Can a Rebellion/Resistance be written as antagonists?

I do believe that we can all agree that the storyline about a country, world or even entire galaxy being under the thumb of an oppressive regime, with the main heroes being the resistance movement against it, is a very common trope to use. But, can it be written in a reverse light?

I mean, say that the current regime is the side that the story’s main protagonists are on, i.e. the King, the Queen, the Prince, the Princess, the Emperor, the Empress, etc. What would it take to write a rebel/resistance movement against them in a convincing sort of way?

Now, I know that it is a common choice for stories with the main protagonists as the reigning royal families to either have outside aggressors who are out to destroy/take over the country or simply irate, greedy and/or conniving lower members of the hierarchy out to usurp all control as the main antagonists. But, can a story where the heroes are the heads of state really have a resistance/rebel movement (as in those who do not approve of the reigning heroes or the way that run the kingdom/empire, even though they are not actually doing anything selfish or tyrannical and are truly making an effort to be good leaders who actually look out for their people and keep things running effectively.) against them as the main antagonists?

I think so. This runs the gambit from straightforward The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized ala the Civil War from Lincoln's perspective to Villain Protagonist stories like the Black Company. Most easily, the Staged Populist Uprising will let you have your cake 'the revolutionaries aren't so bad' and eat it to 'neither are the leaders,' the real problem is this one asshole over here manipulating the situation.

More generally, a lot of 'fight organized crime' stories are structured very similar to this. The problem people run into and the reason this is relatively rare narratively, is that people love an underdog and often find it very hard to create tension if overwhelming force is on your side (see the proliferation of theoretically rare Kryptonite whenever we're in a Superman story). And the thing about a story like this is that, usually, overwhelming force should be available to a ruler.

This gets really whacky in cop stories, where somehow you have your 2-4 heroic NYPD cops constantly outnumbered, despite the NYPD having ~40,000 uniformed officers. But here's the thing, it's narratively boring if the climactic confrontation is 'SWAT stormed the building, the antagonists are all under arrest or dead, with no/minimal casualties amongst our heroes'.

This can be done well, but you probably want to structure it as basically a mystery, where the mystery is either 'who are the rebels' or 'where are the rebels hiding'? Rather than an adventure/military story. Alternatively, you can do it as a political thriller of trying to resolve their complaints/negotiate a compromise/whatever. But this is a story that doesn't really work in a standard adventure/action structure.

Edited by ECD on Mar 31st 2022 at 7:54:52 AM

Yeah, sure. Separatist groups, Fringe political and religious sects, Other-nation-backed-and-inspired uprisings, hired mercenaries attempting to replace the government with a wealthy benefactor, and so on, all using underdog tactics like generalized terrorism, assassinations, and infrastructure sabotage.

There are a lot of ways to have a rebel group as antagonistic while the heroes still look good. Of course, actually getting rid of a rebellion does take a lot of actions that are difficult to write. Either it involves a series of atrocities usually culminating in killing the rebels' hostages and families alike to make sure few rebels escape, a slow reconciliation process where usually the rebels end up getting a bunch of their demands realized, and if that falls through at any point, more terrorism ensues, or some international organization stepping in to mediate, in which case the rebels usually get many demands met. And considering that rebels usually have no incentive to not commit war crimes, fake surrenders and truces being pretexts for more violence are likely.

Of course, a monarchy is one of the absolute worst forms of government ever made, so any rebellion against that would probably be very justified and leave the protagonists looking bad, if the rebels are offering a legitimate alternative government.

Edited by Florien on Mar 31st 2022 at 8:39:34 AM

It's important to note that "rebellion = good" is a uniquely American thing. If you look at Violet Evergarden, it has a subplot where the rebels are fighting because they want the Great Offscreen War to keep going.

Even if we grant that monarchy is necessarily bad, that can be handled by having the rebels intent on installing... another monarchy.

But to address the main question, I'm in agreement with the above posters: I daresay that it is indeed possible to have an antagonistic rebellion.

Indeed, even if the rebellion's goals are such that the reader is inclined to agree with them—say the replacement of an untoward monarchy with another form of government—their methods may still be antagonistic.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Apr 1st 2022 at 10:00:53 AM

Even then, a lot of American stories featuring rebellions tend to cast the rebels in an unflattering light. They'll be extremists, or led by a corrupt leader, or suffering from factionalism, or what have you. Rebelling against an evil authority will be seen as good, but the rebels themselves are often subject to Morality Kitchen Sink rules.

If I remember right, the Nazi party actually took over the then democratic German government by staging a rebellion. That could be a source of inspiration, there's also that little "incident " that occurred on January in 2021.

That was the Beer-Hall Putsch. It didn't take over the government, it was basically January Sixth but in the past, wherein a large gang of nazis and their supporters tried to storm a government meeting to either kill or hold government members hostage until they were declared the rulers of germany. On meeting significant armed resistance, the whole thing fell apart, with slaps-on-the-wrist for participants and nothing really came of it aside from a short prison term for hitler and a couple other nazis. Hitler still became chancellor a few years later.

But yeah attempted coups are a form of rebellion which is very commonly portrayed as antagonistic.

My version of this question takes into consideration a common criticism of superhero stories, being that they're... kinda-sorta fascist adjacent by virtue of a lot of their narratives centering firmly around a villain trying to change the (often rigged and unfair) status quo and the heroes trying to stop that, for little other clear reason than preserving that status quo for its own sake. Turn that on its head such that a revolution to change things for the better already happened and the principle villains are hard right-libertarian-ish counterrevolutionaries who feel that they (or, more accurately, the wealthy ruling class who cared nothing for them. Bootlickers gonna bootlick) were robbed and are trying to roll back the social progress. Understandable motive, but not a sympathetic one.

A largely unrelated tangent but I never really got that vibe from most comic villains. Their idea of changing the staus quo is by taking over the world so that they can rule, that sounds pretty fascist in-and-of-itself to me. How is a superhero stopping that fascist adjacent? Though I suppose that could also fit into the evil rebellion idea, someone trying to change the status quo for the worse.

Mind you, it's not one I fully agree with (early superhero stories could lean pretty strongly antifascist, if anything) but I see where it comes from; perceived authoritarian/randian 'strongman' imagery, especially the idea of individuals with massive, often innate, powers harassing petty crooks who are only the way they are because of said status quo that the hero does little to challenge despite having the ability... clumsier stories can be pretty uncritical of this. "Cops in spandex" is a term I see applied to that sort of thing.

Tying this back to the topic at hand, it's where the 'revolution in the recent past that the "rebels" are trying to undo' idea came from, coupled with modern fascist movements trying to roll back positive social change in favor of 'the good old days'.

(that and the First Order, but ideally handled better than "lol empire again")

Edited by Chortleous on Apr 2nd 2022 at 10:52:17 AM

There are such tropes as Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters and Hero Antagonist.

I'm not sure the latter counts as I think this thread is talking more about a Rebellion as a more villainous force rather than our perspective being with the bad guys.

Alan Moore was calling this out decades ago, while also pointing out that superhero imagery owes much to none other than The Klan. "Superheroes = Fascist" is not a new conclusion, really.

As for writing an antagonistic rebellion? You can absolutely do so but I strongly advise that you avoid the boring angle of a progressive movement gone too far; See Bioshock Infinite for an example. Rebellions by reactionaries stoked by positive social changes is one that goes so frequently unexplored, and I believe there is rich material to mine from the idea. The only recent example that immediately comes to mind is, strangely, FTL: Faster Than Light. As minimal as the story was, it was interesting in that the rebels were villains driven by a belief in human supremacy and desire to subjugate or exterminate all non-human life.

The progressive rebellion gone bad is something that started to erk me more and more as I became political aware. One of the most egregious recent examples I can think of is actually the original IDW transformers series. In that, the Decepticons started out as a peaceful protest movement (not even an actual rebellion) for equal rights who became genocidal murderers, this really started to leave a bad taste in my mouth in the wake of the George Floyd protests.

Agreed.

If anything it's the Autobot who should have been the peaceful protest.

I will admit one could still make this work by having such rebellions represented through extremist offshoots of more level-headed progressive organizations. After all, it is natural that the radical elements of an organization get tired and want things done right now regardless of optics or collateral damage. Fiction likes to treat rebel movements as one monolithic organization when reality has repeatedly shown that such movements are not only diverse but messy, sometimes coming into outright conflict against each other over their respective ideologies mid-rebellion. It still needs to be written deftly, lest you run into the same problematic elements as the rest.

It is also possible to show such indiscriminate Red Terror-esq bloodletting as grimly necessary, but few writers want to even consider that option for obvious reasons.

Edited by BaronVonFistcrunch on Apr 14th 2022 at 9:05:45 AM

Funnily enough, I just finished reading a book series that had something like that former idea of yours: A rebellion that had understandable goals; that had likely-objectionable methods early on; that went on to something less specifically violent, building something new; and that then experienced internecine conflict due to a hard-line faction that was focussed heavily on violence and the destruction of the old enemy.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Apr 14th 2022 at 9:38:59 PM

In the dystopian I'm writing, one of the three main factions is the rebellion, and in this rebellion are some of the more unambiguously heroic characters but it's also a massive, poorly organized group, so you also have your extremists who don't care for the more cautious new leader, and the original leader would've just produced a Full-Circle Revolution if he'd successfully gained power (considering he blatantly ignored several injustices to suit his agenda and had the rebels commit several acts of terrorism).

Then there's another, smaller but still influential group lead by the rebel leader's rival, and several of their members are disillusioned ex-rebels who weren't happy before.

It's a very Morality Kitchen Sink thing. The rebels are fighting for good, but a lot of them are way more trigger-happy and in it for their own gain, which gives them a really bad reputation in the present. And of course, not all of these extremists are necessarily evil, they're just much more aggressive, and are often the ones on the front lines of the field, while the more cautious rebels are newer or more involved in background work.

Star Wars does this in the prequels. The Separatists separate because they don't like the Republic and are generally pretty villainous. They aren't even Progressives either, as they are just a bunch of greedy corporations ruling over various worlds.

In real life, you have the example of the Confederate States of America, who wanted to secede for the purpose of ensuring slavery would remain. And I think in Brazil the monarchy fell because to a coup because people thought they were too liberal and so decided to install a conservative and dictatorial republic in favor of the monarchy. But, don't quote me on that as I'm pretty sure it was more complicated then that and I'm not well read on that.

As for the progressive rebellion turned bad...I think that its a cheap way to gain sympathetic villains but its not without historical precedent as in the case of Stalin (and arguably Lenin) and Napoleon who ended up creating regimes that ultimately served to grant them power at the expense of the freedom people were originally fighting for. It's all too easy for charismatic individuals with bad motivations (such as wanting more power) or bad personalities (control freaks who have no interest in giving up or sharing power) to end up in charge of the important mechanisms of society, such as those with the most guns and then using it to enforce their authoritarian goals.

Plus, it's all too possible for evil people to take advantage of legitimate social issues to gain power. In this case, normal, well-meaning people would be manipulated into joining a rebellion that claims to suit their purposes, but doesn't actually.

An example that immediately springs to my mind is the War Between the Provinces series. When King Avram of Detina comes to the throne he declares his intention to free the serfs, who are an indigenous people the colonizing Detinans conquered a century ago, from their ties to the land. The northern provinces are the primary croplands of the kingdom and very serf labor dependent, so the nobles promptly rebel under the banner of "Provincial Prerogative!" and make Avram's cousin their new king.

The provinces loyal to Avram, primarily in the south, rally to his banner and, bolstered by serfs they free along the way, march north to preserve the kingdom and free the remaining serfs.

Edited by Parable on Apr 16th 2022 at 9:14:25 AM

Think of the Sons of the Harpy from Game of Thrones, who were rebelling against the main protagonist's regime in order to reinstate slavery and human ownership.

Or, the serfs can be rebelling to keep the rights and protections they enjoy under serfdom. The nobles want to abolish serfdom, free their serfs and institute fee-simple landownership...so that they can turf people off their land, enclose it for livestock or manage it as cash-crop plantations and have it worked by free laborers, because after a recent agricultural revolution, that makes them more money than traditional serfdom, while the "free men" will end up living in a company town with little more freedom, less food and much less security than they had as serfs.

Who's right? Well... the nobles are right that serfdom is an obsolete system, often oppressive, and standing in the way of progress, but that progress is threatening the livelihoods of their serfs until the labor market adapts, and also the nobles are still greedy bastards.