Why The "Proud Warrior Race" Is Doomed To Extinction
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- čas přidán 3. 05. 2023
- Of all the nations, factions, and organizations across alternate worlds, none are so poorly positioned to thrive as civilization advances, as the "Proud Warrior Race". Its inflexibility leaves it doomed to extinction.
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I've actually been working on a flip on this trope, a sort of "humble warrior" culture
I hate to be pedantic, but it's tenet, not tenant.
Tenet: a principle or belief, especially one of the main principles of a religion or philosophy
Tenant: a person who occupies land or property rented from a landlord
I think of the Saiyan Race when I hear 'proud warrior race'.
I thought you wanted to get rid of followers, hence the hot take on the Orville ships, which is totally wrong.
I'd like to point out that the Mandalorians are surviving due to that relagious zealot group since they are the ones who keep the traditions alive and pretty much take anyone in who wants to join to their ranks making sure their cultural heritage didn't die out completly...
As a Floridian, giant alligators attacking a birthday party is a rite of passage. Only those crazy enough to wrestle the gator and skilled enough to win survive to go on to become "A Florida man..."
That would explain a lot...
After this ritual they recieve their first meth pipe
As a Flordian I can confirm we only use 5 footers
Guess that's the only education not banned yet in that state..
@@ulandookwah7104 Naw, we still got courses on moonshinin and how to make your own meth and physical education like ways to run from the law without losing your drawers.
Seriously though our state of education is abysmal, there's just not much to do but make fun of it. They aren't listening, after the gerrymandering we can be safely ignored. We are rapidly approaching the time where we are either going to have some drastic happen or large chunks of the population are going to leave. As funny as it is to think that the third least educated state in the country could have a brain drain that's exactly what is going to happen. With DeSantes trying to drag our two biggest industries into the mud the future is looking bleak.
I love how you just used half a dozen AI personalities from Stellaris
I'm so glad someone else noticed that 😂
@@jazzbefos9303 My first reaction was basically "holup, I heard those names before"
To be honest, they fit very well as broad strokes names.
Lol
What were those? I haven't played Stellaris in a while.
Fun fact about the Indiana Jones gun scene: Harrison Ford was supposed to grab a sword and skillfully win the duel, but he kept dropping the thing. It was hot, he was tired, they'd done multiple takes, he was sick, and he didn't want to keep doing it. That whole bit where he draws his pistol and fires was improvised, and it works marvelously.
He was also suffering from dysentery. But yeah. He was done with it and they rolled with it.
@@codytyndall1077 I'd forgotten that detail. Thanks.
Not to mention that the guy playing sword dude was pissed who wasted alot of time training for this scene only to be unceremoniously shot dead.
@@master9147 Imagine the in universe character's last thoughts: a lifetime of sword training undone by some archaeology nerd with a pew pew.
@@pierrecurie More like "I need to get one of those! I will call her "Kalash"."
If you go by the mandalorians from star wars legends most of them had farms or were doctors, scientists and business men. When it came to war they acted more a Militia army, and with the code of honor in Legends it only had 6 points: where the armour, speak the language, defend yourself and your family, raise your children as Mandalorians, contribute to the clan and gather when called by the Mand'alor. Apart from that everything was free game
That is far more plausible than the trash Disney is spewing at audiences now.
Yeah, but since Disney threw all of that rich lore into the woodchipper, the only people who know about Mandalore in that light are the ones who knew about it before that mouse took over, and those who actively seek it out. I highly doubt that lore will ever make it into the open in a manner that it deserves.
@@darthmeta6445 Have you read the Republic Commando novels?
@@Mark-in8ju Nope. But I’ve seen enough videos from people who have read the novels that I kinda got the gist of what they’re about, and it goes so much deeper that what Disney’s got going.
@@Mark-in8ju When did Disney contradict any of that?
The only way I was ever able to square the circle on the continued survival of the Klingon Empire is if they take "battle is glory" and apply it metaphorically.
We kind of saw it with the Klingon lawyer in DS9. He sees the courtroom as his battlefield, and demands honorable conduct of himself within the rules of engagement thereon.
Medicine is the art of waging war on death, winning back days and years. Research is waging war on the unknown, forcing ignorance into an ever smaller and smaller corner. Agriculture is fighting the elements and the seasons, safeguarding your crop until it can give its life in service of others.
That wasn't in DS9 but Star Trek VI. A great DS9 example can be found in Children of Time when Worf declares time an enemy to get a group of Klingons to help farmers harvest their crops in time.
@@GermanLeftist VI did have a great example! But I meant the one from when Worf was on trial for firing on a transport.
unfortunately this is not something that star trek does with the klingons, only in ds9 we see a klingon proud to be a lawyer in the rest of the seasons non-military jobs are despised and seen without honor.
The Klingons, being a race that are used as warriors, are going to stay that way. They are warriors and therefore one-dimensional. I would say that the Hirogen or Jem'Hadar have treated them better than them over the years.
@@darioestebaneliztrado4641 The true battle all warriors must fight is the writers room...
@@valritz1489 I don't remember him saying that but you could be right.
The sangheili learned this the hard way when they were betrayed, after being warriors for centuries they pretty much didnt care that there werent any researchers or farmers or builders in their society, only warriors but when the civil war ended and the covenant splittered they were forced to restart their ways or be faced to extintion in a battlefield.
did the UNSC not help them rebuilld?
@@charlesfisher-kh5sw mostly they stayed at arms length since there was still a lot of animosity. Then ONI got involved and then you have the Storm Covenant from 4... The Unsc arguably made things worse.
@@charlesfisher-kh5sw they are, but it's still a bug cultural shift to adapt from.
I especially pity this one medic in the Swords war camp. Being seen as a coward by your people for laying down your blade to try and save these fools.
@@Mediados Im pretty sure a major part of Arby's people have come to terms that they needed to adapt at that point in time, tho i would not be surprised if there were still some who believe in their old ways
The first thing that comes to my mind when I hear "Proud Warrior Race" is the Saiyans. I like to think that you can look at *them* and see exactly what happens when your proud warrior race gets to a point where after however many years of conquest, they finally bite off more than they can chew, and pick a fight they just *cannot* win. All that pride and power they went on about, and they still got enslaved and then later annihilated by a much bigger fish.
The Prince of All Saiyans says those exact words to describe them.
haha the saiyan came up to my mind but TBH we never seen how exactly they ended up with freeza though, at least in the canon story line that I know of which include the movie DBS Broly, again AFAIK in all the stories somehow they just met freeza and got overpowered, then freeza made them his (his father first actually) own "special" fighting force, I know that you can say that it's implied that they fought freeza and lost but we have never seen the details to this day yet, I mean who knows, maybe there can be a chance where they met freeza family peacefully somehow.
however, the thing is, at some point there can no longer exist bigger fish than someone both in fiction and reality, so a superpowered warrior race like the saiyans can have a chance of achieving total domination unlike their more "realistic" non anime scifi brethren where they are more confined within the same physical and technological boundaries of other races and factions around them...
Bardock was your Genetic Saiyan, until Toriyama give the Middle Finger when he wrote Dragon Ball Minus.
They also became complacent, however, they went from warriors to oppressors for a time and became weak as a result, no longer working with the hyper evolving genes they had and fighting tougher races to become stronger. So when Frieza and Cold came along they couldn't do anything about it. It could be argued if they went full viking and just kept warring with other powerful factions they'd eventually become unilaterally strong as super saiyans.
i was surprised he went an entire video talking about the proud warrior race archetype without mentioning saiyans once
Protoss started out as a Proud Warrior Race in Starcraft 1, got humbled by the Zerg, then managed to unify into a Martial State and take back their homeworld in Starcraft 2.
They were more religious zealots than a warrior race. The Conclave ruled the Protoss, and the Conclave was a primarily religious organization, not a militaristic organization. Most of the Protoss in SC1 are Templar, which is the Protoss' military caste. The whole life and purpose of a Templar is fighting though. So if you only ever saw Templar, I can understand why you'd think they were a proud warrior race.
The protoss still are capital 'F'ucked. Post end war they are in A demographic shithole , and even Artanis with all his MC powers can't magic up new protoss babies. The terrans outproduce and outfuck them while rapidly catching up on technology and the less said about their comparison with the zerg , the better.
Didn't the invasion of Aiur in SC turn into an absolute disaster with chaos infecting the entire army and all of the protoss society collapsing until only a few reserve units managed to escape?
@@Maeldruin You can have religious warrior societies as well.
The Aztecs are the most clear example of this.
@@Stranger-rs1sj that's not his point.
The Protoss have a religious warrior caste but they didn't represent the whole of society, it's just that the focus of the story was on this caste.
As an Australian, alligator attacks aren't common at birthday parties, but crocodiles do show up unexpectedly from time to time.
I would hope that you don't have gators down there. I'd wonder how it even got down there in the first place...
@@darthmeta6445 salt water alligators, they swam from south America
@@unavela So it's a war between gators and crocs then...
A kangaroo has just locked on to your location.
But the Emus man.😰
19:38 "In our own world, mankind has been walking the nuclear tightrope for about eighty years."
I don't think I have ever heard something more scary in my *life* than this one brilliantly blunt sentence.
Are you counting "SIGN IT!", Mr. Baltar?
Very few people younger than Gen X really think about that fact anymore, even when it's brought up.
@@Corbomite_Meatballsi dunno. Im a zoomer and alot of folks my age have been thinking about it since the war in ukraine started
It's a shit line based on fearmongering propaganda that follows no conventional logic in modern day warfare.
Strictly speaking, nuclear weapons aren't the actual threat. The threat is their delivery vehicle: ICBMs. Thus far, no reliable counter to ICBMs has been developed. If such a missile is launched at you, you have no way of stopping it. The actual warhead could be anything - it just so happens that nuclear bombs are the most cost-effective choice.
The instant any kind of reliable counter to ICBMs is developed... well, then Destruction is no longer Mutually Assured. And the nukes can start flying, fast and free.
You know what is truly scary? A Humble Warrior Race.
The Sangheli maybe?
Without trying to sound sarcastic, I'd love to know your thoughts on why!
@@Samson1 If they're humble, that means they have the humility to admit when they're wrong and the willingness to learn from their mistakes, which makes them very scary on the battlefield because they can adapt and learn and improve effectively. Like a lot of real life military disasters and defeats are caused by arrogance and an unwillingness to admit mistakes and change. Combine that with a Warrior Race's dedication to battle and you have the ingredients for an unstoppable force.
@@silverchairsg Thanks so much! This has given me much to consider. If only there were more in science-fiction indeed.
I can think of the Fremen or maybe Saudukar from Dune
"Every Member of Society Is a warrior in his own way and deserve Honor, From the Farmer who fights they land to the warrior wielding the bath'leth" Kahless the Unforgettable . Only when this is forgotten do Warrior race Fall
I heard that a bath'leth is shaped how it is because it was an improvised plough blade that Kahless modified.
The Clans in Mechwarrior/Battletech. Initially, they were a terrifying force... until a general who studied the Clans and their honor system used it against them, challenging the Clans to a Batchall (Battle Challenge). The Clans brought their very best... and their opponents, Commstar, brought *everything* they had. The entire planet became a killing field because, while the Clans were concerned with honor and glory, Commstar was more concerned with winning.
why am I suddenly hearing bavarian music
Landmines and mud flats go brrrrrt
Ah another student of ProfessorTex I see
You don't @#%)& with Space Ma Bell.
and clan as well as political rivalries
Should have included the Sanghelli aka Elites from Halo. After the human covenant war, the Elites were had no idea how to do anything like farming, since all they did in the Covenant was warfare and relied on others for those basic needs. They had to look and scrolls and re-learnt all those things again, while on the verge of a civil war.
The elites learned though, after the schism they dedicated countless resources to relearning it. The reason, in my mind, why he did not mention them is like the Jem’hadar, they were slaves and the culture forced into slaves is not exactly their culture. The elites were unknowingly battle thrall after 2500 years of selective breeding where they didn’t even realise how they were just tools in the covenant, valuable and expensive tools that came with privilege but tools none the less
You said yourself why they don't count, that was a consequence of the arrangement of the Covenant. Before and after their civilization was able to handle non-military things. Since 5he civil war got clapped things have been fine and dandy on their homeworld.
I disagree with this video, a good warrior culture or a martial culture maybe not exactly Warrior but somewhat militaristic making a martial culture can adapt. Look how the Teutonic Knights morphed into the Prussians and how Prussians created modern Germany.
And look how weak modern Germany is once they abandon their martial background, they're so weak they're scared of anybody that could threaten them.
A good warrior class or a good warrior culture or martial culture can adapt to the times it just depends on the culture.
Also has a terrible example because you're back then are not like the Europeans now. The Europeans now largely speaking are very weak and skittish people compared to Europeans just 85 years ago. Now I'm generalizing this is not true for every country in Europe but do you know my point.
Do Europeans even with a Firearms were not weak people, the Europeans always had a hearty group of people that are willing to fight. The weapon systems only as good as the man behind them... don't believe me look at Vietnam and Afghanistan how a hard group of primitive people beating the most technologically-advanced opponents.
@@chaotixthefox Well not really fine but functional.
@@landsknecht8654 You are describing at best Martial States. But not really, none of your examples fit what this video is taling about. Being militaristic does not make you a "warrior race".
You touched upon several things related to this, but it needs to be said outright as well: A big problem with these types of societies is that they're *always* seeking enemies to fight. Sooner or later, that means they either pick a fight they can't win (see the Mandalorian Wars of the Old Republic) or they run out of available enemies and fight themselves instead (see Tuchanka during the trilogy). Either way, they're destined to destroy themselves.
This is illustrated well in Paul Chafe's novel "Destiny's Forge", part of the Man-Kzin Wars shared universe spun off from Larry Niven's 'Known Space' universe. The Kzinti Patriarchy was a culture that was based around conquest, and overran many human-colonized worlds until they started getting smacked down trying to conquer the Terran solar system over repeated attempts, but improving until the Puppeteers diverted an Outsider ship to a human planet and sold them the hyperdrive, which completely outclassed the sublight Kzinti ships. In Destiny's Forge, the Patriarch points out that he can't just order raids against human worlds to stop unless he has something else to give the Great Prides -- for hundreds of generations, conquest was a tool to send males outward, winnowing their number while giving them an outlet for their aggression, and if they can no longer focus on external targets, the Great Prides would begin to turn on each other -- and the novel shows this playing out as Tzaatz Pride attempts to invade Kzinhome to eradicate and replace the Rrit line that has ruled the Patriarchy for hundreds of generations.
That's just survival of the fittest if so... but more often a war does not result in total annihilation that's cartoon logic. Rome also did keep looking for enemies... most states do in a way, probing for what seems a good military investment.
@@vanivanov9571Usually, states know when to keep peace, because peace is almost always more beneficial to both sides than war.
While total annihilation is rare, a lost war can lead to loss of power and if a society is too obsessdd about glory... they might try picking at opponents who are not beyond their power, cause they could tackle them in glory days and blah blah.
Rome bit off more than it could chew. From what i know, it seems like Rome was kinda bad as a society.
That scene from Indiana Jones has got to be the most poignant example of the dichotomy between honor and practicality.
Even more so when you know it was ad-libbed. There was supposed to be a fight. But Harrison was feeling sick that day.
I prefer the duel between Haronobu Adachi and Kothun Khan.
Well, its a good example, but ask Poles about this, and their 3 uprisings which was done for honor, and not practicality or even freedom and of-course their short and long term consequences that they dont wish to speak off....
Except Indians and Arabians with swords regularly wounded British soldiers. It was set up as a gag, he wasn't using the kinds of tactics that lead to the accounts of British losing limbs.
I mean, it only works because the guy was swinging it around trying to look cool if he had rushed Indy He would’ve killed him before he had time to draw his pistol.
I'm convinced The Watch are less the Taliban of Mandolore and more the Florida Rednecks. The "Beach Training" scene just needed some strap style lawn chairs, empties of Bud Light and landspeeder on blocks in the background. Especially around that bunch throwing blaster fire into the empty lake. Not even a floating target. The gator attack really makes even more sense in that context.
That and Florida rednecks are not known for their……. Gusto in cultural enforcement
The Empire canceled their plans to invade Mandolore because you already fucking roasted their entire civilization lmao.
Taliban and Duck Dynasty Rednecks aren't so different, both strictly religious, following Abrahamic religion that tells them to grow long beards and everything that they ended up looking and acting similar. People don't call them Y'all Qaeda for nothing.
@@ninjiango9126 the taliban will murder you while the duck dynasty people will probably at most disagree with you politically because they exist in a secular civil society as opposed to a violent fanatical militaristic sect.
You keep trying to genuinely compare apples to murderers
@@ninjiango9126 Al Qaeda means the base
For all the flak initially given to Satine, at least she was trying to expand past the violent nature of her people in order for them to thrive. Granted she probably could’ve organized a defense force so her society isn’t completely helpless.
I mean, considering the state of the galaxy when she entered and the fact that for most time the neutrality was working until palpatine decided to be palpatine, can you really blame her? The defense force showed in canon would've been enough in any other situation, but well, you have the radicals, then the cis, then maul and then palps fucking things up
Deathwatch was one extreme, Satine was the other. Maybe if they had worked together, things might have worked out better. Synthesis is always required for a society to work.
@@doorcf sadly the police force she did have couldn’t even stop a bunch of criminals from attacking.
@@xenomorph1238problem is death watch wasn’t interested in cooperation: they wanted only for their warrior race to prevail. To return to its roots whereas Satine wanted progression.
@@doorcf The problem with the Death Watch was Pre Vizla. Pre Vizla only saw violence as the only reason why he should rule to the point that in his first appearance, he killed one of his men, while on the other hand, he committed an unnecessary massacre against the Ming Po where there were innocent civilians. Bo Katan made mistakes, but at least she saw truths that Vizla did not recognize. If he had spoken with Satine, they could have reached an agreement, but Vizla did not want that. Bo realized years later that Vizla talked a lot about honor, but he only wanted to rule.
In fact, his descendant in The Mandalorian, Paz Vizla, showed a sense of honor that Pre Vizla lacked.
Theres a quote from someone i forgot: "If youre fighting a fair battle, you did something wrong" which really accentuates this. If you're only "honorable" wgen you leave your enemy a chance, youre dooned to loose way more people than necessary
Sun Tzu advocated building your enemy a golden bridge to retreat on. That's giving them a chance, and you too. But that's not honor; it's enlightened self-interest.
@@nathanielhellerstein5871 That's about winning a strategic battle by giving your enemy an easy chance to quit the field rather than giving them the impression that their only chance of survival is to win or fight their way out thru you. Whether or not that tactic is appropriate really depends on what you're trying to achieve.
If you just want to capture the city or hill and don't really care about the enemy army occupying it, then it's a very reasonable approach. If on the other hand you're attempting to attrite the enemy forces or annihilate a smaller force in detail, you probably don't want to give them a way out.
I'd love for you to name three examples of "honourable" battles from history. I can think of three, and of the reasons why those rare examples happened.
@@vanivanov9571 i don't claim to be knowledgeable enough in history to definitely answer that
@@dominiklehn2866 OK, well I'll share them. One was a duel between Sparta and Argos, trying to settle the issue so as to avoid a larger war. So that's a case of honour... you're literally deciding to do less damage for the good of your society, and in this case theirs. Honour is generally about developing a good rep, which is often better for the long-term.
Another was when the Vikings were allowed to cross a river off of a small island. The Saxon general allowed this because if he didn't, they'd hop off on their ship and attack somewhere else, undefended. There've actually been a few cases of allowing your enemy to cross uncontested or such, for honourable but pragmatic reasons.
And a third was the Combat of the Thirty. The French and them fought like three engagements, and eventually the French won. A strategic blunder that the English accepted, but it was a way to try and end the bloody fighting in Brittany decisively.
I guess in a real world context when I think of the proud warrior race I often go to the Celtic tribes. They were extremely fierce warriors and when a single leader like Vercingetorix or Boudicca was in charge they really gave the Romans a run for their money but pretty soon they slipped back into intertribal fighting. This continued into the early modern period and its what allowed a much more centralized state like England to utterly dominate the Irish, Welsh and even the Scots for so long.
yeah that's a good example. I have to admit I first thought of Spartans, but those more resemble a Martial State.
I thought of the Japanese in WW2. They had Bushido and didn't think very much of the Americans. But the fact that America could out-produce Japan played a major, if not decisive, factor in America winning.
Was Boudicca the one that tossed her entire force into a frontal assault on the Romans and got curb stomped as a result?
@@jeffperkins8921 martial state. Getting out produced was not for lack of trying.
@@Kettlewulf Yes. The Boudican revolt supposedly numbered at least 230,000 in the last battle(actual number disputed) versus the Romans' legion of 10,000. They battle was a slaughter with some 80,000 Britons dead and only 400 Romans, in large part because the Roman legion were a disciplined cohesive tool of war, rather than a disparate set of tribal armies that had probably never even seen each other before then.
I think it's telling that a lot of the most successful Proud Warrior Races are more properly Proud Warrior Castes. Medieval knights were powerful because of their training, yes, but this training was made all the more effective because for every knight, there were scores of commoners to equip him, feed him, care for his horses, and so on and so forth.
We can see the same sort of thing going on in some fictional empires. The Sangheilei, the Sardaukar and the Saurus are effective not primarily because they are skilled in combat, although they certainly are, but because they represent the leading edge of a civilisation which includes other specialities.
Which provokes the question: what is a Proud Warrior Race doing in the early days of its expansion? What becomes of the peoples whose territories are swallowed up by the Proud Warrior Race's borders? A good general should be aware that different people have different talents, and that it is inefficient to try to pound a round peg into a square hole. And if the Proud Warrior Race considers warfare to be the most worthy persuit an individual can follow? So much the better: if the Great Houses should deem that their new vassals serve better in an auxiliary role, it should only serve to underline their own higher status.
That's more like the Martial State also mentioned in the video.
@@Alpostpone They're not dissimilar, I agree, but the kind of - I think I'll call it a Militant Coalition - that I've described differs from the Martial State in a couple of key areas.
1) The Martial State has "a centralized government that exerts unrivalled authority". In order to allow its internal specialised groups to function at peak efficiency, the Militant Coalition needs to allow its subgroups a measure of autonomy. The Ixians, Skinks and Kig-Yar are all talented specialists within their own fields. It is by not stamping out the unique flavour of these subcultures that they are able to function most efficiently, which makes it counter-productive for a central government too command them too heavy-handedly.
2) Although the warrior caste are usually an important part of a Militant Coalition, it does not require that the warrior caste be its leaders - many Militant Coalitions have an equally-specialised political or religious caste who do most of the running of the society (indeed, this is probably the fate of many Proud Warrior Races that are themselves conquered).
@@stephenwood6663 That still adheres to martial state concept as outlined. It doesn't necessarily mean fascist totalitarianism, where all diversity is stamped out in favor of conformism and what differences must remain are subject to vertical hierarchy.
What matters whether power is centralized so that different castes, sects, species, great houses, etc. can't challenge central authority or freely fight amongst themselves or outsiders as a looser coalition would allow. Inside their own spheres, diversity could remain.
In short, you could quit coalition but not a state. How deep would be the integration and dependence on other parts of the whole?
Warrior caste makes sense; even if the Samurai become obsolete, Japanese society needn't fall apart; the rest of them can adapt and move on.
Any warrior race, warrior caste or martial state can have the most skilled fighters in the universe, but if their logistics isn't on point then they're going to fold against anyone who understands the concept of supply lines. Fearless individuals won't stand up to a military machine that has a force of medics, cooks, mechanics and other non combat roles backing up the soliders.
I am surprised Ezri Dax's views on the Klingon Empire were not used here. She perfectly shows to Worf the consequences of a warrior society, notably the corruption as houses/factions war between each other in the name of "honor".
we got a lot of play out of that clip already, seemed better to give it a rest.
@@TemplinInstitute Well, I'm just sad I didn't see Ezri. Nonetheless, a great video.
SFdepries had something to say about it. In simple terms, Proud worrier races generally focus on external honour, how there seen by their society. So they are willing to do dishonorable actions to maintain the image of honour, or place honour before doing the right thing. An example would be Zuko, or Duras.
Internal honour is more the results and Morels you live by. Examples would be Worf or Iroh.
@@valf1733 Corruption is nothing to do with 'honour', real warrior societies are not notably more (or less) corrupt than others
@@thekaiser3815 That's an irrational perspective as it assumes there is only one 'right thing'. What you're talking about is the division between societal ethics and personal morals. Neither of those is essentially more correct than the other, so your comment isn't a reasonable criticism.
I think Mandalorians are an interesting example because we do see factions that lean closer towards the more martialistic side over the warrior race trope.
As we see in Rebels, some clans do put value towards roles outside of combat. Sabine Wren's father, wife of the clan leader Ursa Wren, is an artist by trade. Unlike his daughter, who is an artist and a soldier, Alrich is dedicates his life to his artistic pursuits, and it is considered an element of the clans fight (as propaganda and as fuel for morale, etc).
In Legends (and I think some of this is canon now) the Mandalorians have a pretty strong cooking culture, too.
The current batch of Mandalorians have to all be warriors now just due to the environment and lack of personnel and material. But once things start calming down, I bet artists, scientists, and civil engineers will begin to arise again.
@BladeLigerV you're absolutely right. At this point the post-Imperial Mandos we've seen united are a ragtag mercenary fleet, the crew of a post apocalyptic ski-ship, and a secretive cult who before now have been relocating between caves and sewers constantly (its only since Din got them land on Navarro that they even had yurts to live in!).
Hopefully when they speak of returning to past glories, they mean more than just warrior prowess and militarism.
Yeah in Legends as I understood it it was less "every mandalorian is a warrior only" and more "every mandalorian is a better warrior than someone of equivalent role and status". So while even Mandalorian farmers would be trained to fight, they might not be to the level of another military's soldiers but would still fare far better if attacked than another culture's farmers would.
They also brought that mentality from the battlefield into everything else; so a mando construction worker, on top of being a reasonably decent warrior, is gonna the best damn construction worker they possibly can be, in the same way that a mando soldier would be the best damn soldier they could possibly be.
And they also had actual command structure.
Mandalorians are also interesting, because their culture (at least in legends) has lasted for almost 10,000 years, which is ridiculously impressive for a warrior culture.
@@infinitespace2520 It lasted that long because it's culture is accessible to everyone.
And I'm glad that the writers of The Mandalorian brought that back.
My first thought (after Klingons) was the Nietzscheans from Andromeda. Humanity tried to construct their own proud warrior race... and it went about as well as you'd expect.
I mean technically they won and ruled over most of human space. They also were very rapidly brought back to their previous strength by just a single forward thinking leader.
The only sort of proud warrior culture I can see surviving uninterrupted is the Jem’Hadar, they are a part of the greatest empire in the Gamma Quadrant and are not self-destructive by nature
Victory is life, baby!
Orks are also surviving.
@@cdg196 fair point, they are the only ones who could be said to be “thriving” except maybe the Tyranids
The other reason is because they are basically a specialist caste more than a race in the sense this really discusses. A warrior caste MIGHT work out, but only when there's sufficient balance across the whole. This is why the Battletech Clans are not ultimately sustainable - things are unbalanced and they are likely to get into conflicts they can not win.
I mean, they are literally self-destructive by nature due to not naturally producing ketracel white, but I get what you mean
Short version: The Proud Warrior Race is based on the ideal of the Samurai, especially during the Sengoku Jidai, or Warring States Period, where Japanese clans fought each other for around 100 years to secure dominance. However, when it ended, Samurai were largely left without a path since the Shogunate kept Japan out of any wars, thus leaving their warrior class without purpose. The ultimate end of the Samurai came with the Meiji restoration, which replaced the warrior class of the Samurai with a peasant conscript army. What pop culture fails to recognize is that the Samurai, while important during both the Sengoku and Shogunate eras, were only 1 part of the social order, and Japan's society was not built solely on guys in armor with Katanas fighting each other over honor, and the end of the clan system was necessary for Japan to become a modern nation-state that could compete with Western Powers. Heck, in many cases the Samurai were incredibly sneaky and backstabby, just as capable of dishonor as they were of honor.
Honestly in my opinion the Jem'hadar from Star Trek DS9 and Clones from Star Wars are fantastic examples of how a nation can have a Proud Warrior Race without being fully enveloped by them. Much like the Samurai the Clones and Jem'hadar only had one purpose: to fight. Yet unlike in Japan, where the Samurai were dismantled as a hereditary cast because of their unreliability and fealty only to their lords, the Clones and Jem'hadar were loyal to a central government. They have no great houses to split them apart or horde technology, they themselves are weapons, and thus aren't exactly going to search for a war that will end their use (plus they're also not in charge of their respective factions), and their numbers can be altered at the will and needs of their overlords so they don't become a restless warrior class waiting for the opportunity to launch a coup.
Tying into Marc's final point, both are essentially a martial state within a state: They have vast influence and power given they are the entire military, but they cannot, and in fact do not, exist in a vacuum. They are capable of adapting or adopting new tactics since they are not bound by ancient practices, although this does not mean they are devoid of interesting culture or internal differences.
Ironically, Bushido was more important after the Meiji Restoriation, when it was used to create the Japanese martial state that led to the infamous fanaticism of its soldiers and even civilians during WW2.
@@MaxRavenclaw I did remember that but felt the comment was long enough. Thanks for adding the context though!
ironically, the samurai and the clans in a way still survive, though their power has changed, the grandson of the ones who went into to battle with sword and bow now are on a different battlefield, one of an economic nature. During the Meiji restoration many Samurai where actually glad to be rid of their designation as the warrior class so they could now conduct business and build companies and even today, over a century later the Samurai's imprint on Japanese society on who has the money and the power can still be felt, many descendants of Samurai still make up much of Japan's white collar workforce and many large companies like Honda and Mitsubishi trace their routes to the Samurai warriors, families and clans of old.
Can we get a tl;dr of this tl;dr?
@@yeboi2379
Sure
Most Proud Warrior races are inspired by Japan but don't show the full picture
The Jem'hadar from Star Trek and Clones from Star Wars are well done because they do not have the job of running an entire society in addition to being soldiers
The above 2 are Martial States within a state, which is another part of why they work.
I personally love the idea of the proud warrior race because it makes for a very involved presence in stories, either as adversaries or allies. An entire race with their society focused around military and combat. It is reminiscent of the great Khans of the plains of Mongolia, the many Norse tribes, and the Spartans.
Problems arise, though, when writers only take their mythological depictions into account and ignore the reality of how they really operated. Each of the famous ancient military focused groups operated very differently than the archetypal warrior race does now. Sparta, for instance, only came to be the way it was because one of their kings decided to create a strict regiment for discipline, education, and growth that expanded well past the age other Greek cities stopped at. Most cities stopped teaching their children once they reached sexual maturity. Sparta educated well into young adulthood, and as such ingrained a near impossible amount of discipline and education into them.
The Mongolian tribes were all nomadic because the area they inhabited were not ideal to settle long term. They didn't have the technology to do so. As such, their history is a long chain of tribes forming nations, those nations breaking down, outsiders coming to claim territory and facing retaliation, and then going back to riding the great plains once again. Were it not for the great Khans uniting the tribes to work together and make true progress, like creating the Silk Road, they would have faded into obscurity by civilizations that could afford to progress faster than them.
The Norse, having their popularity spike in recent years, were a series of clans that were living in extremely harsh climates. Survival was a do or die situation. If your clan didn't have enough food for the winter, you took that food from someone else because that's all you could do. It was brutal, but eventually became stable as time went on. All the way up until Anglo-Saxons came, bringing their religion, and sparked the Viking Era, which drove many pillagers to retaliate against them in their own lands, leaving their own homes largely undefended from the people seeking to undermine their culture. Not the smartest move, but it was a natural progression.
All of this is to say that each mythological warrior clan has something driving them. An environmental element, a political element, or a sociological element. When you take them and put them into a vacuum, the concept breaks down and quickly spirals into an unsustainable mess. So, what do you do to fix this? Simple: You provide a legitimate reason for them to continue being militaristic.
Consider this: A race of aliens are born to a very hostile world. This world has megafauna, violent predators, hostile geography that prevents easy settlement, and a whole slew of ways for something to die. Think Australia meets the Amazon Rainforest with mountainous terrain. In this world, creating clans and tribes is key to survival, being capable warriors and able to suffer loss without breaking down is a requirement, as is being resourceful cooperatively. As time goes on, survival becomes easier as tribes grow, discoveries are made, and weapons are created. However there's one key issue: Unification is next to impossible, as everyone would be fighting each other for their advancements and resources, and you want this race to make it to the stars. How do you do this?
The answer? Replicate the Great Khans and Alexander the Great and have a unification on an unprecedented level. Even if it isn't permanent, the idea of unifying and the structure of unifying will be proven possible. If made permanent, such a structure can easily turn into a form of Constitutional Feudalism, where there's one high king, or high council, a series of kings and councils under him, and then every clan. Each given proper respects, the clans are given freedoms, but they must comply with the regional king or council to retain access to public services like roads, assistance, trade services, and so much more. Military control, then, would fall under the high king or high council, who operate in broad strokes in the interest of the entire race. This means there's a military pull from all clans, unified under the high king or high council's banner. This doesn't sacrifice the importance of their home clan, but it puts greater emphasis on discipline and unity than it does on personal glory or rivalries.
The spartans nor the Norse were a warrior society
@@thodan467 No, but their depiction in popular media make them out to be warrior societies, and people will look at that as inspiration first. It's one of those mystifying things humans are good at
BRILLIANT
Good comment overall from Vallah. Absurd one from Thodan. Spartans and Norse are ARCHETYPICAL warrior societies! The Norse were famous for their warrior poetry, the sagas from the skalds, and Sparta was literally a state dedicated to creating high grade warriors.
@@vanivanov9571
Meanwhile, the Mongols were a race of great hunters and horsemen who endlessly wandered the vast grasslands to the north of China.
No code of honour has ever required you be nice to the enemy. They always account for the necessities of war. They are more internally focused. Most actually focus more on following orders and what a valid relationship between a lord and soldier is.
and which orders not to follow
the relationship between sovereig, comrades in arms and your own skills etc
@@95DarkFire Sure, but that concerns the treatment of prisoners of war after you've already won. In actual battles in the gunpowder era there wasn't any kind of squeamishness about annihilating a whole regiment with artillery fire; the ideal of honor on the battlefield was that you _maintained unit cohesion_ even under cannon fire.
Any code of honor that in anyway says “give your enemy a chance, don’t be sneaky, and don’t use all potential tactics/weapons” is going to lose to a code of honor that says “do stuff that will allow you to win”.
Honour was important, as it was like the Geneva Convention today. IT was also a way for people to trust your nation, knowing it kept its promises and wasn't a an empire of lies.
"this is the way" muttered Keith, as he entered the 3rd quarterly output figures into the spreadsheet, "this is the way".
I think the ''strict code of honour'' trope is honestly silly, there is really no historical precedent for this, not in European chivalry or Japanese Bushido, both of those could mean many things, bushido wasn't even a term when the Samurai were actually important and there were actual wars for them to fight. And chivalry could practically be anything you choose. Real life codes of honour and such were typically never something incredibly strict and codeified, especially not during war time where necessity often overrules any notions of honour or fair play, those ideas overriding the necessity for victory in war is more ofthen the exception than the rule. Take the most famous piece of literature related to Bushido, Mushashi's Book of Five Rings, it was written in the Edo period, during a time of peace, before this the often romanticised noble samurai would have really done anything that was within their power to win in battle, of course within the boundaries of personal morality. There are plenty of tales of Japanese Daimyo using deception, and a whole host of things you'd rightfully consider underhanded, even unfair, but such is the nature of war.
Exactly, and by far the Bushido with the most historic impact was the post-Meiji restoration Bushido that led to the infamous fanaticism of WW2 Japanese soldiers and even civilians. Now that I think about it, Japan would be a good example of a proud warrior race turning into a martial state, if they actually ever were a proud warrior race.
@@MaxRavenclaw The existence of any actual proud warrior race in our own history is something that can be debated, but honestly I'd say it's more like a proud warrior phase than anything else. But I do agree Japan is about as good of an example as it gets. You could also argue that Bushido, by the very nature of becoming something codeified was a part of the transition from that disunified warrior culture phase, where honour could mean just about anything depending on who you were, to something that more resembles a martial state. First in Edo period Japan, where loyalty to the Shogun was reinforced in no small part by the adoption of such practices, and then later reaching a sort of peak with the restored Empire.
In a more feudalistic society, honour and loyalty mean different things depending on which clan or family you belong in, betraying one clan could be seen as loyalty to another, or to the Shogun, or outside of Japan perhaps to the King. You almost of need a central authority to overrule anyone else before these kinds of ideas can be truly codiefied, because you can't be loyal to all the people with conflicting intrests.
However, if honour and loyalty are both aspects of service to the central authority, now you have a way of easily codeifying what being honourable actually is, across the board, no exceptions. And as you pointed out, that truly unwavering adherence to a strict code was very much present in Japan during the wars, but it doesn't really exist in the same way in cultures and civilizations that might be comparable with the noble warrior race trope. I think in this way the Mandalorians are right on the money, they have ideas of 'creed' but it's not really something that everyone agrees on, it means different things to different groups of mandalorians.
I think if anything the Mongols most fit the bill irl, but even then they knew to not overdo the personal glory aspect of things.
Honor is a parlor trick of the elder statesman sitting atop a mountain of young men's corpses
The only society really was the spartans.
I do like in Kenshi how the Shek, the proud warrior race, are pivoting hard to "not that" as the current ruler realized that focusing an entire nation on all war all the time was wiping them out.
FUCK YEAH SOMEONE MENTIONED SHEK MOMMAS. i-i mean uhhh yeah yeah great insight i still don't understand how the fuck the bersekers are still alive roaming places filled with cannibals and naked screaming people.
And if I recall correctly if you murder that King his replacement goes right back to the Proud Warrior Race stereotype with predictable results for the Shek people.
@@S3Cs4uN8 Queen actually, and you're correct. The shek already wants to throw themselves to death at a moments notice, so if the stone golem falls, they just jump into battle and die.
@@CoqueiroLendario One of the bits of Kenshi I rather liked with how the various societies changed, or even fell apart, if you eliminated their leadership.
Killing the Hive Queens being probably the worst-case example of it.
@@S3Cs4uN8 yeah, they made sure that you wouldn't accidently kill the western hiver queen because she's tucked away in a safe island full of hivers. So if she dies/gets kidnapped, its because you WANT to see what happens.
I have to say, that analysis of the coming-of-age scene from The Mandalorian was surprisingly thoughtful, both your analysis and the scene itself. I'm not too interested in the show, but I'm surprised at how much they said without words in that action sequence.
I was about to ask “what about Proud Warrior Races that have evolved beyond their restrictions and embraced change?” Then you hit me with Martial State. Well played.
I think the Aiel in Robert Jordan’s “Wheel of Time” rides this line well. They have a warrior code which explicitly values things other than fighting such as blacksmithing. Everyone fights but most people are still expected to have some kind of skill or craft. They are divided into clans which go to war with each other, but they are more than capable of setting aside feuds to band together. And not even just to defend their homes but on the offensive as well such as their invasion of Cairhien just because the king chopped down a sacred tree. Towards the end of the series there are even talks about what will become of the Aiel in the future to prevent falling into the pitfalls outlined in this video.
Do they ever address the hypocrisy of the Aiel antipathy towards swords (ostensibly because swords have no use beyond war) while wielding spears that are equally useless for anything else? Aiel battle spears have about as much in common with hunting spears as swords do with skinning knives.
@@boobah5643 Also, spears can be used for hunting, but it's still killing. Followers of the way of the leaf are vegetarians for a reason. However I'm fairly sure that the whole point of this is that it's meant to exemplify the cognitive dissonance of the Aiel. I think Jordan generally opposed the idea of violence, so a lot of how they're portrayed is meant to reflect that belief
Well, in the end, if you look at the greater scheme of things, whole purpose of Aiel was to provide the Dragon Reborn with large, well-trained and disciplined army. Once they fulfilled that destiny, they can move forward, which is the point of talks you mentioned.
Many other Proud Warriors, on the other hand, don't have such a purpose in the narrative. They simple exist as is.
I think that so long as Uncle Wrex is in charge the Krogan could make the change to a martial society. But this would definitely require that he remain in charge and not be removed before it can be completed. I'm sure that so long as the Genophage is cured, Eve survives and Wrex helps win at the Battle of Earth he pretty has it in the bag though. He could also use the respect that Shepard would have amongst the Krogan due to them being friends.
It requires 2 things:
First, Wrex and Bakara remain in charge.
Second, Grunt replaces them as leader when they die.
That is, people who remember the leadership skills displayed by Commander Shepard.
Paragon shepherd*
The Hissho from ES2 is the perfect example for me- they are a proud warrior race slowly advancing and eventually becoming a martial state as the game progresses.
"Can't induct new people without it turning into a net loss for their population" is not a cultural condition I ever thought I'd deal with, in fiction or reality.
Honorable mention to the Hirogen of Star Trek Voyager. A Hirogen leader attempts to change his society from a Proud Warrior Race into a rich culture by using Federation Holodeck technology to preserve their past while focusing on the future. Voyager season 4 episodes 18 & 19 "The Killing Game".
The Martial State has to be one of my favorite fictional state archetypes. Sands off the useless and constraining edges of the Proud Warrior race for something more enduring.
Which is why in Stellaris I play with the warrior culture civic even if it is a somewhat useless civic on it’s own. It’s still very fun to roleplay with.
Seems like Starship Troopers
Like America 💪🇱🇷
Prussia?
It's basically fascism
Important modern meterological methods (also critical to computational fluid dynamics and tons of other stuff) were developed in WWI. Finite element analysis was invented by a fellow volunteering with the Friends Ambulance Service... an organization of pacifists who wanted to serve the war effort in their own way.
"Friends" means Quakers, but a lot of non-Quaker pacifists joined too. One of them was Olaf Stapledon ;)
There are 3 best examples of The Proud Warrior Race in sci-fi, in my opinion.
1) The Orks from Warhammer 40K. They're literally thriving in a war-torn galaxy. Need I say more about them?
Edit: When I said they're a Proud Warrior Race, I didn't say they were honorable; more like they love fighting tough opponents like the space marines, and if they're winning.
2) The Jem'hadar from Star Trek. Want a warrior race to make sense in a sci-fi series? Have them be the warrior caste or primarily the military of the alien empire they're fighting for.
3) The Narn from Babylon 5. They were once religious and peaceful until they were annexed by the Centauri, consequently turning into the warrior race we know them now. They didn't want to become a warrior race but felt like they had to survive.
Edit: I'll be honest; I was desperate for this one. I like the Narn because of the idea of a once peaceful race that forcibly turned war-like and now slowly trying to rebuild its old ways but still has to deal with its old enemies and even the new ones. It's a very interesting idea for a fictional race as well as a cool way to rewrite a trope in a sci-fi series.
I don't know if I would include the Narn because while they have a militaristic culture, it is not the same as a 'Proud Warrior Race'.
I think a better example would be the Sangili (as part of the Covenant) for the same reason as the Jem'hadar, as they have the rest of the empire to support them
Well, the orks are a special case, they were engineered as bioweapons, they dont have much of the pitfalls mentioned in the video.
First of all, they have very strong reality warping psychic abilities, they are never truly behind in technology even though they dont actually have real technology, whatever they build is mostly powered with magic, as such they dont need any auxilliary jobs either, except for a few mekboys (who have innate capabilities anyways).
dying is litteraly how they reproduce, and they are really prolific.
They arent particularly proud and they dont really have any concept of honour, all they want is a good scrap, they dont care how, when or why, they are litteraly violence junkies , engineered to get high from combat.
all in all I dont think they really fit the proud warrior race stereotype
honestly they are more akin to a pathogenic agent released into nature, they arent much different from tyrannids, minus the hive mind
So basically all three of those examples are battle thrall, the “war culture” is just to keep them riled up and ready for a fight but they go under the cultural umbrella of their overlords not proud warrior race.
They are proud tools
Even the Orks are much weaker in the 41st millennia than they were ages ago.
@@louisazraels7072 True, the closest Orks get to a code of Honor is a preference and disdain for stabbing people in the back or being sneaky. Hence why the Blood Axes, who are meant to be a "leader" caste and have a high number of Kommandos is seen with suspicion for the rest of the Orks, despite being the most effective Orks on the battlefield.
Yes this disdain and denial of backstabbing or strategy is skin deep at worst, and passed of as a joke at best, as any Ork will backstab any and all enemies it can, and if it gets a better scrap out of it the better.
I think the best example would be Giovanni dalle Bande Nere's story (there's also a movie about him): he was an Italian condottiero, specialized in armored combat on horseback. He thought gunpowder was pointless and destined to disappear. During the battle of Governolo he led a cavalry charge towards the enemy, too bad they were equipped with the lastest inventions/tactics you'd find in a 15th century battlefield: pikes and cannons.
Giovanni took a cannonball from a falconet in the knee, losing half his leg and dying of sepsis days later. The end.
I agree. There's a good quote about how nothing can ruin a state as effectively as waging protracted wars. The destruction of resources (money, metal and manpower) is unparalelled in societal projects.
A society that values war as a desirable outcome is set up for failure.
A related trope that really bugs me, as a biologist, is how often the "proud warrior race" is modelled on predators. Lion people, Wolf people and so on... But in the real world species with dangerous natural weapons are less likely to fight each other, exactly because of how dangerous (statistically costly) the fight option is. And also, a predatory species would probably want to live in a complex ecosystem with lots of other species.
You want to make a really warlike society that aims to conquer everything, exterminate all competitors and turn everything into single-species habitat ... use bunnies. And watch Watership Down.
This is just making me realize that a “fully Proud race” where every profession and job is emphasized to be honorable and pride worthy, would be absolutely terrifying because every aspect of the race is putting in its all to work together to make you dead in a war.
Its a shame that so many people at Lucasfilm now ignore what George was trying to do with the Mandalorians in The Clone Wars because they "werent cool anymore"
Are they ignoring it? It is clearly shown and stated that Mandalorian infighting is their greatest threat and they eventually unite, including the most zealous faction.
@@martinsriber7760 Yes it is the "eventually unite, including the most zealous faction" part of your statement that is the problem. Mandalorians should never be able to return, that is their point. They had a chance at glory in the Mandalorian Wars and ever since Revan defeated them they will never return to the glory they once had. They're a tragedy, and a moral lesson that the Mandalorian archetype is stupid and wrong.
@@dylanburnett7928 Failing does't have to mean extinction. Their old way has been shown to lead to doom, now new way can show to lead to prosperity.
The Mandalorians haven't been of galactic significance since Revan dropped a gravity weapon on them and killed their leader. At best they're a mildly cost effective mercenary group. Mandalore as a planet is just one of millions of worlds. Utterly insignificant in the grand scheme. Even if Mandalore had been united that wouldn't have done any good against a fleet of Star Destroyers glassing their world from orbit.
@@martinsriber7760 And history repeats itself because Mandalorians will make the same mistakes due to their proud warrior race type
“A more elegant weapon of a more civilized age, eh? Well, guess what. Times have changed.”
"A more civilized age"... "You mean 30 years ago?"
I know other commenters have noted it too, but I gotta say, kudos for the giant easter egg/massive fan service for we Stellaris fans with the 'civilization categories' used extensively in this video, Templin Institute. I see what you did there, and I'm all for it.
The moment he said Slaving Despots, Erudite Explorers, and Xenophobic Isolationists I knew he was quoting Stellaris! The list of governments around 1:16 just confirmed it.
@@styrfry he mixed government types with ai personalities, unwatchable
Speaking of Proud Warrior Races, I think Warcraft's take on Orcs is a pretty interesting example to explore.
At a glance, they're textbook "Big orc smash things!" but there's lots of little interesting things about them.
Like how part of their story is them rediscovering their old traditions. How part of the reason a large portion of their population is so eager to war is that they lived their lives under threat of internment. How an alternate history was explored with them. And finally, in Battle For Azeroth, they really got deep down into "What is honour" - one of the Horde's greatest warriors, who fought in every major war, both as a bloodthirsty monster under the first Horde, and fought for the new Horde under Thrall, began considering what honour really is. How part of it is this mythic lie they tell their younger warriors and stuff like that.
Honestly, I'd love the Templin Institute to dip into Warcraft a bit, I think it's got quite a rich world, though it is fairly surface level.
God I've played too much Stellaris. I recognised all of the types of empires you listed as the AI personalities
If anyone asks... they stole them from us. Then we just hide down Mexico way till it all blows over.
@@TemplinInstitute Once the Institute works out time travel it will all work itself out
Eh nothing new under the sun, it is like the affinity system from civilisations beyond earth. A rough categorisation system to classify certain beliefs and values as they appeared across literature and media.
Flexible enough to apply it to anything with overlap being encouraged rather than discouraged.
I can even apply it to the stellaris ai types and get several sub variants.
When people ask oh why do you use terms from games all the time.
Do you know how many words it would take to describe the values and ethics that all coalesce into something when the vocabulary is already out there.
I can use the word xenophile and cut out the middleman only clarifying when someone asks.
@@The_Sci-Fi_Slut The Time Paradoxes The TIME Paradoxes
@@TemplinInstitute "When the Templin institute sends us their people, they're not sending us their best. They're sending Stellaris content. They're unoriginal, and some... I assume are good people."
So basically, the main thing here is that the relationship between a civilization's culture & technology are inextricably linked and as technology changes the culture has to adapt as well. Plus have balanced institutions to be prepared for new innovations & avoid glaring weaknesses; and a civilization that is united rather divided is less likely to be exploited & conquered by its peer powers.
Also, neat GTU cameo. *Terra Invicta!*
any group that can not adapt with changing weapons is doomed to fail.
"Culture & tech are inextricably linked!" is the greatest lie of the post-Enlightenment era & is also the reason why modern people will continue to be utterly surprised by the depths of human atrocity (which is no less deep than it's always been).
@@KevinJohnson-cv2no ..Why is it a lie?
The point of "proud warrior society" is their militancy and selflessness in the face of great adversary, NOT their vanity (which actually never seen as a good thing in any actual warrior society, such as Knight Templar, Livonian Order, Sengoku Japan, Prussian state, etc).
Furthermore, this video seems to conflate "warrior culture" with group of pirates/bandits, full of selfish opportunists lusting for plunder. IMO this is anti-thesis of "proud warrior culture".
Looking at actual historical examples, warrior cultures do value science and mercantile activities. After all, warrior spirit and code is applicable to these aspects as well.
Japanese Zaibatsus (e.g. Mitsubishi, Mitsui, etc) were samurai families, Prussian state promotes research and development, Mongolian and Turkic warlords value engineers and merchants.
@@KevinJohnson-cv2no ..By what metrics? How come technology is never linked with culture?
I think the Ironborn in ASOIAF expertly shows a warrior nation in its decline, splitting itself into a faction that wants them to adapt, one that wants them to go back to their old ways, and one that wants to take those ways to their extreme.
And then there’s book Euron, who just wants to become medieval Cthulhu.😅
@@stormsurge2103 I kinda counted him in the extreme camp, but thinking about it, he's clearly just a maniacal cult leader taking advantage of negative sentiments among the ironborn lol.
It's also shown how the Ironborn 'warriors' are really just raiders and pirates, and whenever they are brought into direct battle, they pretty much get stomped.
I think this fits the Tenno in Warframe really well and explains why they haven't been able to end the War in the Origin System, let alone actually become a true unified military superpower. Sure a single Tenno can kill thousands of enemies with ease but the Grineer can keep replacing those losses with more clones while the Corpus can do the same for the proxies they employ in battle, which they can mass produce in large scale due to their industrial capabilities as well as dominance over the system's economy. Thus, its an endless stalemate since the Tenno rarely go after high value strategic targets to permanently cripple enemy capabilities and pursue any long term strategic goals. Not to mention the fact that the Tenno are also divided into numerous clans with conflict among them in the past for the Solar Rails. And its implied that motivations among the Tenno also vary with some acting as mere mercenaries while others try to play the legendary warrior role. If it weren't for the Lotus, the Tenno wouldn't even be that effective at all. Imagine what the Tenno could achieve if the clans or at least a number of them united with the singular purpose of ending the war and also joined forces with others non-Tenno such as the Syndicates (especially Steel Meridian, Red Veil and Perrin Sequence) as well as what's left of the colonies. They could form a single state with a combined arms military force that can be quite competent.
Also, the Martial State is a good evolution for the proud warrior race because it can actually maintain their core principles while being more pragmatic, especially if the race had its norms shaped up by warrior poets of great wisdom and intellect that crude barbarians. For example, the Terran Federation has a more Foucauldian view on violence or power due to how the novel expresses that voting itself is a form of violence due to using authority. Its a quite a philosophical and honestly pragmatic view on the nature of power itself and its importance.
It should be noted that black powder weapons took some time to come into their own. The first thing which could be called a firearm was the Fire Lance, basically a bamboo tube stuffed with gunpowder and pebbles and a hole for a slow match. Kirk's makeshift gun from The Arena is not far off. Either way, what you have is a one-shot short range (20 meters at most) shotgun, often tied to a spear. These emerged during the Song Dynasty around 1000 CE.
Around 1250-1300 these were refined into handgonnes, metal tubes that could be reused with some measure of reliability, but even so it largely remained niche among skirmishers (which were irregular units that attacked by ambush and in such situation being able to blast through armour at close range and might buy one because it looked cool) and urban militias (which were also informal groups which might buy a flashy new weapon on cool factor, but also would have battlements to defend from and reload in relative safety).
By 1450 had these been refined into basic matchlocks, which had a mechanism to lower a slow match into a pan and had a basic gun shape (lock, stock, trigger). Matchlocks would have a major impact on the battlefield, but for the next few centuries, an army would still have only about a third of it's troops as gunners with the rest armed with halberds and pikes. It was only around 1700 with introduction of the flintlock and the socket bayonet that firearms became the standard weapon for all soldiers.
the first great equalizer on the battlefield was the cross bow - requiring far less skill than a normal bow and is still as deadly and cheap - a peasant with few weeks of training had an actual chance of deleting an armored knight or sword fighter that trained many years just to use their weapon effectively.
Templin also really understates the need for training and discipline with early firearms. With a matchlock you were literally carrying around fire and matches to stick into your firearm, and had to clean and load through the breach, measure gunpowder without even a paper cartridge, aim, keep formation and maintain firing rate, probably all while under fire yourself!
It was a lot easier to train a musketman than a longbowman, sure - one took a lot of training while the other took a lifetime.
The Jedi Order of the Old Republic also fall under this category of Proud Warrior Race. And yes, Mandalore was indeed headed for a Martial State before it got dismantled by the Empire.
The Jedi aren't a race though. They're a sect of warrior-monks that answers to a democratic body.
@@levongevorgyan6789 They still count due to being a culture. And that body you mentioned doesn't hold any true sway over the Jedi. Only reason they got involved in the war was because a Sith Lord was involved as well.
@@kennyholmes5196 The ancient Je'daii did, sure, but not the Jedi themselves. They're no more a culture then the Knight's Templar or Shaolin Temple. And we see in the Prequel Era that the Jedi did answer to the Republic government. They got involved in the Naboo conflict before they even knew the Sith were back, and they got involved in the Separatist Crisis to defend Senator Amidala.
The Jedi have rarely met the criteria of placing warfare at the center of their culture, as would be expected of a Proud Warrior Race.
The vast majority of Jedi treat war and violence as an unfortunate necessity that should be avoided when possible. And victory through battle is generally treated as not something the Jedi take any pride in.
Jedi tend to place much more value on being scholars, philosophers, explorers, diplomats, and peacekeepers.
The Jedi are amazingly capable warriors far surpassing almost any other factions, including Proud Warrior Races like the Mandalorians. But that's not something they place much value in.
@@dungeonguy88 Tell that to how they go straight for the throats of the Sith when there's no oversight preventing them from acting directly.
the fact that mandos aren't extinct because of their infighting and their constant fight-picking with others is bigger plot armor than beskar
Early in the video I was so ready, to counter your points with the Turian Hierarchy , not knowing that what happened for Turians is your prime example of how a race evolved from a warrior class to military state. Great video!
Templin: The Proud Warrior Race is doomed to extinction.
Wrex: Tell me something I don't know.
Warrior Cultures do tend to be self destructive. Recently talking with friends about the Clans of the Battletech/MechWarrior universe. The Clans only had one thing to unite them; the conquest of sacred Terra and bring back the rule of old (stuck in the past reference goes here) after that became seemingly impossible after multiple major defeats, the Clans turned on each other in what would become known as the Wars of the Reaving.
I find the clans interesting cause they do have some things to stave off the pitfalls outlined in this vid l, such as a scientist and merchant castes (even if they are less respected than warriors)
The most unbelievable part for me is the fact that didn't have way more clans self-destruct in the hundreds of years before the invaded the inner sphere
What's cool though is that some of the clans successfully transitioned into other modes of governance, most notably ghost bear Dominion and the Scorpion Empire
Whereas Jade falcon didn't really change and all their holdings are currently disintegrating to seperation and rebellion
I was hoping you'd bring up the Krogan! Its been a long time since I played Mass Effect, but I think that Wrex is really taking the first steps toward moving toward a Martial Society instead of the proud warrior race in ME2 and 3. He's forcing the clans together, creating a unified government, and even getting his scientists and engineers to work on ways to benefit Krogan lives rather than just making things to kill each other (for which they hate him of course). He's trying to make the Krogan more than just the proud warrior race, which, looking back, is a pretty good take.
3:25 - The book Red Rising by Pierce Brown actually covers this. There is a school for the elite of society in that book where the students are split into 12 houses and each house is supposed to create its own civilization from scratch and conquer all others. Those of House Mars, who are specifically selected for having the aggression and might of warriors, typically rule the Institute at first because of this. But then, as winter sets in, as supply drops with better technology come in, they fall behind the other houses, as their martial prowess doesn't translate into good supply logistics or ability to properly hunt down and utilize the the supply drops.
That seems terribly written. Logistics is integral at every level of warfare. You need to decide where to build your camps for the night, and what your troops will be eating in three days... there's no way these guys would last a month, let alone till winter, with that cartoonish writing.
@@vanivanov9571 Well, in the real world, the Spartans despised essential activities like farming. So what they did, was they used their martial prowess to enslave their neighbors, who would do the work of farmers, camp maintenance staff, etc. And it worked out well for their time.
And in that school I mentioned, slavery is a thing: each house can enslave members of opposing houses, and the slaves have to obey their masters' commands, or their futures after the school are ruined. So, House Mars can last the way the real-world Spartans did, at least until technology advances and logistics becomes more complicated than it was in the Bronze Age.
So, I don't think it's bad writing.
...That just makes it a huge plot-hole that they didn't have any staff for their exercises. And if you believe in economic specialization, it makes sense to have warriors focused on war. But they generally always pursued philosophy and art as well, since they were the rulers.
The Spartans is a terrible comparison with overly aggressive guys with bad logistics. They were typically careful about when and where they waged war, and were cautious if anything. Did you just assume they had bad logistics for no reason?
@@vanivanov9571 That school actually does have staff, in the form of proctors for each house. The role of those proctors is to mentor and advise, but they are prohibited from interfering in the actual warcraft.
Also, I didn't intend to imply that the Spartans had bad logistics. Their logistics probably were fairly solid for their time (though, similar to the video's point, not economically well developed enough to take advantage of something like the Industrial Revolution).
My intention was to just point out a way in which overly aggressive guys not focused on logistics can survive until technology advances or something that you need serious non-military planning for (like winter) comes.
This was a pretty exaggerated example from the get-go. The whole point of that school is to take spoiled kids of the elite of society and give them the skills necessary to lead. So of course these students would make rookie mistakes that real-world proud warrior races (like the Spartans) wouldn't.
But my exaggeration is there to paint a simplified summary of where proud warrior races succeed and where they fail.
@@vanyac6448 From the Bronze Age and onwards, societies already were "industrial." There are less layers than logistics and tech today, just as the industrial era had less layers, but it was still a very complex matter to even raise enough pigs to fund the state army... and the politics of that was very much part of the purview of the Spartans, with literal pig-taxes being debated. The Romans had even more advanced logistics and engineering, of course, but that's a separate matter.
If you plucked a Spartan from the Iron age, and dropped him into the industrial one... he'd likely be effective with logistics in a couple of years of practice, since while it gets more complex, the end-point military concerns haven't changed since Sun Tzu wrote the art of war, even today. Generals today don't learn how to make fighter-jets, anymore than generals back then learned to raise pigs or mine copper.
If the story is just about miscalculating resources due to enemies targeting your logistics, akin to Yang Wen Li in the Legends of the Galactic Heroes novels and classic series, that's different. Even skilled generals can fail to meet logistical needs.
9:23 Case in point, the battle of Tukkayid. Normally we are justified in expecting a telephone company to not succeed against multiple armies. But because their honor system demanded they follow certain well established rules, the Clans, with the exception of Clan Wolf and Jade Falcon(who only managed a draw), were defeated by Comstar and the inner sphere was granted time to recover
Edit: Ghost Bear also fought to a draw
But Clan Wolf did eventually conquer Terra, despite the setback of Tukayyid. In that particular universe, the "proud warrior race" is actually doing pretty well for itself, all in all
We really badly need the institute to cover the battle tech world
@@bjornancraite2266 Yeah, and i think its actually quite fun for stories and roleplay potential in the games.
i did want to share it however given how well it fits the point being made
@@luchs2907we dooo
Ghost Bears got their draw in other way, unlike Jade Falcons.
Bears got one of the cities, but lost momentum to conquer another. Com-Guard managed to secure the second city, but had no means to root Bears from the first. It was a deadlock. So it was a clear draw for both sides.
Jade Falcons got their draw through sheer butchering. Falcon Guard under star colonel Aidan Pryde captured the first city, but retreated asap for Com-Guard caught other part of clan with their pants down. So Com-Guard lost 5 of 7 battalions due to fighting with Falcons, so that is called "a draw".
You really wonder how the mandalorians were able to survive for centuries. I mean, an enemy just needs to spark clan infighting and he has already won
I want to write a story about warrior people who changed with time instead of fighting people default monsters, and they sold the parts for money.
The Mandalore was a highly unifying factor for most of their history. No one would be willing to go against the Mandalore for cultural reasons and even if they did they’d have to contend with all the Mandalorians who served him/her
When there wasn’t a Mandalore, clan infighting did happen a lot more and was pretty destructive, but it was rarely total war. That’s a recent thing by the Clone Wars era
They survived because the Mandalorians aren’t really a people. Anybody can be a Mandalorian and so their ranks can’t ever really be diminished.
From what i remember Mandalorian history is either:
-we are united and no one can stop us
-we aren't united anymore, our asses are bleeding and it's going to take centuries to recover.
There is no middle ground.
@Jaydee-wd7wr They also changed a lot with time. I honestly think that's if Joster moriel survived the mandalorian people have been United and stable.
In defense of the Mandalorian Tribe, their position next to Giant Monster Lake was more because their people were under contant threat by others seeking to wipe them out, so secrecy and survival were more emphasized, and we see in their retaking of Navarro that when they aren't caught by surprise by a gaint crocodile they operate as an effective unit led by more verteraned members of the group.
also, theres the question of "did they know there was a giant croc in that lake *before* it attacked?"
@@keenirr5332 well, could have done a recon before choosing that site as a venue for what is essentially baptism.
@@alexanderchristopher6237 eh, they could have...but given how still and unmoving (internally and externally) IRL crocodilians and turtles can go as they hibernate or stalk prey, they still might not have found anything other than sandtrout...I mean trout. :)
So why they just pick a spot that was not vulnerable to attacks from giant monsters or maybe pick a different planet that wasn't as dangerous? Why did they move the first time they got attacked
@@mariobadia4553 This is the Star Wars galaxy - every time we think "oh we're safe here"...thats when the planet blows up or turns out to be home to a hungry space worm or "wookies will tear your arms off". So they have to decide just how much of a risk they want to take, given that there is a risk of some degree everywhere.
An interesting aside from the proud warrior race is the fallen warrior race. The Mandalorians of Star Wars and the Ironborn from Game of Thrones/ASOIF for example are proud warrior cultures who peaked but then suffered major setbacks that rendered their previously advantageous warrior culture a liability. Fallen warrior races are faced with a dilemma of either remaining true to their culture even when it no longer benefits them, or to become something different that may give them a chance at survival at the cost of a loss of identity.
I think the only warrior race that works well is the Protoss. They have three castes, only one of which are the warriors and the warriors are not given unilateral power. Their shield technology and incredible speed allow them to use melee weapons just as effectively as ranged. Also when wounded they can be teleported to safety to either heal or be placed in a dragoon (essentially a tank). In StarCraft 1 the Protoss civil war actually happens when the warriors agree to put aside their millennia old prejudices and work with their, "Dark Brothers" to save the species but the religious fanaticism of the ruling caste is what leads to a brief internal conflict.
The Protoss also got a nasty wake up call when the Zerg invaded Aiur and found out the hard way that "proud Protoss warrior traditions" really don't mean squat when you're outnumbered ten to one and your race is teetering on the brink of extinction thanks to negative birth rates. Their population crisis is so bad that every casualty could doom an entire art of their people.
@@Gamerguy826 To be fair to the Protoss, they did posses weapons of unimaginable power that actually brought them into parity in terms of lethality. Unfortunately the Zerg under the Overmind were not simple mindless creatures, but a coordinated swarm, and thus combining strength in numbers with brains to use them effectively.
Technically mandalorians, being proficient enough to produce and maintain their armor and gadgets, should be able to produce droids to take care of their industries and commerce
The Kzinti from Larry Niven's novels would have been a good example to discuss too. They take every single weakness discussed here and ramp it up to eleven.
5:59
"T'was a mighty fine throw..."
I was glad you included this pic, that throw is worth an epic all to itself!!!
On the issue of the code of honor, i will also add that it results in something else. The drainpipe of demotion. When you have a society where minor infractions can result in a person becoming no longer an accepted warrior in the society, you are depriving your society of even more troops but ALSO you have usually the mentality 'if you lose in a battle you die in that battle' which results in even more dead warriors.
Look at for instance Worf problematic conflict with discommendation. The fact alone that he was being tried for crimes his father was accused of. Or Din's conflict over the helmet issue. Both of these are pure custom based philosophies that crater potentially useful members of the state. And of course, in the case of Worf, and then you still have to deal with the potential corrupt politicos weaponizing the code for their own purposes.
I think there could be plenty of value in applying the values of a warrior race to naval warfare; Operating a ship, whether in a maritime or spacefaring context, can often require just as much training and personal investment for individual sailors, with the added pressure that a lost ship can cost huge swathes of these sailors at a critical turning point in a conflict, rather than the far more manageable steady flow of casualties that might be experienced in a land-based engagement. I'd love to see the values of a proud warrior race applied to a civilization specializing in spaceborne combat, where individual members are almost useless in physical engagements but are completely unrivaled in their dedication to the craft as pilots, gunners, naval infantry or on-board engineers.
Edit: this could also be critical to developing the Home Front concerns discussed here, since when you're confined to a tiny metal canister floating in an unimaginably vast and completely inhospitable environment things like logistics, medicine, technology and reconnaissance are all much more pressing on a much more personal level. A food shortage might be almost imperceptible when you have miles of supply lines to your back and a continent's worth of trenches and bunkers to your left and right, compared to when you have an empty galley just down the hall from your own crew quarters.
Yeah, they very much undervalued the amount of training modern militaries require of their servicemen. A properly trained and dedicated modern military will rip through a military of conscripts.
@@adambielen8996 Just like Ukraine in the current year.
That remind me of the Super Star Destroyer of Star Wars. There was a quiet common understanding among all admiral/captain leading such ship. If your ship is destroyed or capture, just suicide right now. That way of thinking don't exist with others smallers ships.
The huge cost of building one and the overall training of all the crew (no rookies around) means that losing one is a death sentence in the Empire. An honor with a Damoclès sword over your head.
Doronai Nui (a free fan-made Bionicle TTRPG) did something I really like with this trope. Their "Proud Warrior Race," called the Barramoi (if you're familiar with the sets, it's Hydraxon's species) are more like "Proud Warrior Consultants" - they go around collecting martial knowledge to pass on to the heroes. I could see some Proud Warrior Race remnants ending up like that.
The thing that I love about the Mandalorians is that yes, they are badass, but they are always getting paved over by much more powerful and cohesive civilizations. The one time Mandalore seemed to fit into the galactic community was when its pacifist faction basically strips down the warrior identity of the nation, much to the consternation of the warrior traditionalists who are on the outs. It feels realistic that things just don't seem to go well for them even though I am sympathetic to their cause.
The only way this can work is if you have some truly unchallengeable power that can't be replicated by technology and can't be countered (e.g. the precognitive path to victory the force gives Jedi and Sith), then you can have a warrior class grow up around that
While this may solve the technological problem, you still get the other problems. Personal honor and glory gets in the way of pragmatism. Rivaling warriors fight over leadership etc. etc.
The Jedi are a good example for the former. Though it is not directly "honor" that hindered them from properly protecting the republic, but their rather passive philosophy. I believe it was Darth Plagueis in his own novel that stated that the Jedi could have kept electing Jedi chancellors and ruled the Republic and that in this case, it would have been nearly impossible for the Sith to topple it.
And of course the Sith are the epitome example for the impossibility of a stable government with rivaling warriors which is the entire reason for Darth Bane initiating the rule of two.
I mean the Jedi got literally slaughtered during the clone wars. So I wouldn't say that force users can't be countered.
You can do it with tech. FREX: Imagine a skill set that's useful almost exclusively in combat. This skill set requires extreme competency and training. It's scalable with the ability of the practitioner. Only a fraction of the people who would apply would be eligible for even learning the skills. It provides enough insulation that failure does not automatically equal the loss of the practitioner.
A real world near future example would be human-drone teaming and drone swarm management that's being designed for NGAD programs (both NGAD, don't ask).
As argentaegis has mentioned, this is something you can do with technology aswell and it doesn't even need to be uncounterable. It just has to require a skillset whose performance is actually scalable with the user's skill instead of being something "streamlined" like with a line of muskets. Just get creative with your worldbuilding and create the necessary conditions to make individual martial prowess actually matter as much and make as much of an impact on the battlefield as the other "macro" aspects of war.
The rest is the Rule of Cool.
@@fastenbauer Well, they got slaughtered by having the rugs pulled out from under them, with all of their greatest warriors being turned on by the Clone Army while they were still trying to fight the Droid Army.
It wasn't through any manner of battlefield tactics, technology, or skill that the Jedi were defeated. Rather it was through decades of scheming, politics, and manipulation.
Ironically, the Sith only overcame the Jedi when they stopped trying to rely upon lightsabers or the Dark Side itself to do so.
I agree with your points about proud warrior races, I always thought they were silly and overused. I don't think I agree that the martial state is much better, at least with the example of the Turians. I think they were also doomed to failure as well. Their adherence to discipline as a code of honor meant an unbending following of the laws. Just look at how they started a brief war with humanity for breaking laws they couldn't have known about.
Starting unneccessary war against much weaker opponent is significantly smaller issue than what proud warriors get into.
Eh. I still disagree with you here. Sparking small conflicts is nowhere near as bad as what Proud Warrior Races get into.
And we technically don't really know _who_ started the First Contact War. We know who fired the first shot, but we don't know the actual situation behind it.
For example, The Turians could have been sitting by the relay, warning the Humans to stop their approach. The humans, rather than stopping to decode the message, kept pressing toward the Relay.
Human stubbornness coming into conflict with Turian honor and unbending loyalty to the law.
The Turian general in ME3 also mentioned how their rigidity made them susceptible to the Reapers. They can’t adapt their strategy fast enough.
@@chrishartanto4238 In fairness, no one could adapt their strategy to the Reapers fast enough.
The Reapers and their technology actively defied the modern understanding the Mass Effect galaxy had of physics. They were faster and more powerful than any thing the galaxy had, they were completely independent of logistics or infrastructure.
You basically had to start learning how to do war again from scratch.
An interesting comparison is between The Kingdom of Rohan vs The Kingdom of Numenor, both are proud martial kingdoms but there are some major differences. Rohan relishes war and finding glory and honor on the battlefield, this is very explicitly described in the books and while they are formidable warriors their culture is bit backwards compared to other kingdoms like Dale or Gondor. Faramir's discussion with Eowyn on the topic is fascinating. Numenor and Gondor after it also had a very strong martial culture but for them they were a lot less interested by personal glory and much more interested in the Glory of their Kingdom, Numenor and Gondor don't glorify war but culture, art, crafts, etc. It is interesting that Numenor wasn't only the Richest most advanced Kingdom of men but also the most powerful military power, of course their Blessing from the Valar Helped a lot, but I think it was their culture that played an even more important part. Of course this is a fictional example but I think it works.😎
"Proud Warrior Race" is defined as "Winning a battle but losing the war".
achieving a minor victory that ultimately results in a larger defeat, rendering the victory empty or hollow. It can also refer to gaining a small tactical advantage that corresponds to a wider disadvantage.
Ironically, alot of the supossed real world "proud warrior race" were more like that of a Martial State.
Well they started as x then evolved into y to not vanish off the face of the earth.
The only thing stopping Madalore from taking its place as a hyperpower in the Star Wars Galaxy is the perpetual identity crisis that its civilization has been suffering ever since Mandalore the Ultimate drew his last breath.
That's a fair point. Though that might also be due to other powers, not leaving the Mandalorians alone and either using them as weapons, like the Sith, or smothering them like the Republic and Jedi.
@@matthewcoster5535 I mean, that could largely be laid at the feet of the Mandalorians themselves for always leaping into wars they had no real chance of winning.
If I remember correctly, there was a bit in one of the games about the Krogan society being more intellectually diverse prior to their destruction. It was a unique genetic anomaly that made Krogans more aggressive but better at healing that disproportionately survived their nuclear holocaust that made their current society what it was.
One thought I had while watching this is that maybe the Proud Warrior Race is doomed to fail as a nation, but they might actually excel as individual clans or groups. As seen with the Mandalorians, those that survive would be some of the most dangerous fighters you could face within a galaxy, especially if they are acting on their own and not part of a group.(Bounty hunters, mercenaries, etc.)
Instantly makes me think of the Clans from Battletech. Strict honor code when it comes to fighting and society, deliberately rebuilt their society to produce 'master warrior race' Mechwarriors almost exclusively, and their code of honor and rules of combat prevent them from using their full power effectively because 'everything has to be fair'. And then they ran afoul of Comstar and the Inner Sphere, who have been fighting ACTUAL wars for generations, rules be damned. And then Tukayyid. Where the Clans got their asses so comprehensively handed to them that it didn't just force them to obey a term that had been set on them to not advance further for 15 years (which is forever for a short-lived warrior), but also deprived them of entire generations of warriors which had died worthlessly in the conflict.
I think Kerensky's Clans are a fair deconstruction of the Warriors Race. They evolved in a vacuum with nothing but self-perpetuating dogma guiding them. The only true challenge to their society was quickly crushed because Nicolas Kerensky, the last true evil genius for centuries, was still around to personally wipe them out.
And for the Clans, once they encountered the Sphere, got (barely) beat out by ComStar, Zellbrigen instantly fell apart, and most, if not all clans abandoned Zellbrigen. Later you see Malvina Hazen taking a big fat one all over Zellbrigen. Zellbrigen, though, is totally that whole honor code, overblown by Clanners themselves. Nicky Kerensky, insane though he may have been, never intended for artillery, WarShips and such to become disliked, the Clanners did that themselves
However, the Clans don't follow the total proud warrior race thing, of only making war. Remember, there's a whole caste dedicated to science in all forms. Sure this is nominally weapons, but we do know the Clan Medicine is extremely good, enough to have people living well over a century.
However, importantly, the Clans did fail, though do anything but struggle, at least the Spheroid Clans that is. Homeworld Clans, we have absolutely no idea.
@@argokarrus2731 I wouldn't call it 'barely' beat out. Out of all various clans to try to get to and take their objectives, only Wolf was actually successful. Jade Falcon and Ghost Bear were stuck at a Draw each, and every other clan that participated flat out LOST. LoL.
In Clan culture, Warriors are the ones who rule. They look down on and scoff at everyone else, including the Scientist caste and the Engineer caste... two castes who, if they weren't there, the warriors would have not be ABLE to fight except in physical combat. If you weren't a Mechwarrior, you were barely tolerated, and viewed as inferior. The other castes were told they only existed to serve the Mechwarrior caste because Might Makes Right. And the harsh military philosophy that permeated Clan culture assured that no one (or very few) thought differently. Those that did... Well, it didn't turn out well for them.
I understand that after Tukayyid, in the decades afterward, stuff changed around in the Clans at that point, including the wiping of some. I qualify that as a step towards the extinction of that particular warrior ethos, because it failed them so spectactularly. Whatever came out of the Clans after Tukayyid, it was changed and different than the Warrior Culture Clans that went in. Maybe not by much, but they had to change, or fall apart completely. Which...they kinda did by becoming Wardens and Crusaders.
As a wiser man than I is fond of saying...
"Always pay your telephone bill, fucko." or something similar.
@@JordonVirtue Damn right. Lol.
You've got me thinking about the UK coronation. While medieval England was certainly not a warrior culture, rather a feudal one, the coronation has brought forwards a bunch of these old feudal traditions (eg, the Stone of Destiny). These are, as one tweet put it, 'deeply unserious', but were incorporated ceremoniously _on top of_ the real change that happened.
The fedual structure is a warrior one
@@bencox3641 feudalism is when a ruler give land grants to his men in exchange for military service
They were definitely feudal, and definitely warriors... they were literally a society created by Germanic Warriors. A feudal system of warlords. That did change to the more foppish, money-minded British we know, at some point. Merchants in the guise of nobles.
@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl though it's notable that whilst feudalism looks like it's entirely based on military notions, it was also largely used due to the lack of centralised administrative structures. To note: were feudal title holders soldiers granted land, or nobles required to perform military service? It is, in the end, a bit of both, and a long tradition into it- under the early feudal system of rule under charlemagne, the 'warrior aristocracy' were not nearly as integral to the army (which still recruited men from towns and villages in the normal manner) as the chivalric knights of the late medieval period.
It's also worth remembering that below that higher levels of dukes, barons and counts, some feudal lords would, in fact, just be towns- manorial estates, the sort of parcel of land run by a knight, were agricultural and populated by serfs, but the people of towns were generally not serfs, even if they looked like peasants. Medieval towns also contributed to the military by raising a militia, but they obviously weren't 'warriors' on account of being a collection of buildings which could probably only harm an enemy if they fell over on him.
@@reganator5000 that doesn't change the fact that it was a administration system entirely revolved around raising men
If warrior enough. What would you call a warrior society?
Note that the era where untrained conscripts can fight as well as a professional force with decades spent training is largely over at this point. The machinery of war is getting increasingly complex, requiring more training and practice to use, so modern armies are moving away from the conscripts with guns doctrine and replacing them with career soldiers.
@The Templin Institute
This was one of the most brilliant episodes ever. I have new respect for how meteorology and pasta makers can impact the war effort.
Only thing I'll add is how, in the latest season of The Mandalorian, Bo-Katan Kryze echoes this video's criticism of her culture's clan infighting being its biggest weakness. She even admits to contributing to this division.
I wonder if the showrunners of the series are using the Mandalorians to exposes the flaws of the Proud Warrior Race. Maybe Season 4 onward along with other Star Wars shows will explore the people charting a new and better path.
Well with the Krogan, at least if Wrex is in charge, he realizes that the Krogan will only survive if they give up being a war centric people as that has led them to know where but destruction.
I think that the most interesting feature of ME5 will be how the galaxy, post-Reapers, has developed politically and culturally with interstellar travel, commerce, warfare and almost all elements of communication crippled.
The Krogan also managed to advance to the nuclear age on their own prior to deciding they wanted to use those weapons so they definitely have had fully functional societies in the past.
The biggest issue facing the Krogan is how to leverage their crucial role in victory over the Reapers without instigating another disastrous conflict whether that conflict occurs within the Krogan state or the wider galaxy the results will prove catastrophic for the Krogan
@@LordOceanusyeah their original biome was a jungle world. Now it’s a tomb world. They were not dumb by any means. “Im not stupid I’m just an idiot”
Eve also points out the great temple ruins on Tuchanka, built during a time when the Krogan were not dedicated to war and had a great civilisation. In at least one of the endings (synthesis) they seem to be on track to rebuild it.
This sort of thing is why I'm not worried about violent aliens, there's a point in development where such mindsets and instincts aren't advantageous and by the time a species becomes capable of galactic space travel those negative traits would have eeeither been heavily reduced or they'd have killed themselves.
The obvious exception of this is the Locusts from the Independence Day franchise. They survived whilst being aggressive by developing total cultural unity and an ultra-xenophobic 'them or us' view of all other life-forms in the universe. This probably occurred at the far end of their technological growth epoch when the environmental damage caused by their economic development made interstellar travel and the rapid and unchecked acquisition of resources (irrespective of who had them initially) a survival necessity.
Bold of you to assume that they exist at the same scale we do. Like what if it’s a planet or Star sized alien whose honor-bound culture has them go fight planets of humanoids? You think we can stop a Jupiter sized alien from slashing us apart with a giant plasma sword half the length of the solar system?
@@grandadmiralzaarin4962 There's no proof, either way.
Average delusional pacifist before having chains clanked around his neck:
Ever heard of the dark forest theory?
I ask you from the bottom of my heart to make a video describing this "Martial State" that you mentioned. It looks really interesting and it reminded me of that faction of Stellaris that you guys had done in a past video series - The Greater Terran Union.
When you started talking about the idea of a martial state and that theme music kicked in, all I could think was "So... basically the GTU?" 😆
"And what happens if whoever the Proud Warriors Race is fighting doesn't share the same moral code?"
The Star League shows up and the Smoke Jaguars become the _smoked_ Jaguars!
and then the wolf that was more the martial state take earth and the feudal lords know their place. Seyla
@@anuvisraa5786Even though they have only gotten as far due to Plot Armor.
@@spartanalex9006 on the contrary it was anti-plot armor that divide the clan. plot armor is the inner spare getting warships out of the blue and having competent naval officers in less than 15 years. because the author needed a clan destroyed
One of the things I did to my personal setting the main militant faction (story under construction) was the central tenet based on the ancient Chinese maxim “ the greatest way to defeat your enemy is to make them your friend” hence the armored super soldiers must attempt diplomacy every time they are faced with combative elements. It also means they are never the aggressors which means any retaliation is in self defense.
This is a great analysis. I also like how your solution closely paralleled a real world transition from warrior society to marshal rule. Japan in the shogunate was a major warrior culture in most of the ways you described. But enough of the leadership realized that modern war was industrial, and transitioned into a Marshall state (with a warrior code which promoted discipline) which was powerful enough to subdue all their neighbors and fight head to head against other industrial powers.
Seems pretty accurate. Also, whenever I see this trope in fiction, the proud warrior race always fulfills one of two roles: the brute force antagonists who are defeated by the heroes through clever tactics, or the "best warriors in the world/galaxy" who get curb-stomped by the big bad to demonstrate the threat level/raise the stakes (a.k.a., the Worf effect).
The Orks of 40K under these definitions work as a Proud Warrior race and these weaknesses are both the point and the reason they ironically thrive. They grow in size, strength and intelligence when exposed to more violence, the death of a Ork means the birth of countless more since they grow via spores released from their body on death. Every Ork forms Clans based on core tenets they find the most important. These being stealth, acquiring resources, engineering, wealth, pure martial skill, marksmanship, survivalist skills and gaining the spoils of war. The ones that live the longest know what’s best and the ones that die help the Army by dying and giving the chance to make better Orks. War isn’t just tradition, war isn’t just fun for them War is Life itself. At the same time they were uplifted in a hurry and so were I’ll prepared for the dangers of the universe. So the unfortunate result is the Progenitors of their race died in massive swaths over thousands of years until all that was left were dumber versions that didn’t know any better and none of the more intelligent to teach them what’s what.
Honestly, the proud warrior race would do absolutely fine if the species in question was extremely large. In fact, the larger you are, say-planet sized, the better it is for you to actually have an easily identifiable archetype, because other races more easily can negotiate with you. Honestly, if the Ctan were honorable warriors rather than nihilist cannibals, they’d have done better in the wh40k galaxy.
When I comes to nuclear weapons and walking that tight rope, there is also just blind luck, and a few heroic individuals who were at the right station wo made the right call. The submarine captain who convinced his superior officer that they should not press the button. The time a pair of nuclear bombers entered a storm during an exercise, and needed to drop their loads in the vicinity of a city, and on recovery it was found that one of the bombs was inexplicably armed and inexplicably did not explode.
Very interesting in-depth analysis. I really enjoyed this episode and would love investigations of further archetypes! I first though of the klingons and how hard to believe I always found that they would be space-faring, because it is hard to imagine a klingon scientist, let alone a scientific community continually working together to unlock interstellar travels and everything before that over the course of hundreds of years...
I knew you guys were going to highlight the Turian Hierarchy when you mentioned about the martial state. Would be great if you can make a contrast video of the Turian Hierarchy and the Roman Empire.
a good warrior makes a poor soldier
I got so hyped when you said "martial state" and the Terra theme music started playing.
My favorite version of this trope comes from the pc game Kenshi, which has a genetically engineered race of humanoids called the Shek.
In the game's lore, the Shek were originally created to be security forces for an empire that eventually fell. Then the Shek, without their old masters, tried to form their own kingdom. Eventually this warrior race was saved by a handful of intelligent individuals that managed to form military strategies to save their remaining lands from conquest.
I recommend playing Kenshi to see a warrior race trope done right.