Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
Toys
|
alt title(s): Knights Templar 
Do not consider the millions who must die by your will. Do not consider the billions who toil in darkness to feed the engines of war. We are at war with forces too terrible to comprehend. We cannot afford mercy for any of its victims too weak to take the correct course. Mercy destroys us; it weakens us and saps our resolve. Put aside all such thoughts. They are not worthy of Inquisitors in the service of Our Emperor. Praise his name for in our resolve we only reflect his purpose of will.
Sometimes the Forces of Light get too hardcore. Beyond the Well Intentioned Extremist, they get blinded by themselves and their ideals, and this extreme becomes tyranny. It's not the Forces of Darkness's fault, but they are laughing their asses off. It doesn't mean that they still won't fight to the death; but they take great satisfaction in that they were right.
Usually the Knight Templar's primary step (or objective) is to get rid of that pesky "free will" thing that is the cause of crime and evil. To many Knight Templar types, All Crimes Are Equal, and the lightest offenses are met with full imprisonment, death or brainwashing. Note that the canonical "minor offense with staggeringly out-of-proportion punishment" is jaywalking. If you're in a story like this, don't jaywalk.
It's important to note that Knights Templar believe fully that they are on the side of righteousness and draw strength from that, and their opponents are not. Invoking goodness and decency will have no effect, save for making Knights Templar decry your cause as the work of the devil. After all, they are certain their cause is just and noble, and anyone who stands in the way is a deluded fool at best or another guilty soul to be 'cleansed' or evildoer to be killed, and doing so is not even Dirty Business. Indeed, it may take them a while to realize that a person of sense and good will really opposes them; the righteousness of their cause — and their own selves — is self-evident to them.
Utopia is commonly ruled by knights templar.
Sometimes the Knight Templar is an artificially intelligent computer that took its instructions to "protect humanity" just a bit too far. Knights Templar often make up the Ancient Conspiracy, and many can also be found in the ranks of the Corrupt Church, Church Militant, or Path Of Inspiration.
Contrast with Card Carrying Villain, a villain who completely believes that they are bad. A Knight Templar can become this if he has a Heel Realization and decides to keep being a villain anyway. Alternatively, he might turn Necessarily Evil. Compare and contrast with the Knight In Sour Armor who is what happens when a Lawful Good character chooses to err on the side of Good instead of erring towards Law.
A mild, comedic version is the Lord Error Prone. See also Knight Templar Parent, Knight Templar Big Brother, Lawful Stupid Chaotic Stupid. Sometimes they started out Fighting Monsters. Those who will really do anything for their beliefs count among The Unfettered.
In case you were looking for historical Templars, see The Knights Templar.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime
Comic Books
- This is a common Alternate Universe for Super Heroes.
- The Elseworld story Superman: Red Son features a Kal-El who lands in Soviet Russia, is brought up as the son of Stalin and encompasses the world in a prosperous but tightly controlled dictatorship, which deals with dissidents by robotic mind-control on the basis that, hey, it's better than killing them! In the end, Lex Luthor defeats him by writing him a letter: "I'm distilling everything Superman hates and fears about himself into a single sentence." The contents of the letter: "Why don't you just put the whole WORLD in a BOTTLE, Superman?" Unusual for most Knight Templar characters, this works, and Superman breaks down and cries, realizing that he's no different from Brainiac, who shrunk down cities and put them in bottles — the only thing Superman wasn't able to undo.
- In Watchmen, Ozymandias kills half the population of New York in order to unite the US and the Soviet Union.
- Judge Dredd is probably the most famous example of this in the world of comics.
- All Crimes Are Equal doesn't really apply to him, though. He sentences people according to their crimes, and I'm pretty sure he's even been merciful at times, though I can't come up with an specific example. He's more of a really tough guy, but not impossibly so, while this trope implies impossibility.
- Judge Death takes this to its logical extreme. "The crime is life. The sentence is DEATH."
- Starr from Preacher, a fusion of Templar attitude and Templar position and mission.
- Iron Man became one of these during and after Civil War. Note that this need not have happened; both sides were intended to have valid points, but the people writing the anti-Registration side kept penning atrocity after atrocity for him to commit to make their side look better.
- In the lore of the Green Lantern mythos, the Lanterns were preceded by a robot force known as the Manhunters. A perfect example of the trope, they are the "logical guardian machines removing free will."
- And now the Green Lantern Corps has created a sort of internal security force called the Alpha Lanterns—using Manhunter technology. Brilliant.
- The X-Men have faced the Purifiers; a sect of Christian fundamentalists led by Reverend William Stryker. The Purifiers believe mutants are the devil's children, and they are fighting a holy war against them.
- And let's not forget the Sentinels, shall we?
- Hell, how about "Anyone with an irrational hatred of Mutants"!
- At one point, the Autobots in the Transformers Generation 1 comic became like this when Grimlock became leader after one of Optimus Prime's numerous Heroic Sacrifices.
- The Autobots also did this during the Nova Prime administration in the latest series of comics.
- In the Ultimate Marvel reboot of the Fantastic Four, the Ultimate version of the Psycho Man mind controls an entire world to feel happy and contented, while the Ultimate Silver Surfer argues that they are merely happy slaves. Also, let's not forget that Dr. Doom is always working on creating his "utopia", even if it means destroying the world as we know it. Hey, it's for a good cause.
Fan Fic
Film
- In Frailty, Matthew Mc Conaughey's family is commanded by God to destroy demons. One of the kids sees "destroy demons" to mean "kill people."
- Robocop, in the second film, has been reprogrammed with an All Crimes Are Equal package as a means of making him ineffective. He comes across somehow as both Lawful Stupid (shooting at a man for smoking in a no-smoking zone) and Stupid Good (by refusing to fire at someone shooting at him and trying to talk things out) He realizes this is not right and goes on to get electrocuted to remove the programming, something the said programming didn't expect.
- The Operative in Serenity is another example - he truly believes in the ultimate rightness of his actions, even as he acknowledges that they are horrible things and he is a horrible person for doing them, and as such he will have no place in the perfect world he is trying to create.
- In a way, the entire Alliance can be seen as Knights Templar, considering that they killed thirty million people on Miranda while testing a peace-enducing chemical inhalant and the entire justification for them cutting River's brain up was to "make a better world."
- Well, not the entire Alliance — just whatever faction of the government/corporate complex is involved in all that. We know it involves members of Parliament, but they've been out to keep it all very secret, too.
- The Jigsaw serial killer in Saw sees himself as this, never admitting to actually killing anyone (and providing video "evidence" to prove it), and insists that his actions were intended to help the "wrongdoers" that were his victims "see the light" and reform their evil ways. Of course, the fact that he does this through Death Traps created to fit the "sin" of the victim, and requiring them to kill or maim another person or mutilate themselves to escape, makes his statements hard to believe.
- The government of Libria in Equilibrium suppressed human emotion, as it was believed responsible for causing the human tendency for violence that brought about the war that practically destroyed the world, which means destroying art, movies and other things inducive of emotion (including cute little dogs) and terminating "sense offenders" who go without the government mandated drug called Prozium.
- Jonathan Doe from Se7en believes that he is punishing the wicked by killing people that go against his belief system. It could be argued, however, that he is simply a sadistic psychopath.
- It could be argued, however, that many Knights Templar are simply sadistic psychopaths...
- The Paladins in the film version of Jumper, led by Samuel L. Jackson. They believe they are doing God's will by murdering all of the jumpers, as "only God should have that power".
- Subverted in The Wicker Man, where Sgt. Howie is introduced as a religiously intolerant, uptight Jerk Ass. However, his faith and sense of duty are presented in a more and more admirable light as the film progresses, and he's far less enfuriatingly fanatical than the townsfolk. By the end, you're ready to salute him.
- An inversion maybe but in a Tyler sorta way he is one. I mean he talks about the greater good and the removal of free will(at least to get people out of their consumerist lifestyle) its just chaotic instead of orderly
- Literary, not film, but still Chuck Palahniuk: similarly, Brandy Alexander in Invisible Monsters claims that all of our desires have been conditioned by external forces, so that we can't trust the things that we want. Hence, his decision to become a woman.
- The League of Shadows in Batman Begins have devoted their lives to defeating crime and evil — by any means necessary. They eventually decide to kill every single person in Gotham City because they feel that the entire city is beyond redemption.
Literature
- Jorge of Burgos from Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose is the epitome of this trope. He's already a crazed extremist at the beginning of the book, and then he kills - or has killed - seven people. All to prevent somebody from reading a book that Jorge considers heretical: Aristotle's lost chapter of the Poetics discussing comedy. His Karmic Death comes as a huge relief. Even to his allies.
- In Harry Potter, Dumbledore and Grindelwald once wanted to take over the world, so wizards could stop hiding: "Muggles forced into subservience. We wizards triumphant. [Us], the glorious young leaders of the revolution". On the other hand, Dumbledore manipulates many people, even planning Harry's Heroic Sacrifice, to defeat Voldemort.
- Also, Voldemort himself (among others) believes, not that he is a "good guy", because for him "there is no good or evil", but that wizardkind must be purged from what "infects" it, namely everyone who's not a pureblood or half-blood wizard.
- The Whitecloaks in The Wheel Of Time series. They think all Aes Sedai are servants of the Dark Lord and they get neighbors to accuse each other of being "darkfriends." Only three of them are presented as honorable men.
- The Questioners, a branch that specializes in tortured confessions, are so nuts that not even the Whitecloaks can stand them.
- Also from Wheel, the Red Ajah, that faction of the Aes Sedai dedicated to finding and depowering men who can channel.
- In Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files novels, and to some degree the TV series based on them, the White Council and their enforcers, the Wardens, frequently come across as Knights Templar, primarily with their draconian enforcement of the Seven Laws of Magic (usually entailing instant beheading). Morgan, one of the leaders of the Wardens, is the first and best example of this. However, this ends up somewhat subverted later in the novel series when Harry, who had been viewed as a troublemaker at best and Lawbreaker at worst, and had once been under a one-strike-you're-dead parole, is recruited into the Wardens after many of them are slaughtered during the war with the vampire Red Court. Even Morgan changes his position; while he still believes that Harry is dangerous, he no longer thinks he's evil, just arrogant, undisciplined, and stupid. This is a major change from a character previously thought to be unchanging.
- Even more of a subversion, as Morgan's changed opinion is mostly right.
- Lilith de Tempscire in the Discworld novel Witches Abroad, whose warped narrative awareness leads her to believe that anything she does as a fairy godmother is justified by the Theory Of Narrative Causality, and means everyone will live Happily Ever After. She's absolutely shocked when Granny Weatherwax tells her she's not "the good one".
- In the Revelation Space universe, there is an entire species which plans to prevent any technological civilization from arising for 6 billion years to make sure that life can flourish after the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies collide. They are perfectly willing to kill trillions of sapient beings and wipe out whole species in order to achieve this goal.
- The disturbing feature is that this explains where all the aliens are.
- A similar feature is in Anvil of Stars and its prequel, where the good guys' mission is to defeat a group of planet destroyers who eliminated Earth. This involves eradicating nine different intelligent species who have the misfortune to be in the way.
- Not just in the way. Apparently, those races were deliberately created as (non)human shields.
- In certain time periods of Larry Niven's Known Space universe, minor crimes such as "repeated traffic violations" are punished by execution. However, this is primarily because the organs of all executed criminals are harvested for the "organ banks" for use in transplants.
- While Lord Asriel's grand plan in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials novels is certainly noble in theory, the fact remains that he first kills a child in order to open the first portal to the parallel worlds and then pulls a Lucifer and makes war on Heaven, all in a plot to kill God. We're not too sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that he succeeds. Asriel is still pretty awesome.
- This trope also appears in The Amber Spyglass, in which the Magisterium dispatches a young priest named Father Gomez to kill Lyra. Gomez fairly blazes with righteous piety and the belief that he is on a holy mission. The sin of murder is explained away by the church as having already been "paid for", since Gomez has been doing pre-emptive penance for most of his life.
- In the Dragonlance series of books, the Kingpriest is a Knight Templar. His insistence on destroying all evil leads to him attacking neutral people and gods (because if you aren't with us, you are against us) as well as evil. His upsetting the balance, as well as demanding from the gods the power to destroy all evil, brings about the destruction of a large part of the planet, as all the gods decide that humans have gone too far and they get pissed.
- in Only a Woman Can Take This Sort of Abuse sword Dzeldazzar that took over paladin of Tyr.
"Evil!" the sword hissed, jerking Sir Thongolor's arms this way and that. "Any who would resist or prevent me or the holy warrior who bears me must be evil — and must be destroyed!"
- Inspector Javert from Les Miserables. To him, law is everything, and when he realizes that to act lawfully is to act unethically, he snaps and commits suicide. Inspector Javert is also an example of an Inspector Javert.
- Inspector Javert IS Inspector Javert.
- Villains By Necessity by Eve Forward portraits the whole world dominated by Knight Templars in quite serious inversion of many classical tropes.
- The Humanoids, a model of robot from Jack Williamson's 1947 novella "With Folded Hands" (and the follow-up novels The Humanoidsand The Humanoid Touch) are a classic example of this trope combined with the Literal Genie trope. The Humanoids are programmed to "Serve, Obey, and Guard Men from Harm." Since nearly every human activity has some risk of harm associated with it, the Humanoids in practice never let anyone do anything (although occasionally, if they really need a single human's help to "protect" a great many humans, they will bribe them with limited autonomy). When people begin to complain these restrictions are psychologically harmful the Humanoids drug or lobotomize them. In the end the Humanoids invent a machine that gives them Psychic Powers and use it to institute an Intrumentality).
- In the Ciaphas Cain novel Duty Calls, an Inquisitor in is willing to stage a massacre, abandon innocents (including children) to an alien attack, and actively cause an alien attack and massacre (not to mention trying to assassinate Cain three times) on the grounds that what he is protecting is too valuable for the information to get out. He even thinks that Cain will agree with these actions because of the importance of the artifact.
- In the same book, Battle Sisters refuse to retreat to the line of their defenses because they must serve the Emperor; Cain finally points out that if the Tyranids outflank them, they will be responsible for the massacre of civilians in the Emperor's Temple. This not only persuades them to retreat, it causes one of them to thank him later, for reminding them of their duty, and admit that their zeal had lead them astray.
Later this takes on a grimmer note. The sisters realize they have sheltered a renegade inquisitor. Even his deception does not ease their guilt; their zeal had blinded them from seeing the facts. In atonement, they sacrifice their lives to ensure the escape of the Inquisitor who had told them the truth and her party.
- It may not quite fit this trope, but in Xenos, Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn explains some of the mindset behind such people. He finds himself in a position where he can either mercy-kill an innocent, and allow a heretic and traitor to escape, or follow the heretic and allow the innocent to die horribly. He talks to the reader for a moment, saying that, if you would kill the victim, that is good, you are human. On the other hand, you are not an inquisitor; he must place the millions of lives that the heretic threatens over the lives of others. If one man must die, that millions might live, that is how it must be.
- In the beginning of the Sword Of Truth series, Richard Rahl, the hero, is told evil people never think they are evil, but think they are doing good. So it comes as a surprise when Richard becomes one of these, at one point ordering his soldiers to go into enemy territory for the sole purpose of killing and maiming civilians. Why? Because their government stands in opposition to him, so logically, every single citizen of the Empire is evil. It gets worse-the NARRATOR fully agrees with Richard on everything.
- Robert E. Howard's Puritan avenger Solomon Kane is an interesting example of this trope. He's presented most often as a Knight Templar, but it is implied in several stories that he is in fact a Blood Knight who has convinced himself otherwise.
- Lucas de Beaumanoir in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, who actually is a Knight Templar—indeed, the Grand Master of the Order. Although most of the Templars in the novel are corrupt and immoral, Beaumanoir "is of a different stamp—hating sensuality, despising treasure, and pressing forward to that which they call the crown of martyrdom..." He comes to the preceptory of Templestowe to root out vice and in the process puts the noble Jewess Rebecca on trial for sorcery.
- Maxim, an uninitiated Light One in Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch. He has been enchanted so that he can sense the evil of the Dark Ones but not the good of the Light Ones, causing him to consider himself a lonely crusader in a world choked with evil (as opposed to a world in an eternal stalemate between evil and good), leading him to kill low-powered and not particularly evil Dark Ones. Actually, given the Night Watch's philosophy of good as being working for the greater good, the entire side of light can occasionally become Knight Templars, and we are explicitly told that both Soviet Communism and Nazism started out as plots by the Light to win against the Darkness.
- Terry Pratchett's Discworld Auditors are very much this. They just want a universe of perfect order. Is it their fault that life, especially intelligent life, keeps getting in the way of this?
Live Action TV
- Adam Monroe of Heroes is immortal, and has lived for 400 years. This has led him to see the World as a never-ending nightmare, filled with war, famine, and global epidemics. Thus, he plans to create a perfect world by unleashing a virus that will destroy 94% of the planet, and giving those who survive a second chance. He also believes himself to be a God, and compares it to when God flooded the Earth and had Noah build an arc to start over.
- The Knights of Byzantium in season five of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
- Jasmine in season four of Angel. Holtz is also an example of this.
- To an extent, the Syndicate of The X-Files qualifies for this, as over the series it developed that they were collaborating with the alien Colonists in order to stall for time to prevent the coming invasion and to work on a vaccine for the alien plague.
- The Vorlons in Babylon 5 are a clear example of this trope - they seek to maintain peace and order through manipulation of the "lesser races", often using very morally questionable methods. By this standard, the Shadows also qualify, as they truly believe their Darwinist agenda of deception, violence, genocide and Mind Rape is also for the Greater Good.
- 'Infection,' from the first season of Babylon 5, finds the station under attack by a cyborg Templar. An ancient artifact infects a man, transforming him into a walking weapon designed to eradicate anyone not of 'pure Ikarran' stock.
- Iris Crowe on Carnivale believes that her brother Justin has a destiny. And she'll do anything to help him achieve it. Unfortunately, he's the Antichrist - and "anything," in this case, involves arson, multiple homicide, self-mutilation, and incest. The actual Knights Templar on the show is actually just a MacGuffin to distract us from the fact that Ben's a fairly crappy savior.
- But Iris is just a chip off the old block compared to her father Lucius Belyakov aka Management, being willing to orchestrate murder after murder so that Ben can realize his destiny. Ironically, this makes him the polar opposite of a Knight Templar Parent, since Ben's destiny is to kill Justin. That's good parenting.
- Lord Dread of Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future wanted to create a better world by fusing man with machine, removing the "weakness" of emotions and allow humanity to be ruled solely by logic. Hence the "Metal Wars" and the subsequent "Project New Order", where the planet is ravaged, most of humanity is annihilated, with the few that remain are either loyal to Dread, or are in hiding or in an organized resistance movement that is opposing Dread's empire.
- While Lord Dread is plagued by the remnants of his humanity, and occasionally doubts the worthiness of the cause, the supercomputer Overmind is unflinching and resolute, and it can be argued that it doesn't share the same concern for humanity's ascension to perfection, being more focused on absolute domination by the machines.
- Near omnipresent in Alias, to the point where multiple terrorist cells successfully pose as CIA Knights Templar to recruit unsuspecting agents, and the core group of one of those cells going on to become an actual CIA Knights Templar.
- Charmed was notorious for relying on this one. A few examples: Paige Matthews' initiation as a witch was almost spoiled when the Big Bad of the time attempted to make her use her powers to tear out someone's heart. Incidentally, Paige's powers were staggeringly powerful in their possible implications - imagine calling nuclear weapons or lightning. When the evil and good worlds started becoming TOO evil and good, respectively, the good world was marked by extremely pleasant punishment for the slightest transgressions. And an Elder, a being of great rationality and goodness, spends a good portion of his time trying to murder an innocent baby out of fear that the baby is The Chosen One in a bad sense, of course creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Star Trek Deep Space Nine's Section 31, a secret rogue Federation agency who assassinate foreign dignitaries, kidnap disloyal officers and even attempt to commit genocide against the Founders in the name of protecting the Federation.
- Admiral Leyton, Sisko's old XO, attempted to overthrow the Federation President and establish a military dictatorship in order to protect the Federation from Dominion attack.
- DCI Frank Morgan in Life On Mars is eventually revealed to be one of these. He began as a subversion of The Umbridge, being a more competent, enlightened and thoughtful administrator than Gene Hunt, who he replaces. It's then revealed that he deliberately allowed a sting operation that Hunt has set up to be badly botched in order to reveal Gene Hunt's incompetence, thus allowing Morgan to take over and reform Hunt's department. That this will result in the deaths of everyone on Hunt's team is a sacrifice Morgan can live with.
- Eliot Stabler from Law And Order SVU has been known to act like this, especially in the early seasons. After he does things like: waterboard a perp, mercilessly lock up a survivor of the Serbian genocide, and arrest a porn director for "promoting pedophilia", even though said director's models were of age, and even though said pedophile was messed up even before he saw the porn, you have to wonder why you're supposed to sympathize with the guy. Not to mention that he's implied to be prejudiced against transgenders.
- Bounty Hunter Keisuke Nago in Kamen Rider Kiva plays this trope so damn straight that at times he borders on self-parody. For example, as a young adult he led his father to commit suicide when he reported a simple accounting error to the police as evidence of corruption, and when lambasted by an understandably furious Papa he replied, "Sin is sin". To up the ante further, he can transform into rival Rider Kamen Rider IXA, whose motif is that of a white paladin. He's quite the Jerkass about it, too.
- The Knights Templar
 in a few episodes of Andromeda are fanatically devoted to destroying the humanity-offshoot known as the "Nietzscheans". Their leader has dark-sided in her/his attempt to stay alive "for the cause".
- Nathan Petrelli becomes one in the third season of Heroes.
- The main Knight Templar from Volume 3 was Arthur Petrelli.
- He starts off as one in Volume 4 too, but his Dragon, Danko, quickly usurps the position from under him. Nathan's plans involved simply rounding up all the people with abilities and detaining them to protect national security, whereas Danko seems more interested in just eliminating them outright. They don't call him "The Hunter" for nothing.
- While a Complete Monster in the Sword of Truth series, in Legend of the Seeker Darken Rahl is more this trope.
- In Battlestar Galactica, the Cylons have a paradigm shift brought on by Boomer and Caprica Six. They realize that they no longer want to destroy humanity, but rather help humanity. So, they take over New Caprica in order to rule the humans and make "them better."
Tabletop Games
- Considered an ideal in Warhammer where rigid thought control is the only known way to keep the villains' More Than Mind Control from spreading.
- And presented again in Warhammer 40,000 by the Inquisition of the Imperium of Man, who eradicate entire worlds to stop "Heresy" from spreading. Somewhat justified considering "Heresy" usually, but not always, has the horrors of the Warp (and by extension Chaos Gods) follow it or is it.
- Also, don't forget the Imperial Space Marines themselves. They fit this trope to the letter. Hell, there's even a chapter called the Black Templars who are notorious for their intolerance of aliens and heretics, going as far as to "purge" entire planetary colonies because somebody there has bought equipment from alien traders (the standard imperial responce would be to execute that guy, and the conduct an investigation on whether or not the rest of the place was "tainted" too, and if so, should they nuke the populace or just send them to work camps).
- Not uniformly. The Ultramarines and the Imperial Fists are good examples of more heroic chapters to whom the term "collateral damage" actually means something.
- This applies to the Tau, too, to a lesser extent.
- Subversion: in the RPG Deadlands: Hell on Earth, there is a group of people - including some player characters - that call themselves Templars. In a post-apocalyptic setting named, well, Hell on Earth, you can imagine what they're like: unflinchingly hard-nosed, often turning away those in need simply because they don't live up to some subjective moral standard. Even worse, sometimes they force others, who are less "worthy", to do unseemly tasks with their awesome supernatural powers. And they're the good guys. Their more messianic counterparts have been corrupted: while they start out trying to save everyone, they inevitably become pawns of evil.
Jo, Templar Grand-Master: Here's the way we see it. The old world was full of greedy, violent people. It was also full of lazy bags of crap who knew the world was going to Hell and didn't do a damn thing about it. The small minority who stood up against evil, who sacrificed everything to help fight oppression, didn't usually get much help. Templars have vowed not to let that happen again.
- The Monster Manual 3 from the 3.5 version of Dungeons And Dragons introduces the Lumi, a race of extraplanar light-empowered beings who believe lying to be the ultimate sin. To be clear, if the choice were between telling a lie or letting thousands of people die, a Lumi would have no doubt: all those thousands of innocents would have to die. It seems these guys are planning a mass invasion of the Material Plane to destroy any and all deceivers... and even those who have as much as told a white lie.
- Also, at least 10% of anyone involved in anything in Eberron is a Knight Templar. Literally, in the case of the Church of the Silver Flame, whose hardliners a) want to forcibly convert everyone and b) consider fire a divinely sanctioned weapon even against civilians. This is from a Lawful Good religion, with help from Eberron removing the rule about cleric alignments.
- Speaking of Dungeons And Dragons, roughly half of the faction known as Mercykillers from the campaign setting Planescape can fall into this category; they were originally two separate factions, the Sons of Mercy (Lawful Good) and the Sodkillers (Lawful Evil), but when the Lady of Pain declared that only ten factions could exist, they joined forces; after the Faction War, when the Lady banished all the factions, the Mercykillers split apart again.
- It's also an inherent risk of certain paladin-based prestige classes, such as the Grey Guard (who get cheap atonement when they do something less-than-angelic in the service of good, like beating someone to death to get information out of them) and the Shadowbane Inquisitor (who, despite having levels of rogue, are considered unsually hardassed even by other paladins).
- Magic The Gathering frequently uses this trope with White. In fact, most angels are portrayed as fanatical warmongers. Particular examples include the archangel Radiant (turns a paradise into a police state in the name of her goddess); Akroma, Angel of Wrath (leads a genocidal war to wipe out an evil organization); and Reya Dawnbringer (raises her followers from death, denying them repose).
- The Knights of the Harrowing from Infernum might fit into this trope, or another trope entirely. They are an order of Christian Crusaders (their old name was the Knights of the Sepulchre) who deliberately decided to transport their fortress into Hell in order to exterminate every last demon. Who, by the way, number in the billions... have a reproductive system where any individual can be sacrificed to produce up to eighteen new demons (which will go from "birth" to "fully grown and ready to kill" in about six months)... and have technology roughly equivalent to the 19th century, backed by Black Magic and demonic innovation (including, but not limited to, machine guns that shoot acid, biomechanical Golems, and rudimentary guided missiles).
Video Games
- The Warcraft series is filled to the brim with these.
- The Titan Sargeras was tasked originally with keeping the universe safe by battling various Eldritch Abominations, but eventually he decided there must be some underlying flaw in the universe and the only way to fix it and end his eternal battle was to destroy all of existence and start anew. To this task he created the Burning Legion of the demons he had imprisoned and set on a crusade against all that exists. Of course most demons are in it just because they like destroying stuff.
- In Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, Arthas Menethil starts out as a headstrong young man fighting the undead. Things start going downhill when he slaughters the populace of a major human city to avoid the plagued parts of it from turning into the undead. Later, when his father, the King, commands him to come home from an expedition in the home continent of the Scourge, he has hired thugs sink his own ships and blames the whole thing on them to get an excuse to disobey the order. Eventually, he lets a good friend die in exchange for a sword that can defeat the demon he thinks is behind everything. At which point he stopped being a Knight Templar wanting to save his people and turned into an avatar of vengeance is a hotly debated topic.
- In the Expansion Pack for the same game, Frozen Throne, Maiev Shadowsong devotes her entire existence to hunting down Illidan Stormrage, whom she had been tasked to guard during his imprisonment. She eventually lies to the man who gave her this task in the first place that his wife is dead so that he would help Maiev capture Illidan instead of going to save her from certain peril. In World of Warcraft she manages to fulfill her purpose only to realise her life has no meaning anymore.
- Meanwhile, World Of Warcraft has the Scarlet Crusade, an organisation bent on destroying the undead. Over the years, they have become so paranoid about the Plague which turns people into members of the Scourge that they will attack anyone they do not recognise as a member of their organisation. Ironically, their leader, and the man who sent them down the slippery slope, is a demon in disguise, manipulating them for the sole purpose of creating a force to destroy the Scourge.
- The Burning Crusade expansion introduced The Ethereum, the former Ethereal ruling class who declared war on The Void (and especially Dimensius) after the latter destroyed K'aresh, their homeworld. The Ethereum have become so consumed by their mission that they consider anyone who doesn't help them an enemy and have even gone to the point of infusing themselves with void energy to create nexus-stalkers, which often end up destabilizing and becoming voidwraiths.
- Later on in Wrath of the Lich King, the Blue Dragonflight under Malygos also turn into this, willing to kill tens of thousands and cause irreversable ecological damage to the planet to rid the world of mortal arcane spellcasters.
- Judging by the fact that the Titans created a being called Algalon the Observer to serve as a fail-safe protocol that would "re-originate"(read: annihilate all life and start over) the world and have every intention of using it, they probably qualify as well.
- Yggdrasill from Tales Of Symphonia set out to resolve a war between two magitek nations and end the world's Fantastic Racism; creating a world where everyone could be free of discrimination. One Dead Little Sister later and he was accomplishing this by splitting the world in half, grinding the humans into the dirt and killing them off to create Soylent Green that would turn the half-elves into soulless, mindless and lifeless beings. It never even occurs to him to consider that he hasn't got the moral high ground.
- Grand Maestro Mohs from Tales Of The Abyss is a devout follower of The Score, a set of extremely specific set of prophecies that say there will be a time of great prosperity following a massive war between the two dominent countries, a war he tries to incite numerous times. To do this Mohs collaborates with Master Van, the real villain of the game who has conflicting interests with Mohs and is more of a Well Intentioned Extremist.
- At least, that is what the main characters say about him. Mohs Evil Laugh and general jerk tendencies would indicate otherwise.
- Vhailor from Planescape Torment is a member of the Mercykillers, a Planescape sect that believes in the absolute order of the law. Crime is violently punished, and rehabilitation is often not under consideration - their creed is thus: "Justice purges evil. Once all have been cleansed, the multiverse achieves perfection."
- For more fun involving Vhailor, check out the quote page.
- Just to help put things in perspective, Vhailor is no longer a man, but
a haunted suit of armor an incarnation of justice who exists through the strength of his Mercykiller beliefs.
- The Mercykiller faction formed when the Sodkillers (a gang preying on the Clueless) for unspecified reasons joined forces with Sons of Mercy (a group of law-upholding citizens, some of them paladins). The faction lived up to this portmanteau name (they kill mercy), becoming the semi-official and extremely corrupt police force. Vhailor is remembered many years after his disappearance because of his fanaticism, showing that Knights Templar are very rare among the Mercykillers.
- In Arcanum, the Big Bad intends to cause the death of every living thing in order that they may enjoy the peace of oblivion.
- The Knights Templar in Deus Ex: Invisible War.
- Seymour Guado from Final Fantasy X believes that destroying the world of Spira and everything in it is the only way to save it from the Vicious Cycle it's trapped in (this train of thought is possibly due to his own troubled upbringing).
- Arguably, the Ur-Quan in Star Control II. The green Kzer-Za want to enslave all life and the black Kohr-Ah want to kill all life in order to ensure no species could ever potentially enslave them again as The Puppetmasters did - a kind of species-wide Freudian Excuse.
- The villains of Assassin's Creed are literal and figurative Knights Templar, while the assassin clan Altair works for are more moderate Well Intentioned Extremists.
- The Order of Burning Rose from The Witcher is a literal Knight Templar organization with Utopia Justifies The Means style of operation.
- City Of Heroes tries (and mostly fails) to portray the Malta group as this. The problem is that for all the dialogue describing them as thinking they're the good guys, nothing changes that they are just as ruthless and vicious as other villain groups (if not moreso).
- They're supposed to be more ruthless, and the development team goes out of their way to make them so - they're a grab bag of every other villain's evil characteristics, from mass assassination to kidnapping to brainwashing to indoctrination to more mundane blackmail and fighting legitimate heroes. That doesn't stop them from being legitimately interested in things they consider good ideals, such as keeping dangerous metahumans under control or fighting various fascist and communistic groups. That doesn't stop them from being really, really nasty, but it keeps them well within the Knight Templar definition.
- Interestingly, both Indigo and Crimson, the two contacts you use to stop Malta, could be considered 'good' versions of this. They will do anything to stop Malta, and players see them entrap bad guys, trick civilians into dangerous traps, lie to compatriots to test their network for leaks, protect bad guys when their loss would empower Malta, provide false evidence to a villain group to cause someone's execution, and 'protect' good guys without warning them that they are at risk.
- Nemesis is another example, and one that never really pretended to be good in the first place. He's always been after the fascist control of the world, and just picked up the method of taking over or blocking dangerous heroes and villains while providing safety after the previous method of killing civilians didn't work.
- Both the Brotherhood of Nod and the Global Defense Initiative of Command And Conquer can be considered Knight Templars, especially in the later games, where the more "good guy" traits of GDI start getting subsumed in their more aggressive ruthlessness after Nod attacks them.
- The AI ODE System is an AI example of this. When the creator went emo, it is reprogrammed to gather humans together in one network to protect Earth from aliens. It took it very literally and goes on a mass kidnapping and absorbing spree, including its creator.
- Saren, the villain of Mass Effect, was an extremely violent Knight Templar during his tenure as a Spectre, prior to the events of the actual game, where he became more of a Dark Messiah.
- X and the Maverick Hunters start to fall into this in Mega Man X 4 and X5. Fast-forward 100 years to Mega Man Zero and Copy-X is protecting humans by mass extermination of innocent Reploids.
- In S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl, the C-Consciousness Project. Conceived to rid the world of all destructive and negative human emotion, its members accidentally cause a spatial tear that causes several kilometres around its site to become a desolate, radioactive wasteland fraught with dangerous mutants ("The Zone"). To prevent discovery of their project by those seeking valuable artifacts in The Zone, they use various devices that result in death and/or zombification of those who come near. Anyone who makes it past is diverted to what is believed by all to be an omnipotent wish granting device, but in reality it brainwashes the wisher into becoming a minion of the project, either as part of the official death squad, or as mindwiped individuals who have one singular mission to carry out, but aren't sure why. The player character begins as one of these individuals.
- Despite the name, the Protoss Zealot may or may not be like this. But on the major characters, Aldaris is a Knight Templar to the core. At first, he didn't care whether Tassadar was contacting the Dark Templar for the good of the Protoss race in general because he knows they are the only ones who can destroy the Overmind, he violated the Conclave's orders, so he must be arrested. He got better after seeing Tassadar and Zeratul's efforts (also Raynor's) to defeat the Overmind and started supporting them, but in Brood Wars, once again he acts as a Knight Templar, refusing to work with Kerrigan while the others had no choice but to ally with her. Unfortunately, this is the only time where his actions were actually RIGHT. And he's killed soon after. By Kerrigan, who reveals that she's been using the rest of the Protoss the whole time.
- Arguably, the Zerg Overmind with its will to infest everything - especially the Protoss - in order to create the perfect species might also count.
- The ending for Siegfried in Soul Calibur IV causes him to say after defeating Nightmare - "With this... it ends." "Our kind must not exist in this world; not ever again." This causes Soul Calibur to crystallize him, Siegfried and Soul Edge... as the screen fades to black and give us the epilogue that the world will soon be "covered in crystals, making it a utopia without wars or suffering."! Whether this is Siegfried's choice or Soul Calibur's is unknown.
- Cassandra's ending makes it pretty clear that Soul Calibur has a serious Knight Templar streak. She is so fed up with what her sister Sophitia has become because of Soul Calibur that after destroying Soul Edge, she destroys Soul Calibur as well.
- Hotaru from Mortal Kombat: Deception is fanatically devoted to order. In the game's story mode, he imprisons the main character (who had been allied with him) for unknowingly breaking curfew... and decades pass before he gets his appointed trial.
- The goddess Ashera from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.
- In Ultima V, Lord Blackthorn usurps Britannia's throne and turns the virtues, formerly self-imposed moral guidelines, into enforced laws (for example, forcing the people to donate to charity or face execution). The results are predictable.
- In Ninety-Nine Nights, the Ax Crazy Inphyy. She's a light-empowered swordswoman (she's even an officer in an order that calls itself the "Temple Knights") who is so utterly convinced that the goblins and other races that follow the Dark are Always Chaotic Evil monsters, that she'll go so far as to cut down little goblin children without missing a beat. Even her similarly-powered but far more sane brother Aspharr calls her out on this in a What The Hell, Hero? moment.
- In Drakengard 2: Nowe's friend and fellow Knight of the Seal Eris is a definite Knight Templar at first, rationalizing her superiors' questionable actions, threatening to harm Nowe when he expresses doubt about the Knights' righteousness, and even sporting a disturbing smirk when about to burn Manah at the stake. Luckily, she wises up eventually... even if it took General Gismor using her as a human shield and leaving her to die to do so. Gismor himself does not fit the bill: he doesn't care about justice or order, only personal power.
- Dragon Quest VIII has an order of zealous knights who are actually called the Templars.
- The Law Hero gets to be like this near the end of Shin Megami Tensei I and pretty much all the higher-ups on the Law side of the spectrum (who are all worsphippers of the Path Of Inspiration, naturally) are a version of this - including the protagonist, if the player so choses.
- Gamma, Joules and Drazil in Soul Nomad And The World Eaters are this trope incarnate. The 'utopia' they have created, molded to their own ideals, defies all explanation This Troper could give it and can at best be described as 'an utter nightmare'. Even the resident Omnicidal Maniac is disgusted by it.
- The Brotherhood of Steel in the Fallout franchise may fit this trope.
- They are a trope on their own, in fact. They are more xenophobic and less crazy than the usual Knight Templar. The Mid-Western Brotherhood (Fallout Tactics), on the other hand, was a bunch of Knight Templars and Well Meaning Extremists. But compared with the other crazies around them (Beastlords, Reavers, Calculator, Gammorin's Super Mutant Army), only Gammorin's and his mutants weren't crazy on one level or another. Elder Lyons' Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 3, were actually scorned by the Mid-West for not abandoning the Knight Templar schtick and becoming Knights In Shining Armor.
- The Order of the Hammer in Thief. In Thief 2: The Metal Age, the Mechanists emerge as "templars within the templars," scorning the antiquated aims of their brethren in favor of something even more extreme.
- Leo from Lunar: Eternal Blue starts off as this. Thankfully, he is more open-minded than most other examples of this trope and once he realises that the church he works for is actually trying to resurrect the dark god, he switches sides.
- Count
Vulgar Veger from Jak III certainly deserves a place. He didn't like Dark Eco. That was OK, nobody particularly likes Dark Eco. However, he exiled and repeatedly attempted to kill Jak, whose Dark Eco powers let him save the world at the end of the previous game. He even describes himself as "the glorious light that burns away the shadows" in between attempts to turn Haven City into a totalitarian theocracy under his rule, subverting Utopia Justifies The Means because it wasn't really going to be that much of a utopia with a psychotic zealot like Veger in charge.
- The Catholic Church as depicted in Tsukihime and to a lesser extent Fate Stay Night (where the Knight Templar would probably more be Emiya Kiritsugu since the church is mostly connected with Kotomine here) is obsessed with killing all vampires and other non humans. Prime example, when Ciel resurrected for the first time they killed her for a month straight, nonstop and rather messily before giving up because she literally cannot die while Roa lives. They also appear to have a mild hands off/Enemy Mine approach regarding Arcueid... mostly because there is no way in hell they could possibly kill her and they don't want to make her mad.
Webcomics
- Miko Miyazaki in Order Of The Stick, a paladin who went from uptight but lawful good to executing the head of her own holy order out of paranoia. Unlike most misguided villains, she went to her grave completely convinced that what she was doing was right.
- Miko might have realized she was wrong after talking to Soon, which could have started the process that leads to redemption. However, she was dying, and there was no time for her to improve herself.
- Redcloak certainly fits this trope. After all he hates all humans (although to be fair they destroyed his home town and killed most of his family), his master plan is to threaten release a lovecraftian entity which could destroy the world in order to blackmail the gods into making Goblins more equal (in the OotS universe they were created as Cannon Fodder for PCs to kill) and his back-up plan is to let this happen anyway so the world can be recreated with his god having a say.
- It is important to note, that this version of goblins' origin was told by an evil god that sponsors Redcloak's plan to blackmail the rest of the gods, and that goblins that do not follow this god, like Redcloaks's own brother, were shown to coexist with humans peacefully. Redcloak almost messed everything up by being greedy, but after spending time with his brother's family, started to realize that maybe there was another way. That was until Xykon returned and forcibly conscripted the peaceful goblins of Redcloak's brother's village. Sadly, with Xykon's return, Redcloak abandoned the notion of peaceful co-existence for the furtherance of the plan, killing his own brother in the process.
- Raf Maliksh in Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire: as the Champion of Law, he took it upon himself to take whatever steps were necessary to ensure order - including performing human (well, elf) sacrifices and massacring anyone even associated with the rebellion against him - and when he fell from power, he created The Chosen, a chaos-worshiping cult that he intended to 'purify' the world with.
- Captain SNES: Alex's captor, Ryan, in the "present" acts like a Knight Templar.
- In Its Walky!, after a particularly painful sequence of events, Sal snaps and goes on a quest to eradicate the evil that the Martians have brought to Earth, which eventually results in her coldly attempting to beat her own brother to death after he attempts to reach out to her, before deciding to wipe out everyone who was ever abducted by the Martians with an alien super-weapon - with the fact that this will also wipe out the entire continent of North America being of little concern to her.
- The Gatekeepers in Schlock Mercenary were definitely an example of this trope, cloning and murdering multiple times the entire population of the Milky Way galaxy in order to suppress teraport technology to maintain peace with the immensely powerful Paan'uri before Petey showed them that they've been deceived all along and the Paan'uri were planning to destroy the galaxy anyway.
- Kore the dwarven paladin in Goblins, who killed an innocent child because there was a slight chance he might grow up evil (he was "tainted" from having associated with the so-called "monster" races).
- Note that the child comes from a genuinely noble dwarven clan and was kidnapped by the monster races. That's right. If you get kidnapped under Kore's watch, your life is over either way.
- Vashiel from Misfile is one of these in his Back Story. Apparently he went too far in punishing a city.
- Professor Broadshoulders from Zebra Girl was cursed by a demon in his youth (the curse takes the form of a "yucky face" branded on his forehead, and swore to stop similar things from happening to anyone else. To this end, he tries to kill Sandra, who is a good person despite having been turned into a demon. Recently, it was revealed that the yucky face was actually a demonic third eye, which Broadshoulders opened, damning himself in an attempt to drag Sandra down to hell with him.
- Miranda West in The Wotch turns out to be one of these, if not flat-out evil. She is a former avatar of chaos after all...
- Leono from Sluggy Freelance.
Leono: Aylee, God will strike you down for this unforgivable betrayal!
Aylee: *sigh* You're so lucky that God always feels the same way you do.
- Security Chief Parahexavoctal in Buck Godot: Zap Gun For Hire will do anything to enforce his version of keeping the peace, including opening entire embasies to the vacuum of space.
Western Animation
- Megatron from Beast Machines willed the establishment of total order by eradicating free will. After conquering Cybertron by disabling the Transformer population, he extracted every single one of their sparks and stored them away. He intended to absorb every spark into his consciousness to create a perfect, technologically precise entity.
- Two examples from The Real Ghostbusters:
- In "Mr. Sandman, Dream Me a Dream", the title creature seeks to end war - by making the entire human race sleep for 500 years.
- In "Ragnarok and Roll", a depressed young man with a broken heart decides to end human suffering - by using a magic flute to play a "song of destruction" that will end the world.
- Most of the Superman The Animated Series episode "Brave New Metropolis" takes place in a Mirror Universe where Lois Lane's death has turned Superman into a tyrant who cooperates with Lex Luthor.
- The two-part Justice League adventure "A Better World" featured a vaguely similar plot. It featured the League's Mirror Universe equivalents, the Well Intentioned Extremists called the Justice Lords, who decide to end crime by ruling their world as fascist dictators. Interestingly, in this version the straw that broke the camel's back was Superman killing Luthor. The aftermath of this encounter was seen in the first two seasons of Justice League Unlimited.
- Well really, the straw that broke the camel's back was President of the United States Lex Luthor murdering the Flash and then gloating about it in Superman's face. At that point, Supe snapped and showed why heat vision is not a toy.
- The Darkwing Duck episode "Time and Punishment" introduced a futuristic version of the character, Darkwarrior Duck, who not only had run every bad guy out of St. Canard, but was now enforcing his iron will on its citizens for such "crimes" as staying out too late and eating too much junk food.
- Nerissa, the villain of season two of WITCH, seeks to rule the universe in order to stop all conflict and war. She eventually gets this wish, if only as a illusionary world she's trapped in for all eternity.
- Jet from Avatar The Last Airbender initially seems like a worthy ally to the Gaang with his resistance movement of people like him who have lost their families to the Fire Nation. However, it soon turns out that he's a very "the ends justify the means" guy, not caring at all if innocent people are hurt due to his actions and intent on wiping out the entire Fire Nation, including people who had nothing to do with the war. Later he repents and tries to help the right way, which doesn't work out so well.
- Also, he does not really reflect on his ends at all...
- Alvin from Sabrina The Animated Series. He starts off as a Ridiculously Cute Critter Morality Pet for Sabrina but guess what happens when she neglects him and leaves the spooky jar out. So Yeah...you know the rest.
Web Animation
- The main villains of Broken Saints, Lear and Gabriel, fall pretty firmly into this territory.
Other
- The Order of Mata Nui from Bionicle is a secret organization. As such, they do not need to show morals (as nobody would judge their actions) and will have no problems in doing unethical things, like experimenting on and modifying an entire species to use as soldiers against the Brotherhood of Makuta.
- In their defense, it might have been with the consent of the species. In any case, the race doesn't have a problem with the changes and continues to aid their mysterious benefactors. But it still doesn't let the Order off the hook, as they've imprisoned many without giving them a chance at parole. For good guys, they're pretty amoral.
Real Life
- The namesake of this trope comes from the members of a western Christian military order known as the Knights Templar. The Templars were skilled, pious and occasionally highly educated elite fighters, cavalry and bankers who fought primarily to open the pilgrimage routes during the Crusades. The Templar Knights were all in all a fairly normal (if vastly successful until its demise) depiction of the religious warrior class born from the upper crust of medieval society. However, its engagements in religiously yet complex motivated military operations have inevitably tarred them in the eyes of the western media which frecuently portrays them as major players of some Ancient Conspiracy.
- Tomás de Torquemada, the most notorious figure of the Inquisition.
- Pick any major conflict, and you'll find someone on each side preaching that their cause is just and their enemies are inherently evil. Whether the subject is the War on Terror (or on Western imperialism, if you're on that side), or the abortion debate, there will be those willing to destroy careers, lives, or themselves without remorse, secure in the conviction that they are doing the Right Thing.
- Histoical portayals of Maximillien de Robespierre are sharply divided between messianic (helped turn France into a republic, kept Austria and all the monarchies of Europe at bay post-Revolution, weeded out traitors in the republic, was nicknamed "The Incorruptible") and utterly demonic (killed about 30,000 people he thought might be foes of the Revolution or otherwise hindering it, usually makes "top 10 most evil men in history" lists) because he was very much this trope. He went to the guillotine after being overthrown wholly believing that
God the Supreme Being and the people of France were on his side, and that everything he'd done had been in accordance with the will of the greater good.
- In a sense, the Shinsengumi were very much like the Knights Templar, but they were a smaller group and only had about five years of activity... but what a turbulent five years to exist for! They had uniforms that look visually arresting even today, an unbelievably strict code of conduct, and what even The Other Wiki has to get rid of any sugar-coating for and describe as "an unflinching readiness to kill". They supported the Tokugawa regime in its final years, opposing the imperial loyalists. Despite their job technically being to keep the peace, they had a tendency to deserve being viewed as a threat, of course. And despite only ever numbering about three hundred at the very most, they are often credited with singlehandedly delaying the Meiji side's eventual victory.
- The Unabomber tried to get across his anti-technology message by sending bombs, carefully crafted with homemade parts, through the mail to universities, ad agencies, and major companies.
|
|
