War! Motivation

Hi there, this is my first post, so I'll try not to offend anyone the first thing I do :P Okey, I have this character who needed a motivation to kill a high status member of another country. Since she is some sort of chessmaster, I also needed the murder to be a part of a larger scheme. Therefore, I couldn't use revenge or hate or something like that as the motivation. After a lot of thinking I decided that this murder appears to be political, and when the person dies, a war starts. Easy peasy this far. The problem is, I also want her to be neutral to who wins the war, because I don't want an antagonist who just want to conquer another country. Instead, I thought, maybe the war itself is a piece of the puzzle of what her motivation is.

The only problem is, war sucks. I don't want the antagonist to just be a sick bastard who want to watch the world burn. I need the war as a tool to something, not the goal itself. Any ideas?

Maybe she's from a province that was occupied by the target nation?

You could take a page from Gundam Wing and have your character launch a war specifically to show the world how completely terrible and pointless such wars are. Sure, there's a bunch of logical problems with that, but it'd work as a motive for a somewhat sympathetic Well-Intentioned Extremist character.

Hang on. So, the antagonist is the chessmaster who needs to kill someone to start a war? Is that correct?

Perhaps it's a war for financial or economic reasons, then. The antagonist's country needs to take over another country or something largely to keep their own people functioning. Or maybe it's a situation in which the antagonist has come to the conclusion that one country in a single landmass is a better idea than a half-dozen fractured kingdoms who never 'move forward' because they're always bogged down in their petty squabbles?

A few more possibilities: a war between two countries might weaken both in terms of both economics and politics; it might act as a large-scale distraction, holding the attention of the leaders of those countries; it might delay international deals not related to the war; finally, it might reduce the population of both (depending on the scale and nature of the war, and the populations of the countries in question).

edited 13th Aug '14 9:54:28 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

Yeah, it's correct :) Sorry for being so confusing. I'm not entirely straight with exactly hows she's going to be either.

I like the idea of her freeing her province from the target nation, but I don't think I can find a way to work that out. The things is, the target nation and the will-be-attacking nation (we can call them south and north, for the sake of simplicity) have been separated for entire centuries because of a great chain of mountains that have effectively prevented anyone except the most skilled of climbers to pass. The two countries have been developing separately all this time. Only lately have the north had the technology to pass the montains, with some sort of trainliftthingies. There have been tensions between north and south mostly because the north see the south as "underdeveloped" and "in need of help" more or less. The south is critical to the way the north live and actively resist this "help" which is why the north consider taking over the south by force. Unfortunatly, that effectively rules out most of the things I have thought about before, because the conflict is fairly new. I don't know. :/

The conflict may be only five or ten years old, I don't think you need much more than that (probably much less) to develop a searing hatred of someone/ something. Maybe the main character assassinates the Emperor/ whatever of the south and makes it look like the north did it?

Maybe her own country, for in the west, is under occupation by the north, and a full war against the south might distract them long enough to organize a proper resistance?

Let's see, what if the war is not the motivation for the assassination but just a terrible consequence of it?

Random scenario: there have been hostilities along the border shared by both nations, the North and South. Both countries, when confronted about it, play dumb and say the 'attacks' were mere accidents. Both sides could be lying. Both sides could be telling the truth. When it's "us" vs "them", the truth hardly matters.

Now, the antagonist sees the recent aggressions as an opportunity to get rid of her target AND blame it on some kind of separatist *slash* freedom fighters group. So she pulls the trigger.

Everything is going well for her except for one little detail: the North uses the assassination of their high profile citizen as an excuse to declare war on the South. Hilarity ensues (not really).

As for the antagonist's motivations, it could be anything. Revenge, racism, nationalism, or she just hated the way the victim dressed. Personally I'd go with "they wanted to steal my freedoms so I taught them a lesson by killing someone important to them, lulz".

Now, in my humble opinion, having the war as the goal is kind of complicated because nations are very complicated. Human nature ensures that mistakes will be made, and that makes it hard to predict if a war would actually break out after that incident.

Finally, I'd suggest you to check the Useful Notes page for World War I.

Ah, then it's obvious: the protag wants to start the war now, because war is inevitable, and the side she wants to win is going to be at a greater and greater disadvantage the more time passes before it starts. The same reason Hitler invaded Russia. Except in this case, there is very little popular support for an offensive war, so an incident has to be staged to generate some. Hence, an assassination, which will be blamed on the other side.