r/TopCharacterTropes • u/AporiaParadox • Sep 11 '26

Hated Tropes "Good guys" committing perfidy (fake surrender) and it's treated as a clever heroic ploy instead of a war crime or something morally dubious

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  1. Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Anakin pretends to surrender to the enemy multiple times during the Clone Wars. And no, it's not used to indicate that Anakin is falling to the Dark Side, other characters like Obi-Wan do it too.
  2. The Iliad. The Trojan Horse was a real dick move, a fake surrender compounded by a fake peace offering, followed by a massacre. I get that it was a different time, but still, most modern adaptations just treat it as a cool thing. One thing I'll give Nolan's The Odyssey credit for is that Odysseus recognizes that what his "clever plot" was wrong.

Perfidy is a serious war crime, because morality aside, in exchange for one victory, you're dooming all of your allies who might want to legitimately surrender in the future because now the enemy is just going to execute them, not to mention that now the enemy won't surrender to you and will just fight harder.

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u/Vyrthic Sep 11 '26

Tbf wouldn't that just be a jailbreak? I'd argue it's only a fake surrender if it's done to lower an enemy's guard and attack them before you are captured, whereas this situation is you allowing yourself to be captured, then breaking out of jail and running amok. The Eliksni don't gain reason to distrust all of the surrenders from the forces of the Last City, they only get taught to make their Guardian prisons more resilient.

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u/GregBahm Sep 11 '26

The Eliksni don't gain reason to distrust all of the surrenders from the forces of the Last City

"Hey boss, this guy is surrendering. Should we shoot him or take him to jail?"

"Last time we didn't shoot the guy, it was a trick. So just shoot him."

This is a textbook example of giving them a reason to distrust all surrenders and is why perfidy is a warcrime.

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u/Vyrthic Sep 11 '26

If you have ten cases where people have surrendered, and of the ten cases one happens to try to escape after they're in prison, that doesn't make the other 9 cases ones you can't trust. It just means that one case was someone who decided they wanted to go free.

Also, prison breaks aren't a false surrender. They are nor war crimes either. Under the Third Geneva Convention, prison breaks, both violent and non-violent, are permitted, as a PoW has a right to attempt escape, and attempting to escape from a prison while being a PoW is considered a natural act of patriotism. The only thing to be considered is if you perform a violent prison break, you accept the high likelihood that you and your accomplices, potentially even the other prisoners who aren't accessories to the act, will be executed by the nation that has captured you should you fail.

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u/GregBahm Sep 11 '26

I have about a billion cases where people were just trying to fly a plane, and one case where some asshole had a bomb in his shoe, and so yesterday I had to take my shoes off to get into an airplane. Nobody is doing the math on shoe bombing. Everyone is just remembering that time they were punished for trusting that there are no bombs in people's shoes.

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u/Vyrthic Sep 11 '26

That is an improvement in security. That falls under what I said about making the Eliksni making their Guardian holding cells more resilient and better capable at keeping Guardians imprisoned. A better example for the issue with false surrender, is if after the guy tried to use the shoe bomb, the airport guards started just shooting anyone wearing shoes that came into the airport.

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u/GregBahm Sep 11 '26

Given the observable status quo for the TSA's response to shoe wearing nuns and geriatric grandparents, it seems overwhelmingly reasonable to expect them to be more prone to violence in an already violent conflict.

Soldiers accept the surrender of other soldiers, out of their own self-interest in being allowed to surrender in turn.

The main character in Destiny is allowed to surrender, but after this ruse is accepted and the player is brought inside the enemy base, the main character never offers any enemy the chance to surrender before killing them all.

It's just a video game. They have to give the PC one set of rules and the NPC a different set of rules. But in terms of storytelling, it's a shit story.

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u/Vyrthic Sep 11 '26

Homie, you lost the plot on my original point entirely. My point was the specific crime. There is no false surrender, because the surrender was genuine. You surrendered and were taken into custody. That's not false. That happened. A false surrender by definition of the Geneva Convention is that you lie about your intent to surrender so you can draw your opponents out from their position and attack them now that they are no longer protected by their position. If you genuinely surrender, then perform a prison break, that isn't a false surrender. You are not lying about your intent to surrender, as you do intend to surrender. You're lying about your intention to remain within custody as a prisoner of war, but that isn't a war crime, as I highlighted. In this situation as outlined by the original commenter, the Guardian is not committing a war crime. They are surrendering, and they are observing their right to attempt escape. That was the point, the entire point.

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u/GregBahm Sep 12 '26

They put quotes around "surrender" because it isn't a genuine surrender. If it was a genuine surrender, why would they put quotes around it?

I think this all comes down to a simple misunderstanding of the story in question.

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u/Vyrthic Sep 12 '26

They put quotes because you're not intending to remain a prisoner. A false surrender has a legal definition per the geneva convention. The described scenario is not a false surrender per the legal definition. It is a genuine surrender followed by a prison break. The articles of the Geneva Conventions all have legal definitions because they need to be legally binding. That's how war crimes work, you must violate the laws of warfare per the articles of the Geneva conventions. They are not arbitrary guidelines, they are well and purposefully defined rules, regulations, and protections designed to keep war, for the most part, fair and just among those who have agreed to them. It is not a difficult concept, and I implore you to consider more than just the face value on things, and to look up definitions of words or phrases instead of wasting someone's time.

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u/NerdHoovy Sep 11 '26

A prisoner that violently escapes jail would still be considered a war criminal, if the prison conditions are up to the standards of the Geneva convention. Otherwise you must assume every pow is in reality a suicide bomber and execute them on the spot

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u/Vyrthic Sep 11 '26

My point was just the particular crime being committed. It wasn't a false surrender, you did surrender, and you allowed yourself to be taken into custody. A Prison Break is not false surrender. Also, a PoW performing a prison break isn't a war crime. Under the Third Geneva Convention, a prisoner of war has a right to attempt to escape and attempting to break out is viewed as a natural act of patriotism. A violent break out still isn't a war crime, but if you fail you accept the likelihood that you and your accomplices will be executed by the nation that was holding you.

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u/NerdHoovy Sep 11 '26

Fair enough. I kinda get that argument. Thanks for educating me

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u/RT-LAMP Sep 11 '26

but if you fail you accept the likelihood that you and your accomplices will be executed by the nation that was holding you.

Execution for attempted escape is specifically illegal under the Geneva convention actually.

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u/Vyrthic Sep 11 '26

Well, I specified in violent escapes. Is the ban on execution for all escape attempts, or just for non-violent escapes? I think it's only non-violent escapes, as in you and your crew sneak out without a hitch. Violet escapes though, where you kill guards or personnel, I feel like would not be protected from execution.

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u/RT-LAMP Sep 12 '26 edited Sep 12 '26

It seems like for violent escapes the crime is basically treated as if the POW were a civilian who committed the crime (while non-violent crimes committed with the intent of enabling escape like theft are considered fair game). So presumably in most places the violence would have to escalate to murder to be legal to execute them and possibly not even then, but it does note that the fact it was committed while escaping cannot be considered an aggravating factor.

Interestingly I saw (though I can't find again now that I'm able to write this comment) a carveout that this is valid against civilians, guards, and soldiers who are out of combat. I'm presuming that carveout exists so that if an escapee makes it back to the frontlines and has to fight their way through that is allowed (though I suppose it could also mean an escapee who has made it out but is still behind lines can in effect rejoin combat without it risking being considered criminal).