Ambiguous Name: Uriah Gambit

There is a contradiction on the trope page itself.

According to the description, the trope is "Send the guy to his death on the frontlines, and make sure his girlfriend doesn't know." Indeed, the biblical Uriah was sent to death because the king wanted his wife (well, there's four more Uriahs in the bible, but this is the one referred to).

Most of the examples, however, are simply about sending a guy to his death, no romance or lust involved.

So the question is, should we change the trope description to match the examples, or should we remove the examples that don't fit the description? Or is this another case of Missing Super Trope Syndrome, because clearly "send a guy to death because you want his wife" is a subtrope of "send a guy to death".

Change the description to fit the examples. I don't see the point of the whole "girlfriend" part there - classic example of someone making a description starting from an example (the Trope Namer).

Given the usage stats, I think we can leave the name alone.

edited 1st Apr '12 12:42:20 PM by SeptimusHeap

At a mininum this should also have a rename to simply "Uriah Gambit" (which accounts for 1/3 of all wikilinks), not The Uriah Gambit. Tropes almost never start with "The".

I'd say it's Missing Supertrope Syndrome. Make the supertrope for "higher-up deliberately sends a lower-ranked person to their death, without the lower-ranked person knowing that they are intended to die." The last part separates it from the lower-ranked person voluntarily going on what they know is a suicide mission.

Subtropes would include both

• "because the higher-up wants his girl" and
• the old classic of fairy tales, one noble sending an inconvenient person to another noble with a sealed message — the message is "Kill the bearer of this letter."

edited 1st Apr '12 4:21:28 PM by Madrugada

That is good.

The question then is which of these, if any, fits the name The Uriah Gambit. The biblical Uriah fits all three of these tropes (and the other four biblical Uriahs fit none of them).

This is the supertrope. There's only that one line indicating it has anything to do with romance, and that's not supported in the examples, not supported in the laconic, not supported in subtle trope distinctions...basically someone messed up writing the description. Easy fix: change that line.

Not too fond of the name, due to the snowcloning.

I think "make sure his girlfriend doesn't know" was just a verbal flourish. If it means anything for the trope, it's just "try to keep your maneuver as quiet as you can—you might have to let Uriah's CO in on it, but try to keep it from going further". But you can even cut that out.

(If it comes to that, do we know that Bathsheba didn't know what David was doing? Well, I hope she didn't, but I don't think the story says...)

I would simply cut the phrase "...and make sure his girlfriend doesn't know".

I don't think we need to add more tropes to this yet. This trope is for the general case "arrange for an underling to die by sending him on a mission that's meant to kill him". You might be doing this for any number of reasons (to get his girl, to silence him because he's beginning to suspect things, just because you don't like his looks). If any of those specific cases accumulates a lot of examples, we can make a subtrope for it, but I don't see that happening.

Rather, I think that the girlfriend part is an intentional part of the trope: after all, that is precisely what the relevant bible story is about.

Yes, I think the existing trope is "send guy X into a situation that will get him killed to get him out of the way so you can put the move on his woman". If you want a general trope for "send guy X into a situation that will get him killed", we need a new one.

BTW—Madraguda mentions as a part of this, "the old classic of fairy tales, one noble sending an inconvenient person to another noble with a sealed message — the message is 'Kill the bearer of this letter.'"

There's already a separate trope for that, Please Shoot the Messenger. We should link to it from The Uriah Gambit, though—there are similarities.

edited 2nd Apr '12 3:33:52 PM by Narsil

There seems to be disagreement about what the trope is about, then! The trope page begins:

-> What to do when you've made an enemy of one of your underlings? Good thing there is a convenient battle coming up... What's one more casualty between Red Shirts? The coroner will never know the difference.

-> Send the guy to his death on the frontlines, and make sure his girlfriend doesn't know.

Nothing in there at all about "you want his wife". The only reason given is that he's your "enemy". Given that, it's hardly surprising that most of the examples have nothing to do with a love triangle.

(Yes, it happens to be the case that in the Uriah story, David did it because he wanted Uriah's wife, but that isn't stated here as being necessary for the trope.)

At the very least, this isn't an open-and-shut case. When it comes time for decidin', we need to consider at least two options. Option 1: This trope is specifically for "arrange for someone's death *so you can steal that person's lover*"; then we need to create the supertrope, move almost all of the examples to the supertrope, and decide whether The Uriah Gambit even has enough examples left to be worth keeping. Option 2 is rule that The Uriah Gambit is simply for "send an underling to certain death because you want him dead for whatever reason", and then decide whether it's worth creating subtropes for the various reasons you might want to do it (at least two: "I want his girl" and "he knows too much").

BTW, isn't it David making the gambit, while the trope is named for the victim?

Looking at the Wayback Machine, the trope does seem to have originally been about the general "get this guy killed" case. Perhaps it needs a rename to make that clearer.

^^Yes.

edited 2nd Apr '12 4:06:40 PM by MetaFour

^^ It certainly does look that way. In that case, I support making it back into that as a supertrope, and softsplitting the current page by motive (to use the supertrope as an example-catcher), and splitting off the motives into individual subtropes as they accumulate enough examples to start off as healthy pages — I'd say 10 or a dozen examples, preferably from three or more media.

Nah, I disagree. I don't think the motive is relevant to the trope at all. This trope is about the plan. You could have lots of reasons why you might want to get rid of an underling, but that's not the point here. No real need for a soft split, and no real point in subtropes.

I also don't see any reason to rename this. If you started a new thread right now proposing a rename with all the arguments that have been given in this thread, we'd insta-lock it for lack of evidence. Stealth-renaming by starting a thread on another issue and then turning around and renaming without evidence should not be okay.

edited 2nd Apr '12 6:43:16 PM by troacctid

That's clearly not the case: it fits several of the criteria on the "why to rename" page, and there's misuse right on the trope page itself.

Maddy has the right of it.

Has the misuse something to do with the name? Otherwise, it's not a reason to rename something.

Here's a question - for instances where the leader sends their subordinate to die to get an item instead of a romantic interest (be it land, a magical weapon, or whatever other MacGuffin you can imagine), is it this trope or is it a sister trope?

It seems to me like the core of the trope is that you are arranging for a subordinate to die on a mission (battle or otherwise) because you have some sort of problem with the subordinate. Suicide missions where your primary goal is to accomplishing the mission rather than kill the subordinate shouldn't really count.

So, if you are sending Private Snuffy to get the Magical Elixir in the Cave of Doom because you think he is the best guy to recover the Magical Elixir, even though you know he is almost certainly going to die in the process of getting the Magical Elixir to you, it isn't this trope.

If you send Private Snuffy to get the Magical Elixir in the Cave of Doom because you want Private Snuffy to die, and and you secretly sabatoge his gear to make sure it fails as he is crossing over the Pit of Fire, it would be this trope. Especially if you don't really expect the get the Magical Elixir, you just want Snuffy dead.

I think catbert has really nailed this trope there. It's sending someone to do something with the primary intent of the errand being that they die.

Agreed.

And the trope about sacrificing subordinates to accomplish some goal is We Have Reserves.

In that case, the name is bad because it's far too narrow.

Specifically Send Them Out To Die?

Murder By Mission?