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Handling Resistance and Rebellion in your stories

srebak

Troubadour
As history has taught us; where ever there is a government, there will always be people trying uproot and topple it for whatever reason. But how do you present it from both sides?

I mean, in the case of an evil dictatorship, the purpose of a rebellion is pretty simple and straightforward; a group of people who won't stand by while some tyrant uses armies and weapons to oppress them and want to fight back so that their home can be free again. But what if the government in question is actually benevolent; the Head of state treats his/her people fairly and makes sure they are safe. No one is oppressed, no one lives in fear. How could there be resistance and/or rebellion for that?
 

WooHooMan

Auror
What I do is that I organize groups by ideology.
In my stories, the leaders are always cool people who are trying to do what's right but the ideas they represent may not be everyone's cup of tea. Unless this head-of-state is omnibenevolent, he's not going to have 100% approval rating. Under no conditions will everyone agree on how a country should be run.

I got two stories that have a rebellion kind of thing. I'm not going to explain them because who cares but I use the "ideologies approach" and it works pretty well.
 
Someone is always going to be upset by what The Power is doing. If everyone is safe, looked-after, comfortable and treated fairly, the upset people - the rebellion - is going to be the people who think they could/should have more than other people and want a system that gives it to them.

Consider: if the President declared that everyone in the country would be receiving a minimum amount of money that was enough to genuinely live on, and that he was going to raise taxes on the extremely rich and very powerful/profitable companies to pay for it, who would be the rebellion? ;)
 
You have to establish some sort of compelling conflict in your story so there has to be something important enough for rebellion to occur particularly if it gets violent. If everyone is comfortable then where is the potential conflict? Cupiscent had a nice take on this I think.

I think two things can add depth to a two-sided conflict:
1) Showing the virtues and flaws in both sides. So both sides have some self interest, both have some valid claims. If its one sided you just go with the goodies/baddies dynamic. I remember the start to Star Wars Revenge of the Sith and the exposition text in space says 'there are heroes and villains on both sides' and I remember thinking 'no there aren't! Palpatine is purely evil and the jedi are trying as best they can' - so you have to be careful spending time with both sides.
2) Using historical legacy, 'sins of the forefathers' in which good people can be stuck in bad structures. Colonisation and land ownership are big areas of conflict. eg 'I didn't kill your ancestors, but this is my land now, I have a family to feed'. George RR Martin did this well I think in GOT with the wildlings versus the nightwatch. Tad Williams also did it in Memory, Sorrow and Thorn to explain the antagonist's motives and give the conflict poignancy.
 
History does tend to create things like this. Look at the different places and social groups of your world now, but also look back across time: "This land belonged to my great-great-grandfather (but not my great-great-great-great-grandfather) until your grandfather stole it, so GIVE IT BACK" can be is all too real.
 
Alternatively, have a look at English Kings following William the Conqueror. From memory (admittedly sketchy) it doesn't stay with the same line of succession for longer than about one and a half generations. It's very much "if you can win it, it's yours". Once you break the concept of "divine right of kings", the whole idea of rebellion becomes much more acceptable: you're allowed to think "But I/that guy/anyone but this guy would be better in charge."
 
I think with the rebellion its easy to side with the underdogs, I think most readers will appreciate their cause if the ruling elite/government/king isn't being very fair. It just takes one scene showing injustice - starving farmers, unjust arrests etc to make you think 'bastards, let's take them down!'. So its more how you present the rulers - why are they being unfair? Is it because they know things that the rest of society doesn't - eg the bank is broke? This was one reason why people hated King John - he had to apply taxes to pay for Richard the Lionheart's crusade and enormous ransom. So he was the bad guy while Richard got to be the hero. I guess its another historical legacy situation.

Another way could be to show how the rulers are kept from understanding how bad things are in their kingdom by a middle management that want to keep the benefits of the power? Say an administrative order (eg eunachs), or a merchant class (eg East India Trading Co), or a clergy?? Its a bit like Yes Minister but could create more sympathy for the ruling class.

Or you could have someone trying to act within the ruling class to bring reform, but its too little too late to stave off the revolution. Then these characters could get swept up in the revolution and its kinda tragic. I think this happened during the British and French revolutions.
 
at some point when you're writing about differing points of view readers do like to hear why readers are not agreeing. I found myself rather disappointed while playing skyrim the other day because I recently started writing a story and part of the lore of the book was that a religious order had a problem with another nation's belief in a specific god, that was already in skyrim. something as simple as that has real implications though, why do they dislike the deity, why would they interfere with the worship of another body, is this a small group or is it the masses? overall, when you're developing a rebellion or an uprising you should focus on the point of tension describing it in your story. for instance, they hate the deity because he transports souls, they view it as soul stealing, the other group views it as soul transporting. what kind of clashes in religious debate if it were real would this type of circumstance create? in real life you have the Vatican arguing over the real nature of the many gospels of Jesus' disciples versus pop culture versus how many other religions so while you're looking perhaps for a singular tie in, the most fortunate thing for a fantasy writer is that there can be numerous tie ins and you only have to concoct some scheme. peace lovers hate war mongers and wicked minded people despise do gooders. how are they in opposition is what's really important, and how the character resolves conflicts of opposition, for what time have they solved those issues, and will the problem rise again or is there a permanent solution that opens new avenues for the story?
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Not all governments have people wanting to overthrow them. The Roman Republic lasted for hundreds of years before there was any sort of movement to end it. One can even argue nobody wanted to end it, it just fell apart.

In the Middle Ages, the Capetians lasted in France for about 300 years. There was no significant rebellion in all that time. Even the example of the English, a notoriously rambunctious people, the dynastic turnovers were the result of personal rivalries, not popular movements.

You could take the English (or the Danes or the Scots) as an example. The resistance rather than coming from some desire to overturn an existing power, comes instead from personal rivalry. Maybe nothing more profound than a personal grudge. For the most part, the common folk cared very little about who ruled them.
 

DeathtoTrite

Troubadour
Sometimes, a more tolerant view breeds the most dissension- see the Caliph Ali for a great example of trying to be conciliatory can backfire spectacularly. But anyway, why people might revolt against a good ruler-

Has the ruler changed an old tradition that was barbaric (serfdom, slavery, etc.)- you'll get a huge backlash from that.

Or has he maintained the status quo? Because then some group will be angry about that, and seek revolution.

Basically, even a kind, just ruler will have someone angry at them- think Henry IV of France. He issued the edict of Nantes, tolerating Protestant Huguenots. Most people were happy for peace, but some- those radical Catholics who hated Henry for making peace with the heretics and the Huguenots who hated him for converting to Catholicism- constantly plotted against him.
 

crash

Scribe
I know that a lot of people give examples from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but I say, don't be afraid of using more modern events for inspiration. Look at the 1960s and 1970s, in countries with open and free democracies, there was massive amounts of civil unrest.

For example, your country could have blundered itself into a war it really should not have gotten into. The government could have made a number of economic reforms that didn't work out. There could be a radical or revolutionary movement in one country and the leaders in yours are worried that it'll spread and are acting in a very reactionary way. There could have been some natural disaster that the government didn't handle well. The group could come from a long oppressed group (religious, ethnic, etc). Or maybe your government is being backed by a more powerful state that the general populace fears or doesn't trust.

It's from these situations that you could get a radical resistance movement. People want change, people are offering solutions and some are more violent than others. Just remember that this group is going to have to be very underground, look up how clandestine cells work. For how it works, read up about the French Resistance, al-Qaeda, Sinn Féin, many a coup d'état or the Chinese Communists Party during the Chinese Civil War.

As for people, here's my maxim: everyone's a hero in their own story. Within a resistance movement and government you will have people who cannot see their actions as wrong, who are fanatically devoted to their cause; cling to it as if they're life depended upon it. You will have people who are only there to gain power, money and fame. There are people there who are aware of what they are doing, but feel that they're in too deep to switch sides or simply leave. There will be the very cynical types who are looking for something to alleviate their boredom, just looking for a thrill; the politics doesn't matter, they're really just looking for an adrenaline fix.
 
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