Fanfic / A Young Woman's Political Record

"As usual, Tanya has overestimated her own ability to fail and surprised precisely one person in the whole nation with her success."

— The story in a nutshell, according to Slayer Anderson

With the war over and her military career in shambles, Tanya von Degurechaff has to forge a new path for herself. Fortunately, she finds an opportunity to get involved in the political scene. A safe, easy job has never been closer at hand. What could possibly go wrong?

A Young Woman's Political Record by jacobk is a The Saga of Tanya the Evil fanfiction that deals with what would have happened if the Germanian Empire lost the war and was subjected to a ruinous peace treaty, closely mirroring the aftermath of post-World War I Germany.

You may also read the Story Only version here.

---

This Fanfiction contains examples of:

• 0% Approval Rating: What Tanya hopes to achieve for the Rus through Millie Caldwell's reports on the Holodomor.
• Accent Interest: Albish intelligence agents are rather curious about the fact that Tanya speaks perfect Albish with an unidentifiable accent that's definitely not Germanian.
• The Ace: Tanya. To quote Johan Dressler:
  Lergen had found her already a perfect soldier at nine. Johan was finding her already a perfect politician at seventeen.
• Acquainted with Emergency Services: A variation. While testing the new Type 99, Tanya overclocks it to the point of completely destroying the computation orb. When asked what she thought of it, Tanya asks if they still use form LM-347-X, the form for a computation orb being destroyed in non-combat testing. Tanya notes she filled it out so many times, she's memorized the layout.
• Act of True Love: When Francois and the Russy declare war upon the OZEV, a desperate Tanya briefly entertains the possibility of sending away her "valuable subordinate" Visha to ask for asylum at the Unified States, until a "Shut Up" Kiss convinces her of what's really going to happen.
• Action Politician: Tanya personally led the operation against Francois occupation of the Ruhr in secret. Later during the second Great War, once again she personally leads the invasion of Francois and joins in the fighting against Rus in Legadonia, this time publicly.
• All Men Are Perverts: Implied. Elya gestures towards her impressive bust when saying she was considered "too memorable" for undercover work.
• All-Powerful Bystander: Tanya sees the Allied Kingdom and the Unified States as these, powerful countries who can easily end any continental conflicts in whichever direction they please should they be bothered to, and she takes great pains to avoid drawing their ire and attempts to redirect it at her country's foes. However the Albish and American perspectives make it clear that they're nowhere as strong as Tanya imagines them to be and suffer from their share of internal problems as well.
• Alternate History: While meeting the Akitsushima ambassador, Tanya learns Oda Nobunaga survived the Sengoku Period and united the country under the Oda Shogunate unlike his Real Life counterpart who was betrayed and killed by one of his Generals and the country was united under the Tokugawa Shogunate.
• Alternate Universe: Aside from the setting already being an alternate, magical Earth around the time of World War I, the Rus never entered the war in this one, having been tied up fighting the Akitsushima in the east. Tanya also killed Mary Sue personally, rather than just shooting her down and Mary then getting fragged by the Allied med-evac team.
• Anti-Climax: OZEV is spared from having to make more grinding offensives or dropping nukes on any Russy cities when Elya reveals that she had her agents rescue Lev Bronstein^note better known in real history as Leon Trotsky and smuggle him into Moskva, whereupon he kills Jugashvili and incites a revolution before being promptly shot dead by "Albish agents".
• Armchair Military: Churbull's plan to open a new front in the war against the Russy Union is, charitably put, a pie in the sky - a push from Bharat into the Union's southern border, starting with assembling an army from a colonial population, and then crossing and maintaining a supply line through some of the most mountainous and treacherous territory in the world. Not to mention his desire for Albion to open another front against the Russy Union from the east, halfway around the world.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  Lergen: Her ambitions obviously don't end with the repeal of the Treaty.
  Zettour: Do yours?
• Artistic License – Economics: Discussed and averted by showing the results of stupid economic policies. The previous ruling coalition's solution to the economic crisis facing Germania was to continue printing more money, eventually resulting in hyperinflation and leaving the Mark so worthless that a loaf of bread cost a trillion Marks.
• Assassination Attempt: Elya offers to do this to Benedetto Muzzioli, but Tanya ultimately refuses out of fear of making him a martyr, and making other countries start attempting these on her in retaliation.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Germania's incredibly advanced submarines are more than twice as fast as any other in the world and can stay submerged far longer. They're also so dangerously unstable that Tanya considers it a minor miracle the one she was showing off didn't explode during the test.
• Balkanize Me:
  • The Empire after the Great War. Most splinter countries desperately want to rejoin Germania due to cultural loyalty, comparative prosperity and military strength, much to Tanya's exasperation.
  • OZEV was planning to do this to Rus Union and, fittingly enough, Yugoslavia to make them less capable of military adventurism.
• Bar Brawl: A dozen Communists try to start one with Tanya while she's giving a speech in a beer hall. She takes out eleven of them before they even realize what hit them. Visha takes out the twelfth.
• Batman Gambit: Subverted. Zettour thinks Tanya did this when she has Elya send reports regarding her mage battalion to Lergen, telling them to play fair regarding her election as Chancellor or she would rebel. She only handed the report about her mage battalion because she thought Lergen was preparing an army in secret because of the Treaty of Triano restrictions and as far as she knew she was giving some deniable support. Lergen hadn't done such a thing and Zettour makes it sound like Tanya was making a threat.
  • After years of catching any attempted spies on Germania's naval fleet construction, Tanya gives an enthusiastic and in-depth tour of Germania's "adequate" prototypes. The Allied Kingdom ends up giving Germania generous diplomatic favors in exchange for not building a fleet of their insanely advanced subs, unaware that the subs were highly impractical and had No OSHA Compliance.
• Berserk Button:
  • The Treaty of Triano, the Francois, communism and shoddy economics are these for Tanya. She plays up her ire when campaigning, but she shows great dislike for them even in her private monologues.
  • Insulting the People's Car turns out to be one for Ambassador Weber. When Tanya remarks that they pay him enough to buy something better, he goes on a several minute rant extolling its virtues.
• Big Damn Kiss: As Tanya is panicking over the looming war, due to the assassination of the Ildoan envoy to Carinthia, she babbles to Visha about fleeing the country and seeking asylum in America. Visha silences her with a kiss, and gets kissed in turn. They agree to move forward with this after they win the war.
• Blood Knight:
  • Tanya's general reputation is her mourning the end of the war because it meant she couldn't keep fighting.
  • Koenig is also a straight example. He takes a wee bit too much pleasure from his job, and jumps at the chance to continue being a mage.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: Neumann lampshades how pointless it was for the Chancellor to have a bodyguard. If someone did attack her, his job would be to attempt to arrest them before Tanya killed them herself.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Tanya and Visha engage in this in the opening ceremony of the World Cup.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • When witnessing a test demonstration of possible new assault rifles for the Germanian army, Tanya makes it clear that her desired end product should be this. Which she then emphasizes by dunking each of the proposed models in a pit filled with mud and freshly shredded pig guts, and then seeing if they will still fire. As Tanya explains, a soldier who's crawled through miles of mud and gore doesn't care about shot grouping but about whether his gun will fire in such conditions.
  • The "People's Car" as it's dubbed is designed in such a way. While most of the car companies dismiss the idea of a car an average person could afford, saying you'd have to sacrifice everything that makes a car worth buying, one designer dreams of such creating such a vehicle and goes on to create the Volkswagen Beetle.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Tanya finds that she understands the reasoning behind the Francois' declaration of war on the Empire, given they shared a border, that before the Great War the Empire was the one of the strongest among Great Powers, and that had the Empire won the Great War, they would have become the absolute power on the continent. The Republic declared war in fear of the shifting balance of power, and while the Empire wasn't responsible for starting the Great War, much of the military leadership stumbled when they forgot their Clausewitz, i.e. that war is not purely an exercise in logic and emotions played a great part in the Empire becoming the "Evil Empire" of Europe. The Empire, however, did little more than retaliate against unprovoked attacks and, though they did use the opportunity to expand their territory and influence, never overstepped their bounds by international law.
• Brandishment Bluff: It turns out the Rus forces attacking Pullska are... quite a bit weaker than their initial push would suggest.
• Bread and Circuses: A version of it. After Carinthia gets recognized as an independent state, Minister Klohse suggests to use financial pressure to force them to Germania's side. Tanya shoots that down and opts to use extensive propaganda to make the idea of reunifying with Germania a fun and sensible idea for the Carinthian people.
• Bring It: After the Francois Republic's failed attempt to occupy the Rhine Industrial Area, Tanya meets with ambassadors from Albion, the Unified States of America, and the Francois Republic. When the Francois ambassador brings up the reparations Germania still owes, she dares him to "come and take it".
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: For anyone else, driving off an entire army corps would have been a big achievement. For Tanya, it was just business as usual, even treating it like an annoying errand that she has no choice but to do.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: Tanya (who even at seventeen is still less than a hundred pounds soaking wet) gets tipsy from having a single mug of beer and, much later, gets totally drunk after two glasses of wine. Her actions while drunk are what draw her to the attention of the Germanian Worker's Party in the first place.
• Captain Ersatz:
  • Johan Dressler is one of Anton Drexler.
  • Anton Ehrlich is one of Ferdinand Porsche (his name coming from the original's parents, Antonius Porsche and Anna Ehrlich).
  • British Naval Intelligence Officer Ian Flemons is one for Ian Fleming.
  • New Amsterdam Governor, later President, Frederick Rosenvelt is one for Franklin D. Roosevelt. His predecessor President Herman Hooper is one of Herbert Hoover.
  • Air Force General von Richtoffer is THE Red Baron.
  • Pierre-Michel de Lugo is an older and more politically astute Charles de Gaulle.
  • Addy Heidler is Adolf Hitler, but this Osterrian Great War veteran decided to settle down, get married and open a cafe. He is only somewhat active in politics, using his oratory gift to support the Germanian Workers Party after Osterry reunifies with Germania.
  • Benedetto Muzzioli is Benito Mussolini, though one that had to fight a civil war in order to secure power.
  • Albish General Henry Law is Bernard Law Montgomery. Named for his father, Reverend Henry Montgomery.
  • Carl Troeger is based on a reverse Bert Trautmann. While Trautmann was a soldier turned goalkeeper, Troeger was a goalkeeper turned soldier.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • Tanya tries to warn the nations of Europa about the danger of the Communist Russy Union but her warnings are dismissed by everyone west of Germania.
  • Her warnings about increasing tariffs or printing too much money are largely ignored by her early political opposition, and later the Unified States after the stock market crash.
  • She also tries to build an alliance to stop Benedetto Muzzioli's ascent to power only to find no allies willing to intervene in Ildoa, since nobody knows yet that Muzzioli's policy of expansion could start another Great War. As Tanya states, it would only take one idiot to start the next Great War.
  • Ian Flemons suggested that the purpose of Tanya's alliance with Dacia was to contain the Rus, given how she helped Dacia build their army. His superior immediately dismissed this possibility.
• Character Development: Tanya is not a sociopath anymore by the time the story starts; it's possible that this is because she doesn't have to fight in the front lines anymore, and has more than the goal of just surviving a war to motivate herself.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Carl Troeger, the Germanian goalkeeper that managed to hold off Albion's attacks during the World Cup Final, shows up again during the war as a bomber in Germania's air force.
• Cincinnatus: Tanya only wanted a cushy desk job with steady pay and has no interest with power or responsibilities associated with it. Doesn't stop the Germanians from piling more powers to her anyway. At one point they voted Tanya to be the President on top of her Chancellery when she was out of the Capital, knowing she'd likely to refuse had she been present.
• Combat Pragmatist: Tanya has the attitude that honor has no place in war given what she's been through. It's best shown when fighting against the Francois' 32nd Corps: Tanya and the 203rd mages destroy all enemy tanks, plane, artillery, and air mages in an ambush in the middle of the night in an attack so devastating that the Republic Army broke and surrendered right after.
• The Confidant: Visha is the only person Tanya trusts enough to vent her true frustrations to.
• invokedConfirmation Bias:
  • Tanya tends to give her own opinions more weight than other people's, and she makes a lot of assumptions, sometimes without any sort of confirmation. For example, she interprets most people around her as war maniacs due to her time in the Empire's military, completely ignoring that they are just ordinary people serving their country. Her own reputation as a war maniac is solidified because of how she plays up the image of a warmonger during her political rallies.
  • Another instance is her dislike of the People's Car. For someone used to a modern automobile, the People's Car is frankly terrible - it's just that for people used to what came before it, it's a godsend at every level - especially at its extremely low price. Every time someone praises the People's Car, Tanya reflexively assumes it's pure sarcasm directed towards the Empire and tends to Accentuate the Negative, when in fact it's only her own experience that doesn't let her see the innovative and efficient design.
• Cult of Personality: Tanya is entirely unaware of the one that popped up around her, initially made up of the extremists in the Germanian Workers' Party. A year into her term as chancellor, angelic statuettes of her have spread across the Germanian countryside.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • The Battle of Duisbusch. Thanks to the newly developed concept of stealth casting, the occupying army didn't even know Tanya was there until about a minute before she opened fire, taking out all the 32nd's senior officers and over 90% of their mages in the opening salvo. While most of the rank and file troops survived the attack, the surprise so shattered their morale that they surrendered in place the next morning.
  • During the Francois invasion of Northern Ildoa, an aerial mage recon force decides to probe the Germanian defenses at Carinthia and they die to a man without doing anything meaningful.
  • In the first ever battle of Germania's new navy, one carrier and fourteen destroyers go up against a carrier, five battleships, ten cruisers and 22 destroyers, a six to one tonnage disadvantage. Through a combined force doctrine between Air Force guided bombs, aerial mages, dive bombers and torpedo runs, all of the Francois ships save a single destroyer are sunk or taken, with the only confirmed Germanian casualties being three dive bombers and a fighter. The surviving ship defects to Albion to avoid having to return to the war.
  • The entire second World War ends up one for Francois, with Tanya riding a tank down the streets of Parisee two weeks after the war starts.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: The Russy Federation. Although the Francois were defeated in quick order and the Carinthians are making steady progress against the Ildoans, OZEV's momentum was stopped in the Eastern Front with the Russy stretching them out in Pullska, making creeping advances in Dacia and outright taking Legadonia.
• D-Cup Distress: Downplayed but Elya, who's buxom enough to make the curvy Visha look flat, laments that her figure makes her "too memorable" for most undercover work.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Since the story is set during the 1930s and 1940s, some people have values that wouldn't be acceptable today.
  • Millicent Caldwell's mother, a rich socialite from old money, has negative views about "modern" women having new work options, believing that they should find a man and settle down. Not only does she dislike her daughter working as a reporter, she at first refuses to let her visit Germania as the country is progressive in women's rights and finds it unacceptable that Germania elected a woman as their leader.
  • During the World Cup, the French Ambassador takes Visha's hand to kiss it and showers her with praise on her beauty. Tanya makes an excuse to take Visha away after realizing Visha is uncomfortable with what the Ambassador is doing, which by modern standards is sexual harassment and unacceptable; Visha is afraid to complain since women during that time were supposed to accept it or be seen as rude.
• Despair Event Horizon: The citizens of Germania suffer this on a national scale after the Empire lost the Great War and the aftermath and consequences began slamming the country.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • While testing the Type 99, Tanya decides to disengage the safety protocols to see just how fast she can fly with it. She ends up destroying the computation orb due to over-stressing it and admits she should've remembered that safeties exist for a reason.
  • The Francois Republic decide to supplement their depleted aerial mage forces with colonial mages. Magical combat in this setting requires a solid grasp of mathematics, innate magical talent, and considerable support to maximize its effectiveness: colonials are lucky to be taught multiplication (usually only knowing addition and subtraction), barely have enough magic to work a Computation Jewel since the Francois are just padding their numbers with any colonial they find with a trace of magic, and are given barely adequate equipment for the role (they can barely hover and slowly fly). As a result they're mooks at best, and the Francois mages don't even bother coordinating in combat with their "inferiors", deliberately using the colonial mages as bullet sponges.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Elya is extremely buxom and Tanya has to noticeably fight to keep her eyes on the woman's face during their first meeting.
• Divide and Conquer: The Allied Kingdom's long-term national strategy in Europe is to keep the various mainland nations off-balance and at odds with each other to ensure that no nearby power can threaten Albion.
• Downer Beginning: The story begins after the Empire lost the Great War and slapped with a crippling punitive treaty that leaves Tanya jobless, penniless and homeless. She obliviously rejects obliquely-made job offers that she sees non-existent threats in, and seeks refuge in her old orphanage doing odd jobs until an opportune recruitment offer from a tiny and insignificant political party comes her way.
• Down to the Last Play: The World Cup Finals get decided in double-overtime shootouts because Germania's third-string goalie (only starting due to injuries in previous rounds of the previous two goalies) manages to hold the game to a zero-score tie through regulation and overtime. He only lets a goal through at the very end due to fatigue and dehydration catching up after two hours of getting continually shot at by the overall superior Albish team. Germania wins the shootouts 4-1.
• The Dreaded: Tanya's already established herself as a terror on the battlefield and quickly becomes the same in politics. By her reputation alone, she is able to treat with the Allied Powers from a strong position despite Germania being initially weak and never actually meets the Francois ambassador because he fears for his life.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: After she helped train them, Germania's new aerial mages are afraid of Visha, much to Tanya's amusement.
• Due to the Dead: During her state visit to Legadonia, Tanya goes to Mary Sue's tomb to lay down a crown of flowers.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Regardless of their platform, businesses tend to support any party that opposes the communists as their philosophy is naturally bad for business.
  • Tanya has a bit of fondness for the Akitsushima Empire because she was Japanese in her previous life, but she doesn't think too kindly of their imperialist ambitions or their military policies (both the Japan she grew up in and the Akitsushima Empire in turn). That said, she covertly sends some advisors to aid them in their fight against the Russy Union in exchange for their aircraft carrier blueprints.
  • Tanya convinces Germania's old enemy Dacia into joining a military alliance due to their fear of Rus, poor economy, and only lukewarm support from their old allies.
  • As much as they fear or are skeptical of Tanya, the Allied Powers allow the Treaty of Triano to be dissolved (much to the Francois' anger) so that Germania and its military can rebuild itself and act as a buffer against the Rus and Communism.
  • The Rus and Francois neither like nor trust each other at all, but decide to ally themselves anyway to contain the threat posed by the Tanya-led Resurgent Empire.
• Ensign Newbie: Wilibard Koenig, a Germanian commando, pretends to be a new lieutenant in the Russy army. He mentally lampshades that in every army he's ever dealt with, there's always an equivalent saying to "There's nothing more dangerous on the battlefield than a lieutenant with a map".
• Entertainingly Wrong: All the time. Of note, Tanya thinks of how painfully naive Visha is for letting a friend give speeches on the party's behalf, not realizing that said friend is the analogue of Adolf Hitler who was a magnificent orator.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Tanya refuses to blame Germania's religious and ethnic minorities for the country's woes because they are voting citizens. Instead, she focuses the Germanian people's ire on the Francois, one of the countries actually responsible for the Great War.
  • While she may hate the Germania Communist Party, she tells Elya not to target their supporters since they only support the party due to hardships they suffered from the Treaty of Triano. Once her economic policies improve the country, those supporters will happily abandon the party for a chance to get a job and roof to sleep under.
  • Tanya refuses to speak at President Rudersdorf's funeral as she didn't know him personally enough to do the man justice, and even she refuses to stoop so low as to turn his funeral into a political rally.
• Exact Words: When Albion enters the war but insists on only fighting the Russy Federation then talks about a technology exchange with Germania, Tanya asks the Albish ambassador to send her a written proposal which she will ensure "gets all the attention it deserves". As she sees Albion as a Fair-Weather Friend trying to take advantage of Germania, Tanya fully intends to burn said proposal.
• Expecting Someone Taller: General Henry Law is surprised at how short Tanya is when he meets her.
• The Famine: The Rus government engineer the equivalent of the Holodomor in Kieva by siphoning out the vast bulk of the region's harvest and heavily restricting how much gets sent back. Tanya uses Millicent Caldwell's reporting of the incident to destroy the possibility of the Unified States selling oil to the Rus after making a big push for the Caucasus oil region.
• Fantasy Conflict Counterpart: The second Great War to the World War II, though it also take its cues from the World War I.
• First-Person Smartass: Tanya thinks like this but usually refrains from speaking out loud because she doesn't want to offend the person she's talking to, mostly because they're either very powerful or have a lot of influence.
• Foregone Conclusion: Because of Tanya's knowledge from before her reincarnation, she knows how some events will happen, such as the Great Depression and the Cold War, and prepares herself and her country to counter the impacts from affecting the Empire.
• Frontline General: While bailing out the Albish in Legadonia, Tanya leads the Germanian forces personally despite being Chancellor. One of the bomber crew mentions he can't really complain about his work or pay if even the Chancellor is picking up a rifle to fight the Rus.
• Genre Savvy: Well aware that the Akitsushima Empire's war with the Russy Federation will not end well for the former just like what happened to Japan against the Soviet Union in Real Life, Tanya won't form an alliance with Akitsushima to prevent Germania from getting involved in their war with the Rus.
• Germanic Efficiency: Germania quickly becomes this under Tanya's rule due to having the 203rd training new aerial mages, eccentric scientists and Tanya's future knowledge aiding in R&D, and solid economic theory providing the funding for all the aforementioned people to do their best work.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Tanya smacks the Parisee chief of police upside the head when he breaks down crying over Francois's swift defeat by Germania, telling him she lost a war too and it's hardly the end of the world.
• Giving Radio to the Romans: Tanya notes that she's not in the best time period for this as she's been isekai'd to a time too developed for her to be able to introduce anything that can kick off an industrial revolution or get rich, and she's not really knowledgeable of any good future tech that can be developed in her situation.
  • That said, she does introduce 21st century marketing and political campaigning techniques, financial security policies and the assault rifle, among other things. She's also proposed high-level concepts like geosynchronous TV satellites, signal repeaters and noise filtering in front of engineers and stood back to see if they could run with them a decade or more before such ideas were first thought of in Real Life. So while she can't give radio to the Romans, she can find Roman engineers theoretically capable of building one and give them the idea.
• Gray-and-Gray Morality: Because of the nature of politics between the nations of the story, many nations do morally grey things for the sake of their people.
• Have We Met?: Tanya asked this to the Alternate Universe Adolf Hitler.
• Heroic Russian Émigré: Visha often mourns what has become of her birth country under Communism.
  • Koenig gets married with a Russian noble he rescued while in his stint at the war between the Russy Union and Akitsushima.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: A group of Akitsushima generals offer to commit seppuku to the Emperor for their recent failures against the Rus in Manchuria, believing the Emperor will forgive them, letting them save face and giving the military hardliners support within the government for their open show of devotion. Unfortunately, the Emperor knows what the generals' real plans are, and having enough of the war, accepts their offer of seppuku, much to their shock. They are forced to resign in shame after refusing to kill themselves, damaging the reputation of the hardliners, allowing the Emperor to dissolve the government and replace them with moderates who oppose the war.
• Hope Bringer: Tanya very much becomes this to Germania, literally giving hope back to the citizens. After the Great War, most people sink into despair what with the fall of the Empire, the economy in shambles, and losing a number of its territories. This all changes when Tanya comes into power and turns things around.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: After the Treaty of Triano, Tanya is homeless and jobless, and has been separated from her Computation Jewel due to the Treaty. Due to the fact that Tanya is still legally a child, she returns to her orphanage for shelter.
• Hypocritical Humor: Rather common when Tanya is involved. For example, Tanya heavily favors an intervention in Ildoa's civil war because Muzzioli all but promises to invade Germania should he succeed and she takes it for granted that he would definitely follow through... apparently forgetting that she herself has used the exact same rhetoric in the past to the chagrin of her neighbors. When the Francois President not-so-subtly compares Muzzioli to Tanya, it flies straight over her head and she thinks he was talking about some Francois historical figures instead.
• I Have to Iron My Dog: When Visha thinks that Tanya is planning to cook dinner, she hurriedly comes up with an excuse to spend the entire evening somewhere else.
• Iconic Outfit: Tanya started out wearing simple white dresses provided to her by the orphanage and her military jacket on top. She keeps the look well into her political career because it becomes very iconic; so iconic that she mentions in an interview that she couldn't hold speeches in a different outfit as people wouldn't recognize her and would demand "the girl in the dress" to get on the stage instead. This same outfit shows up on angelic statuettes going around Germania's more rural areas.
• Ignorance Is Bliss:
  • Tanya decides to have Elya stop local polling operations specifically so she doesn't see her approval ratings until the very last minute. All well and good since she's trying to get herself removed from office, but she barely understands just how popular she is already.
  • Elya's employment is this on Tanya's part thanks to miscommunication between the two. Tanya assumes that she's hired Elya for secretarial work and to conduct polling operations as a favor to another military veteran, but Elya assumes that the famed military genius Tanya has hired her for her intelligence background and quickly sets up an unofficial intelligence apparatus and secret police under the guise of "polling operations". Both events listed under The Purge happen with Tanya unknowingly ordering them.
• The Illuminati: Elya creates a version that thinks they're an ancient order meant to prop up the Albion empire and fight off its shadowy enemies, not realizing they're actually a tool of Germanian intelligence gathering made out of whole cloth meant for combatting communists with plausible deniability.
• Improbable Age: Tanya becomes a Diet member at 18 and later elected Chancellor at 22.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Germania bombers are viewed this way due to being the only ones with guided bombs. Flemons mentions that when bombing a moving target from 20,000 feet in the air, one in twelve bombs hitting would've been fortunate; the Germanians managed a seemingly impossible nine out of twelve.
• Implausible Deniability: The Francois government tries to argue that the photographs of their soldiers beating, raping, and murdering civilians isn't as bad as it seems or that the presence of someone to photograph said scenes proves there's more going on. Though they never deny those events are happening.
• Inadvertent Entrance Cue: When Germanian aerial mages come to assist the Albish against the Rus, General Henry Law tells his men not to get too excited.
  Henry: Keep yourselves together, men! I don't care if the Devil of the Rhine herself were here, two battalions of mages aren't enough to stop an army.
  Tanya: (Walking in at that very moment) Well, I'll do my best.
• Insane Troll Logic: Ian Flemons's superiors recall him from the Caribbean on the basis that being a mage would give him insight into Tanya's character... when absolutely nobody, from mages to generals, has ever gleaned what that is. Flemons privately lampshades how absurd such reasoning is.
• Intrepid Reporter: Tanya mistakes Millicent Caldwell for this, and inadvertently turns her into a real one. Originally, her task was only to write bit pieces on Germania's preparations for the World Cup for Unified States newspapers, showing what kind of nation Germania had become. One of her reports attracts Tanya's attention. She decides to give her an exclusive interview, the very first one that Tanya has ever granted to a journalist, jumpstarting Millicent's reputation for even getting the chance to do so. Millie enjoys what she thinks would be a brief success back at the Unified States and traveled to Parisee to continue her original mission... where she catches a second exclusive by interviewing Tanya at her triumphant entrance to the Francois capital. And then, while visiting Berun for a second time, she’s directed to Legadonia and a third exclusive interview, all but cementing her as Tanya's apparent favorite journalist.
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople):
  • Germania is post-Treaty of Versailles Germany; Berun is Berlin.
  • Francois is France; Parisee is Paris.
  • The Russy Union is the Soviet Union; Moskva is Moscow; Kieva is Ukraine.
  • Dacia is Romania.
  • Osterry is Austria; Wien is Vienna.
  • Legadonia is Sweden and Norway.
  • Pullska is Poland.
  • The Albion Kingdom is the United Kingdom plus Ireland; Londinium is London.
  • Ildoa is Italy, minus Trieste.
  • Ispagna is Spain.
  • The Unified States are the United States; New Amstreldam is New York.
  • Akitsushima is Japan.
  • Lothiern is the Netherlands.
  • Daneland is Denmark.
  • Malagasy is Madagascar.
  • Carinthia is Slovenia.
  • Waldstatten is Switzerland.
  • The Magna Rumeli is a resurgent Ottoman Empire.
  • The Turkmen Principalities are the North African protectorates.
  • Kanata is Canada.
  • Bharat is India.
  • Pashtostan is Pakistan.
  • Jiuzhou is China.
  • Joseon is Korea.
  • Averted in several cases such as Croatia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.
• It Works Better with Bullets: General Heinz Ziegler almost shoots Tanya when she wakes him up suddenly, only to realize his pistol is too light, causing Tanya to hold up the magazine she'd already removed. Ziegler lampshades trying to fight an aerial mage in melee range was "just a fancy way to commit suicide".
• Jerkass Has a Point: Tanya easily comes off as an abrasive firebrand, especially to her enemies, but anyone who bothers to look into what she says tends to find either a solid point backing it up or a hidden meaning to her words.
• King Incognito: Chapter 25 has Tanya go undercover to better understand how her policies affect the common Germanian. She drags Neuman along because Visha was asleep at the time.
• Landslide Election: After she renegotiates the Treaty of Triano, saves the economy, ousts the communists, dramatically improves the Germanian international standing and much more, Tanya receives 70% votes on her re-election, meaning she and the Germanian Workers Party have total political domination; her people note she can basically run the country any way she wants. Note that she achieved this despite putting no effort whatsoever into campaigning, while effectively trying to lose.
• Living Legend: Tanya starts the story as the world (in)famous Argent Silver/Devil of the Rhine. In the political field, she very quickly rises to power, saves Germania from economic ruin and makes good on her campaign promise to end the Treaty of Triano, while also getting a favorable deal from the rest of the Allied Powers that basically leaves the (now hated by Germania) Francois in the dirt. POV sections from other Germanians has her described in near-mythical terms.
• Loophole Abuse: Like how she did during the war, Tanya makes interpretations of the Treaty of Triano's wording that foreign politicians do concede indeed isn't illegal, even if they are somewhat provocative.
  • She joins the Germanian Workers' Party because it's illegal for her (a former soldier) to be directly employed by the government, but there's nothing that says she can't join a political party.
  • Subverted by a bar patron in chapter 1 who suggests the Germania Republic change its name and join the Kingdom of Ildoa to escape paying reparations from the Treaty of Triano since it only applies to the nation called Germania. Tanya mocks the patron, since not only is the idea stupid, changing the country's name won't fool the Allied Powers, especially the Francois.
  • Every time someone mentions a standing treaty and Tanya in the same sentence, she always finds away to work around it without violating anything. This is best shown when she speaks to the Pullskan ambassador. The Treaty of Londinium forbids direct military cooperation between Germania and any of the former Imperial territories so Tanya offers new military equipment at cheap prices and to send some some advisors so that Pullska can update its military.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Prepping the firing range for the final test Tanya puts the prototype assault rifles through involves what she calls a "pigsplosion".
• Magikarp Power: Civilian computing orbs have many limits, the main one being that they can't process too much magic, but mastering their use requires a great deal of finesse, which can help a mage develop efficient spellcasting with proper military orbs and even allow themselves to cast magic undetected, due to them effectively training to use far less magic than they normally would.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Elya secretly has the leader of the Germanian Communist Party along with his wife and second-in-command assassinated by making it look like a murder-suicide, where the leader caught his second-in-command having an affair with his wife in his bedroom, killing them both before killing himself. Tanya, unaware of the assassination, truly believes it was a murder-suicide.
• Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: Tanya, watching Visha's odd behavior, muses that even twenty-four years after her reincarnation as a woman, she still doesn't get women.
• Mighty Glacier: The Rus military is this. Their army is large and mighty, but slow to mobilize and maneuver because of their shoddy infrastructure and inefficient bureaucracy. This is the reason why their strategy requires Francois Republic to fight the brunt of the war until The Rus finished mobilizing.
• Million to One Chance: Millicent Caldwell happens to be in Parisee writing stories on the Francois Republic when the war breaks out and is still there when Germanian forces capture the city, allowing her another chance to interview Tanya von Degurechaff.
• Mis-blamed: In-Universe, Tanya has a marked tendency to blame Being X for whatever's going wrong, though it's made abundantly clear that it's always a logical, though not obvious, consequence of her own machinations.
• Mistaken for Badass:
  • Tanya overestimates the quality of US aerial mage training and technology. She starts off thinking that the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds are college sports teams that she'd maybe rank as on par with above average Germanian recruits and is never corrected by her hosts. She also expects them to bust out a super computation orb leagues ahead of the Type 97 and leaves without learning that they don't actually have anything that comes close.
  • When Elya's agents uncover a backwards and underfunded Francois orb research facility, Tanya immediately assumes that it's a decoy, due to it being too convenient to find. She seems to have underestimated how much she and the 203rd depleted their mage population and the effects of the recent upheavals in the country.
  • Tanya assumes that Millicent Caldwell, a daughter of old money she's given an interview to, is a master negotiator due to her upbringing and a dangerously cunning reporter due to being from America. She's actually a star-struck fan having an adventure in Germania, while admittedly making the most of the journalistic opportunities, and the only one running circles around Tanya in the interview is herself.
• Modest Royalty: Chancellery, actually, but Tanya very much prefers wearing simple dresses made by the nuns from the orphanage she was raised in, and her old military jacket over that.
• The Mole: Russy infiltration runs deep in the Unified States and Allied Kingdoms. As this was a period before most paid much attention to communism, only Tanya takes them seriously and her peers believe her to be overreacting. This turns out to be a problem when the Rus manage to acquire dual-orb technology this way and Elya's spies mention that the Albish electronic code breakers have been compromised.
• Moral Myopia: The Empire was held responsible for the Great War despite not being its instigator. It was the Legadonia Entente and the Francois Republic who, separately, invaded the Empire without provocation, with the Empire only defending itself and retaliating accordingly. Tanya notes that the Francois probably has the opinion that the Empire must be evil for the Republic to invade them, believing themselves completely in the right to do so at a national scale. This is one of the reasons why Tanya despises them so completely.
• Motive Misidentification: Soon after Tanya responds to the war being declared by Ildoa, Francois, Yugoslavia, and the Russy, a courier delivers the film reel of her speech to the Unified States. Rosenvelt and Morrow watch it, and feeling something's odd, they replay it with all sound muted. They decide Tanya looks positively giddy and wonder how long she’s wanted to go back to the war. In reality, Tanya despises war, and the only reason she felt so giddy was because she finally was snapped out of her Oblivious to Love state and forced to realize that yes, she does reciprocate Visha's feelings.
• Mundane Utility: Tanya uses magic to make sitting seiza style more comfortable.
• Mythology Gag: Ian Flemons (based on Ian Fleming) is nicknamed "Number 7" by his superior.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond:
  • Neumann isn't particularly outstanding as a member of the 203rd and Tanya cites his heavy build and slight fear of high G-forces as detriments. During an exhibition show in the Unified States, he handily outperforms the best of the US aerial mages (at about a third faster than the top US record) to the shock of everyone around except for Tanya, who berates him for his slow time, shoddy maneuvering, and excessive showboating. Indeed, while Americans only understand she's browbeating him, they think it's because he showed more competence than he should have.
  • Sergeant Georg Eschenbach is only C Class when it comes to magical ability, making him unable to become an aerial mage by Germanian military standards. But once stealth casting becomes widespread in Germania's military, his ability to enhance his reflexes and use tracking spells make him a godsend for his infantry unit, such as being able to land shots at twice his panzerfaust's effective range.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Tanya's actions to restore the national economy by defaulting their reparation payment to the Republic and using those resources to fix Germania end up causing the Republic to invade and occupy the Rhine territory. Tanya expected some level of rebuke that she hoped she could use to both get negotiated settlement conditions and to get herself booted from office, but did not expect them to invade as their first option, especially with the current political climate.
  • Tanya orders Elya to form the Carinthian Independence Front who wants to form their own nation in order to create a buffer zone between Germania and Ildoa after the Francois send troops to help Muzzioli's forces conquer the country. However, Tanya not disbanding the group but separating it into a political wing and militant wing ends up biting her later after the Militant wing assassinate the Ildoan envoy while he was visiting Carinthian and the leader of the Political wing insults Muzzioli over his envoy's death, leading to the Second World War.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Francois invade the Rhine Industrial Area to take from Germania what they are unwilling to pay in reparations. The only thing they gain was a bit of loot not worth the expense and manpower and a severely damaged international reputation due to their soldiers massacring and raping any Germanian they find. To cap it off, the occupation ends after Tanya wipes out their commanders, artillery, mages, and most of their materiel in an ambush. It also gives her the excuse to renegotiate the Treaty of Triano, voiding the reparation debt.
• Oblivious to Love: Tanya is unaware that Visha is in love with her and seems to think at first she's in love with Elya, staying in the dark until Visha kisses her to snap her out of a Heroic BSoD in Chapter 39. After taking a moment to reassess Germania's position in the new war, Tanya quietly promises Visha that they can sort out their feelings for each other when the war has ended.
• Occupiers Out of Our Country: In a mirror to the Occupation of the Ruhr, the Francois occupy the Rhine Industrial Area when Tanya stops payments in order to both fix Germania's ailing economy and to draw the Francois to the negotiating table to try to wring better terms. After getting her hands on the Type-95 again, she completely annihilates the occupying forces in a single night – and does it so thoroughly that nobody outside the immediate area realizes that she'd successfully killed or captured (mostly the latter) twenty-five thousand soldiers, until she announced it on the radio the next evening.
• O.C. Stand-in: In canon, Elya is a very minor character, only showing up in two scenes months apart in-story. She's presented as Viktoriya's friend and roommate during their time in basic; due to her penchant for finding gossip, she joined the intelligence department under the cover of being an observer mage. Here, she reunites with Viktoriya and becomes Tanya's Secret Police's leader.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Lehrgen is in shock when it dawns on him that Zettour has been in Tanya's camp from the start.
  • Tanya is noticeably alarmed when Zettour describes Germania's alliance with other countries as the Central Powers as it makes her realize exactly the situation she's facing.
• Older Than They Look: Tanya is already an adult by the time of the story but, thanks to a low-impact puberty, can easily pass for a pre-teen just by styling her hair differently, which she takes advantage of when she goes King Incognito. The author says that she's the kind of woman who would be carded well into her forties.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: A common source of comedy is for Tanya's statements to be misinterpreted this way.
  • Tanya thinks she's using the Socratic method to tell Visha that she doesn't really mean to break the Treaty of Triano and provoke the Francois, she's just securing a cushy lifestyle working for a small political party. Unfortunately for her, Visha takes her words at face value.
  • Elya also finds some letters to Tanya from military manufacturers, using words like "touring facilities" or "discussing the future of the nation" to hide that they really want to hire her to be a lobbyist for them... but Tanya declined them because she simply didn't know that they were actual job offers. Elya assumes she did so as part of an intricate plan to take control of Germania and lead it to glory.
  • Elya also has a habit of assuming anything Tanya says as orders to spy on or eliminate people.
  • Notably (as in canon), the majority of Tanya's various conversations with Lehrgen consist of mostly innocuous remarks on Tanya's part that can (and do) sound very ominous to Lehrgen. Tanya, for her part, begins to believe that Lehrgen is a war maniac himself, and his various measures and plans (meant to curtail her aforementioned ominous ideas) are him chomping at the bit for another war.
• Only Sane Man: Lehrgen considers himself to be this, and Tanya to be a terrifying warmonger trying to take total control of the country. Tanya, in turn, considers herself to be this, and feels apologetic more than once for having to restrain Lehrgen's (nonexistent) plans for aggressive actions due to his patriotic war fervour.
• Open Secret: It’s known that the civilian uprising story is totally bunk and that it was Tanya and the 203rd that destroyed the occupying Francois forces in Duisbusch.
• Orphanage of Love: Tanya was raised in one, and returned there after the end of her military career. The nuns there are devoted to the children, and Tanya feels she owes them for all they've done for her, so she makes it a point to send gifts regularly or even drop by herself when she has time.
• Paper Tiger:
  • When Tanya and her men capture Parisee, she admits to herself that their image of invulnerability is largely smoke and mirrors. The men are ready for battle if necessary, but are tired (from moving top-speed during the previous night to Parisee) and have only so much ammunition. The tanks and trucks however all need serious maintenance before combat and some might not be capable of driving any significant distance. While Tanya's forces would win against any number of Pariseeans, it'd be a long and messy battle that Germania can ill afford to deal with while the Russy Union is still in the war.
  • Some of the Rus defenses aren't nearly as formidable as they seem. Hill 213 is defended by a pair of pillboxes, a bunker, and half a dozen tanks. But it turns out that they only have a quarter as many men as they should and the tanks are fakes made of wood.
• Pet the Dog: Despite the animosity between their countries, Francois President Pierre-Michel de Lugo tries to assure Tanya, who after failing to convince the other nations to intervene in the Ildoan Civil War to help the elected government against Benedetto Muzzioli's faction, that Muzzioli might not invade and moderate himself just like Tanya did, and even offers Germania to host the World Cup. Tanya naturally assumes he’s mocking her.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • Rudersdorf later explains to Tanya how close she was to being sent to the rear echelon position she so wanted, but that it was his and Zettour's respect for her military accomplishments and her apparent desire to stay in the field (as they saw it) as a patriotic soldier that led them to keep sending her into the meatgrinder. As you'd expect, Tanya is not very happy to hear this.
  • Tanya sees double meanings in everything anyone says or writes. Not only does she take away subtext that doesn't exist, she makes a point of speaking in a circumspect manner, simply assuming whoever she's talking to will pick up on the hidden meaning behind her words.
• Post-Victory Collapse:
  • Downplayed. After Germanian forces capture Parisee, the soldiers quickly set up their bedrolls and go to sleep, having been driving most of the night. Tanya herself doesn't even bother, simply laying down on top of a tank and tilting her hat over her face before (seemingly) falling asleep.
  • Kurt von Rudersdorf, already elderly and in poor health, passes away soon after news reach him of De Lugo's surrender.
• Powerful, but Inaccurate: For all but Germania, and even that only thanks to Tanya's actions, bombing any target is matter of dropping enough bombs and hoping you hit your target. Flemons mentions that one bomb in twelve hitting is lucky whent bombing a moving target.
  • Troeger doesn't think much of nuclear bombs because while they're promised to be far more powerful than standard bombs, they also can't be guided. His crewmembers joke that he's been spoiled by the guided bombs they've been using the whole war.
• Pride Before a Fall:
  • Albion prides itself on having the best football teams in the world, and this pride leads directly to their defeat. During their first match at the World Cup, they lose 5-4 and at halftime had been losing 4-1, because they were so confident of their victory that their team went pub-crawling the night before the game and have to play the game while hung over.
  • The Parisee chief of police sees the Francois Republic's swift defeat by Germania this way, declaring that God was punishing them for their hubris.
• Psycho Sidekick: Humorously, Tanya views Visha as something of this, and jokes she might try to run off to the front lines if another war does break out. Ditto with Lehrgen, due to her viewing his preparations as thirsting for open war again. Tanya seems genuinely worried that Lehrgen would attempt a coup at times if she reins him in too much.
• A Pupil of Mine Until He Turned to Evil: How Zettour viewed Tanya at the beginning, shifting away from this as she returns Germania to greatness.
• The Purge:
  • Upon being hired, Elya purges the Germanian Workers' Party of its old guard, ensuring that all who remain are loyal to Tanya.
  • Aside from the assassination of the Communist Party's leadership, she has the rest of their higher-ups arrested for ties to the Russy or just disappeared.
• Quantity vs. Quality: Tanya has Germania's aerial mages trained to her high standards and thus has fewer mages on the outset of the Ildoan conflict. Francois, having lost a good number of mages in both the Great War and in the Occupation of the Ruhr, opts to supplement their forces with magic-capable colonial troops. The problem is that these troops not only lack training and proper equipment - their math skills (a key part of orb magic) are horrendously deficient, leaving them able to fly a bit, but not much more; to a Germanian force, they're little more than targets, and the Francois only use them as bullet-shields. Despite outnumbering their Germanian counterparts at least 4-to-1, when they face off at the North Ildoan-Carinthian border, a Francois aerial mage force is completely wiped out with no mention of any casualties inflicted on the Germanian defenders.
  Elya: Suddenly, fighting a thousand mages doesn't seem so bad.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Tanya is Germania's Chancellor and also their best aerial mage who has no qualms with fighting at the front line if needed.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: The Francois army occupying Rhine makes a habit of raping and murdering the civilians living there.
• Recursive Fanfiction:
  • Extra History: The Silver Chancellor by Gremlin Jack, which is presented as an In-Universe Extra Credits video on the events of this fic.
  • A Kaiserin's Post-Living Arrangements by Lord Caelum, which has a future deceased Tanya be summoned as the Fifth Holy Grail War's Caster, in the future of this fic's world.
  • A Young Chancellor's Trans-Dimensional Voyage is also a future crossover fic, done with KanColle this time.
  • The Cold War is a pseudo-sequel that details the fallout from this fic's Anti-Climax and the progression of Tanya's world into the Cold War.
• Reflexive Response: While counter-invading Francois, Tanya shoots down a scout before he can get away then has to be reminded that they're supposed to let the scouts get away so the Francois know she's coming.
• Red Shirt Army: The Francois aerial mages due to most of them being colonials who don't have the solid mathematics background needed for magical combat, let alone the equipment to actually contribute to a aerial mage battle. When Tanya learns of this, she refers to them as a bunch of practice targets.
• Resurgent Empire: How the rest of Europa view the establishment of the Central European Treaty Organization, or OZEV (Germanian: Organisation des Zentraleuropäischen Vertrags) as it’s the former Imperial states, minus Lothiern, plus Dacia in a comprehensive and integrated military alliance centered around Germania. Building on top of the commercial, industrial and limited military links Tanya's forged with the states involved, it’s functionally a restoration of the Kaiserreich.
• Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman: Addy Hiedler (the YS counterpart of Adolf Hitler) is a baker living in Wien (Vienna). His wife appears to be Jewish.
• Ridiculous Exchange Rates: When the new Mark is introduced (which is backed by coal), the exchange rate with the old Mark is two trillion to one. Despite the new Mark being worth so much more than the old Mark, it's still a fairly weak currency for several years.
• Rousing Speech: When General von Richtoffer shares his doubts about how he has no place in the new age of warfare, citing how blind he is to all the innovations Tanya is sharing, she tells him that he sells himself short and that his accomplishments (in forming the standard of aerial doctrine rather than his personal victories) are why he was given his rank.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Johan Dressler, the leader of the Germania Workers Party along with those loyal to him quit the party after Elya "convince" them Tanya would make a better leader for the party.
  • After a series of deaths, accidents and misfortune for the leaders of the Germania Communist Party, many members decide to quit the party and either leave the country or join the Germania Workers' Party due to the latter's success and popularity.
  • After the first naval battle between the Germania and Francois Navies ends with a disastrous defeat of the latter, the only surviving Francois ship along with a group of Mages decide to defect to Albion rather than fight the Germania Navy again.
• Secret Police:
  • As an accidental example, Elya and her former intelligence colleagues join the Germanian Workers' Party as this.
  • The NKVD appears fielding mages using orbs they stole off the Americans.
• Self-Made Man: After the war, Tanya is once again a penniless orphan. When she joins the Germanian Workers' Party, she rises to Chancellor.
• Selective Obliviousness:
  • Tanya never quite grasps the image she projects. Rather than someone who's fickle or a liar that doesn't uphold her campaign promises like she thinks people see her as, she's seen as a Reasonable Authority Figure who does more to enrich Germania and its people than any other politician.
  • She also has a tendency to view things from a 21st century perspective. Tanya will worry that Germania will be seen as quaint or backwards when it's actually praised for how progressive and modern it is. Particularly, the towns for the various World Cup stadiums are put up at a pace compared to shanty towns in the Unified States. Tanya sees the comparison as insulting the quality of the towns while everyone else realizes how amazing it is to build actual towns at the speed most countries would only manage shacks. This also shows in her consideration for Millicent Caldwell's articles during the World Cup, believing that her glowing reports on Germania's economic miracle and development are satire meant to mock Germania in comparison to the Unified States.
• Serious Business: Apparently, trying to pin down Tanya's accent causes at least one fistfight among Albion's linguistic experts.
• Ship Tease: Boatloads between Tanya and Visha. It gets nods every now and then, mostly when the former notices that the latter is engaged in what would normally be considered wifely duties. Even the cast picks up on it, what with Neumann fearfully looking towards Visha's room when Tanya makes an offhand joke about how they should pretend to be engaged before going King Incognito.
• Shipper on Deck: Tanya for Neumann and the American mage he met while he was sent as an instructor as part of the orb trade deal.
• "Shut Up" Kiss: Visha plants one on Tanya, breaking her out of a Heroic BSoD and her stubborn Oblivious to Love attitude.
• Smooch of Victory: Tanya opens her announcement that the Russy government has fallen, ending the war by kissing Visha in front of her entire cabinet.
• Springtime for Hitler: Pretty much the whole story. Tanya tends to fail upwards, fail at failing, or her actions have unexpected consequences that work entirely to her benefit.
  • She joins a minor political party for a relatively cushy job as a minor party functionary, deliberately trying to stay small and unimportant in the scheme of things. She ends up as Chancellor.
  • Tanya provokes Francois with an eye towards being removed from power in exchange for a comfortable and safe exile. The other Great Powers backstab the Republic and basically tear up most of the Treaty of Triano, essentially to appease her. Notably, this was a major plank in Tanya's (thought to be impossible to achieve) party platform.
  • Tanya seeks to get voted out of office peacefully before the problems of post-War Germany can rear their ugly head during her term. She starts a government enterprise to splinter her own ruling coalition (which contain radical Free Market Capitalists). She puts a man to work designing a cheap car for the masses, thinking it would be a marginal profit at best – instead, he creates the Volkswagen Beetle, one of the most successful cars of all time.
    • She also pushes some financial regulations she believes will be unpopular in the Diet, but which all but ensure that Germania will withstand the Great Depression unlike the rest of the world.
  • Tanya's trip to America has her making hefty demands in exchange for sharing computation orb technology in her continued bid to get removed from power. What she gets is (1) an opportunity to publicly demonstrate the superiority of Germanian aerial mages on U.S. soil, (2) support for Imperial reunification (starting with Osterry, at the same time wiping away the debts they have with the US), and (3) the foundations for a military alliance. All it cost her was sharing admittedly potent but already outdated orb tech.
  • Even when she's backing out of an established course of action, Tanya receives a standing ovation – as seen when she decides to stop advancing against Ildoa and instead praising the idea that no nation should interfere in another's attempts at self-determination. Which sends quite the message to the former Imperial territories.
• Stealth Pun: Tanya has Germania declare bankruptcy over its war debts and failing economy in Chapter 11... which is also a chapter in the United States Bankruptcy Code.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Tanya's future knowledge and Being X's previous interference with the Type-95 means that Germania has the highest tech computation orbs by a wide margin, and tank, plane, torpedo, and gun designs already optimized for WWII-era combat.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: The Carinthian People's Front thought it was a good idea to assassinate Ildoan's diplomatic envoy when the tension in Europe was at all time high. In fact, they seem to be happy that it resulted in war.
• Take That!: We have this gem from Tanya when she thought she'd been tricked into confessing her true thoughts by Millicent Caldwell.
  Tanya: I told the truth! To a reporter! I should be ashamed to call myself a politician.
• Tempting Fate:
  • In chapter 21 Tanya muses how she can prevent a Great War as long as she maintains mostly reasonable policies, as it had taken a ridiculous level of constantly escalating provocations to start World War II in her previous world. By the next paragraph, the Pullskan ambassador's suggesting reunification between Pullska and Germania to Tanya.
  • After the World Cup finishes and the civil war in Ildoa seems to favor the Democratic side, Tanya thought she would be able to serve out an uneventful term as Chancellor and retire in peace. Cue the Francois army storming Ildoa from the north.
• Think Nothing of It: After conquering Francois in only two weeks, Tanya tries to insist it was nothing special or terribly noteworthy. Everyone else is awestruck and/or horrified by such an accomplishment and her casual attitude to the feat.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Tanya is clearly no longer The Sociopath by the start of this fic. It gets to the point that it is arguable she no longer qualifies for being a Villain Protagonist, showing genuine care toward the people of Germania, even if she keeps rationalizing her reasons in her usual pragmatic fashion.
• Underestimating Badassery: Tanya severely underestimates her political strength. Understandable, when she's just starting out, but it gets ridiculous when, by the time the Treaty of Londinium is signed, she's imagining that her hold on power is strong following her victory but ultimately fragile enough for her to break or for people to vote her out, when she actually has total political domination.
• Undying Loyalty: The former members of the 203rd jump at the chance to join Tanya again, despite having possibly more comfortable lives in the civilian sector. It really says something when they envision marching to the Reichstag to install her as Kaiserin, or following her to attack the gates of Heaven and doing so gleefully.
• Universally Beloved Leader: Tanya is beloved by her people to the point that she's at times considered an outright saint. In certain places, one can even find religious carvings of her. This is largely due to her fulfilling all her "pie in the sky" promises and turning Germania from a struggling third world nation into a first world superpower that's one of the most powerful nations in the world.
• Verbal Backspace:
  • While announcing the Francois Republic's defeat over the radio, Tanya states that the only Francois military still operating is their navy, only for Elya to quietly inform her of the blockade's complete destruction, at which point, Tanya declares that the only military operating in Francois is flying the Germanian flag.
  • Carl Troeger, a bomber in the Germanian Air Force grumbles about how if they're going to be doing twice the work (dropping two bombs per run instead of one) then they should get twice the pay. Then someone knocks on the bomber's window and he and his crew realize that mage who'd painted a target for them is Tanya. At that, Carl decides that he can't complain about his work if even the Chancellor is picking up a rifle and fighting the Rus.
• We ARE Struggling Together: The various Francois political parties can only agree on their shared hatred for Germania in general, and "The Devil" in particular. Most everything else results in infighting that frequently cripples their government.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 42 While Koenig and his commandos are performing sabotage in the Rus Federation to stall their plan invasion of Germania and their allies, Koenig discovers not only are the Rus employing Mages in their ranks despite the government's anti-mage policy, they are also using dual-core mage orbs as well.
• Wham Line: The end of chapter 55.
  Elya: There's been an uprising. Northern Bharat is in flames. They want to sever ties with the Allied Kingdom and establish a communist regime!
• With Friends Like These...: Germania and Francois are both saddled with this. For example while Germania bemoans the Carinthians for killing a diplomatic envoy and actively provocating Ildoa, the Francois are bemoaning the Ildoans for declaring a war they only half-prepared for.
• World's Best Warrior: Tanya is agreed upon by both Germanian and foreign mage officers to be the absolute gold standard of aerial mage combat, even after she goes into political office. One such officer claims that if you're within a kilometer of Tanya, you'll die the moment you lose sight of her; if you're within a hundred meters, you're already dead.
  "Put an orb in her hands and she's the best in the world. [...] Anyone else [other than Mary Sue], the devil was head and shoulders above. Man amongst boys, like."
• Worthy Opponent: Sort of. Tanya has this opinion of Lieutenant John Green of the Allied Kingdom not because of his fighting ability, but because his tactical acumen gave her an excuse to keep from overstretching Imperial supply lines during the Africa Campaign.
• Wrote the Book: Ian Flemons gives a variation regarding Tanya, saying most aerial mages "learned their business by cribbing from [her] notes" before stating that the naval battle between Germania and Francois has made it clear that "school is back in session".
• You Just Told Me: Visha bluffs Tanya into admitting that she'd melted a prototype magical orb in what was supposed to be a relaxed test flight. Tanya is exasperated that Visha used a technique she'd taught her to use on a shady boyfriend on HER of all people.

---