Klingon Promotion / Literature

• In David Anthony Durham's novel Acacia, the people of the Mien have a tradition of dueling to become chieftain instead of the chieftain, but this is never used as a plot point.
• In the Dale Brown novel Air Battle Force, Ozarov kills the Taliban leader Zarazi and briefly takes over. When Zarazi's deputy Turabi kills the usurper, the leadership falls into his hands. Also, Grzylov stages the killing and disappearance of Russian president Sen'kov and his succession line.
• Inverted in Animorphs, where becoming captain of the Helmacrons involves the new leader being executed- dead leaders don't make mistakes, but live leaders can.
• Artemis Fowl: In The Arctic Incident, our heroes are saved by a group of goblin gangsters pulling this during a combat mission.
• In The Black Coats, this is the family tradition of the Colonel's family. Julian does succeed at this over his father.
• The Black Witch Chronicles: It is implied that Big Bad Marcus Vogel murdered the previous Gardnerian High Mage before his term was up to take the position sooner, having already amassed enough support to make his election to the position a certainty.
• In the Merlin cycle of The Chronicles of Amber, Merlin's mother "arranges" to have everyone whose place in the line of succession was closer than Merlin's end up dead so she could become shadow ruler. Not a direct example, but definitely in the spirit of the Klingon Promotion. Of course, by the time Merlin becomes King of Chaos, he's no longer under her control.
• Conan the Barbarian ultimately becomes King of Aquilonia this way, through leading a popular rebellion against its previous king Numedides.
  • In "Iron Shadows in the Moon", Conan kills a Red Brotherhood pirate captain in a duel, which according to their rules makes him their leader. Amusingly, several of them question if this is actually the case, since Conan is not one of the Red Brotherhood and thus does not necessarily get the benefit of their laws. This leads them to argue among themselves and even go so far as to capture Conan so they can decide whether to kill him or accept him as their leader. They're pretty quick to accept him, however, when they get attacked by the titular Iron Shadows.
  • In "A Witch Shall Be Born", Conan is rescued from crucifixion by a band of desert outlaws. He then spends the next year winning the loyalty of the outlaws until it gets to the point where he can remove their leader and assume that title himself.
• In the Deryni works, Wencit comes to the Torenthi throne by overthrowing and killing his nephew Aldred II with the aid of his nephew's wife, Charissa, Duchess of Tolan in her own right and Festilic Pretender to the throne of Gwynedd.
• This was endemic in Discworld, particularly in the earlier books:
  • Because the number of people who can hold any rank in the Unseen University was fixed by tradition, nobody could be promoted unless a slot above them opened up through the death or promotion of a more senior wizard. As a result, creating an open slot by killing a higher-ranking wizard was the preferred means of promotion (via the "Dead Man's Pointy Shoes" rule). The catch, however, is that high-level wizards usually have so many magic wards that they can take a full-on thaumonuclear explosion to the face, forcing them to resort to more practical means, making daily UU living for high-ranking wizards an exercise in forensics. This came to an end, however, when Mustrum Ridcully became Archchancellor and proved nigh unkillable; and, Wizards being creatures of laziness, they soon came to realize a less competitive work environment is rather enjoyable. Added to this, now the senior faculty are all settled and long-standing members, they've realized in the old days each one of them would be a target for an up-and-comer; therefore it is in their best interests to act as a group now. It helps that a generation's worth of ambitious wizards killed each other off in Sourcery; the faculty originally brought Ridcully in to lead them because nobody was left who wanted the job.
  • There is also a persistent rumor that if a student Assassin manages to inhume one of his teachers, he will be graduated to full member of the Assassins' Guild on the spot. But since it is definitely known that trying to inhume one of the teachers and failing will get the student expelled not only from the guild but from life as well, no actual attempts have occurred during any of the books.
  • Also, Vetinari (maybe), although in his case he replaced the replacement of the Patrician he assassinated.
  • For that matter, back when Ankh-Morpork still had kings, there were a number of monarchs with very brief reigns. The record was King Loyala the Aargh, who ruled for all of 1.4 seconds before being killed by his successor.
  • Way back in the first book, the Thieves' Guild apparently works like this, since the leader's Number Two apparently lost an eye to the leader's pet ravens. The narration then tells us that the leader is fine with this, never begrudging a man his ambitions.
• Deconstructed with the minotaurs of Dragonlance. The accepted way to become the minotaur emperor is to defeat the previous emperor in a duel. However, an Imperial Duel is an incredibly formalized affair, the incumbent emperor can ignore challenges if he wants to (though doing this too often/ignoring a challenger with a strong enough reputation will quickly earn an emperor a reputation for cowardice and/or corruption, not a good thing for the leader of a Proud Warrior Race to have) and if the emperor is killed outside of an Imperial Duel, that's assassination and isn't well-regarded. Doesn't hurt that the emperor's main job is to be a sterling example of minotaur values for the people to look up to and be inspired by — though he sets policy in a broad sense, most of the day-to-day running of the empire is carried out by the bureaucracy.
• The Dune universe:
  • In Dune when it comes time for Paul to unite the Fremen tribes, he must first be recognized as the leader of the tribe he's been adopted by. But the Fremen traditionally determine leadership via Duel to the Death, so to take command he would have to kill his father-in-law, friend, and valuable general Stilgar. Paul refuses to fight, stating that it would be a waste of a good future lieutenant. He takes a third option by having the tribes swear their allegiance to him as their Duke rather than as a tribal leader, thus he doesn't need to kill Stilgar and he has the locals endorsing his claim to being the rightful ruler of the planet within the framework of galactic politics.
  • The Honored Matres are shown to work this way in Chapterhouse: Dune though without the ritual or rules that the Fremen had in their example.
• Dungeon Crawler Carl: On the Scolopendra floors of the World Dungeon, there are NPC towns and villages, and killing the mayor results in becoming the new mayor. Even if the town guards were standing right there and watched you do it. Carl becomes the mayor of a third-floor town, but unfortunately, he didn't know how the mechanics of it were supposed to work; it's only later that he discovers the loot box containing the emblem that he could have used to command the mayor's underlings.
• In Empire of the East, this is how the titular Empire keeps its various lords and satraps subservient to the Emperor, apparently; they are so busy competing with each other for their various positions that they never think of allying and overthrowing the Emperor himself. The Emperor tacitly approves of the practice, as several characters note; he will readily accept the service of a Lord who gains his position by disposing of his predecessor since the former occupant was obviously not worthy of the seat in the first place.
• In Jack Chalker's Four Lords Of The Diamond series, the four planets of the Warden Diamond, as a dumping ground for all the sociopaths, criminals, scum, villainy, and political opponents that the interstellar human empire decided weren't worth killing (or mindwiping) use this method for their internal hierarchies. On the one planet where this is frowned on, it still happens if you can frame or con someone higher up the chain of command to make them look bad so they get jailed, demoted, or transferred for being stupid enough to fall for it.
• Ghost Girl (2021): It's heavily implied that Scratch murdered Principal McCaffery to take his position.
• Gor:
  • In Raiders of Gor, Tarl Cabot kills a pirate named Surbus in a tavern brawl. At the (surprisingly considerate) request of Surbus's slave-girl, whom he had been about to kill, Tarl allows the dying man to see the sea with his last breath, which causes his loyal crew to acknowledge Tarl as their new captain.
  • In Tribesmen of Gor, our hero has made the desert march to the hellish salt-mines in Klima. Every man there is a salt slave, with the leader being one Tz'shal who advises the new arrivals that anyone who wishes to be first at Klima need only kill him. Of course, he who did so would then have to watch his own back, as well as inheriting not just the power over the salt-mine but also the responsibility.
• In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Hagrid describes how the gurg of the Giants who was sympathetic to their overtures of wanting giant allies in the fight against Voldemort was beheaded and replaced by a gurg backed by Death Eaters.
• It's mentioned in Horatio Hornblower that while there are a handful of duels throughout the series, it's illegal for a junior to challenge an immediate superior to avoid this rather obvious problem.
• The Hunger Games: In Mockingjay, Finnick reveals that President Snow used this trope to get control of the Capitol. He poisoned his rivals and superiors and then drank from the same glass (to ward off suspicion) before downing poorly made antidotes. That's why he wears roses, to cover up the smell of his chronically bleeding gums.
• Hurog: In Dragon Bones, Ward's father gained the inherited title of Hurogmeten by killing his own father and disguising it as a hunting accident. He now fears that Ward, his first-born son, will in turn kill him to gain the title. Subverted with Ward, who is a Gentle Giant and resorted to Obfuscating Stupidity to seem less of a danger to his father.
• According to R.A. Salvatore, writer of The Icewind Dale Trilogy, this murder-based hierarchy, from among Houses to within families, is what keeps dark elves Always Chaotic Evil.
• The early Roman Empire is depicted this way in I, Claudius, albeit with the murders carried out by proxy rather than in person. Livia, after killing everyone higher up the line of succession, poisons Augustus so Tiberius can succeed him; Caligula succeeds by having Tiberius smothered; and at the end, Agrippina poisons Claudius to clear the way for Nero. The only Emperor who DOESN'T succeed this way is Claudius himself, who had nothing to do with Caligula's murder. (Historically, it's doubtful if Augustus and Tiberius were murdered or not, though Claudius probably was.)
• It All Started With Columbus proposes that Aaron Burr would have had a better shot at obtaining the presidency if he had shot Thomas Jefferson instead of Alexander Hamilton, though "it would, however, have established a bad precedent for vice-presidents."
• Tharkian society works something like this in the John Carter of Mars novels. If you kill someone of higher rank than you in single combat, you get to take their rank, their stuff, and their name. Downplayed at the highest levels; the jeds and the jeddak don't have to face challengers unless their entire circle of subordinates votes that they are unfit and must prove their right to continue to rule by defeating the challenger.
• In Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, the Gentleman with Thistle-down Hair believes that once he and Steven kill the king of England, it will be a simple matter for Steven Black, a black manservant in 19th century England, to become king. This is often how things work in Faerie, and the Gentleman never really troubled to make a distinction between his opinion and reality. This comes back at the end of the book when Stephen kills the Gentleman with Thistle-down Hair and inherits his Faerie kingdom.
• The Laundry Files has a few short stories that show this as the inevitable conclusion of working at the Laundry, a vast entity of the civil service that no one's allowed to leave (mainly because of their line of work). It's dead man's shoes all the way up, and some folks underneath take pains to vacate the shoes of the one above them...
• This is standard operating procedure among the Boskonian Space Pirates of the Lensman series, as their hierarchy is built on power and intimidation. If you can't keep your underlings from killing you and taking your job, you clearly weren't doing that well at it in the first place.
  • When Kim Kinnison poses as a senior Boskonian officer in order to work his way to the top and undermine Boskonia from within in Second Stage Lensmen, he has few problems playing this trope straight since the people he has to kill to do it are his enemies anyway.
  • Subverted on two occasions, in which he either has his superior court-martialled and himself promoted to the position instead of doing the deed himself, or pulls favours from the man he would otherwise have killed in order to win a side-transfer and progress his true goal more effectively.
• Happens on the planet of Surebleak in the Liaden Universe all the time. If you want to be in charge of a territory, you have to off the old boss.
• In The Machineries of Empire, it's a respected tradition among the Shuos that the easiest way to get a promotion is to assassinate your superior. For this reason, the position of Shuos hexarch used to change hands astonishingly often until Shuos Mikodez got the job and proved too apt at Assassin Outclassin'. Mikodez himself won his seat by helping his predecessor retire to breed cockatiels.
• Among the Magelords of the Mageworlds series, ritual dueling is Serious Business, with the victor gaining authority over the loser along with the loser's rank and titles, if they hold any (duels between high-ranking Mages are often to the death considering how high the stakes can be, but if one combatant is skilled enough to subdue the other without killing them, that works too). However, it's made explicitly clear that such duels are very formal, and must be officially declared, carried out in front of witnesses, and conducted according to strict standards of honorable combat — a breach of any of the above, the duel's results aren't valid and no power changes hands. This serves as a plot point several times in the third book.
• The Seguleh from the Malazan Book of the Fallen have a lineal rank structure among its warrior caste. Every ranked warrior is given a number with the lowest numbers indicating the best fighters. To progress through the ranks you have to defeat everyone ahead of you one rank at a time. If the current holder of a rank is unavailable, you wait till he/she returns or is declared dead. This trope gets inverted as you get to the top ranks as at those positions the fights are merely a test of skill rather than a fight to the death and actually killing your opponent is considered to be extremely bad form. If you show yourself to be a superior fighter the current rank holder will give up the position willingly since for the Seguleh leadership, Asskicking Leads to Leadership is a religion. A full inversion occurs when it comes to the top position of the One. The position cannot be challenged for and is a lifelong appointment. When the position becomes vacant it is offered to the current Two and if he/she declines, the offer is passed down the ranks till someone deems him/herself worthy of accepting it.
• In Maledicte, Maledicte's lover systematically kills or tricks Maledicte into killing everyone between himself and the crown, so he can take the title for himself. This is also part of his scheme to totally screw with Maledicte since he's now the man Maledicte must kill to complete her quest.
• In Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan, executives of the mega-corporations that control the world compete for promotion in road duels. You don't have to kill the person you're challenging, though a lot of that depends on the corporate culture of whoever you're working for. The custom came about during a time of economic crisis. The economy was fluctuating so badly there was no means of telling who was competent or not, so executives were being laid off just because they were late for work. One executive tried to beat his rival and ended up running them off the road.
• Subverted in Prince Roger: A Boman war-chief is "anointed in the blood of his predecessor", but the actual appointment is by consensus of the war-band, and the killing of the predecessor is in part a punishment for incompetence and in part an insurance against cliques forming and leadership becoming uncertain.
• Quantum Gravity has Demons settling almost anything by fighting, although this only becomes apparent from book two onwards. The most ruthless example comes in book four; Lila had asked Teazle to search Demonia for certain artifacts, and later learns he resorted to killing the heads of countless families, not to mention angry successors, as the only way of finding the things is to claim the treasure by Klingon promotion. When she later took over the empire he had raised, she called a meeting of the family heads. The discussion was punctuated by several attempts on her life, and on their failure she promptly, without a backwards glance, ordered the heirs to all the deceased summoned to continue.
• October Daye: Generally, Cait Sidhe princes become king by defeating the previous one in combat (which usually also involves killing them, as Tybalt did to his father).
• In the Redwall novel The Taggerung, killing the previous Taggerung means you get this title. Considering the Taggerung is supposed to be the greatest warrior, this isn't easy. Gruven Zann claims to have accomplished this, and it's eventually "confirmed." Ruggan Bor, who also wants this title—and unlike Gruven, has the chops to back up his claim—promptly cuts off his head.
• Septimus Heap has a rare heroic example. Alther Mella became ExtraOrdinary Wizard by wresting the Akhu Amulet away from his Evil Mentor DomDaniel, who then fell off the roof of the Wizard Tower in a Disney Villain Death. Unfortunately, DomDaniel was immortal because of the Two-faced Ring, and returned for his revenge.
• Red Rising: Mustang holds the severed head of Octavia before the Gold Senate and is proclaimed the new Sovereign
• Shades of Magic: People win the throne of White London by killing the previous monarch, which they can do with outside assistance (like an allied archmage) or through indirect means (like poison). Its world is starving for lack of magic and its citizens eagerly cannibalize each other, sometimes literally, for power.
• In the StarCraft novel Ghost: Nova, the eponymous character is an extremely strong telepath/telekinetic (she can almost literally go nuclear). She runs afoul of a gang leader in the Tarsonis ghetto. After figuring out that she's a very person, he threatens to kill little children if she doesn't work for him. Before that, she "predicts" that he'll be killed by one of his lieutenants (after reading the mind of one doubting lieutenant). Years later, Nova is tracked down by a Ghost Academy recruiter. When the gang leader (who has gone insane over months due to the abuse of a telepathy blocker) is about to shoot him, Nova mind-controls the doubting lieutenant and has him shoot the leader in the head. So, in effect, this is a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. The lieutenant becomes the new leader. Trouble is, there isn't much of a gang left after the crazy former leader has killed many of his subordinates for slightest faults (even imagined ones). Also, the gang headquarters is in the process of being raided by Confederate forces. To top it off, this is the day the Zerg invade Tarsonis. Nova barely makes it out alive.
• The Star Trek Expanded Universe specifies that for the Klingons, challenging a superior and taking their position by beating them in a fight is only acceptable under specific circumstances. The superior must have demonstrated cowardice, incompetence, or other dishonorable behavior, and the challenger must be qualified for the position.
  • The Star Trek: Mirror Universe novel Rise Like Lions has this happen to change the leadership of nations three times during the course of the story. In two cases, it's the Klingons, who apparently roughly keep to the rules mentioned (with the rather important provisos that you could pretty much always accuse the Regent of incompetence since something is always going wrong somewhere in the Klingon Empire, and that the Klingons apparently regard any Klingon who can get in a position to formally challenge the Regent as qualified). It's a bit less clear how Damar got away with killing the previous leader of the Cardassian Union by shooting him in the back of his head during a speech to the public and then taking over the Union since this is both illegal and the sort of thing that sets a bad precedent.
  • Invoked in Doctor's Orders when a Klingon starship shows up after Kirk inexplicably vanishes on an alien planet. Not wanting to explain this to an enemy, McCoy (who Kirk put in charge just before he went missing) instead claims to have killed him in a duel and taken command.
• Subverted in The Stormlight Archive when Shallan is accepted into the Ghostbloods, who believe she murdered her mentor to take her place. It's clear that she's being accepted because she impressed them with the skills demonstrated in carrying out actual missions, and she's specifically warned that while killing your superior is not technically forbidden, it's frowned upon and should not be considered a reliable method of advancement.
• In the Sword of Shadows series, the generally accepted way to succeed the Surlord of the city-state of Spire Vanis is to off him (though if you're not of noble blood, you probably won't keep the title very long). In the later books, it becomes a plot point that Surlord Penthero Iss chose his own successor, his commanding general Marafice Eye. Since Eye didn't kill Iss himself or arrange for it to be done (in fact, Iss was killed almost incidentally during the rescue of an important prisoner), and is a commoner to boot, he has to fight tooth and nail to keep his throne once succeeding to it.
• The Wheel of Time:
  • The Children of the Light have a ritualized dueling ceremony entitled "trial by the light," in which the loser's rank and property are forfeit to the winner. Galad uses this in conjunction with surviving a military Everybody's Dead, Dave shortly beforehand to skip virtually the entire command structure and go from an unspecified junior rank straight to Lord Captain Commander.
  • One of the two ways of becoming a Blademaster is to kill another Blademaster in fair single combat. The other is to have a panel of five Blademasters unanimously vote to accept you. Guess which way is used by every character who became a blademaster over the course of the series (though none of the characters in question did so with the sole intention of becoming a blademaster).
  • Though the Forsaken are more or less equal in standing to one another, one among them is elevated to serve as the Dark One's right hand; this lucky individual earns the title of ''Nae'blis'' and gains limited authority over the others. Three guesses as to how the title can change hands.
• This is how the draconic monarchy works in the Wings of Fire series, with daughters challenging their mothers for the right to be the queen of each clan. The entire plot to the series is in fact set up when the queen of one clan is killed by a human, leaving her daughters to fight amongst themselves over who has the right to be queen now, and setting off a continent-wide Mêlée à Trois in the process. The exception is the RainWings, who, largely being Actual Pacifists, have a "rotation" of queens, and when one is challenged, they compete in non-violent ways for the position.
• In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, this is how Dorothy Gale becomes the Witch of the East. She's accidentally killed the old one and is given her silver slippers. She then goes inside her house to change clothes, what she's wearing having been damaged in the tornado. In Oz, witches, and only witches, wear white, usually trimmed with the color of whatever area of Oz is under their jurisdiction. The East's color is blue. Dorothy changes into a white and blue dress and the silver slippers, not knowing that, as soon as she steps out of the house, she's taken over the job of the woman she just accidentally killed.
• In the X-Wing Series novel The Bacta War, the captain of the Lusankya refuses to surrender, despite his ship being heavily damaged and outnumbered. This captain promotes himself to Admiral then orders his men to crash the Super Star Destroyer into the planet Thyferra, which would kill all 250,000 people on the ship, millions more on the planet, and destroy the sole source of one of the galaxy's most effective medical products. One of his Lieutenants shoots him, promotes himself to Captain, and accepts the surrender offer.

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