbiter appointed ended up leading the Elites in rebellion against the Prophets. And is still alive and kickin'.}}.

** The only Shofixti you can find in the game are Captain Tanaka (or his brother Captain Katana if you kill Tanaka), who broke the activation switch for the Glory Device in his excitement, and a dozen Shofixti females in [[Human Popsicle]] state. In the ''Ur-Quan Masters'' version, the Shofixti have a clear Japanese accent, which only serves to reinforce their kamikaze status.

* The Qunari of ''[[Dragon Age]]'' seem to have this as part of their hats due to their devotion to The Qun. It's stated by Sten that the one of the few things that they do celebrate is when one of them dies a "heroic" death.

* The name of the Warrior Caste segment of the Polaris, in [[Escape Velocity]] Nova, translates to "Fallen Leaves". They are taught to consider themselves already dead in the service of their people. They seek no personal glory in death, instead they dedicate their lives to protecting the lives and values of their people.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

*** On the other hand, "true-church" Protestants who took the New Testament at its word were especially eager to give up their lives in the service of [[Actual Pacifist|pacifism]], and "martyrdom stories" would be the primary accounts of their church's development, with each church leader seeking to outdo the last in outrageous acts of asceticism.

*** Of course, the people torturing them were [[Church Militant|other Protestants]] and [[The Spanish Inquisition]] who claimed, in turn, that torture would have a cleansing effect if they recanted, not a punitive one.

** There is a saying, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," and it originates from the fact that the intense persecution at the hands of the Romans only made the Church grow faster. Considering the fact that Christian martyrs were often tortured and given several chances to recant their testimony, it's no surprise that they'd win many converts- you have to be thoroughly convinced that you're right in order to choose death rather than recanting, despite excruciating pain.

*** In the third and fourth centuries after Constantine I changed the Christians from the fringe to the mainstream and consequently lost their traditional means of displaying the extent of their faith, there was some difficulty. The response included statements like, "let no man say, brethren, that in our times there are no combats for martyrs. For our peace has its martyrs also." Referring to the invention of ascetic monasticism as a major religious practice. (Which required a kick in the pants every few centuries on the whole 'ascetic' thing, because a counterculture subsides into an institution every time it survives long enough.)

** The Vikings famously believed that the only way into the Warrior's Heaven of Valhalla was to die in combat. (An honorable execution would do in a pinch.) If you died in bed, of age or illness, you went straight to [[The Nothing After Death|Hel]].

*** This created occasional problems for those heroes of legend who were just too damn good to die, no matter how many battles they charged into screaming their heads off. For example, the Saga of Starkodder, takes him through many a battle, and he always somehow manages to survive. Eventually, when he's getting old and infirm, he starts to be afraid that he'll die in bed and thus make his lifetime of heroism moot. So he tracks down a worthy youth - the Prince of Sweden, as I recall - and offers him a little 'deal'... he'll let the prince behead him, so he can have a worthy death, and if the prince can leap between his head and his body before either hit the ground, Starkodder's legendary invincibility will be transferred to him. The prince takes him up on the offer, but after cutting off the head, he recants in the last second and leaps back instead, realizing that Starkodder's hugely muscular body would crush him if it fell on him - and that Starkodder had thus aimed to murder his executioner post-mortem. Sure enough, when the headless corpse falls over, it leaves a crater of impact - and the head, filled with bloodthirst even in its last seconds, bites the grass as it lands.

**** In order to deal with this problem, some Vikings interpreted the conditions for entering Valhalla simply as dying with your sword. Therefore, handing an aged hero a sword in his deathbed was seen as an acceptable solution to this dilemma.

** To straighten the record about martyrdom in Islam, those who died in battle in service of God is automatically granted a place at the third highest level of heaven. The problem is deciding whether suicide bombers are considered martyrs (contrary to popular western perception, the majority of Muslims doesn't approve suicide bombing) as well [[Leeroy Jenkins|those who blindly charge towards the enemy]].

** Eugenics program. They also gave women athletic training so they'd have better babies and survive more of them. Of course, ''none'' of that is going to help in the long run if you have limited sexual opportunities even after marriage, high mortality, and a dozen ways to lose your citizenship and not one to gain it.

* In Irish culture, fasting and hunger striking has used as a tool of political redress since the time of the Brehon Laws in the 7th-8th century. The most famous recent example is the 1981 deaths by starvation of Bobby Sands and nine other prison inmates, in protest of British abuses in Northern Ireland. W.B. Yeats describes it thus:

Even though it be the King's. }}

* [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] offered the existence of these types of culture as evidence that "the will to power" was stronger than "the will to live". In death martyrs gain more respect and status than they could in life.

[[Category:Knight in Shining Tropes]]

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