History Main / WrittenBytheWinners

[-[[caption-width-right:350:[[Creator/MarkTwain "The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice."]]\\
[[https://www.deviantart.com/latuff2/art/A-Walking-Paradox-75841558 Image]] by [[https://www.deviantart.com/latuff2 Carlos Latuff.]] Used with permission.]]-]

-->-- '''UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler''' [[note]]who, sure enough, wasn't "[[TemptingFate there to explain]]" at the end of the war.[[/note]]

[[folder:Film -- Animated]]

[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]

* This helps explain the [[ContinuitySnarl untidiness]] affecting a lot of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'''s backstory. The Space Wolves ''know'' that the Thousand Sons were traitorous sorcerers that their forebearers rightfully punished for using forbidden magics, while the Thousand Sons ''know'' they suffered an unjust and unprovoked attack ordered by the Emperor they up until then had loyally served. The Literature/HorusHeresy novels reveal that while the Thousand Sons were using sorcery, they were trying to ''warn'' the Emperor about the imminent rebellion, but then the true traitor, Warmaster Horus, changed the Space Wolves' orders from "bring them in for questioning" to "kill them all", and the psyker-hating Space Wolves were happy to oblige. Nowadays the idea that the Space Wolves were played or that the Emperor should have believed the Thousand Sons' warning are treated as heresy.
** Another example is the history of the Dark Angels. Outsiders know the chapter to be one of the original First Founding legions and exemplars of loyalty. The chapter itself is wracked with guilt over how fully half their members turned traitor during the Horus Heresy, a secret they jealously guard and which drives them to obsessively hunt these Fallen Angels. Meanwhile, there's hints that the Dark Angels' Primarch may have been sitting out the civil war altogether, and the "Fallen" were merely defending themselves against their possibly traitorous kin...
*** This trope and the Lion's ultimate allegiance are dealt with in the Age of Darkness anthology story Savage Weapons, [[spoiler:Lion'el is absolutely loyal to the Emperor, but his campaign against the Night Lords, and the Chaos Gods' intervention in the Warp will prevent him from ever reaching Terra to aid in the defence. Night Haunter himself directly taunts Jonson stating that the Lion's character will always be questioned because he not was at Terra.]]
** The Thunder Warriors were the Emperor's first attempt at creating an army of [[SuperSoldier super soldiers]] that would aid Him in the Reunification of Terra. Although utterly victorious in their objective, they turned unsound in both mind (the candidates were taken from Humanity during the Age of Strife and such were mostly [[AxCrazy murderous maniacs]] only held in line by their loyalty to the Emperor) and body ([[FlawedPrototype the process greatly shortened their lifespans]]). Once the war was won, the Emperor ordered the culling of the Thunder Warriors as He considered them [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness too dangerous to be of any further use]]. Official records, however, dictate they all bravely gave their lives in the Reunification Wars to lay the foundations upon which the Emperium of Man would be built.

* ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'': Alyx was a girl who fell into the strange world of Ever After and wrote a book about her experiences when she returned to Remnant, casting herself as a hero. When Jaune Arc meets her via time travel, he learns that she was a vile and twisted person and far from a hero. Among other things, she started wars, poisoned Jaune and left him to die out of paranoia even though he was trying to help her (he barely survived), and [[UnPerson never mentioned in her book]] that her brother Lewis fell into Ever After with her and she apparently sacrificed him in her quest for home. [[spoiler:It is eventually revealed that in reality, Lewis returned to Remnant while Alyx was murdered. Lewis wrote the book while omitting himself and casting his sister in a better light.]]

In RealLife and actual history, it is certainly true that historical accounts can be subject to the personal bias of the writer and readers have to be wary of them, which is what the saying warns us about. However, applying the saying in such a simplistic manner can potentially be as reductive, misleading, and more importantly just as binary as "the winners' narrative". To say that history is written by the winners ''should'' mean that we should treat both the winners and losers fairly and not present a one-sided view. Academic historians would qualify this by stating that our knowledge about our past, certain figures and events, is based only on a few sources and furthermore, our understanding of history is never static and unchanging. [[ZigZaggedTrope History is, in truth, written and rewritten by all sorts of people with different agendas]]. For example, while the records are indeed often biased in favor of the winners, they're just as often biased in favor of the ''losers,'' who put pen to paper so they could gripe about how different things would be if ''they'd'' won out. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography Historiography]] is a separate discipline that actually studies and keeps track of how people's opinions about the past and certain events change throughout history. The reason for those changes is that people who win in one era, would lose in the other and their conquerors will be as generous to the defeated as they were to their defeated. Likewise, "winners" and "losers" mean a variety of things. In the military-political sense, ''losers'' at times do end up writing history; since they've often been deprived of actual power after their defeat, they often spend their time [[StillFightingTheCivilWar sulking and writing about how things would have been so much better had they won]] -- just ask [[ThoseWackyNazis a Neo-Nazi]] or [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy someone still re-fighting the civil war.]] The actual losers in this situation would be in the broarder societal sense (in the examples, Jews and slaves, respectively; and generally those third parties whose oppression by the later losers the conflicts had started over ''in the first place''); and the resolved conflict may well mark the ''end'' of their troubles.

Also worth pointing out that not every "winner" is going to be slick and sly about their crimes, simply because they don't view them as crimes. Many of history's "winners" will be surprisingly honest about atrocities or even write proudly of how they brutally crushed their opponents, because it would serve their self-interest and their careerist aspirations. For example, Caesar wrote of his genocide of the Gauls in [[Literature/CommentariesOnTheGallicWar his personal memoirs]], and historians doubt that account and other Roman accounts only because they feel Caesar is exaggerating, not only his actions but also those of his enemies, since Romans always did like painting its wars as "defensive" and their victories as underdog triumphs, so historians are skeptical about the moments when Romans invoke WorthyOpponent on their enemies as well. It likewise appealed to the vanity and pride of an Empire to preserve trophies and symbols of their conquest of foreign peoples, after all if the winner is writing a history, they would need losers to make themselves and their achievements look special. You can't be a King without a Kingdom and a People to rule over, so in every work of propaganda there are, for lack of a better term, FreudianSlip and other bits and moments that actually do allow the multitude to peep over the shoulder of their rulers. It's also worth pointing out the most obvious fact that even people ''on the same side'' [[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation will often disagree wildly on events and motivations]].

* ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}}'': ''Asterix and the Missing Scroll'' is about the Roman's attempts to pull off this trope. Caeser plans to leave his failure to conquer the Gaul village out of ''Literature/CommentariesOnTheGallicWar'', knowing the illiterate Gauls will have no way to protest. A rouge scribe steals the chapter containing these losses and passes to the Gaul village, who in turn pass it to a teacher who spreads it orally until it reached René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo in the 20th century, who then tell the stories as the ''Asterix'' comic books.

* Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' deals with this trope. In the present timeline, Robert Baratheon is loved as a glorious rebel king but hated by Targaryen loyalists for being TheUsurper. Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, who was regarded as TheWisePrince in his lifetime, is smeared after his death as a rapist and villain.

* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': According to Robert Baratheon, Rhaegar Targaryen is an insane rapist and Lyanna Stark is a helpless martyr torn cruelly from Robert's loving arms by way of Robert's word and will alone. None of this is true. Though you can't blame him for rebelling since The Mad King called for his head on less-than-questionable grounds.

** ''[[Literature/ServantsOfTheEmpire Servants of the Empire]]'' also does this, though this time it's the [[Characters/StarWarsTradeFederation Trade Federation]], portrayed in the lessons Zare Leonis learns in his history class as engineering a famine on Chrona to protect their profit margins and destroy genetically modified crops that would've been a viable alternative. While Leonis takes issue with this due to being around when the Trade Federation was still a major company, he's still glad they're no longer in business, considering all their bad history, like the [[Film/ThePhantomMenace Invasion of Naboo]], [[Recap/StarWarsTheCloneWarsS3E4SphereOfInfluence blockading Pantora in order to make them go over to the Separatists while kidnapping Baron Papnoida's daughters]], and overall making profits over the many dead people in the Clone Wars.

** ''[[Literature/StarWarsServantsOfTheEmpire Servants of the Empire]]'' also does this, though this time it's the [[Characters/StarWarsTradeFederation Trade Federation]], portrayed in the lessons Zare Leonis learns in his history class as engineering a famine on Chrona to protect their profit margins and destroy genetically modified crops that would've been a viable alternative. While Leonis takes issue with this due to being around when the Trade Federation was still a major company, he's still glad they're no longer in business, considering all their bad history, like the [[Film/ThePhantomMenace Invasion of Naboo]], [[Recap/StarWarsTheCloneWarsS3E4SphereOfInfluence blockading Pantora in order to make them go over to the Separatists while kidnapping Baron Papnoida's daughters]], and overall making profits over the many dead people in the Clone Wars.

* ''Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'': ''[[Literature/StarWarsLostStars Lost Stars]]'' shows that the Empire wasted no time doing this after its establishment: There's a scene where protagonists Thane and Ciena, who were born the year the Empire was established, are studying for a history class in their Imperial school. They're specifically studying how the Clone Wars started, and the version they learned in school portrays Jedi Master Mace Windu as the leader of a criminal gang that interfered with a legal execution of a certain [[Characters/StarWarsPadmeAmidala peace mongering Senator]] who hated Clones on Geonosis. Anyone who's seen ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'' will know that's... incorrect.

*** The ''Jaws of Hakkon'' DLC reveals Ameridan, the first Inquisitor, to be a victim of this: Ameridan was an elf mage of combined Andrastean/Dalish faith, who was sent to slay a possessed dragon that threatened Orlais and who ended up disappearing -- along with the dragon. [[ForWantOfANail Without his stabilizing presence]], he was unable to mediate developing tensions between the Orlesian and Dalish nations, which culminated with the above-mentioned Red Crossing incident and subsequent defeat of the Dalish Elves; in the aftermath, the Chantry covered up any and all mentions of Ameridan being an elf or a mage.

* ''Manga/RecordOfRagnarok'': When Lu Bu was defeated and executed, he met his death with quiet dignity. However, to spite him, it was recorded that he cried and begged for mercy

* In the ''Film/Underworld2003'' movies, Viktor rewrote vampire history to appear as if he was the original vampire, when, in fact, it was [[spoiler:another Elder, Marcus]]. So this is a literal case of history being [[IncrediblyLamePun written by the Viktor.]] Despite this, he doesn't hide the fact that [[spoiler:Marcus is a son of the first immortal Alexander Corvinus, although he claims it's a children's story]].

* The book ''Literature/{{Victoria}}'' is ''literally'' written by the winners, being the in-universe memoirs of the Christian Marines' supreme commander. Small wonder all the enemies are cartoonishly evil and incompetent.

* %% Music/GangOfFour's "Not Great Men".

%%%

%%%

%% DO NOT remove the permission notice.

* Music/MarilynManson's song "Irresponsible Hate Anthem".
* Music/GangOfFour's "Not Great Men".

* ''Manhua/RavagesOfTime'' so literally ''runs'' on this trope that in Chapter 209, a historian employed by Prime Minister Cao Cao discusses with an old friend named Chen Gong how the historian is going to demonize the prior Prime Minister to make the current one look better.
--> '''Chen Gong''': That's what happens after a dynasty change. In order to justify the rule, the enemy would have to take all the blame. Historians are but tools for propaganda.

** In "Recap/AvatarTheLastAirbenderTheHeadband The Headband]]", Aang (in disguise) attends a Fire Nation school for a day. During the class's history lesson, the teacher quizzes the students on how Fire Lord Sozin defeated the "Air Nation Army". Of course, Aang (and the viewers) knows full well that the Air Nomads were a mostly peaceful population of monks, who didn't even have an established ''government'', much less an army, and that Sozin's attack against them wasn't so much a battle as it was ''outright genocide''. When he tries to point this out, the teacher irritably responds that [[DramaticIrony unless he was actually around 100 years ago]], he shouldn't be questioning the Fire Nation's history books. (Again, this is the same propaganda Zuko grew up on.)