Written by the Winners: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|'''Eddard Stark:''' My lord, what you're proposing is treason!

 

When the official history of the setting is overwritten by the ones in power and their [[Propaganda Machine]].

A prime belief of every [[Conspiracy Theorist]].

 

 

{{examples}}

* The motto of [[Big Bad]] Makoto Shishio in ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]''.

* In ''[[Scrapped Princess]]'', Earth was conquered by {{spoiler|the aliens}} who then rewrote history, presenting the heroes of [[La Résistance]] and [[Les Collaborateurs]] as evil and good gods, respectively.

** This trope is an explicit belief held by Donquixote Doflamingo, who says that whoever wins the current war between the World Government and Whitebeard will be the ones to define what "Justice" means.

* ''[[Saint Seiya]]'' - Cancer Deathmask subscribes to this theory, but was in the wrong side of the conflict. {{spoiler|However, in the Hades arc, he could've been subscribing to this and just been smart for once.}}

* In ''[[Death Note]]'', Light tells the Task Force that if Kira wins, he's justice, if he loses, evil. {{spoiler|He loses.}}

 

* In an issue of [[Peter David]]'s ''Captain Marvel,'' Rick Jones and Genis-Vell travel to a far-flung [[After the End]] future where the Earth is covered in desert and has been colonized by aliens. The only surviving history was written by [[Big Bad|Doctor Doom]]. Notably, this means that all superheroes were portrayed as evil villains who stood in the way of progress. [[Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act|Hitler]] was still a bad guy, though, because he persecuted the Roma (Doom's ethnic group).

** So, this is a literal case of history being written by the Victor (Von Doom).

 

 

* ''[[Braveheart]]'', the opening monologue: "I shall tell you of William Wallace. Historians from England will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes."

** Ironically, the film is in fact [[You Fail History Forever|laughably historically inaccurate]] from ''any'' perspective.

** Not quite: Viktor is quite willing to acknowledge the ''legend'' that vampires and werewolves came from the brother Corvinus ("One bit by a bat, the other bit by a wolf"), but he makes fun of it, probably to [[Fantastic Racism|diminish the connection between Lycans and Vampires]]. On the other hand, he's quite willing to rewrite {{spoiler|his murder of Selene's entire family}}.

** Selene [[Genre Savvy|shows signs of being aware of this]]. She recognizes that Kraven is not enough of a warrior to have actually killed Lucian, but as the only survivor could claim that he did. She also initially comments that the Lycans started the war, but then admits that that is what is said anyway. By the second film, she's (accurately) assumed virtually everything Viktor has said is a lie.

{{quote|Rebellion is ''always'' legal in the first person -- "''Our'' Rebellion". It's only in the third person -- "''Their'' rebellion" -- that it becomes illegal.}}

:As does another:

{{quote|Treason, eh? Treason is a charge invented by winners as an excuse for hanging the losers.}}

 

* In ''[[Arcia Chronicles]]'', [[The Church]] rewrote history of the War of the Deer to remove all positive mentions of those heroes who didn't comply with its official doctrine.

* The same is done in ''[[Reflections of Eterna]]'', particulary in the prequel ''Flame of Eterna'': Rinaldi Rakan was sentenced to death by his royal brother and left in history as a [[Complete Monster]], while he was framed by his brother and Beatrix Borrasque.

** In the ''Taligoian Ballad'', his distant descendant Ramiro Alva was killed by Alan Oakdell for regicide and betraying the Cabitela City to the Maragonian Bastard. 400 years later, the last will of the "murdered" king was found and revealed that the king himself ordered Ramiro to give up the city.

{{quote|Winners don't have glorious victories. That's because they're the ones who get to see what the battlefield looks like afterwards. It's only the losers who have glorious victories.}}

::Most people will take any excuse they can get to have had a glorious victory, but meh...this is the Discworld, after all. And the quote is from a tortoise.

{{quote|"And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy any more. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused just about anything if you're a hero, because no-one asks inconvenient questions."}}

* A couple examples from [[Larry Niven]]'s ''[[Known Space]]'' universe where victors wrote the original history of a colony world:

* In a ''[[BattleTech]]'' novel, a character counters to someone stating this that "History is written by the survivors" and that "given my track record, you should hope I remember you fondly".

 

* ''[[Blackadder]]'' - Henry Tudor has everyone else erased from history in the first series.

* ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' - In an [[Inverted Trope|inversion]], in the episode "Living Witness", the history was written from the perspective of the ''losers'' who were relegated to second class citizenry, and the winning faction was very annoyed at being portrayed as vicious, bloodthirsty tyrants who slaughtered innocents and made martyrs out of people that turned out to be pirates and raiders.

** Debatable, as there were some hints that the winning side really were that bad. Most of the martyrs were those who were gunned down after being convinced by Janeway to surrender.

** Not that it mattered {{spoiler|since history was one of the many, many things that the Colonials decided to jettison upon reaching Earth.}}

* ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]''

* A variation in that they didn't really "win", but the version of the Peacekeeper battle against the Venek Horde that Aeryn relates in the [[Farscape]] episode ''Different Destinations.'' Subofficer Dacon was a cook and only ended up negotiating the ceasefire because everyone else was killed. Alternatively, if this is a case of a [[Stable Time Loop|Stable-ish Time Loop]], he was just following Aeryn's instructions in the first place.

 

* Some [[Satan Is Good]] beliefs held this about [[The Bible]].

* Averted in [[Greek Mythology]], where it is established that Chronos ruled over a Golden Age, so the Olympians didn't bother to hide that.

 

* In ''[[Eberron]]'' there was the War of the Mark, the first half of which was basically genocide preformed by the dragon mark houses against those with aberrant dragon marks, and the second half was a war because the victimized party got organized and put up a valiant effort, anyways [[Downer Ending|it didn't end well.]] Most people don't like and fear aberrant dragon mark wielders, although the extent of the prejudice is up to the DM. The dragon marked houses however are quite accepted, and while many people know of the War of the Mark (despite it happening almost 2,500 years ago), almost none know what actually happened.

** Another example is the history of the Dark Angels. Outsiders know the chapter to be one of the original First Founding legions and exemplars of loyalty. The chapter itself is wracked with guilt over how fully half their members turned traitor during the Horus Heresy, a secret they jealously guard and which drives them to obsessively hunt these Fallen Angels. Meanwhile there's hints that the Dark Angels' primarch may have been sitting out the civil war altogether, and the "Fallen" were merely defending themselves against their possibly traitorous kin...

*** This Trope and the Lion's ultimate allegiance are dealt with in the Age of Darkness anthology story Savage Weapons, {{spoiler|Lion'el is absolutely loyal to the Emperor but his campaign against the Night Lords, and the Chaos Gods intervention in the Warp will prevent him from ever reaching Terra to aid in the defence. Night Haunter himself directly taunts Jonson stating that the Lion's character will always be questioned because he not was at Terra.}}

 

* The majority of Shakespeare's Histories (That is: ''[[King John]]'', ''[[Richard II]]'', ''[[Henry IV]]'', ''[[Henry V]]'', ''[[Henry VI]]'', ''[[Richard III]]'' and ''[[Henry VIII (play)|Henry VIII]]'') feature this to a greater or lesser degree, seeing as how Shakespeare wrote histories for the winners, his 'sponsors'. The [[wikipedia:Shakespearean history|other wiki]]'s article is a brief introduction to this.

* The Wizard's song "Wonderful" in ''[[Wicked (theatre)|Wicked]]'' is all about this. ("A man's called a traitor- or a liberator. A rich man's a thief- or philanthropist. Is one a crusader, or ruthless invader? It's all in which label is able to persist.") Of course, he's used this to his advantage by wielding the [[Propaganda Machine]] against his political opponents.

 

* ''[[Valkyria Chronicles]]'': {{spoiler|The known history has The Valkyria as demigods who arrived from the north and saved the land from the Darcsen race, who were fighting devastating wars with Ragnite weapons. The Valkyria are still worshiped as gods and saviors, and the Darcsen are prosecuted and marginalized. In truth, the Darcsen were peaceful, and the Valkyria were invaders who enslaved them - as well as causing enormous destruction with their ragnite weapons. They rewrote history to suit themselves, and hid the truth from all but their own descendants.}}

* ''[[Star Trek]]: Birth of the Federation'' - When you choose to play the Cardassians, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhV43JiGiSE their opening] claims this as one of their motivating principles.

* ''[[Fire Emblem Tellius]]'' reminds you that Chaos Is Evil. Uh, then you uncover the millenium-long coverup setup by the one survivor of the Law vs Chaos War. And he's the King of Dragons!

* In ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'', {{spoiler|quite a bit of the legend of Mithos the Hero is false, created by Mithos himself}}

* In ''[[Last Scenario]]'', {{spoiler|pretty much all of the standard history is a load of crap.}} This is used as part of the game's subversion of [[Video Game Tropes]] of all kinds, as it means {{spoiler|''the opening [[Info Dump]] [[Playing the Player|lies to you]]''.}}

* ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'' is full of this trope. {{spoiler|Saint Ajora and the Lucavi in the past and then the official history of Ramza and the Kingdom as a whole.}} Possibly subverted by the Durai Reports though.

* In ''[[Guild Wars]]'', White Mantle history records Saul D'Alessio's final battle against the Charr as a defeat. In fact, D'Alessio won the battle, but his gods murdered most of his followers and abducted him, never to be seen again. Ironically, this would lead to D'Alessio being villified by the people who overthrew the White Mantle when he would have likely sympathized with their cause.

* Mentioned by developers of ''[[League of Legends]]'' as the reason why Demacia is perceived as "good", while Noxus is "evil".

** The Journal of Justice is written by the League(neutral organization) and averts this trope(see also Morgana vs Kayle).

* The ''[[Fallout 3]]'' expansion ''Operation: Anchorage'' has this as part of its backstory - a General Chase commissioned an elaborate virtual reality simulation of the Alaska campaign of the Sino-American War, in which he played a key role. But instead of serving as an adviser he kept tweaking and changing the script, even as the world shuddered towards nuclear war, until the events depicted in the simulation bore little resemblance to what actually happened (including entirely fictional Chinese secret weapons). The technicians developing the program privately worried that the man had gone insane. [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog|Then they all died in a nuclear apocalypse]].

 

* In the ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' episode "The Headband", Aang (in disguise) attends a Fire Nation school for a day. During the class's history lesson, the teacher quizzes the students on how Fire Lord Sozin defeated the "Air Nation Army". Of course, Aang (and the viewers) know full well that the Air Nomads were a mostly peaceful population of monks, who didn't even have an established ''government'', much less an army, and that Sozin's attack against them wasn't so much a battle as it was ''outright genocide''. When Aang tries to point this out, the teacher snaps that, [[Dramatic Irony|unless he was actually around 100 years ago]], he shouldn't be questioning the Fire Nation's history books.

 

'''To minimize the danger of [[Flame War|history politicizing discussion]], [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|please refrain from adding examples that are less than 200 years in the past]].'''

* Pretty much [[Historical Hero Upgrade|anything you were taught]] about Christopher Columbus or the story of Thanksgiving in Elementary School, if you're American. Though this is slowly changing.

** While the [[Flanderization]] of Caligula is surreal enough, it's nothing compared to what his daughter and sister got. (Meassured in surrealness rather then evilness.) The [[Unreliable Narrator|official history]] on the emperor Caligula teaches us that the conspiracy that had him murdered was very brave, wise, and benevolent. Not only was Caligula so evil and mad that he totally deserved to die, his two years old daughter who was murdered at the same time (because she was his only heir and thus a threat to the usurper) was '''also''' so evil that she totally deserved to die. The same history writing tell us not only that all political decisions he ever made was evil, crazy and stupid, but also that many of them was very popular... but that's only because the population is stupid. The later theory was also used to [[Hand Wave]] why empress Drusilla was considered a popular politician... while using unsubstantiated slander to [[Retcon]] her into a mere [[Sex Slave]] of her brother.

** The objective historical truth about Drusilla is that the imperial oath was aimed at her as well as her brother, that the coins of the empire depicted her like they would depict any emperor, that she had a imperial cult around her just like the other emperors had, and that there was a national mourning when she died. Also, that she was married to another man and that her brother was married to another woman. Two of the funny quirks about the rumors about [[Brother-Sister Incest]] is that they 1. Seems to have started after Caligula's death, and thus long after Drusilla's death. 2. That the story was simplified by pretending that Drusilla's husband and Caligula's wife didn't exist, rather then commenting on how ''they'' reacted to the stories.

* [[Richard of Gloucester|Richard III of England]] is a good example. While he wasn't the nicest guy around, he was also not the [[Complete Monster]] that the dynasty that succeeded him portrayed him as, either, as the modern research shows. It doesn't help that [[Shakespeare]] was [[Richard III|with the Tudors on this issue]].

* Ivan IV of Russia. Consider at the very least the fact that he actually ''prayed'' for those he sentenced to death. Though, that would not be especially abnormal for his highly religious time. Still, there is plenty of historical debate as to whether he destroyed Muscovite society and caused the Time of Troubles or whether he dug out the foundations of Peter the Great's new Russian Empire (or both). There is also debate as to whether his epithet "Groznii" means "Terrible" in the modern sense of "horrible" or in the Old Testament sense of "awe-inspiring". The fact remains that he has been used as a historical justification for the need of a strong leader in Russian society (see: Stalin).

* A rare subversion can be seen in the Mongol conquests of everything from China to Hungary. In addition to more conventional tools of war, among their most effective weapon was their reputation. They deliberately committed horrific atrocities, and actively encouraged the spread and exaggeration of the stories (which were pretty bad to begin with by any standard). The primary purpose of this was to make their enemies shake in their boots when the Mongols came knocking, breaking the enemy morale, and leading many adversaries to outright surrender without a fight (it was that or be butchered down to the last man, woman, child and dog).

* Peter I of Castile is Peter ''the Lawful'' in chronicles written by his supporters and Peter ''the Cruel'' in those written by his enemies. Since he lost the civil war that dethroned him, the second version is the one that has stuck to the modern day.

* Subverted a few times where the events in question were much more important and significant to the losing side than to the winning one.

** The above seems to be speaking of modern history. Finding a text by the losing side in ancient history is extremely rare. Furthermore, there is no law that states Written by the Winners and Lost Cause tracts are mutually exclusive - each side might get their viewpoint across, both will be biased. If there is actually a person that disbelieves this trope happens in Real Life, then I have a bridge over some swamp-land in Florida on the moon to sell them.

** Suetonius and other Roman histories are cases of losers (ie: the Senatorial Elite) writing the history which is no small part of why the first twelve Caesars come across as such villains. From classical times onward losers have been very good about getting their side into print - at least in the West. The Soviet Union of course was another story.

** And then there's a huge gap between what scholars know and what the population believed. Up until recent times when scholars studies are more readily available to the general public, it is not at all strange to think this trope is in play in lots of real life cases.

* From a class perspective as opposed to a national one: Most of history (at least until modern times) focused on ruling and upper class males because ruling and upper class males dominated society, were generally the ones who knew how to write history, and were only interested in the affairs of their peers (i.e. other ruling and upper class males). There are remarkably few historical works that focus exclusively on women, members of the peasant classes, or the bourgeoisie.

* Rather averted in the case of the [[American Civil War]], where there are plenty of pro-Confederate accounts. This of course started with the fact that many Southern generals and politicians were forced into inactivity after losing the war and thus had more time to devote to writing their memoirs. A fairly extreme example is that Confederate president Jefferson Davis wrote a multi-volume apologia of his government while his victorious opposite number Abraham Lincoln for an obvious reason never got around to writing his account.

* In European history it is quite common for histories of a large war to come from everyone concerned. That is because despite all of Europe's wars it is rare that a major state is actually eliminated. Usually they just hold a [[Peace Conference]], exchange provinces and then get back to plotting their next evil deeds.

* Invoked by [[Winston Churchill]], who is also the [[Trope Namer]]

 

{{reflist}}