Risking the King

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"There is an unknown threat on that unstable derelict ship, capable of wiping out an entire starfleet crew. I could send a fully armed squad of trained security personel, but instead I will send a team comprised of my chief science officer, my only physician and myself, the captain of the ship." —Liberally paraphrased from Captain Kirk, Star Trek

Sometimes a story-teller has The Main Characters Do Everything; sometimes the writer simply wants to hurry up and bring about a climactic fight. Regardless of the reason, story-tellers will often have crucial characters run pèle-mèle into dangerous situations when more qualified (or, at least, more appropriate) people are perfectly available. This is akin to sending your king out to capture pieces in chess.

Not to be confused with Challenging the Chief in which, to preserve their honor, the boss agrees to fight one on one in spite of an existing tactical advantage.

The trope codifier, as implied above above, is the original Star Trek series, where every crucial command officer would regularly be assigned to the away team for some dangerous new environment. It was largely subverted in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" where the captain would stay on the bridge and dedicated away teams would be put together for specific trips.

Subtrope of Acceptable Breaks From Reality. This is sometimes a Sister Trope to Authority Equals Asskicking. And arguably the opposite of Orcus on His Throne. See also Warrior Prince

Examples of Risking the King include:

Anime and Manga

• A common theme in Code Geass - nearly every leader in that show will risk themselves to do something when subordinates are available. It's implied to be expected of them, armies refusing to risk their skin for someone who won't take the same risks. Lelouch and Cornelia in particular believe in the trope very strongly.

Lelouch: How can a king expect his men to follow if he does not lead?

• In Saiunkoku Monogatari, Ryuuki, the Emperor of Saiunkoku, puts himself in harm's way on several occasions - mostly to protect Shuurei. The most notable example comes when he leaves the capital city entirely to make sure that Shuurei and Eigetsu aren't attacked by assassins on their way to take office in Sa Province, which he has to do in secret and incognito for the obvious reason that, as the Emperor, he's not supposed to be doing anything of the kind.

Comic Books

• Marvel Comics superspy Nick Fury was nominally the director of a covert agency called S.H.I.E.L.D., but from the Silver Age to The Dark Age of Comic Books he behaved more like the main field agent. Despite S.H.I.E.L.D. having dozens or hundreds of agents Depending on the Writer, Fury was typically depicted working solo on commando missions, infiltrations, and so forth. This has become an Averted Trope in recent years, especially with his Ultimate Universe incarnation.
  • Iron Man did much the same during the brief period when he became Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.
• Avengers villain Kang the Conqueror has untold legions from across all time at his disposal, but he's enough of a Blood Knight that he often turns up alone to take on entire teams of superheroes. His older, more cautious counterpart Immortus, on the other hand, has learned to hide behind minions.
• Princess Sally Acorn (and sometimes the other Acorn monarchs) in Sonic the Hedgehog, with varying attempts at story justification.

Film

• Lampshaded in the third X-Men: The Last Stand movie in which Magneto plans to send lesser powered mutants into the fray first as a diversion and uses his most powerful henchmen last.
  • But not himself necessarily, making this debatable.
• Independence Day. The U.S. President, an ex-fighter pilot, decides to participate in the final aerial attack against an alien ship even though his top military adviser doesn't want him to. Justified because if the mission fails, the human race will be wiped out and he'll have no one left to lead.

Literature

• Commander Root in Artemis Fowl doesn't do this... at first. Given the exceptional situation, he judges that there is none better to deal with it in the field than the LEP's commanding officer. Normally sending an officer into the field takes several months and lots of red tape, but the book notes "Root had a lot of influence on the commanding officer".
• Lampshaded in Belisarius Series. The Persian emperor makes Belisarius' bodyguards promise to keep him alive even if it requires arresting him. This is necessary because The Emperor feels he needs a Roman he can personally trust during a diplomatically sensitive joint military operation and Belisarius has an eccentric habit of getting to close to the fighting.
• In the book trilogy His Dark Materials, the ruler of the multiverse, Metatron, identifies Mrs. Coulter as a woman whose entire life is based on betrayal, yet he willingly goes alone with her to ambush Lord Asriel instead of sending a legion of mooks. Lord Asriel, meanwhile, plans this elaborate setup to catch and kill Metatron but decides to spring the trap on one of the most powerful beings alive with only himself instead of with a platoon of heavies. To top it off, they both decide to go unarmed (although there is probably a different trope for this).

Live Action TV

• Used towards the end of Dollhouse, when the viewer learns that Rossum's chief executive officer has been Hidden in Plain Sight as Boyd the entire time, despite this nearly getting him killed repeatedly and despite having thousands of people around the world capable of acting on his orders.
• Stargate SG-1 had a bad case of this, regularly sending the main cast to do jobs even when, logically, the larger organization should have had people who were better at that particular job than they were (e.g. sending O'Neill to do a diplomat's job). Even General Hammond himself once went away to help rescue the team.
• On the original Star Trek series the "Captain in distress" plots were criticized, so Gene Roddenberry decided to make a "new Star Fleet protocol" that barred the Captain from going on away-missions.
• Merlin: Prince Arthur is often sent on all sorts of dangerous but relatively unimportant missions. Season five, however, subverts this since King Arthur is forced to spend most of his time inside the castle while the knights go on missions without him.

New Media

• The protagonist of Descendant of a Demon Lord stumbled herself into being in charge of an army, and then found herself meeting rulers that decide to pledge their supported for Celes to become the Demon King/Queen (and they also told Celes that she should become Demon Queen). Celes eventually gives in and tries to win the 20 year War of Succession. At one point she did something particularly risky (literally going into a magic hole with basically no knowledge of what was on the other side) and one of her commander's, Vrudanos, complained to Celes about it. Yes, Celes was probably the one most likely to pull off what needed to be done and then get out. But if Celes died then it was likely her alliance would fall apart and everyone that died for her would have died in vain. Plus when Celes did this her army was in territory that Celes took from Pride (one of her rivals). Pride still had most of her military and infrastructure intact, so if Celes died her personal army might be abandoned by Celes's allies in what was virtually enemy territory. Furthermore, Celes is Lady Slaughter's Morality Chain. Celes losing a handful of subordinates would be unfortunate, but Celes dying would be an absolute disaster.

Tabletop Games

• This actually can be done in chess, once one or more rooks, one or more bishops, and both knights are out of the way (why knights? Because in order to get close enough to the queen take take her out of check, and even then she has to put you in check, you have to be something like two over and one up, and she has to be otherwise threatened by your pieces.
  • Needless to say, if you actually pull this off, it's immensely satisfying, since your opponent is probably then completely demoralized, and you can wipe the board through cheap moves).

Video Games

• In Dawn of War, the Tau AI always sends their Ethereal out to fight. The Ethereal provides damage, health and morale boosts to every units while alive, but induces total morale loss in all units if killed. Guess which unit is targeted with all priority?
  • Similarly, the Eldar Avatar of Khaine allows you to surpass the population cap and build faster. Being a relic unit, it's actually a good idea to send him to fight, but an equally valid tactic is to leave him in the base to keep the bonuses.
  • The Imperial Guard's Command Squad unit is the only melee unit available to them at first, consisting of the Imperial general and his staff.
• This is the point of the Fire Emblem series, which many liken to an extremely in-depth chess game with RPG elements. The main character has to come to every map and if they die it's game over. It's typically best to risk the king early on so that they can level up and be strong enough to defend themselves later. Especially since the last levels usually demand that they spend some time on the front lines.

Webcomics

• Planet of Hats, mocking Star Trek, couldn't avoid this:

Childress: Eve went crazy and ran off into the sandstorm. Kirk: I'll find her. No need for anyone less important than the captain to risk their lives.

• Vexxarr in the strip "Scrum And Villainy" has "Tactical Darwinism" explained by the protagonist («Any commander who lead by example left the gene pool long ago»). So it's averted… and then exploited.

Real Life

• In times when institutions were less mechanical this was fairly normal because few warriors would fight for a prince who stayed behind (they don't seem to have minded them bringing a few extra luxuries to the field with them but a cowardly leader would not be stomached). Several famous rulers in European history died on the battlefield and to this day such behavior is admired even though not practical.