Balcony Speech

For Apathetic Citizens, the sign really helps.

"Instead of government, we had a stage
Instead of ideas, a prima donna’s rage
Instead of help, we were given a crowd
She didn’t say much but she said it loud!"

— Che, Evita, "Oh What a Circus"

In order to both display a mastery over the crowd and to better project one’s voice, leaders often give speeches on some type of raised platform. A special favorite is a prominent balcony from a palace or mansion. In media, such speeches can be portrayed positively or negatively, depending on the speaker.

If it’s a popular monarch or head of state, then they are likely trying to encourage their people during a time of great danger or struggle or declaring victory after the Evil Overlord’s attempt at conquest was thwarted. If it’s an Action Politician, then it is especially likely that they are giving a Rousing Speech. If The Hero Dies bravely in battle, then this may also serve as a eulogy.

However, if the leader is demagogue, then expect this to be a case of Putting on the Reich with plenty of Hitler Cam shots. The crowds will be likely be whipped up into a frenzy, and if it’s a musical it may turn into an Angry Mob Song. In the case of villain victory, then this will likely be a New Era Speech. But if it’s a more established People's Republic of Tyranny, the crowd may look pathetic and disinterested and only give weak, obligatory cheers. In this case or in the case of a Near-Villain Victory, expect The Hero and his crew to stage a very appropriate interruption of the events.

Compare with Rousing Speech and Rabble Rouser. See also Emergency Presidential Address.

---

Examples:

Anime/Manga

• Gankutsuou: General Morcerf does this during a military coup; definitely a Putting on the Reich version.
• One Piece:
  • Shortly after Luffy is given his first bounty, we see Vice-Admiral John Giant giving one of these to an assortment of marines, about how they must wipe out any pirate- IN THE NAME OF JUSTICE!!
  • At the end of the Alabasta arc, Vivi gives her coming-of-age speech to the people of Alabasta from the balcony of the royal palace. However, she sneaks out partway through to say goodbye to the Straw Hats.
• Gaara, from Naruto Shippuden, gives his Rousing Speech Allied Shinobi Forces from a balcony.
• Mother Keeper: Graham gives one to the members of Chaos Tide in order to have them join forces with Cosmos (and presumably the cocytus) to take down Eden once and for all.

Comic Books

• King Smurf in The Smurfs comic book story of the same name (and its Animated Adaptation) delivers one from the balcony of his newly-finished royal palace, thanking his "loyal" subjects for its completion. However, only one Smurf remains standing to give applause to the speech, saying "Long live King Smurf".
• The French comic ''Robin Dubois" (a Robin Hood spoof) has the sheriff's wife run out of eggs and tomatoes (and seeing as she was planning to make a tomato omelette...). The sheriff goes to the balcony and asks the village at large for their opinion on a new income tax. He manages to save two eggs, and suggests tomato sauce will do fine.

Fan Works

• In the Star Trek fanfic The First Tile, Monarch Kalidon of the Trill (the position should have been only symbolic, but that turns out not to be the case) calls one of these after a brief civil war on the planet using it to not only denounce his father's policies, and declare some badly needed reform, but to reinstate the unfairly ousted Prime Minister Kareel Odan.
• Gihren Zabi gives one in the fourth chapter of Mobile Suit Gundam Alpha, about the inner superiority of Zeon. His wife didn't seem to like it.

Films — Animated

• Aladdin: The Sultan, when announcing the wedding of Jasmine and "Prince Ali". Al is then pushed out into the balcony and in front of the cheering crowd, for extra embarrassment.
• The Lion King (1994):
  • While not a balcony in the strictest sense, Simba is presented to the entire animal kingdom in such a manner.
  • Scar gives one to the hyenas, encouraging them to join him in overthrowing Mufasa.
• Shrek: Lord Farquaad is a fan of this. Possibly because no one could see him at all if he weren't elevated so far over everyone's heads…
• Joseph: King of Dreams: Pharaoh announces Joseph's promotion from imprisoned slave boy to the second-most-powerful man in the world from a balcony.
• In Minions, one of the eponymous characters is crowned King of England and gives a nonsensical speech like this.

Films — Live-Action

• Baahubali 2 The Conclusion: Queen Mother Sivagami announces the death of Amarendra, and names his newborn son Mahendra as the new king.
• Bananas: Has such a scene.
• The Beautician and the Beast: Used as a parody of Evita
• The Expendables: General Garza, when speaking to his soldiers.
• The Great Dictator: The "Look up, Hannah", with Charlie Chaplin laying a brick bat not just on Naziism but nationalism itself.
• The Lord of the Rings
  • In 'The Two Towers'', Saruman makes such a speech from Orthanc to his army before they march for Helm's Deep.
  • Denethor in The Return of the King subverts this, telling the Gondorian army to flee for their lives when Sauron's army is at the gates of Minas Tirith. (Not so much from a balcony as over the top of the highest level of the city, but it serves the same purpose.)
• Monty Python's Life of Brian:
  • The trope is played with in the "You are all individuals" scene. He speaks to the people he wants not to follow him from his window.
  • Pontius Pilate pays it straight when he addresses the people of Jerusalem.
• Moon over Parador: Features an example of this.
• The Princess Bride: Prince Humperdink announces Buttercup as his bride-to-be from a balcony.
• Quo Vadis: Nero watches the Imperial Troops march from his balcony and exchange salutes.
• Star Wars:
  • Revenge of the Sith: While it doesn't take place on a balcony, Palpatine's speech to the Senate announcing the rise of The Empire serves the same function. Then again, a pod rising a hundred feet off the ground is close enough to a balcony.
  • General Hux does this from a podium in The Force Awakens, as part of the intentional First Order/Nazi visual parallel.
• The Wall: Pink's opening speech in the "In the Flesh?" segment qualifies in pretty much every sense of this trope.
• The Three Stooges: The classic short You Nazty Spy!! satirizes Hitler's and Mussolini's use of it.
• The Hunger Games: Catching Fire: This is President Snow's preferred approach to public appearances.
• Water (1985). The Cascaran Liberation Front (all two of them) try singing to the masses to make them turn away from signing up with American oil company Spenco. No-one pays much attention until an American executive, annoyed at their bad singing, offers a hundred bucks to anyone who nails them. An attempt to escape from the balcony by jumping onto a pair of bicycles doesn't end well.
• In The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, John Lithgow, portraying Earth scientist Dr. Emilio Lazardo who is possessed by alien villain Lord John Warfan gives such a speech to his men before taking off to invade their home world in another dimension. He constantly mugs in the style of Benito Mussolini (making you wonder which personality knew about that) including a rousing call to arms:
  Warfan: "Where are we going?"
  Lectroids: "Planet Ten!"
  Warfan: "When?"
  Lectroids: "Real soon!"
• In This Other Eden, set in a small Irish town following the War of Independence, a controversial modern-art statue of a local IRA hero is blown up, sparking a riot. Crispin Brown, a Hibernophilic Englishman looking to settle in the area, gives an impassioned speech for peace from the balcony of the town hall. In keeping with the movie's satirical tone, the crowd are mostly just amused at Brown making an ass of himself while the other characters don't have the heart to tell him so.

Live Action TV

• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Bronwyn tries to encourage people barricaded withing the walls of Ostirith to stand and fight the Orcs, by speaking from a wooden balcony. Her speech falls flat when Waldreg interferes and convinces the people to surrender in exchange for their lives and takes half of the people with him.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus: The Hitler scene, where Hitler is hiding out as Mr. Hilter, has the titular character running in the North Minehead by-election and addressing, from a balcony, a cast of one man and three children. His speech is welcomed with canned applause.
• The first scene of BBC's Merlin has Uther Pendragon doing one of these about the execution of a sorcerer. Several major characters who live in the castle watch from behind him or windows, while Merlin and a large cast of extras watch from below.
  • Uther does this almost whenever he's executing someone.
• Lampshaded by the Doctor in the Doctor Who story "Terror of the Zygons" when he points out that it takes more than a Loch Ness Monster to rule Earth.
  "But you can't rule a world in hiding. You've got to come out onto the balcony sometimes and wave a tentacle."
• Used twice in the first "V" miniseries.
  • In the first case, Visitor leader Diana is standing on a balcony above a crowd and giving a wonderful speech of friendship when the Resistance fighters break in and rip off her fake skin, exposing her as being a Lizard Person.
  • A couple of days later, the Visitors re-enact the whole scene, with Diana giving her speech from the same balcony with cheering spectators below... but this time, there are a couple of Visitor flunkies off-camera holding up CueCards to tell the crowd when to laugh and cheer, and a large number of armed guards are standing around, also off-camera, to make sure no one tries any tricks.

Music Videos

• Davey Havok gives some sort of speech to rally his followers in AFI's "Miss Murder" video.

Newspaper Comics

• The Wizard of Id: The King of Id often addresses his subjects from the balcony. One of them often shouts a snarky comment back at him.

Theater

• Evita: Appropriately used to mirror Real Life, one of the songs is even entitled "On the Balcony of the Casa Rosada".
• A speech is attempted by Prince-and-soon-to-be-crowned-King Charles in King Charles III to an already assembled crowd at Buckingham Palace... but the crowd is there protesting Charles' hugely unpopular decision to dissolve Parliament. None of the protesters can hear him over the general din of the protest-ing, even when Charles tries using a megaphone.

Video Games

• Tropico 3: This is an ability your dictator character can perform. It can improve morale.
• The evil ending of Knights of the Old Republic. Amusingly, since the player character can't talk, Bastila is the one that actually makes the speech, despite the player being the new Dark Lord of the Sith.
• A stock cutscene in Age of Wonders 2: The Wizard's Throne and Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic.
• Gulcasa delivers one of these in Blaze Union at his coronation. The recipients of the speech—the remnants of the former Imperial Army and the nobility, who have never been exposed to his ideals—are initially ambivalent towards their new sovereign, thinking "at least it's impossible for this guy to be worse than our last emperor". Once Gulcasa is done talking, he has their complete and undying loyalty.
  • In Yggdra Union, Gulcasa's rejection of Yggdra's demands for his unconditional surrender is also one of these, as he's standing atop the city ramparts and addressing the enemy army gathered beneath.
• John Hancock, the ghoul mayor of Goodneighbor in Fallout 4, likes delivering these to his community from time to time from the balcony outside his den in the Old State House.
• In Middle-earth: Shadow of War, every siege begins with the defending orc Warlord giving out a speech from atop the main fortress's balcony to assure Talion, and his forces, that he has no hope of winning. Once you conquer the fortress, Talion and Celebrimbor give a joint speech every time a region is conquered. Every speech is actually somewhat terrifying, with Celebrimbor's voice superimposed over Talion's and the aggressive, almost manic tone they use to promise pain and suffering for their enemies. Given they're giving a speech to uruks, though, that may simply be playing to the crowd.
• Giliath Osborne in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II does this to the nation of Crossbell at the tallest tower of Western Zemuria, the Orchis Tower, to announce the annexation of Crossbell to the Erebonian empire.

Web Comics

• In The Order of the Stick, this is how Redcloak announces to his goblin followers that they're no longer occupying Azure City, but are founding their own nation of "Gobbotopia."

Web Original

• In The Gamer's Alliance, archmage Jemuel addresses his people from a balcony and announces a new glorious dawn for the Magicracy of Alent.

Western Animation

• Seen twice in Alfred J. Kwak: In the beginning of episode 21 where king Franz Ferdinard is (attempting to) deliver an undetailed speech, and near the end of episode 25 the king is holding a better-received speech once The National Crow's Party's dictatorship has been overthrown and he has been returned to the throne.
• The Simpsons: Mr. Burns does it a couple of times, such as when he gives the award to the Inanimate Carbon Rod in "Deep Space Homer".
  Burns: Compadres, it is imperative that we crush the freedom fighters before the start of the rainy season! And remember, a shiny new donkey for whoever brings me the head of Colonel Montoya.
  (Smithers whispers something in his ear)
  Burns: What? Oh. And by that, I mean, of course, it's time for the worker of the week award!
• In the Johnny Bravo episode "The Prince and the Pinhead", Johnny (taking a prince's place) addresses the masses simply by saying hello, asking what'd they do yesterday, then telling them to keep it up.
• Used several times in Avatar: The Last Airbender, as befits the the Fire Nation.
  • When Admiral Zhao captures Aang, he makes a Balcony speech to his troops, complete with bombastic statements about Fire being the "Superior Element".
  • When Azula and Zuko return to the Fire Nation, Li and Lo announce them to a crowd which is understandably thrilled to hear the war is practically won.
  • When Firelord Ozai finally departs to do something, he announces to the Imperial Firebenders supporting him that he is now the PHOENIX KING!
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars, "Defenders of Peace": Durd gives a Rousing Speech prior to testing his new superweapon from a balcony atop his fortified base.
• In the Thunder Cats 2011 episode "Omens Part One" King Claudus gives one in a huge amphitheatre dedicating some celebratory Gladiator Games to the memory of Panthro, and concludes leading his sons and Grune in raising their glasses to toast their Absent Friend, while the crowd cheers raucously.

Real Life

• Benito Mussolini spoke and addressed the nation from a balcony, as, for example, when he announced victory in the war against Abyssinia and the creation of the "Italian Empire" from the balcony of the Palazzo di Venezia, May 9, 1936. Then the partisans hung him upside down...
• President Juan Perón and his wife Eva famously used the balcony of Argentina's House of Government to deliver speeches.
• The Pope: Uses his papal balcony for special events and celebrations.
• The balcony of Buckingham Palace was built for this purpose, most recently at Will and Kate's wedding.
• The Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs had instead of a balcony a 'Window of Appearances' overlooking the main palace courtyard suitable for showering gold down on worthy officials and showing themselves to a worshipful populace.
• Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu's famous balcony speech took place immediately prior to the Romanian revolution. He tried to placate the crowd, dumbstruck, that they were, for the first time, booing him. He got about ten words out before the mob broke into the Presidential Palace and forced him to flee.
• Thanks to its design, Amalienborg Palace, the residence of the Danish monarchs, have four balconies (one for each of the four identical buildings facing the same square). The Monarch will usually employ this trope on his/her birthday, but it has also seen use to announce a new King, most recently when Christian X ascended to the throne in 1912. The following two monarchs, Frederik IX and Margrethe II, however, chose to give their Balcony speech on ascending to the throne, from the balcony at Christiansborg Palace.
• When he was the football coach at University of California-Berkeley (1947-1956), Lynn "Pappy" Waldorf would address fans from a balcony by one of the stadium gates after every home game.
• Agustín de Iturbide, the man who achieved the Independence for México, sat playing cards with his friends at his luxurious home when a large multitude marched through the streets and assembled under his balcony, proclaiming him as the Emperor of the newly created country. Iturbide came out to his balcony to address them, however contrary to stereotype, he first turned down the offer and his speech revolved around how Mexicans didn't need him to lead them, then finally agreed to let the congress decide the matter in the morning, which eventually led to his election as monarch.

---