Pyrrhic Victory: Difference between revisions

Few victories come without cost, but the cost of a Pyrrhic Victory is ruinous to the victor. A Pyrrhic Victory will often involve a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] or people asking [[Was It Really Worth It?]]. If it happens at the end of a work, it will inevitably lead to a [[Bittersweet Ending]] or even a [[Downer Ending]] (and likely [[Inferred Holocaust]]). Often the implication of a [[Lonely at the Top]] situation, where someone gets everything he wanted, but lost everything and everyone that helped him get there. A clever enemy can use a [[Defensive Feint Trap]] to trick an opponent into "winning" such a victory.

 

 

Has nothing at all to do with the victories of Pyrrha Nikos from ''[[RWBY]]''.

* Twenty years before the main story in ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'', Ala Rubra stopped the war in the Magical World and saved the world. Unfortunately, this was only achievable through {{spoiler|the sealing of Asuna, which caused the floating capital to collapse and destroyed the cultural center of the world. The dynasty of the founders and kings of Ostia was also assumed to be wiped out when Arika was blamed for the disaster.}}

* Arguably, the end of ''[[Code Geass]]'' goes something like this- {{spoiler|Lelouch is dead, Suzaku's had to fake his death (and both of their reputations are in ruins), the entire populations of both Tokyo and the Britannian capital are dead and it's likely that Nunnally and several others are likely to need some kind of therapy. The world's at peace, but it's come at a heavy price.}}

* In ''[[Great Teacher Onizuka]]'' a Phyrric Victory is achieved by an antagonist in a beauty pageant. By cheating the voting system, she manages to beat Tomoe in the pageant, but as she receives her reward, everyone in the audience boos her and claims to want Tomoe to be the winner.

* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann|Gurren Lagann]]'': {{spoiler|The Anti-Spirals are defeated, but more than half of the Gurren Brigade are dead, including Kittan, and Nia dies soon after returning to earth, because her life force was tied to the Anti-Spiral. On her ''wedding day'' of all days.}}

** [[Invoked Trope|Invoked]] in "What You Leave Behind":

{{quote|''"You may win this war, Commander, but I promise you, by the time it's over, you will have lost so many ships, so many lives, that your 'victory' will taste as bitter as defeat."''}}

{{quote|'''Worf:''' "Consider what you do here today, Gowron! Kahless himself said, 'Destroying an empire to win a battle ''is no victory'' '! "

'''Gowron:''' "'And ending a battle to save an empire is no defeat'." }}

* In ''[[The Shield]]'s'' series finale {{spoiler|Vic succeeded in getting away with everything he's done, but no friends in the world, his family relocated out of fear from him, and his new employment is guaranteed to be Hell for the next three years}}. So yes, he won, but the cost was obscene.

* During the evacuation of New Caprica in ''[[Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series)|Battlestar Galactica]]'', {{spoiler|the Galactica and most of the civilian ships manage to escape the planet...at the cost of massive damage to Galactica and the loss of the high-tech, advanced battlestar Pegasus, which was capable of building Vipers. [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|Nice job breaking it, Lee]].}}

* The Battle of Witchhead in ''[[Andromeda]]'' turned into this for the [[Nietzsche Wannabe|Nietzscheans]], although they arrived to the battle preparing to ambush a fleet of 100 High Guard ships with an armada of 1500, which would've been a [[Curb Stomp Battle]]. Then Hunt (AKA the Angel of Death) shows up and wipes out 1000 ships, damaging the rest, and sewing disarray among the Nietzchean ranks. The High Guard fleet shows up shortly after and is still wiped out, but the Neitzscheans are left with hardly anything themselves. In fact, the ruling Drago-Kazov Pride was supposed to form the dynasty for the new Nietzschean Empire, but their losses mean that they no longer have the power to unite the warring prides, resulting in a 300-year power vacuum.

 

* This was, according to medieval myth, the fate of anyone who stabbed a basilisk. Lucian described it thusly: "What though the Moor the Basilisk hath slain, and pinned him lifeless to the sandy plain, up through the spear the subtle venom flies; the hand imbibes it, and the victor dies."

 

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* In ''[[STALKER]]'' ''Shadow of Chernobyl'', {{spoiler|the best ending has Strelok stopping the C-Consciousness' ulterior motive of tampering with the noosphere by shooting their stasis pods and then escaping their secret lab by means of a portal off-screen. However, this caused the Zone to become even more unstable as emissions have run rampant on a ''daily'' basis, resulting in an increase of zombified stalkers, mutant activity, Monolith soldiers, and other nastiness. ''Call of Pripyat'' takes place after this ending.}}

* In ''[[Halo]]'', the war between the Forerunners and the Flood technically ended with victory for the former group; all they had to do was eradicate ''all sentient life in the universe'' so the Flood would starve, and leave behind technology that would start evolution of every race over at the beginning. That was the only plan these [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]]s could come up with to kill these things. Indeed, the Flood is ''really'' bad news even in present day, the only way to stop the spread of the parasites is to quarantine the infected area and blow it up, such operations often done via [[Enemy Mine| cooperation between humans and Covenant forces]], the two usually being [[Arch Enemies]].

 

== Web Comics ==

* In [[Tales of the Questor]], Quentyn kills the dragon—except his arm is broken, he must [[Mercy Kill|spare the mortally-wounded Ember any further suffering]], {{spoiler|and it was the wrong dragon}}.

* The end of the ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja|Dr McNinja]]'' saga "Doc Gets Rad" has {{spoiler|the doc trap Sparlelord in a infinite time-loop, preventing him from conquering the world. Of course, by doing this, he eliminated the one threat that could have permanently defeated King Radical, which Radical is more than happy to rub in Doc's face.}}

 

== Web Original ==

* In ''[[Tech Infantry]]'', pretty much every battle in the story is one of these, if not an outright defeat. The first Jurvain invasion of Rios is destroyed, at the cost of a jump gate, then a rebel attack is driven off with such heavy cost in Council Loyalist ships that when a second Jurvain invasion comes in, there's effectively nothing to stop them. The rebel fleet attacks the Federation capital in Avalon, and is again driven off at the cost of such heavy Federation casualties that future offensive operations against anyone are pretty much impossible. And the Vin Shriak is defeated, at the cost of so weakening the Federation that they are powerless to resist a subsequent invasion by the Eastern Bloc and their alien allies.

** Not to mention {{spoiler|her last words}}. Can you imagine any satisfaction in his "victory" at all after something like that?

* [http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=/052.jpg This] ''[[Erfworld]]'' story arc involves something on a smaller scale. Gobwin Knob has made a series of losing attacks on the Jetstone forces, which were reported to their commander as victories by the psuedo-magical "rules" that make Erfworld function like a tabletop game. It takes a couple minutes for someone to point out that, by attacking, inflicting losses, and retreating, the Gobwin Knob forces were technically losing the engagement but still inflicting critical damage on the Jetstone siege forces.

* '[[Red vs. Blue]]'' has the defeat of the Meta and dealing with Project Freelancer come at the price of {{spoiler|Alpha-Church and several other [[A Is]] being destroy in a EMP, Tex imprisoned in the capture unit that Epsilon-Church then joins her in (which is thrown into evidence and deemed useless) and Wash almost killed, then forced to masquerade as Church to avoid prison time. Oh, and Red Team lost Lopez}}.

* The [[Whateley Universe]] has the Halloween battle. What was originally intended as a cover so that the Goobers could kill Sara Waite turned into a full-on attack on Team Kimba, with many others getting caught in the cross-fire, and it ended badly for ''everyone''- while the Whateley crew won, they ended up with thousands of dollars of property damage, more than a few injured, a staff member dying and that triggering a rager attack by another staff member that turned him almost committing suicide because of the death of his girlfriend. It turned out worse for Englund, the instigator- almost everyone on the staff and more than a few students hated him even though they couldn't prove that he did it, the attack on Sara wasn't successful, and the staff member who went rager now wants to kill him with extreme prejudice. The Syndicate (the main evil attackers) lost hundreds of their soldiers, and the main general ended up nearly losing his boyfriend. In other words, nobody won and everybody lost.

 

== Western Animation ==

 

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[[Category:This Index Is Cursed]]

[[Category:Ending Tropes]]

[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]