Tautological Templar: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Considering all the [[Kick the Dog|puppy-kicking]] the [[Knight Templar]] gets into, sooner or later another good character is going to get the courage to ask her something. Considering how [[Evil Is Petty|petty and mean]] she acts, often toward people who have only committed minor crimes, how can she really be a "good" character?

The answer is simple. Her actions are good because ''she'' is good.

 

 

Tautology is a term meaning that something is true in every possible interpretation; a Tautological Templar, then, is a character who can justify absolutely any sort of behaviour to themselves because no matter what it was, they are arrogant, fanatical or [[Ax Crazy]] enough to interpret it as being the right thing.

 

{{examples}}

* [[Serial Killer Killer|Light Yagami]] of ''[[Death Note]]'', has the following to say on the subject: "Me? Evil? I am JUSTICE! Those who oppose me—''they're'' the evil ones!" Contrast L, who readily admits when he engages in [[Dirty Business]].

* Tousen from ''[[Bleach]]'' is revealed to be this, though not too surprising as he'd turned out to be [[The Mole]] and had long appeared to be a [[Knight Templar]] anyway. It was known that he became obsessed with justice when a friend of his was murdered by her ''[[Shinigami]]'' husband who managed to get away with the crime; it transpires that the reason he turned against Soul Society was for revenge (he has previously implied it was because [[Utopia Justifies the Means]], though this was still somewhat true), believing that forgiveness of any sort was a mockery of justice and feeling he was completely entitled to take revenge on Soul Society and all of its inhabitants, even if that means helping the [[Big Bad]] become a god and not really worrying about the countless innocent lives he was killing or planning to kill along the way.

* {{spoiler|Ashe/Angela}} from ''[[Black Butler]]''. {{spoiler|S/he}} declares everyone impure and that they must be [[Kill It with Fire|Cleansed With Fire]], but doesn't see anything wrong with murdering children and banging demons and [[Our Werewolves Are Different|Devil Dogs]].

 

* [[Depending on the Writer]], [[Judge Dredd]] is aware that sometimes strict adherence to the letter of the law results in injustice; whether he accepts it as [[I Did What I Had to Do]] or exercises [[Loophole Abuse]] varies. There have been other Judges every so often who actually believed, "Because I'm a Judge, everything I do is right/legal."

* In ''[[Spider-Man]]'' Venom believes that he's the good guy and anything he does to Spider-man is justified because he "ruined his life." The fact that Spider-man [[Unknown Rival|hadn't even met the man before he got his powers]] does nothing to dissuade this view.

* [[Norman Osborn]] fell into this territory in ''[[Dark Reign (comics)|Dark Reign]]'', insisting that all of his actions were for the greater good and the heroes shouldn't be uniting against him and have no idea how much he has been doing to protect everyone. The fact that he started it by trying to kill all the heroes in the first place, that he tried to [[Offing the Offspring|murder his own son for ratings]], thats he's been [[Police State|killing or locking up everyone who has a bad thing to say about him]], that his own superhero teams [[Evil Counterpart|comprised of supervillains]] he was allowing (and often ordering) to commit all sorts of murders and atrocities, and that the crisis in question he was referring to ([[The Sentry]] turning back into [[Super-Powered Evil Side|The Void]]) was all his fault in the first place, or the fact that his ''own'' [[Super-Powered Evil Side]] was slowly taking over and he was starting to lose his mind and covering up the fact...Yeah, none of that really mattered.

 

 

** This is discussed a number of other times in the ''Discworld'' series, mostly by Vimes but also by Granny Weatherwax and the wizards. Some character will suggest an action and justify it 'because we're the good guys', only to have it pointed out that being the good guys depends on not doing certain things.

*** Noting later however:

{{quote|"Even barbarian heroes generally draw the line at blowing up the world...they're generally not civilised enough for that"}}

** The cunning argument for why the Unseen University's Department of Post-Mortem Communications is absolutely not necromancy is that only bad wizards do necromancy. One of the determining features of whether a wizard is bad or not is...whether they do necromancy. Because they're not bad wizards, what they're doing cannot be necromancy.

** Inverted by lord Vetinari. To him, everyone is evil (or at least bad), it's just that some people are less evil than others.

* The [[Light Is Not Good|Children of the Light]] from ''[[Wheel of Time]]''.

* Doctor Impossible the [[Villain Protagonist]] of ''[[Soon I Will Be Invincible]]'' discusses how [[Pay Evil Unto Evil|petty and mean]] the "heroes" act and suggests that the [[Not So Different|only real difference]] between heroes and villains is that villains [[Written by the Winners|are on the losing side.]]

* In ''[[The First Law]]'', Black Dow, a [[Card-Carrying Villain]], accuses [[Barbarian Hero]] Logen Ninefingers, the "Bloody Nine", of being this, and says it makes him even worse than him because he is capable of absolutely anything and [[Even Evil Has Standards]], such as {{spoiler|when he slaughters a couple of kids and his own allies in the middle of a siege after the enemy breaks through, and thinks nobody noticed.}} [[Subverted Trope|Subverted]] though, since in fact Logen is just a [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]] who happens to have a [[Super-Powered Evil Side]] that is the ''real'' source of his wicked reputation and (most of) his evil deeds, including the above, and he just doesn't want anyone to know that both out of fear that his allies would turn on him because he's too dangerous, and conversely because even his allies are nearly all [[Defeat Means Friendship|former enemies]] and he worries that, even though he is a formidabble warrior in his own right, they might turn on him because he's not as dangerous as they all thought he was.

** Played utterly straight with {{spoiler|Bayaz}}, however, who justifies centuries of [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder]] and [[Manipulative Bastard|callous manipluation]] as being for the betterment of mankind, in spite of his paradoxical [[Misanthrope Supreme|utter contempt for humanity in the first place]]. He seems to see himself as a [[Dark Messiah]], though a lot of his actions seem to be entirely selfish, and though he can accurately claim that he is protecting the world from a [[Knight Templar]] [[Evil Sorceror]] and his [[Corrupt Church]] of [[I'm a Humanitarian|cannibalistic]] [[Ninja Zombie Pirate Robot|ninja wizard clerics]], he neglects to mention that it really all started as a private blood fued between two powerful mages, and that he is actually guilty of ''everything'' the other guy accuses him of and more, including all of the [[Black Magic]] that supposedly makes the latter the bad guy. By the end of the story you'll be wondering who the real villain was.

 

* [[Stephen Colbert]] [[The Colbert Report|the character]] is this trope [[Played for Laughs]]. "[[Memetic Mutation|Great X or the Greatest X?]]"

 

* The Templars from ''[[Dragon Age]]'' will execute anyone who is a mage but not a member of the Circle of Magi because there is a chance that they may know forbidden magic. However, they are revered as heroes since they are the militant wing of the setting's dominant religion.

** Knight-Commander Meredith of ''[[Dragon Age II]]'' is probably the best example. She gets worse as the game progresses {{spoiler|partially due to the influence of her red lyrium sword}} but believes she is ''always'' in the right because she is keeping people safe from blood mages and demons.

* The Pope from ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'' believes that all half elves deserve to be executed or be slaves because he's The Pope, he never gives any further explanation than he's the Pope, he doesn't even care that The Chosen, a centerpoint of the religion, disagrees, because HE'S RIGHT. Essentially he bases his racism entirely on being The Pope. {{spoiler|Hell, his DAUGHTER is a half elf and that didn't stop him from putting her in a chamber because that's just how things are!}}

** {{spoiler|His daughter}} IS the reason he hates half-elves. He started out on the half-elves side until {{spoiler|his daughter was born}}, and after {{spoiler|she grew up, then stopped aging}} he "realized" how different half-elves really were from humans, and it terrified him. [[Fantastic Racism|Xenophobia]] at it's worst.

 

* Siegfried in ''[[Dominic Deegan]], Oracle for Hire'' starts as one of these.

 

 

* Stan Smith from ''[[American Dad]]!'' is always confident that his way (which is often shockingly bigoted, even by his own family's standards) is the good, righteous and just way, by simple virtue of being ''his'' way. He often comes around by the end of an episode, but the show actually lampshades how [[Aesop Amnesia|the lesson never sticks]]. As a gung-ho CIA agent, he also feels this way about [[Eagle Land|the United States]] itself - he doesn't believe that America can do no wrong so much as he believes that anything it does is justified by being America.

* In one ''[[South Park]]'' two-parter, [[The Sociopath|Eric]] [[Fat Bastard|Cartman]], in the guise of his "superhero" [[Secret Identity]] The Coon, manipulated Cthulu (yes, [[H.P. Lovecraft|that Cthulu]]) into working for him and used it to kill and destroy everyone and everything he didn't like (and then got mad when Cthulu was getting all the media credit), justifying it by saying that he was making the world a better place. When Kenny, {{spoiler|as the superhero Mysterion}}, confronts him and angrily tells him that he's only making a better world for himself, Cartman simply and in all honesty just says "[[Evil Cannot Comprehend Good|Yes, thats what heroes do]]", and didn't really get Kenny's point. He seriously thought Kenny and the other boys were only trying to stop him out of jealously.

* Demona from ''[[Gargoyles]]'' wants to [[Kill All Humans]] because she blames them for enslaving and wiping out her species, specifically the eponymous clan she used to belong to, and for all the persecution she personally has suffered. ''All of that'' was [[Never My Fault|entirely her fault]], though it transpires that there actually are other Gargoyles in hiding around the world anyway. In truth, Demona [[Fantastic Racism|has always hated humans]], deeming them inferior and resenting how her clan was serving them (when in fact it was much more like a mutually beneficial alliance), and her poorly thought-out plan to "free" them is what got most of them killed in the first place. Her problems stem from a serious case of [[Moral Myopia]] combined with [[Evil Cannot Comprehend Good]], and she can't (or rather, refuses to) fathom why her old clan keeps trying to defeat her.

 

* [[Richard Nixon]]. Just ... [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejvyDn1TPr8 Richard Nixon].

{{quote|'''Frost:''' So what in a sense, you're saying is that there are certain situations ... where the President can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Morality Tropes]]