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This is when a leader is cruel and perhaps incompetent, and the underling obeys him out of feelings of some ideal, while hating every minute of it.
The trope is mostly used in vaguely medieval settings. In feudalistic structures more than in others, someone might feel a deep but forced obligation to a certain leader. The underling usually is a minor noble of a warrior caste, a knight or samurai or such.
So the liege orders: "Slaughter these peasants who raise against me as I'm working them to death." and the vassal answers: "They're asking for more food... perhaps they could work better, if Your Greatness gave them some."
"No."
"I like being harsh, hurry up, take the army and mow them down!"
(Nauseated): "Certainly, my lord." and he goes and does it.
To make certain that the public understands that this character disagrees, he will get a lot of Pet The Dog moments, appeal to his liege to overthink a decision, beg for the lives of others, angst visibly when he's alone and try to twist his orders a little if possible. He often doesn't even consider the heroes his enemy and is an honorable opponent. Also he might be seen as suffering as much under his lord as the next subject, for sympathy points.
These types tend to be The Fettered who have sworn an oath to unreliable leaders and refuse to break their word. Such characters are prone to Heel Face Turn because all they need is to broaden their ethic horizon a bit.
Some old European knightly codes had a proper procedure for a knight resigning his oath because his liege lord was on the Wrong side. He had to do it to his liege lord's face. If he survived, he then could join the Right side. A samurai only had the choice of outright killing himself demonstratively as a way of disagreeing and staying honorable. These, hm, options can get ignored due to the Rule Of Drama.
This trope raises the question what an oath is worth. What are wrong and right, personal mercy or abstract principles? What is honor? The liege is evil, how evil is the vassal? Liege and vassal are great foil for each other and for the relationship of a leading hero and his followers.
Especially tragic when the vassal is also more competent than the liege. Very similar to My Country Right Or Wrong only more personal. A common characterization of The Dragon.
Examples
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- Benawi of Utawarerumono hates his orders and stays loyal until the end. The heroes surround the castle and before he lets them kill his lord he first urges him to commit Seppuku and when the lord doesn't he kills him himself. Not out of his clear contempt, anger or hate, but as his second.
- In Digimon Adventure 02, Wormon has this approach to the Digimon Emperor.
- Played For Laughs with the (Anime only) character of Sasuke in Ranma 1/2 who serves the Kunou's every whim no matter how deranged or unpleasant.
- Done several times in Saint Seiya, one such instance occured with the Leo Saint realizing his master was not acting in the interest of Athena but actually against her and decided to confront him before being brainwashed back into his service. Of course the main example of the series comes with the Sagittarius Saint who went rogue to the Sanctuary by saving baby Athena from being killed by the Pope, the ruler of the Sanctuary.
- It also happens the other way around in the Asgard arc in which no matter if their princess is right or wrong, her warriors decide to fight for her until their death even if they do acknowledge she has changed. Yet in another variation near the end of this arc came with Siegfried who disobeyed her princess' orders when realizing the ones he was fighting against were not the real enemies and were in fact trying to free his princess from the mind control ring she was subjected to. He actually gave them the last Mac Guffin required to free her and sacrificed himself by turning on the emissary of his true enemy. In that case, he refused to serve his Lady for her own good in spite of all the consequences, his death.
- Happens quite a bit in Lone Wolf And Cub, for differing values of Lords.
- In Samurai Champloo, one such samurai has the misfortune of serving a lord who has hired a Mad Scientist to revive her daughter. Said scientist tries to accomplish this by kidnapping beautiful young maidens and chopping up their parts to create a flesh golem.
- Abelia towards King Hamdo in Now And Then Here And There. She gets better.
- Entei to Molly in the third Pokemon movie. He actually says "Whether it is right or wrong, I will do as she wishes!"
- Arguably, Souseiseki in Rozen Maiden is subject to the trope, both in the Manga and Anime. She is loyal to her original master, and does whatever he asks of her, no matter how henious, but it is pretty clear she doesn't like doing such acts, and she only does it to help her master become a better person.
- In Fables it turns out that Faithful John's master is working for the Big Bad and, since his fable is all about loyalty, he has no choice but to be The Mole.
- Captain Torame in Usagi Yojimbo.
- Two amazons in the widely reviled Amazons Attack spent a lot of time discussing Hippolyta's insane actions, and how they should stop her. They ended up doing nothing.
- Usagi Yojimbo. For instance, in "The Dragon Bellow Conspiracy," Usagi infiltrates a lord planning a coup against the Shogun who also has an honorable second in command who lives this axiom. In the climax of the story when Usagi reveals his hand and fights to stop the lord, he confronts the second who refuses to switch sides and Usagi admits that he understands considering he never abandoned his own lord (albeit a good guy) when the odds went hopeless against him.
- Seems to be the case with Espio in the Sonic the Hedgehog comic. He's obediently followed orders ever since the Iron Queen took control of his clan, even though he doesn't seem to want to since he has to attack his former friends.
- General Glozelle in Prince Caspian (the film, maybe in the book too, but my memory is hazy). Throughout the film he's got this squeamish but helpless look, has some dialogue with Lord Sopesian to the effect of "watch your butt, or Miraz'll kill you", and looks utterly devastated when King Miraz orders him to kill some of his soldiers to make it look like Caspian is bloodthirsty... which he does. He seems relieved when Aslan offers the Telmarines a fresh start someplace else.
- 47 Ronin.
- The Man In The Iron Mask (The Movie) has one of the musketeers be blindly loyal to Louis, despite his evil and capricious nature because he is Louis' father. Eventually he comes around to the other musketeer's viewpoint that he's gotta go. You'd think having his other son, Louis twin would maybe accelerate his decision making process... but no.
- Olivier of the Brother Cadfael books by Ellis Peters is a paragon of knightly virtue who sees all the faults of Empress Maud. She isn't evil but she and King Stephen are locked in a stalemate of a civil war which is devastating the country. For a good part of Brother Cadfael's Penance Olivier deeply despises a former friend who switched sides to Stephen in the hope of the war finally being decided. (It doesn't work.) Olivier wishes for peace but clearly values staying true to one's merciless liege higher than ending the war.
- The Kingsguard of A Song Of Ice And Fire are supposed to be this, defending the king and executing his orders no matter what they are. The "old" Kingsguard died defending the Axe Crazy "Mad King" Aerys against a rebellion. When the youngest member, Jaime Lannister, kills the king to prevent him from destroying the capital city, he is reviled for his perceived treachery in spite of the old king's madness.
- Notably, while everyone knew Aerys was mad and had done things like burn a powerful lord alive, as 'fire is the champion of House Targaryen', no-one alive but Jaime knows he had degenerated into such mass murdering, city burning crazy. If more people knew they might not revile him quite so much.
- This is one of the main themes in P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles Of The Kencyrath series. Among the Kencyr people, obedience to one's Lord is considered a foundation of honor; if one's Lord orders you to do something dishonorable, the feeling goes, the dishonor rests on his head, not yours. However, the whole system is set up with the expectation that such occasions will be few, minor, and moderated by the priests and the judges. Then a situation comes up that wasn't expected; the Highlord of the Kencyrath, the highest authority in the Kencyr people, decides to betray his people to their ancient enemy in return for personal immortality, but he needs the co-operation of others, particularly those close to him in his own House, to pull this betrayal off. Do the rules of honor still apply? When the order is not simply mildly dishonorable but utter betrayal, does honor still compel obedience? Some decide that it does, and with a heavy heart commit atrocity. Some decide that it does not, and struggle against him. Others decide that suicide is the only honorable option, while yet others don't know the full extent of what they're asked to do until it's too late. However, honor only requires obedience to the Lord's Exact Words; some decide to obey their orders in as unhelpful a way as they can possibly get away with.
- Elliot from Jagged Alliance 2. He works for an evil queen, and must realize that she's a cruel dictator after she keeps threatening her own citizenry. She slaps him around and bloodies his face every time he brings bad news, eventually becoming angry enough to shoot him in the head (he survives). And yet, he's still willing to pull out a gun and start firing at your team when you finally confront him.
- Lancer in Fate Stay Night. And Lancer in Fate Zero. It doesn't end well either time, but in at least one case it ends in a spectacularly awesome fashion.
- Knightman from MMBN 2 exhibits this trait, to his deletion.
- Cecil and Kain in Final Fantasy IV both struggle with this, though Cecil more visibly since he's the viewpoint character. It takes the burning of a peaceful village and the implied order to kill a child to get the pair to disobey the king. Turns out the king really is a noble and decent human being, but he was killed and replaced by a monster sometime prior to the start of the game
- It's implied Teal'c was like this before his Heel Face Turn in the first episode of Stargate SG 1. He did terrible things, and hated himself for them, but he was ordered to by, well, his god. When O'Neill gives him the chance of freedom from Apophis, he jumps at the chance.
- This is the struggle Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Karai faces in the second and third seasons of the second cartoon, where the character's loyalty to her adoptive father, The Shredder, clashes with her more noble instincts. One of these forms this clash takes is in her reluctance to kill the turtles, who had agreed to help her restore the New York Foot in exchange for ending the syndicate's vendetta against the turtles. While the agreement was made under false pretences—it was made under the assumption that the Shredder was dead and that Karai would be leading the Foot, which Karai knew was not the case—she still felt compelled to keep it, despite her father's wishes.
- Since Megatron is the undisputed Leader of All Decepticons, Always, anyone wearing the purple has to murmur this phrase if they want to stay sane. The least loyal of Megatron's troops have used excuses for staying under him ranging from "It's still better than the Autobots" to "I get to live how I want", but some 'Cons like just say "He's the boss."
- All except one.
- Played with in Beast Machines; the generals Strika and Obsidian are loyal to Cybertron, first, foremost, and always...and, by their own Insane Troll Logic, whoever is in control of Cybertron, at the time - regardless of who that individual is, or what his plans are - is Cybertron, and will shift their allegiances accordingly. This means, as their fellow Vehicon Thrust points out, that they're perfectly willing to sacrifice the sanctity of the planet itself, if that is what its current despot deems necessary (which, yes, does in fact render their "loyalty" to Cybertron moot).
- On The Fairly Oddparents, Juandissimo does evil things simply because his godchild Remy orders him to. When Remy's not around, he's quite friendly.
Culture
- "The Tale of the Loyal Samurai" comes up quite often in, obviously, Samurai stories. The gist of it is that loyalty is the most important tenet of Bushido, even if you're loyal to a wicked master. Even if your lord went headlong past the Moral Event Horizon, to rebel would be an unpardonable loss of honour.
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