History Main / WonTheWarLostThePeace

* ''Series/HouseOfTheDragon'': in "The Black Queen", the learned princess Rhaenyra tries to [[DefiedTrope defy this trope]] when her advisers urge her to take a stronger stand against her rivals the Hightowers after they move to usurp her claim on the Iron Throne by crowning her younger half-brother Aegon in the wake of her father's death, knowing that the dragons on both sides will destroy the peace her father worked hard to maintain.

* ''Series/HouseOfTheDragon'': in "The Black Queen", the learned princess Rhaenyra tries to [[DefiedTrope defy this trope]] when her advisers urge her to take a stronger stand against her rivals the Hightowers after they move to usurp her claim on the Iron Throne in the wake of her father's death, knowing that the dragons on both sides will destroy the peace her father worked hard to maintain.

* ''Series/HouseOfTheDragon'': in "The Black Queen", the learned princess Rhaenyra tries to [[DefiedTrope defy this trope]] when her advisers urge her to take a stronger stand against her rivals the Hightowers, knowing that the dragons on both sides will destroy the peace her father worked hard to maintain.

** Robert Baratheon crushes the Targaryen dynasty during the rebellion and becomes king. However, he is such an irresponsible ruler that his government is in massive debt and only a few steps away from civil war, with some factions even plotting to bring back the few surviving Targaryens. Furthermore, he is deeply unhappy, as while he was an enthusiastic warrior and military commander he never truly wanted to be king and his rebellion was brought on by King Aerys Targaryen's mad actions as well as a desire to "rescue" the woman he saw as his one true love, Lyanna Stark, after she eloped with Aerys's son Rhaegar. Lyanna ended up dying [[spoiler:in childbed]], and Robert entered into an AwfulWeddedLife with Cersei Lannister, contributing to his apathetic attitude towards governance.

** Robert Baratheon crushes the Targaryen dynasty during the rebellion and becomes king. However, he is such an irresponsible ruler that his government is in massive debt and only a few steps away from civil war, with some factions even plotting to bring back the few surviving Targaryens. Furthermore, he is deeply unhappy, as he never truly wanted to be king and his rebellion was brought on by King Aerys Targaryen's mad actions as well as a desire to "rescue" the woman he saw as his one true love, Lyanna Stark, after she eloped with Aerys's son Rhaegar. Lyanna ended up dying [[spoiler:in childbed]], and Robert entered into an AwfulWeddedLife with Cersei Lannister, contributing to his apathetic attitude towards governance.

** Robert Baratheon crushes the Targaryen dynasty during the rebellion and becomes king. However, he is such an irresponsible ruler that his government is in massive debt and only a few steps away from civil war, with some factions even plotting to bring back the few surviving Targaryens. Furthermore, he is deeply unhappy, as he never truly wanted to be king and his rebellion was brought on by King Aerys Targaryen's mad actions as well as a desire to "rescue" the woman he saw as his one true love, Lyanna Stark, after she eloped with Aerys's son Rhaegar. Lyanna ended up dying [[spoiler:in childbed]], and Robert entered into an AwfulWeddedLife with Cersei Lannister.

** Robert Baratheon crushes the Targaryen dynasty during the rebellion and becomes king. However, he is such an irresponsible ruler that his government is in massive debt and only a few steps away from civil war.

* In ''Podcast/EighteenSixtyFive'' Edwin Stanton and his fellow Radical Republicans feel this way regarding Reconstruction. True, the North defeated the South militarily, and the nation is reunited. However, not nearly enough is being done to protect the rights of African-Americans, and it will only get worse if the South receives amnesty, and thus Southerns are able to oppose Reconstruction from within Congress.

* ''Theatre/{{Hamilton}}'': After America liberates themselves from the revolution, King George assumes that they'll have trouble establishing a functioning nation. Washington is conscious of this possibility as well, saying "Winning is easy, young man, governing's harder."

Do you know how hard it is to lead?''

If you wish to add examples from RealLife, try to keep it as straight and as civil as you can, as otherwise there'd be way too many of them.

* In ''LightNovel/SagaOfTanyaTheEvil'', after Tanya defeats the Republic and occupies Paris, the Empire agrees to an armistice with them and refuses to let Tanya destroy their fleet at Brest before they can escape. The Republic's remaining military forces flee to Algeria and vow to continue the war, just as Tanya had predicted they would.

* In the backstory to ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'', Revan and Malak's decision to join the Mandalorian Wars ahead of the rest of the Jedi, might have brought the conflict to a close sooner, but the [[SlowlySlippingIntoEvil moral compromises]] they made along the way ultimately led to these [[TheParagonAlwaysRebels war heroes]], and those who followed them, becoming [[FallenHero the next threat to the galaxy.]] ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords'' {{retcon}}s this to some degree: Revan becoming a threat after the Mandalorians [[NecessarilyEvil was the intent from the start]], the plan being that, no matter which side won the next war, the galaxy would be stronger for it and ready to engage another, much bigger threat - then [[SpannerInTheWorks Malak threw a wrench into that plan]] by becoming a more generic wannabe-overlord who [[StupidEvil thoughtlessly destroyed everything that minorly inconvenienced him]].

* This is what happened to [[spoiler:Tarquin]] in the backstory ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'' when his new nation was so threatening that dozens of other neighbours banded against him. His current scheme of being (together with his friends) TheManBehindTheMan for [[PlayingBothSides several kingdoms]] and [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder regularly killing and replacing the figurehead monarchs]], has allowed him to subvert this trope.

* In the backstory to ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'', Revan and Malak's decision to join the Mandalorian Wars ahead of the rest of the Jedi, might have brought the conflict to a close sooner, but the [[SlowlySlippingIntoEvil moral compromises]] they made along the way ultimately led to these [[TheParagonAlwaysRebels war heroes]], and those who followed them, becoming [[FallenHero the next threat to the galaxy.]]

* In the backstory to VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic, Revan and Malak's decision to join the Mandalorian Wars ahead of the rest of the Jedi, might have brought the conflict to a close sooner, but the [[SlowlySlippingIntoEvil moral compromises]] they made along the way ultimately led to these [[TheParagonAlwaysRebels war heroes]], and those who followed them, becoming [[FallenHero the next threat to the galaxy.]]
* In VideoGame/TheOuterWorlds, the need to avert this trope is invoked by Felix in the ending if you have helped the Iconoclasts win: he describes having expected celebrations and dancing in the streets when the [[PrivatelyOwnedSociety Board]] was overthrown, only to realize that they still have all the problems that the Board was failing to solve and the work of a revolution is to find actual solutions.

* In ''Manga/OnePiece'', the Marines and World Government experience this after winning the Summit War against the Whitebeard Pirates. Their victory did not bring peace as the death of Whitebeard created a power vacuum in the New World that other big-name pirates would fight over. Whitebeard's last words confirming that, "One Piece does exist", inspired a second Great Age of Piracy even wilder than the one started by Roger's last words, and the large casualties the Marines suffered during the conflict meant that they were severely understaffed to deal with the sheer amount of pirates. All of this combined caused the world to fall into chaos over the [[TimeSkip two year timeskip]], so much that the Marines were forced to institute a [[{{Conscription}} Worldwide Draft]] to conscript more people just to get the manpower necessary to police the world's oceans, and even that is implied to still not be enough.

If you wish to add examples from RealLife, try to keep it as straight as you can, as otherwise there'd be way too many of them. Also, [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement you know the trade.]]

** On the other side, Abaddon and the forces of Chaos lead the 13th Black Crusade to absolute victory with the destruction of Cadia, the only obstacle to a full scale Chaos invasion of the galaxy. In addition, a massive warp storm is created that effectively splits the Imperium in two, leaving countless worlds vulnerable to attack. However, this decisive victory only served to encourage overconfident Chaos warlords to turn on each other to seize spoils and powers or split off and pursue their own objectives, weakening Abaddon's forces. Meanwhile, the destruction of Cadia only served to harden the resolve of the surrounding planets and systems, and Chaos is unable to make any headway into the remaining planets neighboring Cadia. To make things worse for Chaos, Primarch Roboute Guilliman himself is revived, and he immediately takes control of the Imperium and institutes badly needed reforms that strengthens the Imperium to the point that they can retaliate with their countercrusade, the Indominitus Crusade.

* ''VideoGame/AceCombatAssaultHorizonLegacy'' is a remake of ''VideoGame/AceCombat2'' that ties the game's events more closely into [[ConstructedWorld Strangereal]]'s timeline. During the debriefing for the final mission, unit commander Ulrich Olsen explains that defeating the Usean Rebellion has led to a state of "armed peace" as the rebelling countries of USEA will seek to expand their military, and that another war looms on the horizon--a CallForward to ''VideoGame/AceCombat04ShatteredSkies''.

So, you won a war, you bask in the glory of victory, and all that stuff. But when you finally get over all this excitement, [[AndThenWhat you realize your problems still aren't solved]]; perhaps you bungled the endgame negotiations, your enemies are still strong, or your strategic genius [[CripplingOverspecialisation doesn't extend to politics]]. In any case, your enemy has already regrouped and is ready for another turn, like nothing happened. You won, but you totally botched the peace talks or didn't care to finish off what you've begun.

!!Examples:

[[folder:Literature]]
* ''Literature/ArciaChronicles'': In the second duology, based heavily on the UsefulNotes/WarsOfTheRoses, Alexander (UsefulNotes/RichardIII's {{expy}}) wins the war against Ifrana (France) for his royal older brother Philip (Edward IV), but Philip then signs a strategically poor peace treaty (Treaty of Picquigny) with King Joseph (Louis XI) that gives large momentary gains to Arcia and more than enough time to prepare for retaliation to Infrana. What's more, it does a [[NiceJobBreakingItHero great job estranging Alexander from Philip]].
* ''Literature/LordOfLight'' has an inversion. The protagonist loses the battle of Keenset, but as an eventual result of it, his "Accelerationist" viewpoint that technology should be shared wins the day over his opponents' "Deicrat" viewpoint that this is dangerous, as the battle weakens them enough that they can't maintain the same level of strict technological control as they were accustomed to.
* Creator/JohnChristopher's ''Literature/TheTripods'' trilogy ends with the group defeating the Tripods, and then having to try to tame humanity itself.
* Brandon Sanderson's ''Literature/{{Mistborn}}'' trilogy is based on this. In the first book, they defeat the EvilOverlord. In the second and third books, they deal with the consequences.
* In ''Literature/HonorHarrington'', the ceasefire between the Star Kingdom of Manticore, led by [[ObstructiveBureaucrat High Ridge government]] and The People's Republic of Haven, led by [[StateSec Oscar Saint-Just]], is an example for Manticorans. Despite being on the brink of total military victory, the new government following an assassination accepts Saint-Just's proposed ceasefire, then drags on the "negotiations" for several years, in the process screwing up their own military and giving the next Havenite government plenty of time to build up their military, catch up some technologically, and get good and pissed off that Manticore is stringing them along. When the war inevitably restarts, it starts with Haven at a ''huge'' advantage. [[spoiler:They ultimately make peace and ''sign a military alliance'' thanks to the discovery of a common enemy and the most audacious diplomatic gambit ever seen in the series -- and by "diplomatic gambit" we mean "the President of Haven shanghaied most of her Cabinet and paid an entirely unannounced call on the Queen of Manticore" -- but not before a cataclysmic attack on the Manticore System guts both navies and leaves hundreds of thousands dead.]]
* ''Literature/TheWitcher'': The Elves are against the Northern Kingdoms who oppressed them and broke their forces in a war centuries ago with [[TheEmpire Nilfgaard]], first [[http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/Scoia%27tael as guerillas]], then openly. When the Emperor finished his conquest, he gave them a little independent state as promised, but naturally this enclave was a weak partner of an overlord whom they couldn't oppose in any way, humans in all affected lands switched from occasional prejudice to deep hatred and... the peace was marked by delivering [[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters the most aggressive ones]] to the offended sides -- who [[ColdBloodedTorture didn't just immediately execute them]].
* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'':
** This ends up biting Robb Stark in the ass ''hard''. He wins every battle he leads against the Lannisters, but dealing with his own bannermen is a hell of a lot harder, [[spoiler: especially after he chooses to disregard his oath to one of them to marry his daughter, having fallen in love with another. This eventually results in him getting stabbed in the back]].
** This is essentially what happened to Robert Baratheon after the Robert's Rebellion was over and he was crowned king of Westeros. A decent general and a great leader, but a lousy administrator and politician, it was only the outbreak of another war (the Greyjoy rebellion) that allowed Robert to actually consolidate his grasp on the throne. Control of the Seven Kingdoms slipped out of his grasp due to courtly intrigues he did nothing to rein in, [[spoiler:and upon his death his heir was left with only the Lannisters as allies while all the other great houses rebelled or stayed neutral.]] To his credit, Robert recognized this about himself.
--->''" I swear to you, I was never so alive as when I was winning this throne, or so dead as now that I've won it."''
** Daenerys Targaryen also deals with this after leading her own anti-slavery crusade through the cities of [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Slavers' Bay]]. Once she settles in Meereen, she hears stories of atrocities carried out in Astapor, the first city she liberated, and realizes that Meereen is in its own state of fresh chaos. She decides to put the whole "retake the Seven Kingdoms" thing aside until she can maintain some order in her new kingdoms, first. She explicitly considers this a training run so she can get a handle on what she's going to do later; and, both as expected and as a result... things go badly. Turns out that treating real people, places, and problems as simple practice for "the real thing" adds up to a lot of half-baked "solutions" primed to blow up in your face in record time.
** Even the Lannisters suffer badly from this. [[spoiler: They may have nominally 'won' the War of the Five Kings, but by the time the war reached its conclusion, Joffrey, Tywin, and Kevan are dead, Jaime is maimed, Myrcella is disfigured, Tyrion has been driven into exile, and [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen the recently humiliated Cersei]] was left alone to govern for her weak-willed young son Tommen. By the end of ''Dance of Dragons'', the Lannisters are under attack from an enormous Greyjoy fleet, the remnants of Stannis Baratheon's army, and Aegon Targaryen returned from exile. There is a strong possibility of Dorne, Daenerys, and the Others joining this list. All this while winter has come and their alliance with Highgarden grows more and more fractured. Their main allies in the Riverlands, the Freys that they put in position as Lord Paramount after outwitting House Tully, are also hated by their new vassals and are killed at every opportunity due to their role in the Red Wedding, with no one respecting them or submitting to their authority.]]
* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'':
** The downfall of Númenor as described in the appendix. The Númenóreans assemble a mighty army and invade to attack Sauron. Sauron surrenders and is carted off in chains to Númenor, where he becomes Ar-Pharazôn's evil counselor, egging him on to attack Valinor. This does not go as planned[[note]] For everyone. Sauron was expecting the Valar to beat Ar-Pharazôn; he ''wasn't'' expecting them to sink Númenor, especially not while he was still there[[/note]]...
** The Third Age prior to the main events of the books is a three-thousand-year version of this. The Last Alliance defeat Sauron at the end of the Second Age, but Isildur fails to destroy the Ring, which leads to the estrangement of Elves and Men and his untimely death, which itself causes the split of Arnor and Gondor. Arnor ends up fragmenting into smaller states and slowly being gobbled up by Angmar, with the Elves only helping when it is destroyed, while Gondor spends centuries fighting the Easterlings, Haradrim, and itself, leaving it a shadow of its former self by the time Sauron rolls round again.
* [[Creator/NiccoloMachiavelli Machiavelli]] points out in ''Literature/ThePrince'' that a Prince who won a war and wants to avoid being perceived as cruel will leave the opposition alive. This inevitably concludes in a later war, disorders, and a lot of people dead. So, the paradox is that a Prince who truly wants to win the peace must [[ThePurge crush the opposition]] (but not [[CrushingThePopulace the general populace]]) [[NoKillLikeOverkill fast even when the war has already been won]], so all their subjects cannot see any hope in opposing their new ruler, [[HumansAreBastards and don’t waste time and effort trying it and truly accepting the new peace]].
* Referenced in ''Literature/GuardsGuards'' as a common problem of revolutionaries. One minute everyone is cheering the overthrow of the tyrant, and the next everyone is complaining because nobody's picking up the trash.
** This is the main reason why no one's actually managed to overthrow Vetinari. They may not like him, but [[VetinariJobSecurity he runs Anhk-Morpork like clockwork.]]
* Happens in ''Literature/{{Heimskringla}}'''s "Saga of King Harald Hardrada", where Harald fails to conquer the Kingdom of Denmark, even though he is almost always victorious in battle against his rival Svein Estridson. The trope is lampshaded and discussed later by Earl Tostig of England in conversation with Harald when he points out that Harald's failure was solely because of his lack of favor with the Danes, who clung to the popular Svein in spite of defeat.
* In the ''Literature/WorldWar'' books by Creator/HarryTurtledove, a group of aliens invade Earth in the middle of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. The aliens prove to be so politically naive and diplomatically inept that at one point UsefulNotes/JosefStalin tells his NumberTwo Vyacheslav Molotov that as long as the Lizards cannot achieve [[TakeOverTheWorld complete victory in war]], they will certainly lose during peacetime.
** He's proved right: by the time of the final book in the series (set forty years after the initial four books dealing with the invasion) Earth culture is invading the Lizards' one, their military position on Earth is weaker than ever, and the US, having [[spoiler: developed FTL travel]], have technologically outpaced them.
* The novel ''Literature/{{Xala}}'' by Senegalese author Ousmane Sembène is set just after Senegal gains independence from France, and satirises the failure of post-colonial African governments to improve the lives of their people.
* Brought up early in ''LightNovel/{{Maoyu}}'' as one of [[GenreDeconstruction the Demon King's arguments for peace with humans]]. Even if one side ''were'' [[GuiltFreeExterminationWar irredeemably evil and killing them was fully justified]], in the aftermath their lands and resources would swell the influence of the most greedy and corrupt, while regions dependent on wartime trade would have their economies collapse and rebel, leading the winning side to tear themselves apart.
* The Treaty of the Iersen Bridge in ''Literature/ASongForArbonne'' ceded all the northern lands of Gorhaut to Valensa in exchange for money, dispossessing a significant part of Gorhaut's population and squandering the victory in the actual Battle of the Iersen Bridge. The shameful deal motivates many Gorhautians: some want to restore Gorhaut's honour, others just treat it as opportunity to invade the titular Arbonne.
* Although the first war with Voldemort in the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' novels resulted in Voldemort's defeat and presumed death, many of his top followers were able to bribe their way out of prison and were quickly reestablished as pillars of the community. By the time Voldemort returned they were effectively running the government, making the Death Eater takeover pathetically easy once Voldemort finally decided to move.
* This is the focus of the second half of ''Literature/TheMoonIsAHarshMistress''. The rebellion overthrows the tyrannical Lunar Authority months earlier than they had planned to, and thus find themselves in charge with nothing in place to govern themselves. This forces them to improvise by, among other things, pretending to Earth that the Authority is still in charge so they don't send attack ships to end the new government before it can begin.
* In the ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' SpinOff novel ''The Ellimist Chronicles'', the Ellimist seeks to end a war between two planets by creating an impenetrable AsteroidThicket between them, forcing the two sides to call off the war because their ships are no longer physically capable of prosecuting it. He returns after a TimeSkip to discover that rather than end the war, the AsteroidThicket gave one side the idea to plant SpaceMines in the other planet's path, nuking the enemy into extinction. Suddenly without an enemy, they fell into civil war and ended up bombing themselves into a preindustrial state.
* The aptly-named AlternateHistory timeline ''Literature/LosingThePeace'' demonstrates this perfectly. [[spoiler:While the United States successfully pacifies West Germany, the repercussions of the actions taken there cause a resurgence of the German-American identity, which turns violent during the 2nd Great Depression.]]
* ''LightNovel/TheCombatBakerAndAutomatonWaitress'': After [[FantasyConflictCounterpart the setting equivalent of World War I]] is won by Wiltia (Germany), they soon find themselves struggling to hold the country together, to the point where some officers claim that things were easier back in the war. This includes the recently-annexed Pelfe region coming to the brink of rebellion, the ruthless General Genitz taking control of the nation's PraetorianGuard and amassing resources to attempt a MilitaryCoup, foreign assassins lurking around visiting dignitaries, and a series of treaties that place heavy restrictions on Wiltia's use of LostTechnology weapons (but not any LostTechnology that [[ArchaeologicalArmsRace other nations may have dug up in secret]]).
* The French children's book ''Fattypuffs and Thinifers'' plays this extremely straight. [[spoiler: The efficient Thinifers crush the indolent Fattypuffs militarily, but the amiable Fattypuffs are much better at dealing with people than the impatient Thinifers and eventually take over all the key jobs in the combined country.]]
* The second arc of ''Literature/TheLostFleet'' series deals with the spectre of this trope hanging over the protagonist's home nation, and his increasingly desperate attempts to avert it because after [[ForeverWar literal decades of brutal war of attrition]], the side that [[PyrrhicVictory technically]] won is almost as battered and war-weary as their erstwhile enemies.
* Spin-off series ''Literature/TheLostStars'' has many of the same themes, being set in one of the solar systems that played a brief but important role in the last volume of the main series. The main characters lead a successful coup and throw off the shackles of [[OneNationUnderCopyright the Syndicate Worlds]]... in the first chapter of the first book in the series, ''Tarnished Knight''. The ''rest'' of the four-book series is devoted to them figuring out how to build a functional government from scratch while fending off multiple unfriendly policies on their borders, while [[HeroWithAnFInGood Planetary CEO-turned-President Gwen Iceni]] desperately tries not to fall back into bad habits and have the whole endeavour turn into a FullCircleRevolution.
* ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'': ''Changes'' ends with Harry [[spoiler:killing every member of the Red Court via a curse.]] He's not around to witness what happens next -- which is that in the wake of the ''massive'' power vacuum he caused, a new faction steps out of hiding and starts moving to take over, causing a ''lot'' of trouble in the process. And once he gets back, he finds that he may have ended one war, but there's no peace now -- just a whole new war to fight.
* A side plot in ''Literature/TrashOfTheCountsFamily'' is dealing with the fallout of the civil war in the nearby Whipper Kingdom; its new leader [[DumbMuscle is incapable of politics]] and [[BloodKnight only thinks about fighting]], it lacks resources for the people in the recent end to the extremely draining conflict, and it has no allies to support it in the much bigger war that's to come.
* In ''Literature/TheArtsOfDarkAndLight'', the elves won the war against the [[SorcerousOverlord Witchkings]], but failed to capitalize on the victory politically. This, combined with their [[PyrrhicVictory general exhaustion]] from the war and the heavy losses they suffered, led to the increasing decline of their surviving kingdoms.
* Osbert Grent of ''Literature/GrentsFall'' may be great at combat and leading an army, but quite poor at ruling the kingdom.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Many historians speculate that UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat would have fallen victim to this trope if he ever stopped his eternal campaigning and actually tried to ''govern'' the lands he conquered. The fact that his empire fell apart almost immediately after his death seems to support this speculation. Although some historians have leveled the failure of Alexander's empire on the inadequate charisma and leadership of his subordinates, only Alexander's cult of personality could keep his empire together. Even if he managed to govern well for the remainder of his life, it would all be for naught if he could not transfer his authority to a successor. Since Alexander the Great died at 32, way before his time, there is no way of knowing if Alexander himself could have prevented the fall of his empire.
* In 535 CE, Byzantine Emperor Justinian I sought to retake Italy from the Ostrogoths, triggering a 20-year-long war that actually did more harm than good to the former Western Empire (who did enjoy some stability with Ostrogothic King Theodoric). The Byzantines won in the end, but the war left their empire broke, left Italy [[DepopulationBomb utterly ravaged and depopulated]], and also ThePlague made things even worse. The Byzantines found out Italy cost too much to keep, and when the Lombards marched into Italy to conquer it ten years after the war was won, they barely met resistance.
* The UsefulNotes/WarsOfTheRoses kept restarting all the time because no one faction was able to build a lasting peace.
** By 1461, the Lancastrians were a spent force. Their king was captured, their queen was in hiding, and their generals were dead or captured. London was firmly in Yorkist hands and [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfPlantagenet Edward of York]] had been crowned Edward IV. Unfortunately for him, he inherited a country run by a DysfunctionJunction of noblemen who represented the worst of feudalism. His main benefactor, the Earl of Warwick, was alienated by the King's refusal to marry one of his daughters, rather than the Lancastrian widow who became his queen, and raised a rebellion with the help of his transparently treacherous younger brother George, which briefly put Henry VI back on the throne. Edward got the throne back, in battle, but he could never quite achieve enough political control to ensure a smooth succession.
** The principal reason was the constant redistribution of land between various lords, barons, and magnates after the defeat of their faction in one rebellion or another. UsefulNotes/RichardIII on his accession had hoped to avoid this but even he had to transfer Northern magnates in Southern lands after ousting the Woodville faction. The end result ironically was that the constant land exchanges over time made the Royal Crown the biggest landowner (since they claimed land for which no dispute could be resolved and with the constant deaths and in-fighting this was easy enough). [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfTudor Henry Tudor]], reclaimed the throne and established the House of Tudor and he put a stop to all the land-exchanges and used his old base to build a solid centralized monarchy.
* The peace treaty ending the UsefulNotes/PolishSovietWar. The Polish government was dominated by the Nationalists, who wanted only as much territory as it could be [[YouWillBeAssimilated assimilated]] into Poland, as opposed to commander-in-chief Piłsudski, who wanted as much ground as he could to make it allied buffer states. So, the Poles took less than the Reds were willing to offer.
** The main problem was that both Germany and the Soviet Union felt that Poland had taken too much and wanted "their" territories back, so there was a strong possibility of another Russo-Polish war in any case, no matter how many territorial gains the Poles were able to enforce with French support.
* Post-UsefulNotes/WW2 Britain lost its Empire and was forced to surrender its status as a world Superpower to America. The economic problems caused by the War are more in the realm of PyrrhicVictory, though.
** For the Western Allies as a whole, there was some bitterness over the European situation after the war. The UsefulNotes/ColdWar was obviously oncoming, and absolutely nothing could be done to prevent Stalin from assembling the Eastern Bloc given the world has just exhausted itself defeating the Axis.
** In the case of Germany and Japan, who lost WWII utterly and completely but became stable, functional democracies with incredibly powerful economies, you could argue that they [[InvertedTrope Lost the War, Won the Peace]]. German and Japanese leaders were flabbergasted when the Americans offered to open up their massive domestic market and to keep the sea-lanes safe for world trade effectively for free, [[CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot which nullified the entire reason they started the war to begin with]] (to establish their own autarky in Europe and Asia). Some of their former opponents thought that the opposite, i.e. this trope played straight, applied to themselves.
** The USSR won the war -- and certainly gained influence and superpower status -- but lost the peace in the long run. The country had suffered such horrendous losses economically, materially and in manpower that it took her decades to recover, and that's not even getting into the burden of reconstruction in various Warsaw Pact countries (and then supplying them with subsidized energy to keep them on the USSR's side). The start of the nuclear arms race also made them invest in military expenditure, which despite being cut back by Khruschev in TheFifties, eventually ballooned out of control under Brezhnev and his successors, becoming one of the factors behind the eventual downfall and dissolution of the USSR.
* The Suez Crisis was a military victory but political failure for Britain and France. When Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, Britain and France sought to retake the canal by having Israel capture it and then the two European nations intervened under the guise of peacekeeping. While the British, French and Israeli military forces soundly defeated Egyptian military forces, the ruse was revealed to the public and they subsequently lost the political goodwill of the international community. US President UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower angrily condemned the invasion as he feared it would drag [=NATO=] into a costly war, and USSR Premier UsefulNotes/NikitaKhrushchev even threatened to deploy nukes in the Middle East. Rather than reassert British and French dominance, the Suez Crisis only weakened their international standing and hastened the end of European colonialism while Nasser became a hero amongst Third World nations.
* The Persian UsefulNotes/GulfWar was pretty much this. It did nothing meaningful and only worsened the already growing anti-American sentiment of the Middle East, leading to UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror. On a smaller scale, America went into an economic recession in the aftermath of the war, causing approval ratings for President UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush to plummet, leading him in turn to lose his re-election bid in 1992 to UsefulNotes/BillClinton.
** That said, the outcome of the Gulf War could've been worse. During the war, some politicians wanted to go further by invading Iraq and disposing of Saddam Hussein. President George H. W. Bush rejected this option, arguing that it would lead to political destabilization and create a [[EvilPowerVacuum power vacuum for terrorists]]. In hindsight given the War on Terror, an invasion of Iraq during the Gulf War would've resulted in a bigger military win but a worse political defeat.
* This is a popular stereotype of how Bulgaria's wars end.
** The rule of Simeon the Great of the First Bulgarian Empire (the one who actually made it into an empire) is hailed in historiography as Bulgaria's golden age. Simeon waged many wars of expansion and beat enemies such as Croatia and the Byzantine Empire into submission, turning Bulgaria into the sole major power in the region. This, however, only lasted until his death. Between a populace exhausted by wars, huge expenditures on culture and prestige, a greedy clergy causing heresy and dissent among the peasants, vengeful neighbors, and HordesFromTheEast taking lands too far away to guard, his son Peter I, even if he had 40 years of nominal peace (absence of open war but not rebellions and incursions), ushered in the empire's downfall.
** From modern history: the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 (when Russia assembled a vast alliance of Balkan states to fight against Turkish control of the Balkans and independence for Bulgaria and managed to do the nearly unthinkable by pushing into the very suburbs of Constantinople... [[YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle right before the Congress of Berlin forced the allies to yield most of their gains back to Turkey]]) and the First Balkan war, in which Bulgaria shouldered some of the heaviest burdens, but its allies got most of the territory, causing them to fall out over the spoils. Then things went FromBadToWorse.
** Between the two wars, Bulgarians staged the bloodless reunion of the country with its southern half, which had been left as an autonomous region within the Ottoman empire. This went without the approval of the Great Powers and Russia prompted Serbia to attack Bulgaria as punishment. Bulgaria won the war but lost Russia's geopolitical support, which resulted in three of its surrounding countries (Greece, Serbia, and Romania) forming a long-term alliance against it with Russian blessing.
** The other half of the stereotype, of course, is the inversion. Bulgaria was the only Axis power to come out with territorial gains[[note]]regaining land previously annexed in a surprise invasion[[/note]] from the Second World War, regaining the ethnically Bulgarian [=Quadrilater/South Dobruja=][[note]]It was ceded peacefully while both countries were Axis members, then the change was approved after they both had switched sides to USSR[[/note]] and winning the peace despite losing the war. Bulgaria still [[AwakeningTheSleepingGiant declared token war on the US and UK]] and [[BrokeYourArmPunchingOutCthulhu got bombed for it]], and also got invaded by the USSR and [[DayOfTheJackboot underwent a coup assisted by the Soviet army]], turning into a [[CommieLand dictatorship]]. It also didn't keep Macedonia, which was why it joined the Nazis in the first place.
* This was the common opinion of the Congress of Vienna, which ended UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars and established a new status quo for Europe. Justified or not, virtually every party felt betrayed by some portion of the outcome. [[note]]Russia's ambitions for a united Poland and dual monarchy were quashed, as were Prussian goals to absorb all of Saxony. The Bourbon French and Hapsburg Austria were annoyed that Murat was to be tolerated in "their" Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (until his sudden betrayal in the Hundred Days gave them an excuse to depose and shoot him anyway). Denmark's loss of Norway to Sweden was confirmed to compensate the Swedes for their own loss of Finland to Russia. Austria ceded the Austrian Netherlands to the new United Kingdom of the Netherlands, which was content with that until they eventually rebelled to form Belgium. France was on the verge of coming out ahead in spite of losing the war after Talleyrand successfully divided the Allies against each other and set himself up as a kingmaker player between the two alliances, but the SpannerInTheWorks -- Napoleon's Hundred Days -- overturned Talleyrand's designs and cost France all their gains from 1790-1792, 700 million francs in indemnities, although to the dismay of German nationalists it was allowed to keep Alsace and Lorraine. German patriots also were disappointed that Germany became nothing more than a fairly loose confederation of 38 mostly small states. The only major powers to come out in front across the board was Britain, who still had to admit defeat in convincing the other powers to accept anything stronger than a StronglyWordedLetter-style condemnation of the slave trade; the new Kingdoms of Bavaria and Wurtemburg, who had their borders confirmed; and the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, which regained their old borders with the addition of the Republic of Genoa, but still had to tolerate Hapsburg statelets throughout Italy in addition to Austrian Lombardy and Venetia.[[/note]] On the other hand, the system established in Vienna proved able to preserve peace in Europe for a long time, at least until the UsefulNotes/RevolutionsOf1848. In particular it is notable that the Vienna system managed to avoid a major European war over the revolutions of 1830 and 1831 and after the Oriental Crisis of 1840 when the government of France was itching to compensate for its loss of face in Egypt by starting a war to "regain the natural frontier" on the Rhine.
** Before 1814, Revolutionary and Napoleonic France proved itself incapable of concluding a lasting peace, which led Prince Metternich to tell UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte during his negotiations in Dresden in the Summer of 1813 that all his peace treaties had just been armistices.
* UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar is a complicated matter to be certain. While it should be noted that the American Military won the majority ([[http://www.g2mil.com/lost_vietnam.htm though not all]]) of individual ''battles'' they were involved in, they never achieved a decisive victory. The Americans underestimated how durable the spirit of their Vietnamese enemy was: they wanted to win far more than the Americans wanted them to lose, meaning that a prolonged war and large casualties were not enough to stop them. The Americans eventually headed back home, [[PyrrhicVictory the cost of victory being too high]] and substantial political pressure building against the war. However, even with the opposing force out of their hair, governing the new Communist Vietnam was not easy for the victors. There were rebels to quell, and even a war or two with its neighbors to the West before things became truly stable. After all that fighting with the Americans, peace did not come easy for the Vietnamese.
** Americans themselves were left pretty bad off. The war brought distrust of the government, a generation of young men dead, wounded, or [[ShellShockedVeteran mentally scared for life]]. Even their main objective, stopping the spread of communism south, was only delayed for a few years, and eventually [[DisasterDominoes the theory]] behind that intervention was discredited when Communist Vietnam's invasion of Communist Cambodia uncovered and ended the Khmer Rouge's genocide.[[note]]The underlying assumption behind American foreign policy at the time was that Communists worldwide were a united front against the US and its allies.[[/note]] At the same time, Vietnam successfully fought off Cambodia's main backer, Communist China (allied with America and Cambodia at one point) in a bloody border war.
* The jury is still out on UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror, but the outlook isn't rosy. The primary goal of UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror has thus far been achieved: the security of the United States, though at the cost of dancing distressingly close to the limits of constitutionality (whether the line was actually crossed is a matter of interpretation; what is undisputed is that it has been extremely unpleasant for all involved), and the thousands of lives lost and tens of thousands wounded, plus billions and billions of dollars. And with Iraq's government showing its weakness in the face of ISIS in 2014, followed by the almost immediate collapse of the U.S.-supported Afghan government the moment the U.S. military withdrew in 2021, the long-term prospects for the secondary goal to create stable democracies in the Middle East and Central Asia seem bleak.
** In general, there is often a feeling that the military "successes" of the US have only placed it in a worse position, as military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan has merely [[CreateYourOwnVillain created a new generation of terrorists]] that loathe the US because they killed innocent people and families that had no part in Al-Qaeda. Not to mention, the fear of terrorism that gripped the country following 9/11 has led to an increasingly pervasive surveillance state; and given the militarization of US police departments (as illustrated [[https://dekerivers.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/152393_600.jpg?w=600&h=404 here]]), some would say they're on their way to a {{police state}}.
** The Taliban's jubilation in retaking Afghanistan was quickly undermined by the fact that they now have to govern a failed state. Any attempts to rebuild the country have been mired by economic depression, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and a mass exodus of Afghans fearing reprisals from the Taliban. At the same time, an offshoot of ISIS began carrying out their own insurgency against the Taliban and its supporters. Even neighboring countries like Iran and Pakistan that would've welcomed Taliban victory now have to contend with Afghanistan becoming a haven for drug lords and terrorists.
* Any war in Afghanistan becomes an empty victory. While it's possible to conquer Afghanistan, holding onto it and forming a centralized government is next to impossible given the mountainous terrain and tribalism of ethnic groups. No foreign invaders since UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat has actually managed to take ''and'' hold Afghanistan, and seeing as Alexander died rather young it's unknown whether even he could've maintained control.
* This seems to be the case for a lot of modern-day coups and revolutions. Hoping (perhaps) to emulate other successful revolutions, the two major ones that stand out are the American and French as a source of inspiration, many of these countries fall into relative disarray shortly afterwards. But perhaps a cause why many of these revolutions fail is because they weren't led by people who actually know how to run a country (or any large body of people). As one historian put it "They win, have a big party, wake up with a hangover, and ask 'Now what?'" The Libyan civil war may be given as an example. Although the anti-Gaddafi forces had won, and UsefulNotes/MuammarGaddafi was dead, the country is left in disarray with the new government now trying to restore proper order while fighting rival militias.
** Philippines' peaceful EDSA Revolution did overthrow then President UsefulNotes/FerdinandMarcos for abusing his power during the Martial Law era. But over 36 years, the country has suffered from continued corruption and decadency, half the wealth Marcos embezzled from the government has not been recovered, and Marcos' family have been elected to several government positions. The final straw has been Ferdinand Marcos Junior ''winning'' the 2022 presidential election[[note]]He ran for vice-president in 2016, but ''barely'' lost.[[/note]]. Several political analysts [[http://opinion.inquirer.net/93539/the-millennials noted]] that incompetence and the lack of political will in the previous administrations resulted the current state of the country, and people who were born after the EDSA Revolution became cynical and disillusioned about the consequences of the revolution, and are prone to propaganda.
* The Paris Peace Conference that ended UsefulNotes/WorldWarI is commonly regarded as this, though ''why'' it was lost and ''who'' is to blame is a subject of debate.
** In the end, what the Allies produced was, to paraphrase the words of Ferdinand Foch, "Not a peace treaty, but an armistice for 20 years." When it was all said and done, everyone on both sides had reasons to be resentful of the treaty; some were ignored entirely (Russia, China), some gained something from the war but not all they wanted (Italy, Japan, France) and some believed they lost everything (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Turkey), and thus, instead of making peace, the treaty merely sowed the seeds for more conflict. Not to mention that the various governments' reasons for going to war and stifling internal dissent, cracked with the rise of UsefulNotes/RedOctober and greater demand for democracy at home and in the colonies.
** Italy's case is particularly notable because the lack of some gains (namely Istria, Dalmatia, and some of Germany's African colonies) was caused by both the incompetence of the Italian delegation ''and'' Woodrow Wilson's stubborn refusal to award them the former two regions. The diplomats walked out in protest when the American president tried to stop the acquisition of these Austro-Hungarian territories and did not rejoin until he had failed, by which point the German colonies had already been assigned. That (along with the appalling economic situation) nearly caused a three-way civil war between the Italian government, war veterans on the anarchist side, and war veterans on the far-right side (with at least one incident where far-right activists and Royal troops nearly fired on each other), and paved the way for the rise of Fascism.
** The underlying problem here was that many of the victors immediately and frequently got into conflicts over territories and spheres of influence with each other, e. g. Italy and Yugoslavia, Poland and Czechoslovakia, France and Britain (over parts of the former Ottoman Empire and also over the policy towards the new Turkish state). Another problem was that the League of Nations, and its European system of defense treaties, was irreparably weakened by President Wilson losing his domestic support, which led to the United States refusing to ratify the peace treaties or to join the League.
** The case of Germany was long argued by John M. Keynes who felt the treaty was overly punitive to Germany and unfairly targeted their economy and held them guilty for the war. This argument was rebutted by Etienne Mantoux, a liberal French economist who died in LaResistance. Mantoux pointed out that the reason the peace failed was because other governments were ''too lenient'' on Germany, which had an economy that could have easily paid the reparations to no point. Mantoux also noted that Keynes' beliefs of the war hurting Germany's resources and economy is not borne out by statistical examinations of their output in TheRoaringTwenties. Furthermore, as later German historians such as Hans Mommsen have admitted, the Treaty of Versailles became a rallying cry among Nazis and other nationalists and internalized by leftists and liberals, because it never categorically and fully extracted responsibility for the war from Germany. Other historians have pointed out that from a strategic point of view, the treaty actually made Germany even ''stronger'' than before the war. While its army was almost entirely disbanded and they lost some territory, they kept pretty much all of their industrially-viable territories and workforce population, so they could easily rebuild it. Geopolitically, their entire eastern frontier was no longer covered by two huge empires that could keep it in check, replaced by several, smaller, weaker states with their own internal and external feuds.
* The 18th-century wars would end up exhausting the European powers and bringing an end to their colonial ambitions in North America.
** The British victory in the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar. Although the British successfully forced the French to secede the Great Lakes and northern territories, it also became saddled with debt that lead to the British government imposing taxes on its subjects. Some of these colonists in America would then revolt to protest the taxation, leading to another war for Britain to fight.
** The UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution would become this for the French. During the American Revolutionary War, France decided to back the colonists in seceding from the British as revenge for their humiliating defeat in the Seven Years War. However, while the American revolution succeeded, France was left in crippling debt that led to the country undergoing its own revolution a few years later.
* Italy's conquest of Libya in 1912. The actual invasion and defeat of the Ottoman forces was relatively easy, given the difference in firepower between the Italian invaders and the Ottoman Army, supported by the local tribes. Then corruption and incompetence among the bureaucracy prevented the defeat of a revolt in southern Fezzan when it was still small, the attempt at defeating it in open field ended in [[CurbStompBattle defeat]] due to a combination of incompetence on the part of the Royal Army's upper echelons (who failed to provide the Italian or colonial Eritrean troops needed to do the job) and arrogance of the field commander (who could have still won the day or limit the damage had he not brought too many supplies with him) -- therefore, by the time Italy entered UsefulNotes/WorldWarI the Italians had been forced to the coast. They eventually managed to "pacify" the colony, but only in the early '30s and after a long, bloody, and expensive war of reconquest.
* UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar only looks like a victory for the North if you end it when Lee surrendered to Grant at the Appomattox Court House. However, the actual war was followed by the twelve-year-long Reconstruction Era, which despite being won by the North was eventually reversed by the South via Jim Crow.
** For those twelve years, the South was more-or-less under martial law with Northern troops forcing the Southern states to observe reforms being made by the federal government, such as black men being granted the right to vote. There was massive resistance from the South, including the emergence of the UsefulNotes/KuKluxKlan. The Klan and associated goon squads in effect to harass and disenfranchise black voters were shut down after UsefulNotes/UlyssesSGrant sent reinforcements. However, the North and the Union lost interest in Reconstruction by the end of Grant's tenure, with fence-sitters and other liberals no longer feeling content to stand up for African-American suffrage.
** At the end of the day, the South got pretty much everything it wanted, with slavery traded for segregation and black suffrage taken away through a set of sneaky laws known as Black Codes, or Jim Crow laws. These included but were not limited to poll taxes, literacy tests, and having to guess how many items were in a full jar -- [[GrandfatherClause but you were exempt from these tests if your grandfather had been eligible to vote]], which meant all white males were in and black males were out. This situation lasted for almost one hundred years until the UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement picked up in the 1950s. Slavery was replaced with "prison labor," with all kinds of new laws targeted at blacks (requirements for jobs they didn't have, to be literate even though just a few years before they would face all kinds of punishments if they tried, or just flat out pay off debts that didn't exist). The white judges and all-white juries would convict any black man that came into the court. The worst part about this was that while slaves were an investment, prisoners are expendable.
** Neither was it a true victory for Southern Whites. Some members of the planter elite who formed the aristocracy were dispossessed of their lands, and since the US government abolished slavery without compensation (the Confederates who fired on Fort Sumter spat on Lincoln's mercy when he offered this, which put this forever off the table), they were never quite able to properly replace their losses and industrialize. The sheer scale of destruction and the economic tumult basically destroyed the independent yeoman class, which was seen for a hundred years prior as a bastion of American Republicanism, as previously self-sufficient farmers were forced into a sharecropper system that essentially amounted to economic serfdom. If anything, the Scorched Earth policies of Sherman may be a case of GoneHorriblyRight, with the economic damage being so horrific that only in the closing years of the 20th century would citizens of modern Southern states achieve economic parity with their pre-Civil War ancestors.
** The post-1877 compromises between the Federal government and the South [[PragmaticVillainy actually paid off in the long run]]. What the USA needed to raise themselves to superpower status was ''naval power'' -- the only form of power which decided superiority between nations at the height of the Victorian Age.
* [[http://www.historynet.com/sparta-the-fall-of-the-empire.htm This]] article goes into extensive detail about how this happened to ancient Sparta; while their rigid social castes and harsh internal pressures produced the peerless military elite of their era, it also meant that they were utterly unable to adapt and maintain a stable empire -- after their overwhelming victory over Athens in 404 BC, they wasted their strength on internal political struggles, offended literally everyone in the region with their arrogance, and ultimately set themselves up for total defeat from which they never recovered mere decades later.
** It is also worth noting that Sparta's inward-looking culture caused it to miss several opportunities that rivals seized. Sparta's hyper-religious and xenophobic attitudes worked great for maintaining their social order and scaring off potential invaders, but more than once neighboring states went to Sparta for help, only to get a lame excuse about needing to stay home for a religious festival, or else just being ignored. Athens, on the other hand, had a somewhat flexible social order and was filled with ambitious politicians who jumped at a chance to look like a hero. Rome's same lack of flexibility ultimately undermined even their military power; the rest of the Greek cities slowly developed more advanced phalanx tactics to the point that Spartan techniques were outdated and overshadowed, and they had no chance at all against Roman legions. After the Roman conquest, their culture continued... as a quaint tourist attraction.
* How the First Fitna ended: the reigning Caliph Ali won all military engagements, but on the verge of destroying the army of his last enemy Muawiya he saw the latter send out ambassadors asking for an arbitration based on the Quran, and the majority of his soldiers, tired of fighting fellow Muslims, forced him to accept and name a popular but politically naive man as his representative in the arbitration over his own better judgement and the objections of some of his other soldiers, who felt the correct way would have been to fight and let Allah pick the righteous side by granting them victory and for this act formed the Kharijite movement, that believed both Ali and Muawiya were unworthy of rulership. As a result, the arbitration ended up declaring him deposed and naming Muawiya as the legitimate Caliph, depleting his power base, his initial attempt at defeating Muawiya before he could raise a new army had to be diverted to fight a Kharijite insurrection, and before he could try again a Kharijite assassin killed him while he was leading the prayer, paving the way for Muawiya's rise after escaping another Kharijite assassin. Islam has been divided into Sunni and Shia since.
[[/folder]]

** The sequel series ends up being this. ''Film/TheForceAwakens'', shows that while the rebels successfully defeated Darth Vader and The Emperor, resulting in the defeat of The Empire, that massive threat didn't go away. Forces that remain from the fallen Empire eventually regrouped and created The First Order. They're even led by a powerful Sith who found his own version of Vader in Kylo Ren causing the nightmare to happen all over again.

* ''Series/HouseOfTheDragon'': in "The Black Queen", the learned princess Rhaenyra tries to defy this trope when her advisers urge her to take a stronger stand against her rivals the Hightowers, knowing that the dragons on both sides will destroy the peace her father worked hard to maintain.
Though her advisers urge her to take a stronger stand against the Greens, Rhaenyra attempts to [[DefiedTrope defy]] this trope: she is hesitant to even wage war because she knows that the dragons on both sides will destroy the peace her father had worked hard to maintain.