Silly Reason for War: Difference between revisions

** The way Miles tells it in-story, it was the sort of war that underemployed minor aristocrats start whenever they have a cashflow problem or feel like expanding their territory and think they can get away with it, but it seems to have ground to a halt quite quickly when the [[Honour Before Reason|Barrayaran]] [[Proud Warrior Race|Vor ruling class]] became dimly aware it was a silly [[Pretext for War]] even by their standards.

* In ''[[Use of Weapons]]'', part of the ''[[Culture Series]]'' of sci-fi novels by [[Iain Banks]], one of the many, many, many military conflicts the protoganist took part in was an unending and brutal war on an ice planet. Ostensibly, the war was for control of the constantly shifting iceberg masses that made up the only land surface on the planet. But since these icebergs are inevitably destroyed/melt as they move towards the equator, no victory ever means anything for more than a few months, but the war continues on and on, as both sides had grown to hate the other too much to admit the whole thing was pointless...

** This (well, the first part, not the licorice) is a reference to the split between the Eastern and Western Churches over a Greek word that could mean either 'of God' or 'of man' in the Nicaean Creed depending on if it differed by an iota (the smallest Greek letter). Hence the phrase 'not one iota of difference'.

** The war that nearly takes place in the book itself is over something equally silly: a small island that has no usable resources, and no potential for any use economically or industrially and with very slight strategic value (which is only relevant because there is a war being fought over it in the first place), pops up in between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch. What it basically comes down to is that while neither side actually wants the island, they don't want the other side to have it either, since both sides believe it belongs to them. Humorously, {{spoiler|the war is ultimately prevented when [[Magnificent Bastard|Vetinari]], after visiting the island, surrenders it to Klatch because he had determined that the island will inevitably sink again, making it even more worthless than it already is.}}

 

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[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

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