Military Maverick: Difference between revisions

* Ender Wiggin from ~Ender's Game~ was a ''deliberate'' [[Military Maverick]] - he thought he was being a rebel, but they figured he was [[Child Prodigy|smart enough]] to know better than the rule-makers, and actually intended him to break the rules.

* Inverted in [[Jack Campbell]]'s ''[[The Lost Fleet]]''. Captain Geary is thought of as crazy ''because'' he uses reasonable and not particularly noteworthy tactics. Which baffles his fleet, who are used to simply rushing into the enemy and counting how many ships are left over to determine a victory.

* In a rare example of someone at the top flouting convention, though actually very [[Affably Evil|cultured and refined]] in a way most Imperial fleet officers only hope to be, [[The Thrawn Trilogy|Grand Admiral Thrawn]] spits in the face of conventional strategic and tactical wisdom. He is confident to the point where he bases entire planetary assaults around esoteric uses of obscure or rare technology and other ''extremely'' unusual ideas--ideas that are so odd that he and the captain of his flagship once had a barely-civilized argument over his use of a particular tactic. That particular tactic was in fact outright reasonable (and became ''routine'') compared to some of his more inventive concepts. Then again, Thrawn is only one step down in the chain of command from the Emperor: so long as he remains loyal to the Empire and continues to succeed in his assigned objectives, he has the authority to do whatever he damn well feels like. Thrawn was a military maverick among his own people, too. In ''[[Outbound Flight]]'', he was the one making preemptive strikes, to the consternation of, well, just about everyone. He actually got exiled for that.

** Similarly, General Garm Bel Iblis is a ''slightly'' more conventional commander, but despite his cunning and ability to make do with less is often politically ostracized. He even resisted an upgrade to his aging flagship's comm center so that secure messages would remain more secure. This has more to do with his time as an independent rebel, as opposed to capital-R Rebel, than his behavior, but he seems quite content to let matters remain as they are.