Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Discworld]]'' series:

** The way to get ahead at Unseen University is "by way of dead men's pointy shoes." In other words, kill the guy above you and steal his shoes and hat. Rinse, lather, repeat. Since the elevation of [[Boisterous Bruiser|Mustrum Ridcully]] as Archchancellor this process has been halted, by virtue of him being virtually unkillable, resulting in a lot more permanency among the other senior wizards as well as backstabbing decreases.

* ''[[X Wing Series]]'' Ysanne Isard. Nominally always working for the Empire, but after the Emperor died, she was just working for herself. Later in the series, Baron Soontir Fel and Gara Petothel are both accused of this. It's untrue on both counts.

* Ludovico in ''[[Leonardos Swans]]''. He does this both to his wife and his political allies.

* According to [[All There in the Manual|Pottermore]], the Ravenclaw house of [[Harry Potter]] has a problem with this at times. Though since the information came from the [[Unreliable Narrator|Slytherin Prefect]] it must be taken with a grain of salt.

 

* ''[[The Wire]]'': [[The Chessmaster|Stringer Bell]] betrays [[Rule of Three|three]] people, all of them main characters, and all of them considering him trustworthy. They are, in order, {{spoiler|Wallace, D'Angelo (coming and going), and ''Avon Motherfucking Barksdale''.}}

* {{spoiler|Tony Almeida}} in the seventh season of ''[[24]]''. He betrays {{spoiler|Emerson's group}}, which he claims he had actually been loyal to at one point for {{spoiler|serving as a deep cover agent for Bill Buchanan}}, then betrays {{spoiler|the FBI by killing Larry Moss after thwarting Juma and Hodges' plans}} in favor of {{spoiler|the masterminds behind the conspiracy}}, all so that he {{spoiler|can meet their leader face-to-face and kill him}}.

 

== Real Life ==

** The leading scholar on Napoleonic history, J. David Markham, goes out of his way to mention how backstabbing Talleyrand was.

*** Actually, that's not quite right. His name was actually Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, Napoleon lost patience with him after he bungled a battle, and consequently when the Swedish suggested him as their new king, Napoleon didn't care either way. Bernadotte did change sides in 1813, while he was the Crown Prince of Sweden, but he wasn't actually crowned King until 1818, and Napoleon ditched him before he ditched Napoleon. As an amusing side-note, he was styled Charles XIV when he took the throne, but he was only the eighth Charles on the Swedish throne - an earlier Charles, when determining the correct numbering, didn't realise that the book he was using was [[Did Not Do the Research|fictitious]].

*** Bernadotte switched sides because it was in Sweden's best interest to do so. So what we have here is switching loyalties from his native to his adoptive country, and Bernadotte did not make switching sides a habit.

* The entire Sengoku era of Japan is this; to the level of having [[wikipedia:Gekokujō|a specific term]].

* [[wikipedia:Yevno Azef|Yevno Azef]] was incredibly prone to this. He started out by joining the Socialists in Tsarist Russia. When he was about to be arrested by the [[State Sec|Okhrana]] (the Tsar's secret police), he fled to Germany, taking 800 rubles of party funds with him. He joined the Social Democratic Party of Russia in Exile. Then, the Okhrana contacted him, offering him a lucrative salary to become [[The Informant]]. At the turn of the century, he returned to Moscow, making himself indispensible to the Revolutionaries, and becoming head of their "Combat Division" by betraying his predecessor to the revolutionaries. His job was to become an ''agent provocateur'' - force the revolutionaries into doing stupid things that would get them captured. Unfortunately, this would mean that he would end up being seen as an incompetent head of Combat Division and he would be replaced. So, he set up genuine assassinations every now and again (the Minister of the Interior, a Duke or two) to cover his ass, telling the Okhrana that he didn't know about them. As a result, when [[Cassandra Truth|sympathetic policemen told the rebels about Azef's double dealing]], they ignored it as malicious propaganda. Eventually, however, events caught up with him, and a "Court of Honour" was convened in Paris to try him. He had one last trick up his sleeve, however - he promised to provide convincing proof of his innocence...[[What an Idiot!|if they would just let him go back to his house to get it]]. [[Too Dumb to Live|They believed him]]. He fled back to Germany, [[Cut Lex Luthor a Check|becoming rich on the stock market]]. He would have got away with it too, if it weren't for that meddlin' [[World War I]], in which he was interned as an enemy alien. In prison, he caught a kidney disease, and died of renal failure in 1918.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Index Syndrome]]

[[Category:Betrayal Tropes]]

[[Category:Villains]]