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Barbarian Warlords only lead because they are the strongest.

Ralanr··20 votes·1,213 views

No. By that logic you couldn't have a leader (Just look at Axe in Dota 2. He's the "leader" of an army because he killed his way up the ranks to show he was the strongest. He proved he was, but there was no one left to lead because he killed everyone).

Even if strength is a factor (and for the sake of argument, we will say it is a factor for barbarian leaders) in leadership, you need more than just strength to be a leader.

Most important thing you need is charisma. You need to get people on your side, to fight for you and possibly die for you. Sometimes it's not you that needs the charisma, but your goal.

Let's take a look at King Obould Many-Arrows from the legend of Drizzt. He's an orc barbarian warlord who is introduced by kicking the ever loving crap out of Wulfgar (you could argue the Worf effect). But he's not your average orc warlord who is content in keeping his position. No, he has a dream of creating his own kingdom for orcs.

And he did it. He made that damn kingdom, not just because he was strong. Thousands of orcs are strong, strength is a big thing in their culture. Obould however was intelligent, even by human standards (honestly a lot of characters in Drizzt seem to be special for some reason) and was able to create peace treaties with "goodie races", even traded with them.

Now his strength was important, but if that was all he had then he'd just be another warlord among orcs.

Why am I talking about this? Well this relates a little to Sejuani. I've heard people argue that she is supposed to lead by charging headfirst, by being the strongest.

That's not why Sejuani leads. She's leading because she has a vision, the determination to see it happen, and the charisma to get people to follow her. Strength is important, but she isn't the strongest person in the Winter's Claw. I'd argue that's Olaf because he is fated to not die in battle, and he only follows her to find a death in battle.

Idk. I just never saw Sejuani as "I lead because I am the best!" I mean it is a factor since she doesn't take weaklings, but I don't think people only follow her because she's strong. They follow her because they believe in her vision and will fight to make it happen. Hell her E stacking on melee hits from allies shows this! They will fight by her side, empowering her to lock down an enemy and bring them down faster for the Winters Claw.

Sorry for the ramble. This just bothered me.

20 Comments

Wrathof3007 votes

She doesn't have to be the strongest, because she is already the leader of Winter's Claw. More than likely she got her position because of strength and maintained it because of the reasons you said above. Most other important/powerful characters join after the fact.

Olaf - literally was unmatched by anyone else from winter's claw until he fought Sej, but instead of killing each other she offered him an even more glorious death.

Volibear - his tribe became soft and needed to prepare them for war, so he sought out one of the most powerful tribes and allied with them, to train the Ursine

Udyr - joined her because of her cause to fight against the frost witch.

In all of these cases her charisma and leadership skills are important but in some cases so was her strength. So like you said she may not be the strongest, but she certainly is among the best in the group.

ahferroin72 votes

I would argue that there are some who follow her because they're scared out of their wits of what might happen to them if they don't. Charisma can have a positive as well as a negative side to it, and while we romanticize leadership in such contexts, a lot of 'barbarian' warlords rule by intimidation (and by extension, some form of strength, be it physical or mental).

MetalGearTeemu2 votes

I know I'd shit myself getting initiated on by axe far more readily then by Sej.

Magic Immunity piercing taunt, tree damage helixes and Cull?

Please Mogul Khan have mercy, send the Angry Feminist riding another Feminist instead.

Warlord Dienekes1 votes

I honestly, can't think of a barbarian culture that was ruled by the guy just because he was strongest. Now I can't speak for most fictional worlds, honestly I don't know of many that really revolve around "barbarian" cultures, except for Conan, and Joe Abercrombie's work. By the way, as far as making a barbarian society that actually would function, Abercrombie seems to get it.

But historically, just stop and think about it for a second. If a culture was lead by whoever could beat everyone else up, that would be the single worst organized culture in the world. (Only thing I can think of worse would be the hilariously stupid Rite of Kor stuff, which getting rid of that remains the only good thing to come out of the Targon rewrite) Now there are some legends where the fate of a culture was decided by a duel. But those only happened when both sides of the duel were already leaders in their own right, and a duel was declared to be a more honorable and less costly method of determining a winner than having all their soldiers/warriors also fight. Which actually happened a lot more often.

The real reason why a leader is determined is based off of inheritance, usually the former king would have a son (or granddaughter in the case of the Ostrogothic Kingdom) who would get the kingdom when he died and keep it if he wasn't an idiot. Usually because these leaders can trace their lineage from some probably mythical figure that gives them legitimacy.

Now, there are some other kind of important details in here as well. If a leader was considered weak they can be replaced. What exactly determines weakness is arguable. It probably isn't the ability to beat people up, yourself, but it might be cowardice. A lot (but not all, admittedly) of barbarians kings we know of did lead the charge into battle. Usually with the strongest, best equipped soldiers at their side. This I think is probably where the idea that leading means actually taking the lead comes from, as it was hugely popular for a lot of military leaders, both civilized and barbaric: Alexander the Great, Vercingetorix, Alaric, Theoderic the Great, were all front-line warriors, even Julius Caesar stepped up to the front lines on occasion.

So, I wouldn't say actually being the leader doesn't mean you shouldn't be the one that charges headfirst into battle, the leaders did fairly frequently. It just wasn't a universal requirement.

As to Sejuani herself. I am not going to even pretend I know her story, motivations, or play style. I know she's supposed to be a leader, that's about it. Now, the old way they went about making her a leader was by making her the actual first one into a conflict. Which, is acceptable. As I said, that type of leadership for barbarian kings was pretty common.

So, I would ask, first and foremost: Does this rework make her act like a barbarian leader? If so how? AND does this still match with her current playstyle?

Ralanr3 votes

The only thing I can say that makes her more like a leader is encouraging her frontline to fight with the stun she gets.

But honestly? No it doesn't.

Warlord Dienekes2 votes

Yeah, see there's the problem then.

If people built it up in their minds that Sej is a leader because she actually leads the charge, then that's pretty powerful gameplay and narrative cohesion, and getting rid of it without replace it with anything will just be a disappointment.

Furthermore, there are going to be people who don't actually give a fig about the narrative and only enjoyed Sej because of her playstyle. And that means Riot just ticked off a significant portion of the player base who will latch onto the whole "she's no longer a leader" as an explanation why they don't like it, in addition to the whole she just doesn't play like the character they bought. Which, I get is a problem for people. I've lost champions off of reworks. It sucks.

TyrekGoldenspear1 votes

What was the rite of Kor?

Jusr curious.

Warlord Dienekes2 votes

Ahh it was something introduced in Leona's old lore. Basically it was the Rakkor's rite of passage into adulthood. It involved getting everyone to duel each other in 1 on 1 combat that ends with the loser dying. From a narrative perspective the Rite was probably added to make a very easy to justify distinction between Pantheon and Leona (Diana didn't exist yet). Pantheon passes his Rite while Leona refuses to kill showing that Panth places the rules of the Rakkor above morality and Leona was the good girl willing to refute a religious and social law to do the right thing. And it required no real explaining just justifying it as necessary because of resource limitations.

Alright now why that's all stupid as hell.

That's not how resources work. Alright, when a society doesn't have the resources to sustain a population (pre-modern era) this problem fixes itself because disease and brief famine always occurs just naturally. Or people move, expanding out to further territories. So there would be no need to ever actually create such a Rite. But let's say that they do anyway so that the population doesn't have to deal with the whole starvation thing.

Well the Spartans, who the Rakkor were basically just a Hollywood-ized copy paste of at the time (they really aren't all that similar anymore) had the problem of resources solved: they had a huge slave-serf population built around keeping the resources up so the soldiers can spend their life mastering being a soldier. They also exposed unwanted babies. Basically anyone born with an obvious disability except club-footedness and maybe others.

Now that works because if resources are limited the way to combat that is to make the vast majority of your people's lives solely focused around acquiring resources. Rakkor didn't do that. As far as we got they were all soldiers, that survived because, well, plot.

The other even more weird thing, is that among the Spartans the passage to adulthood was age 21. Now the lore doesn't say anything about their ages just that they were younger than the old guys running the Rite of Kor. I'm going to take a more conservative assumption that they were around age 15 - 16.

So the problem is, if resources are scarce, the young population cannot be used to work to gather resources until around age 12-13. Before that they are an active drain on resources and they probably still are until around 15 when they can really do a full days work.

So what the Rakkor are doing is raising a surplus population that is actively draining resources, teaching them to be soldiers, instead of the far more practical farmer or hunter-gatherer occupation. And then killing them off exactly when they are of age to actually help provide resource growth.

This is so ass-backwards even before you get into the numbers to see if such a population can even sustain itself. Life on a mountain is not easy. You're going to get just random natural deaths. And apparently they're a warrior culture, somehow, so you'll get more deaths there. So by the end of this we're looking at, just to sustain the population something around each family having 5-6 kids, probably more. Meaning the female in this relationship is going to be pregnant for years of her life effective taking her out of the working population.

It all just doesn't work. Like the writer had no idea about the basics of social, and economic realities and just wrote what he thought sounded "so totally kewl."

TyrekGoldenspear3 votes

Ah.

Dem rules of reality, always getting in the way of a kewl tradition! XD

Kappa.

Warlord Dienekes1 votes

Now if I may ask you a question in return?

The Hell does "Kappa" mean? I've seen it come up a bunch recently and I don't think they're referring to the letter in the Greek alphabet.

TyrekGoldenspear2 votes

It is a reference to a meme birthed in Twitch chat that means essentially "just kidding" "joking" or denotes sarcasm.

Warlord Dienekes1 votes

Ahh, thank you.

midnight oil241 votes

Exactly. People don't just get to lead because of strength, they have to have the people skills to back it up. Napoleon: terrible guy but super charismatic, apparently had an insane memory. Unfortunately Hitler: apparently very charming. I'm assuming this is between his rants about what he was going to do, which he presumably did in private so as not to blow his cover.

Point is, leaders don't just get to succeed because of strength. Strength is nothing if you don't have the charisma and and social skills to get these people loyal to you. If you lead based on strength, they're just afraid of you and will turn to anyone who's stronger than you.

You have written an excellent piece, sir!

KONO RUBICK DA1 votes

if i remember correctly Axe was a "one-man army" so if he was a leader, it was just because of strength IMO i don't think he has charimsa

midnight oil242 votes

He's leading an army through strenght because he's the only one left. Go ahead, be an army of one, but you're not really a leader then. You're just a guy flaunting strength instead of working to earn the loyalty and trust of your subordinates.

KONO RUBICK DA1 votes

he's still leading an army because of strength, no matter if they died or not he was a "one-man army" because it is said that axe had the ability to win a war alone

midnight oil241 votes

axe had the ability to win a war alone

Physically impossible.

he's still leading an army because of strength, no matter if they died or not

If there's no one to lead, are you leading anything?

Nylisa1 votes

i agree with you , and i personally would rather follow her! her determination , her stubbornness , her conviction in her goal is very attractive to me! i would pick her as my leader even if ashe is offering peace and all that nonsense!

The Anagram King1 votes

Feudal Japan was based pretty heavily on killing your way to the top. It's doable.

Warlord Dienekes1 votes

That's not really what happened though. If that was true Miyamoto Musashi would have become shogun. He didn't.

Oda Nobunaga did. Then Hideyoshi. Then Ieyasu. A decent warrior but a great brutal general. A sandal bearer turned construction worker. Then a cunning politician who manages to switch sides at exactly the right moment every time.

Now I am not saying that these guys weren't cut-throat brutal people. They were. But being the physically strongest guy wasn't what gave them their power. Controlling armies is what gave them power (and loyal ninja on occasion). Which I think is what Ralanr is trying to say.

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