Myopic Conqueror

"Yes, strength. King Robert was strong; he won the rebellion and crushed the Targaryen dynasty. And he attended three Small Council meetings in seventeen years of ruling, and he spent his time whoring, hunting, and drinking until the last two killed him. So, we have a man [...] who thinks winning and ruling are the same thing."

— Tywin Lannister, Game of Thrones

A Myopic Conqueror is a variant of The Conqueror who is only interested in the conquering and not anything after.

While at war, they are single-mindedly determined to claim control over whatever nation they've set eyes on...but if asked "And Then What?" by anyone, they'll simply shrug off or ignore the question. Alternatively, they may have been confident about their rule before getting hit hard by the boredom of ruling or other unpleasantness from being in charge. They may even become a deity and realize that Being God Is Hard. Either way, all of that passion they showed when seizing control is gone or may be redirected toward their next conquest.

Maybe they're a Proud Warrior Race Guy or Blood Knight to the extreme, where an endless cycle of violence and conquest is exactly what they want. Maybe they were once a powerful fighter or military leader who turned out to be The Caligula once they were given rule of the nation, or whose war served as a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against a previous ruler, with what to do after said revenge a mere afterthought. Maybe they're a Social Darwinist who isn't interested in actually ruling the "weak", instead waiting for the day a new challenger steps up to try to take their throne. An even darker example is a Super-Soldier, Master Computer, or robot army that is conditioned only to destroy and, once the original enemy is wiped out, immediately turns toward another group or even their masters/creators.

After a successful conquest, this character may end up miserable or insane because Victory Is Boring, and they Didn't Think This Through. One solution may be to simply delegate rule to someone else while continuing conquest elsewhere or otherwise trying to meaningfully occupy their time.

Compare and contrast Horde of Alien Locusts, who aren't interested in ruling a place after invading it and only exploit its land and people for their resources.

Contrast it with Visionary Villain. See also: Easily Conquered World, No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction, Wanting Is Better Than Having, and Despotism Justifies the Means.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• An epic case in Overlord (2012), where the conqueror wasn't even aware of what he'd set in motion. Ainz happened to muse that conquering the world might be interesting, but did so in earshot of one of his subordinates who (like all of Ainz' subordinates) considers his word to be law, and immediately started planning for the world's conquest. Once Ainz finds out several hundred chapters/two seasons later, he decides to roll with it by creating a kingdom where all races (humanoids, demihumans, and heteromorphics) will live in peace.

Comic Books

• The Avengers: Kang the Conqueror runs into this quite a bit. He likes conquering but finds the administration part once he's done conquering tediously dull. Meanwhile, his other self Rama-Tut is okay with it but generally prefers a smaller place to rule.
• Doctor Doom has a tendency of this. Despite claiming that his rulership of the world would make it a better place (and sympathetic writers agreeing with him to varying degrees), he finds more pleasure in beating the opposition rather than ruling for the most part. He does seem content in running the day-to-day operations of Latveria, as long as he can also plot to conquer the world/humiliate Reed Richards/whatever it is he's planning this week.
• One arc of Justice League of America sees the Crime Syndicate of Amerika conquer their Earth. Unable to cope with a lack of any real heroes, they turn their attention towards the planet Qward in order to start a new war for them to fight.
• Secret Empire: Subverted with HYDRA-Captain America, which Taskmaster later claims was his Fatal Flaw. HYDRA-Cap made it clear several times in the story that his main focus was on ruling and "bettering" the world according to HYDRA's ideals, to the degree that he actually lamented having to fight and kill his old allies to make it happen. When the resistance forces finally begin turning the tide against HYDRA, Taskmaster realizes it's time to Know When to Fold 'Em.
  Taskmaster: You hear that boom?
  Black Ant: Yup.
  Taskmaster: I know that boom. That's the "We're gonna lose" boom. [...] I tried to tell 'em, nobody gets in this game to rule the world, just to say they wanna rule the world. Doin' it's actually boring as hell.
• The titular beings in The Ogre Gods only conquer because they believe their giant size makes it their divine right to do so. Their founder wanted them to become powerful enough to take vengeance on the family he claims rejected him but died without actually informing anyone where he came from. Actually running their territories quickly fell to their direct subordinates, and then most of the furthest ones were soon annexed back as they horribly punished any bad news, so the only things maintained were things they would directly see.

Fan Works

• The Mountain and the Wolf:
  • The Wolf clearly expects Daenerys to be this, given how the Warhammer world works. Unfortunately for him (and unknowingly, due to his own actions), she's more interested in rebuilding the torched King's Landing and putting an end to the endless cycle of violence Westeros has suffered due to dynastic conflict and has no intention of setting out to conquer the world. It's likely that they would have clashed for good if not for his trying to steal the Iron Throne for unknown purposes, leading to her death.
  • The example of King Baratheon is actually cited. The Wolf has nothing but contempt for him, saying that stopping at just seven kingdoms is what did him in. He also repeatedly mentions that he too once had royal ambitions before the Chaos gods set him on his true path.
• Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K: When it comes to conquering and destroying worlds, Davik Thune is devastatingly effective, inflicting Curb-Stomp Battle after Curb-Stomp Battle on the Republic and Separatists alike. When it comes to actually holding said conquered worlds, he leaves much to be desired. For example, he led the offscreen conquest of Planet Axum, something that most conventional militaries would have considered a strategic nightmare for the same reasons as Coruscant (heavily defended City Planet in the heart of enemy territory, has a hostile population certain to outnumber any invaders by orders of magnitude, and its planetwide Layered Metropolis is too labyrinthine for any unfamiliar invaders to effectively navigate). Thune took over Axum virtually overnight on a whim through sheer brute force without any prior planning, preparation work, or even knowledge of what world he was invading. However, where the cracks start to show is in how he subsequently went about occupying Axum, leaving behind only a token garrison with a piddly three ships to defend his newly conquered holdings. This is despite knowing how close Axum is located to the Republic's capital planet and that the Republic has thousands of warships in their navy preparing to counter-invade.

Films — Animation

• Kung Fu Panda 2: Lord Shen seeks to conquer all of China mainly as a way to cope with his enormous parental issues, with the idea of actually ruling it never so much as mentioned by him or anyone else. He's absolutely unconcerned with his people, letting his wolf minions bully and exploit them with impunity, and turns his cannons on the city at the slightest inconvenience. The Soothsayer repeatedly criticizes him for his lack of an end goal:
  Soothsayer: Then will you finally be satisfied? Will the subjugation of the whole world finally make you feel better?
  Shen: Hmmm, it's a start. I might also convert the basement into a dungeon.
• The Lion King: Scar was solely interested in being the King of Pride Rock and didn't give any thought to the responsibilities that came with it, which led to the valley suffering a drought and all the animals starting to starve.
• Megamind falls into a funk after defeating Metro Man and taking over Metro City. Since he never expected to succeed, he has no idea what to do with the city.
• The Storm King in My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) doesn't really do anything with any of the land he conquers besides robbing them blind because he's a Psychopathic Manchild who really doesn't have the patience for politics.

Films — Live-Action

• Superman II: After easily conquering the Earth with his vast power, General Zod bemoans how boring it is.

Literature

• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Robert Baratheon was a renowned warrior and leader who marched his armies to King's Landing and defeated a dynasty that had ruled for over 300 years. Immediately after seizing control, however, he left his Hand and Small Council to handle the ruling of the empire while he indulged in personal vices. He neglected his duties so much that he even failed to legitimately impregnate his own wife and failed to notice that "his" children were the result of an extramarital affair between the Queen and her own twin brother. This is because Robert never wanted to be King in the first place, just to recover his betrothed Lyanna, but his insane predecessor forced his hand by declaring him and his allies to be outlaws. To top it off, Lyanna died prematurely and the circumstances of the civil war meant that Robert was now indebted to House Lannister, forcing him into an Arranged Marriage with a woman he despised.
  • Daenerys Targaryen realizes she has become this sort of ruler after one of the states she liberated on Essos suffers from chaos and an uprising after she moves on to her next conquest. She comes to realize that although her ultimate goal is to reclaim the Iron Throne in Westeros which is her birthright, it'll all be for naught if her base of power falls apart before she gets there. She thus spends a significant portion of her time ruling and trying to create stability in the city of Meereen before resuming her campaign toward Westeros.
• The titular Mollusk from Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain admits that for as much as he had enjoyed the challenge of conquering Earth, he didn't consider what he would do with his own planet after he had conquered it. He took to the task of protecting them from outside threats both out of a sense of responsibility for them (since he was the one who turned them into helpless pacifists) and as just another way to further alleviate his boredom.
• In Tales of the Magic Land, Urfin Jus conquers the Emerald City twice, only to become ultimately disappointed when it brings him no joy, his subjects, except for a few cowardly lickspittles, hate him with a passion, and he gets increasingly paranoid to the point of madness. He is overthrown both times and ends up doing a Heel–Face Turn and living a peaceful life near the Magic Land's border as a gardener, toymaker, and inventor.
• Artur Hawkwing in the backstory of The Wheel of Time conquered the entirety of the Westlands in his lifetime, save for Tar Valon, headquarters of the setting's main magical faction, and he had even them on the ropes by the time he died. However, he never chose an heir, and when he died his numerous offspring promptly began to fight over his territory, causing the empire to fracture into a series of independent kingdoms, only a few of which are still around by the time the main story begins. It's unclear whether he originally had plans in this direction, but the fact that he had the Dark One's right-hand man whispering in his ear with the direct intention of causing chaos for 40 years probably didn't help.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer: While some warlords will conquer a fortress to use as a base for further raids, most Chaos forces wish for nothing more than to spread kill, pillage, and burn the kingdoms they attack in order to gain the favour of the Dark Gods. The Beastmen in particular are renowned for their hatred of all civilisation, considering even a simple wall as an affront to the Chaos Gods, and will simply raze any area they attack to the ground.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Jaghatai Khan, the Primarch of the White Scars rallied the tribes of the Empty Quarter to overrun the Palatine's empire and successfully conquered his homeworld of Chogoris/Mundus Planus, but was completely uninterested in ruling it afterwards, fearing that a life in a palace would make him as weak, complacent and decadent as the Palatine. When his father the Emperor of Mankind and the Great Crusade reaches Chogoris, he was immensely relieved that he gets to fight and hunt again among the stars at the head of his Legion, and promptly did so, letting the tribes of Chogoris revert back to their divided and nomadic lifestyles.
  • While the motives that Chaos forces have when they attack a world vary, they rarely involve ruling the conquered territory and normally include some combination of creating monstrous war machines, using the population as slave labour and/or sport, using the planet as a base for further raids, turning the planet into a Daemon World, where the Warp intersects with realspace and usually the private playground of a Daemon Prince, or simply to kill and destroy in the name of their insane gods.
  • With war and violence hardwired into their biology, Orks are more interested in invading than ruling worlds. Being irrepressible scavengers, Orks will usually make use of conquered worlds and facilities to strengthen their own armies but don't really care about anything beyond building up their forces for the next fight.
  • Before their 5th Edition rewrite, the Necrons only woke up to purge all life from their planet and surrounding systems or abduct populations for mysterious purposes, before going back to stasis without any intention of ruling the areas they attacked.
  • Due to the soul-sucking deity that their forebears created, the Drukhari faction of Aeldari attempt to control the worlds they attack, emerging from the realspace, only to kill, slaves, and feed of the terror of their victims, before retreating back to their bases within the webway.
• Dungeons & Dragons: This is the backstory for the new Darklord Myar Hiiregard. She started out as a female Genghis Khan who unified the warring tribes of her home and conquered a vast empire... but once she'd done so, she found the actual process of ruling it to be intolerably boring, and eventually started secretly fostering conflicts so she could have an excuse to indulge her bloodthirst by rolling in with her army to mercilessly crush both sides, which is what drew her into the Demiplane of Dread.

Video Games

• Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu: In the novelisation of the video game, the titular Sin Tzu is characterised as this. Despite being a brilliant warlord, to the point that he successfully conquered large strands of Asia, he has absolutely no interest in building anything, usually abandoning his newly taken lands in the pursuit of further conquests, leaving them to rebel so he may conquer them again. He even declares "I am a conqueror, not a ruler," when one of his minions questions this.
• Dawn of War: In the last two expansions, every faction can fortify a conquered province by leaving guards and structures, which makes defending the province easier (in Dark Crusade, every building constructed by the player remained on the map, making defense much easier, but made the battle much longer as the player made sure to conquer the whole map before finishing off the enemy; in Soulstorm this was limited to a few preset buildings). Garrisoned units and structures can also be refunded to free up units from safe provinces to contested ones on the "Risk"-Style Map.
  • In both games, the Eldar simply leave once their purpose is achieved (taking out the Necrons, as well as the other enemies present on the planet/system), leaving behind a few hidden waygates if they should need to return.
  • The Imperial faction returns the planet to the fold, although depending on the faction what the planet becomes varies.
  • The Necrons wake up and start purging life from neighboring systems, leaving behind utterly barren planets.
  • The Tau bring the planet into their Empire, further extending their influence by preserving the useful infrastructures there and adding their own.
  • The orks use the local resources to fuel further Waaagh!s into neighboring systems. Dawn of War III revealed that they canonically won Soulstorm.
  • The Chaos commander becomes a Daemon Prince and rules over the conquered lands.
• Final Fantasy XIV: Zenos yae Galvus is an extreme Blood Knight and the crown prince of the Garlemond Empire, who was assigned as the viceroy of Ala Mhigo and Othard after successfully conquering the regions (almost singlehandedly). However, Zenos is utterly uninterested in ruling and assigns another acting viceroy, Yotsuyu goe Brutus, in his stead. He chooses her for the position because of the utter hatred of her own people that drives her to cruelly oppress them and break their will. He hopes that this treatment will lead the Domans to start another rebellion so that he can find a Worthy Opponent to put down yet again. If not, then the Domans can simply wallow in their misery while he sets his sights elsewhere. He later even assassinates his father...not because he had any interest in the throne, but because his father's biological superweapon was too powerful and too boring, and would have spoiled the fun of Zenos's "hunt" of the Warrior of Light.
• There's a few Fire Emblem villains like this:
  • Ashnard in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance fully admits that he started the war for the sake of war itself rather than any desire to rule territory. He only cares about causing enough chaos to unseal the "Dark God" from Lehran's Medallion, which he hopes would bring about an even more chaotic world of bloodshed where the strong rule. How little he cares about ruling or territory is shown when he gladly abandons his own country when Ike's army gets within striking distance, moving his base of operations to Crimea instead.
  • Sombron, the Big Bad of Fire Emblem Engage, aims to become a Multiversal Conqueror, but freely admits every world, and all the death and destruction he brings to it, is merely a "stepping stone". What he's actually doing is moving from world to world until he happens to hit one where the Zero Emblem still exists. In his mind, leaving each world a barren husk in search of a means to travel to the next doesn't matter, as he doesn't plan on staying there. The heroes call him out on this before the final battle, especially since he treats his own children a similar way.
• Kirby's Epic Yarn: Yin-Yarn, the Big Bad, is one of the few main Kirby villains who successfully took over Kirby's world. He then realizes that he didn't think of what to do after that, but he says that he'll figure something out.
• Mastermind: World Conqueror: The Mastermind not only doesn't have a plan for what to do after conquering the Earth, it turns out he thinks conquering the Earth and blowing it up are the same thing. As a result, the ending is the Mastermind escaping to space, blowing up the Earth, and then realizing he didn't bring any snacks.
• Mortal Kombat: Shao Kahn is the long-serving ruler of Outworld and a Multiversal Conqueror who captures other realms mostly through invasion, but also through subterfuge when necessary. Kahn is an entirely self-absorbed ruler whose goals only serve to satisfy his own lusts, whims, and ego. Though he and his supporters claim that his conquests are for the glory of Outworld, talking to anyone who's been in his service long enough to see his uglier side will have them reveal that this isn't the case. Shao Kahn's conquests do nothing to help Outworld or its people, and in a lot of ways make things worse for them. For instance, if he conquers a world with subjects that make for better warriors or slaves, his first order will be for them to kill the ones he no longer needs. To drive the point home, in his ending in Armageddon, he successfully conquers every other realm in existence, only to go insane with boredom.
• The New Order Last Days Of Europe: Göring's plans tend towards either this or an invocation of this. His reasoning is that the Reich was at its best during the war and the conquests and all throughout the bloodshed, triumphant at every turn. And even when losing, they were still doing better than the current Reich, which is falling the hell apart thanks to reality coming down like a ton of bricks upon them. From this, he takes not the conclusion that maybe he should try and fix things, but rather that the only solution to restore greatness is to wage eternal war, and conquer everything there is, so that the glory may last forever. From there, it's a succession of what the players would call REALLY GOOD IDEAS as Göring implements plans to fight everyone in Europe, then minor powers elsewhere, then superpowers;. This path ends in either Germany collapsing so badly that the civil wars get recursive, or an apocalyptic thermonuclear exchange; there is no victory for him in the end.
• In Spore, this is a persistent occupational hazard in the later levels, particularly after your civilization develops space travel. As you capture more planets, your colonies become increasingly vulnerable to invasions by other empires. And even if you manage to somehow keep the peace, there's always the possibility that your colonies will suffer environmental disasters that render them non-viable.
• Thais of Athens: Alexander the Great is depicted as this; his life's goal is to reach the eastern edge of the world (which he believes to lie just beyond India, unaware of the rest of Asia), and he pursues it in the only way he knows how — by conquering everything between Macedon and India, with little regard to how the conquered lands will be ruled later.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt:
  • According to Cerys an Craite, the late Bran Tuirseach was a High King who wasn't very good at keeping the Skellige Islands stable. She says that his rule was an endless cycle of dissatisfied and complaining people, who quieted down when Bran led the Skelligans on another successful raid on neighboring islands and villages, returning with riches and slaves, only for said complaints to slowly creep back later.
  • Cerys also believes that this is the kind of king her brother Hjalmar an Craite would make. He is not a particularly wise leader, nor is he interested in any sort of progressive reforms or non-violent justice system; he is a warrior and conqueror, and a particularly good one. She's the only Skelligan who voices an opinion that this is a bad thing.
• Total War: This can happen in just about every entry in the series if the player isn't careful. Gobbling up territory is nice, but almost always comes with major penalties; overextend too much and your lands will be suffering public order problems, and your military stretched too thin to be ready for counterattacks. It's a much better idea to expand steadily, consolidating your new holdings along the way.
• Paradox Interactive's grand strategy games like Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings have this happen as well. Overextension can lead to various internal issues like rebellions, or external issues like Napoleon-style coalitions against you. It takes a very great deal of effort to win if you don't put in the time and effort into stabilizing your realms.

Webcomics

• The Order of the Stick: The Big Bad Lich, Xykon, manages to conquer a city of Paladins called Azure City by a combination of opportunity and tremendous luck, though the Paladins destroy one of the Cosmic Keystones (called "Gates") Xykon was seeking in order to Take Over the World. His Dragon with an Agenda, Redcloak, convinces him to forestall his campaign to find the other Gates in order to use Azure City as a base and come up with a better plan before the next campaign. However, Xykon is completely uninterested in actually ruling anything and spends his days messing around and finding petty ways to entertain himself. Redcloak and his subordinates thus perform the actual ruling of the city (now renamed Gobbotopia), until the day a power-maddened Vaarsuvius launches an attack that nearly kills Xykon and costs Redcloak an eye. An enraged Xykon blames Redcloak for "wasting time" playing ruler in the city instead of moving on toward the next objective.
• Kill Six Billion Demons: Several of the Demiurges follow this trope, but Incubus, the Demiurge of Lust, willfully embodies it. In his view of the world, strength and conquest are all that matter, and creation is an eternal struggle to reach the top. Stopping your conquest at any point and actually trying to rule is a practice in futility to him, and thus Incubus has nothing but contempt for Solomon David, the Demiurge of Pride, who is attempting to create an eternal empire that will outlast his tenure as God-Emperor.
  "See, that's the thing, kid. We're princes of the world. We take what we will. We break. We kill. We conquer. Imagine, if you will, actually trying to rule. No, here's the moral of this story: He hasn't won yet."
• Sluggy Freelance: In "Holiday Wars", Bun-bun embodies this trope knowingly and without having a problem with it. After several of the Anthropomorphic Personifications of the holidays have been messing with him on and off for years, he decides to go to war against them, steal their powers, and Take Over the World by becoming a Physical God with all their holiday powers. However, he's perfectly fine with not having a plan beyond this:
  Basphomy: You didn't seem like the world-conquering type.
  Bun-bun: Well, at least until it gets boring.
  Basphomy: And Then What?
  Bun-bun: Then, anything I want.

Web Videos

• The Centrists of Jreg want to maintain their power, but are uninterested in doing anything beyond maintaining the status quo.
  Radical Centrist: One by one we are going to dismantle Team Extreme, and then we will tighten Centrism's grasp around the world.
  Libertarian: Tighten your grasp? And then what?
  Radical Centrist: Oh, Libertarian. Once we are in power, we are going to enact a wide-sweeping plan we have been planning for millennia.
  Libertarian: Tell me!
  Radical Centrist: Once the world is under Centrist command, we. Are going to do. Nothing!
  Libertarian: [gasp] Oh, wait, no. Yeah, that makes sense actually.

Western Animation

• In Justice League episode "Divided We Fall", Lex Luthor manages to convince Brainiac to partner up with him by pointing out that Brainiac is a clear example of this; as a robot, while he has a solid 'conquering' goal (collect all the universe's knowledge, and then destroy everything not in his collection so he can truly be said to know everything), he doesn't know what to do with ultimate power once he has it. So Lex offers one thing that Brainiac lacks but Lex doesn't: Imagination.
• Lord Hater from Wander over Yonder usually just lands on a planet, kicks out the leader, plants a flag and a statue of himself, and calls it a day. The episode "The Axe" shows that, without his Hypercompetent Sidekick leaving a battalion behind to defend them, he quickly loses everything he conquers.
• Double Subverted in The Powerpuff Girls (1998) special The Powerpuff Girls Rule!: Mojo Jojo gets the episode's MacGuffin, making him ruler of the world. He has brilliant, utopian plans that he accomplishes instantly but within a day gets so bored he goes on a crime spree to get the Girls to fight him again.

Real Life

• Alexander the Great is frequently depicted this way for a reason. While his practice of installing puppet rulers in a conquered region is standard imperial practice (he even used the same satrapy system as the Persians he conquered), he did not stop to consolidate his rule and just kept fighting until he died. Leading to his satraps carving the empire up into their own petty kingdoms.
• This trope started to cause problems in World War I, where many times the plan was "Conquer X kilometers" with little idea of what to do next.

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