History YMMV / BattleTech

* Star League General Amos Forlough helped conquer the Periphery during the Reunification War. While his actions against the Taurian Concordat, which included saturation level orbital bombardment and WMD deployment, may have been justified due to the fact that they were doing the same things; his actions on the Outworlds Alliance front went way too far. The Alliance barely had a regular military and so they used irregular militia to fight back with bombings and sniper attacks against his troops. He responded by killing 10% of the population of every planet that resisted (roughly 12 million people across the Outworlds), left many more without homes or shelter and sentenced his own subordinates to death and hard labor if they refused to carry out these atrocities. Little wonder why he is known as "The Butcher" and "The Baby Killer". The worst part is that [[KarmaHoudini he was never brought to justice]] and [[WrittenByTheVictors received some of the Star League's highest rewards for the victories he achieved.]]

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Nicholas Kerensky was either a driven visonary or a CompleteMonster, and there's plenty of evidence for both.

*** Aren't those two things the same?

* CompleteMonster: Stefan "The Usurper" Amaris, who manipulated young Richard Cameron- heir to the Star League- into a conceited self-righteous JerkAss for his own political ends, and pretended to be his sole friend only to betray and murder him in a coup that ended humanity's golden age and replaced TheFederation with a brutal tyrannical dictatorship that ruthlessly persecuted many groups of citizens, including intellectuals and artists. All in order to satisfy his lust for power. By the time Alexandr Kerensky and the Star League Defense Forces invade Terra to overthrow him, he has become completely insane, and even more evil, resorting to such unsavory tactics as using innocent civilians as human shields. So yeah, he's a major douchebag.
** The Word of Blake during the Jihad. Dropped nukes almost impulsively, targeted civilian populations with bio-weapons... ALL the powers in the Inner Sphere pretty much went EnemyMine against the Blakists, and [[PayEvilUntoEvil much escalation occurred in response]].
** Malvina Hazen is edging towards this; certainly she's AxeCrazy already
** The Society during the Wars of Reaving. They wiped out entire worlds with biological weapons and pretty much acted like the Word of Blake on a smaller scale; only with horrific human experimentation instead of reeducation camps.

*** Incidentally, her older brother's girlfriend? Princess of a neighboring realm of considerable size, power, and military prowess. If the Draconis Combine hadn't had its own problems to deal with Katherine would have had a lot more trouble on her hands in the midst of the Civil War.

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: Looking at the long-term prospects of the setting may plausibly cause this. In the ''short'' run, there are always plenty of sympathetic characters to care about; however, both the game and its fictional universe are {{Long Runner}}s built essentially (if mostly implicitly) around the concept of eternal largely meaningless conflict between arbitrary factions because [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption humanity is apparently forever unable to learn from its past mistakes and thus doomed to repeat them]], and it becomes increasingly hard to empathize with successive ''generations'' of characters (a point the setting has well hit by now) all going through pretty much the same motions over and over again.

** Katherine Steiner-Davion grew into this. She believed that her brother Victor would make for a disastrous Archon-Prince, so she assassinated her own mother to force him onto the throne early and start discrediting him. When Victor made a disastrous decision that led to the FWL and the CC declaring war on them, Katherine pulled the Lyran half of the realm out from under his control to keep it from harm. That was pretty much the end of Katherine's benevolence to her people; from there, it was a short trip to crazyville. She started bullying her own nobles into compliance via either loosing [[StateSec LOKI]] on them or withdrawing army support for border worlds, leaving them defenseless before the Jade Falcons. Then she pilfered the rest of Victor's realm from him, ordered an assassin to kill Victor's girlfriend just to [[HeroicBSOD ''spite'' him]], and then murdered her youngest brother just because of what he might say. Unlike many of her nasty contemporaries, [[VisionaryVillain Sun-Tzu Liao]] in particular, most of her later actions were entirely self serving and did not have the aim of helping her realm or people.

** Katherine Steiner-Davion had all the markings of a true [[TheSociopath sociopath]] and millions of people paid for it. She assassinated her own mother, her youngest brother, her elder brother's girlfriend (because she knew it would cause him to have a [[HeroicBSOD nervous breakdown]]) and was responsible for the [=FedCom=] Civil War. If people resisted her she would unleash [[StateSec LOKI]] on them or their families. If you were ruling a border world than you might find LAAF units withdrawn... just as the Jade Falcons came knocking. Unlike many of her nasty contemporaries, [[VisionaryVillain Sun-Tzu Liao]] in particular, her actions were entirely self serving and did not have the aim of helping her realm or people.

* BrokenBase: The Double Heat Sinks. Either you think that they unbalanced the game in favor of energy weapons or you think that they made the energy weapons viable. And whatever group you belong to, it is almost universally agreed that trying to fix Double Heat Sinks would cause more problems that it solves.

* BrokenBase: The Double Heat Sinks. Either you think that they unbalanced the game in favor of energy weapons or you think that they made the energy weapons viable.

** Katherine Steiner-Davion had all the markings of a true [[TheSociopath sociopath]] and millions of people paid for it. She assassinated her own mother, her youngest brother, his elder brother's girlfriend (because she knew it would cause him to have a [[HeroicBSOD nervous breakdown]]) and was responsible for the [=FedCom=] Civil War. If people resisted her she would unleash [[StateSec LOKI]] on them or their families. If you were ruling a border world than you might find LAAF units withdrawn... just as the Jade Falcons came knocking. Unlike many of her nasty contemporaries, [[VisionaryVillain Sun-Tzu Liao]] in particular, her actions were entirely self serving and did not have the aim of helping her realm or people.

** The Society during the Wars of Reaving. They wiped out entire worlds with biological weapons and pretty much acted like the Word of Blake on a smaller scale; only with horrific human experimentation instead of reeducation camps.
* DesignatedHero: When you think about it, Hanse Davion got a few hundred million people killed to impress his hot eighteen year-old Nordic wife. And to get payback from the man who tried to kidnap him and put a doppelganger on his throne.

** The closer you look at Natasha Kerensky, the less you see a FireyRedhead who is good at what she does and much more someone who is at best a BloodKnight, and at worst a SociopathicSoldier (though to be fair, she would have been a type 4 after her lover was killed in cold blood) -- the accounts are legion of epic (and lethal) bar fights that The Black Widow and her Black Widow Company engaged in out of [[ItAmusedMe sheer boredom and for the fun of it]]. Another account concerns a member of Wolf's Dragoons admitting that he had leaked information that made its way to House Kurita, information that contributed to the PyrrhicVictory that the Dragoons endured on Misery. Natasha cold-bloodedly killed him, ''just as Jamie Wolf was about to slap the man.'' When Wolf called her on her murder, her response was to quote words used by Nicholas Kerensky to justify the complete annihilation of an entire Clan.

** Malvina Hazen is edging towards this; certainly she's AxeCrazy allready

** Before the new rules removed the bonus for them, [[GatlingGood Rotary Autocannons]] found themselves mated to Targeting Computers quite a bit. The ability to put up to 30 points of damage on a targeted location, or even at a hit bonus, proved to be overwhelming, and as of the Total Warfare rules, rotary and Ultra autocannons at anything beyond single fire mode can no longer make an aimed shot, nor can pulse lasers. They still get the targeting bonus, though.

* DorkAge: The ''Dark Age'' period.

* CompleteMonster: Stefan "The Usurper" Amaris, who manipulated young Richard Cameron- heir to the Star League- into a conceited self-righteous JerkAss for his own political ends, and pretended to be his sole friend only to betray and murder him in a coup that ended humanity's golden age and replaced TheFederation with a brutal tyrannical dictatorship that ruthlessly persecuted many groups of citizens, including intellectuals and artists. All in order to satisfy his lust for power. By the time Alexandr Kerensky and the Star League Defense Forces overthrew him, he was a pathetic and lonely individual lost in his one insanity. So yeah, he's a major douchebag.

* CompleteMonster: Stefan "The Usurper" Amaris, who manipulated young Richard Cameron- heir to the Star League- into a conceited self-righteous JerkAss for his own political ends, and pretended to be his sole friend only to betray and murder him in a coup that ended humanity's golden age and replaced TheFederation with a brutal tyrannical dictatorship that ruthlessly persecuted many groups of citizens, including intellectuals and artists. By the time Alexandr Kerensky and the Star League Defense Forces overthrew him, he was a pathetic and lonely individual lost in his one insanity.