"I ask my warrior ancestors to look down on this apprentice. She has learned the warrior code and has given up her life in the service of her Clan. Let StarClan receive her as a warrior."
— Bluestar, Warrior Cats
When an incompletely-trained or low-ranking soldier is about to die without receiving the promotion they've worked hard for, they may ask for an honorary Rank Up, wanting a title they can bear with honor in death and take with them to the afterlife. Even if they do not ask for it, their comrades may make the decision to give them a ceremonial title, feeling they have earned it with the bravery they have shown in giving their life to the cause. This trope is most prevalent in medieval or other pre-modern stories, where being a knight or other type of warrior was considered a great honor and military titles had to be earned by proving one's strength and courage in battle. It takes three forms:
- Dying: The person is on their deathbed from wounds, illness, etc. and asks for the promotion as their last request.
- About to Die: The person is in a very dire situation (about to enter a battle they don't anticipate surviving, for example), and voices a desire to be promoted in case they don't come out alive from whatever comes next.
- Already Dead: The person has already died, and their comrades or superiors give them the promotion posthumously as a Due to the Dead. Can be part of a Meaningful Funeral.
Sometimes this person unexpectedly survives whatever almost killed them. In this case, they usually get to keep their title, since they earned it with their almost-death.
This trope also has a practical as well as symbolic purpose. In many militaries, it would lead to your spouse and family receiving a larger pension after you died, and if you were ennobled, then your descendants would likewise be nobles.
Related to Rank Up, Field Promotion, Knighting, Last Request, Due to the Dead, Meaningful Funeral, and Let Them Die Happy. Not to be confused with with Klingon Promotion.
This is a Death Trope, so all spoilers are unmarked.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Fairy Tail: After attempting a Heroic Sacrifice at the Tower of Heaven, Erza has a moment of Near-Death Clairvoyance where she sees her own potential funeral, part of which has Makarov and the Council honor her with a permanent position as one of the Ten Wizard Saints, a title reserved for the most talented and esteemed wizards on their continent.
- Fullmetal Alchemist: Lieutenant-Colonel Maes Hughes is promoted two ranks after his death at Envy's hands, becoming a Brigadier General posthumously.
- Moriarty the Patriot: Moran is declared killed in action alongside his entire squad and all of them are promoted two ranks posthumously. This takes Moran up to his well-known rank as "Colonel."
- Space Battleship Yamato 2199: After Schultz and his crew are killed in their attack on the Yamato, Desslar instructs his second-in-command, Hiss, to give all the soldiers a posthumous 2-rank promotion and to grant them and their families status as honorary Gamilans (the were all Zaltian, whom most Gamilans view as inferior). Ironically, this means that Schultz enters the afterlife with a higher rank than Goer, the incompetent Gamilan commander who had been berating him up to that point.
Films — Live-Action
- Gunga Din: Gunga Din is an Indian man who works as a servant for the British Army and dreams of becoming a British soldier himself. Near the end of the film, he gives his life to warn the Army of an ambush, and is posthumously made a corporal in recognition of his service.
- Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World: Jack gives Midshipman Peter Calamy an acting commission as Third Lieutenant just before laying the ambush for the Acheron. Calamy is Killed Offscreen during the boarding action, and Jack gives his final rank as "Lieutenant", no "acting", when reading off the casualty list at the post-battle funeral service.
Literature
- Ciaphas Cain: Cain leaves his commissarial sash of office to the grievously wounded cadet Donal as a way of saying he's become an official commissar. Subverted when he shows up again under the brainwashing villain Varan's orders, but Jurgen interrupts the effect long enough for Donal to shoot himself in the head, asking Cain to kick Varan's ass for him. Cain takes back the sash and proceeds to do so, booting Varan off a dam with a Bond One-Liner.
"Commissar Donal sends his regards."
- At the start of the war between the Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds, Commander John "Black Jack" Geary was posthumously promoted to Captain as a combination political stunt and recognition for his Heroic Sacrifice in the opening battle. A hundred years later, a fleet making a deep strike into Syndicate territory finds him cryogenically frozen in a life pod, and due to a quirk of the regs, that makes him a Captain with a century's seniority. This places him in command of The Lost Fleet after all the flag officers are killed by an act of treachery.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: Tywald Lannister, Tywin's uncle, died during the Peake Uprising. As he lay dying in his twin brother Tion's arms, he was knighted by Prince Aegon (the future King Aegon V).
- Fire & Blood: As Trystane Truefyre is about to be executed for falsely declaring himself king, his last request is to be knighted before his death. King Aegon II grants it, and Ser Marston Waters dubs him "Ser Trystane Fyre" (as "Truefyre" is considered too presumptuous) before he is beheaded by Ser Alfred Broome.
- The Three Musketeers: In "The Viscount of Bragellone", D'Artagnan is killed at the Siege of Maastricht just as he learns he's been made Marshal of France.
- Warrior Cats:
- If a dying Clan apprentice is found worthy, he/she may be given a warrior name to take to StarClan. When Brightpaw has been savagely mauled by dogs and is on death's doorstep, her leader Bluestar decides to make her a warrior. Unfortunately, the name she chooses is "Lostface" to show her anger against StarClan, who she believes sent the dog pack. After she fully recovers, Firestar gives her a proper warrior name, "Brightheart."
- Badgerpaw is a kit who is not old enough to become an apprentice, but he is made one by his leader Brokenstar and sent into battle against WindClan before he is ready. As he lies wounded and dying, he asks his mentor Flintfang if StarClan will make him a warrior, to which the older cat sadly responds in the affirmative. With his last words, Badgerpaw chooses the name "Badgerfang" to honor his mentor.
- In the ancient days of the Clans, Smallkit was a young kit who was destined to one day become leader of WindClan, but drowned before that could happen. When he goes to StarClan, he becomes an adult cat and is renamed Smallstar (only Clan leaders have the -star suffix attached to their names) in recognition of what he would have achieved if he had lived. His siblings who also drowned, Wolfkit and Runningkit, are given the warrior names Wolfheart and Runningstorm.
Live-Action TV
- Battlestar Galactica (2003): In "The Passage", Viper pilot Kat takes a lethal dose of radiation while escorting the fleet through a radiation storm to a direly needed source of food. As she dies in sickbay, Admiral Adama visits her and symbolically assigns her the position of CAG, the commander of the fleet's fighters for the rest of her life.
- The Big Bang Theory: Parodied. In the season 5 first episode Sheldon assigns himself the rank of Captain of the guys' paintball squad. During the match, in order to revitalize the fighting spirit of the guys, who were uninterested in the game because of personal issues, Sheldon sacrifices himself by standing in the open and calling out, causing him to be 'killed'. In a later scene, Leonard proposes a toast to 'Captain Sheldon Cooper', only for Sheldon to remark that it is actually Major Sheldon Cooper, having granted himself a battlefield promotion with his 'last breaths.'
- Game of Thrones: The night before the final battle with the White Walkers, during which everyone is aware that they may all die very soon, Jaime knights Brienne and dubs her "Ser Brienne of Tarth," witnessed by Podrick, Tyrion, and Tormund. She has always wanted to be recognized as a knight but has never been formally dubbed due to being a woman in Westeros' patriarchal society. She survives the final battle and gets to keep her title afterwards.
- Red Dwarf: In "Stoke Me a Clipper", the dying Ace Rimmer convinces his counterpart to take on the mantle of a hero, and his death is passed off as Rimmer dying. In the funeral that follows, Lister (who is in on the switch) gives "Rimmer" a posthumous promotion to First Officer.
- Sharpe: In "Sharpe's Enemy", former deserter Kelly joins forces with Sharpe against his fellow deserters, and is killed in the ensuing battle. Sharpe promotes him to Chosen Man (the TV series is never particularly clear what this means, but historically it was a rank equivalent to Corporal) as he dies.
Video Games
- Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War: When Chopper is shot down and killed in the mission "Journey Home", he is granted a posthumous 2 rank promotion, making him the highest-ranked pilot in the Wardog flight.
- Galaxy Angel II: Following Roselle's Heroic Sacrifice at the end of Mugen Kairou no Kagi, he's given a two-rank promotion to Corporal. He's demoted back to his original rank when he turns up alive and rejoins at the end of Eigou Kaiki no Toki, though.
Web Comics
- Girl Genius: When Lars dies protecting Agatha, Maxim the Jäger donates his hat for his funeral, thereby symbolically acknowledging him as a Jäger, the elite soliders of the House of Heterodyne.
Real Life
- George Washington was promoted to General of the Armies of the United States in 1976, over 175 years after his death, to ensure
that he would be the highest-ranked US officer of all time.
- In The Roman Empire, Emperors were often "deified" upon death by either the senate or their successor. In addition to honoring the deceased by considering them among the Roman gods, this allowed their sons (and often heirs) to use the title "Divi Filius", "son of the god", as part of their own title. The Emperor Vespasian disliked the practice and, in a true Dying Smirk move, used his last words to crack a joke about it: "Woe, I think I'm turning into a god..."
- In the final hopeless days of the Battle of Stalingrad, General Friedrich Paulus, in command of the German forces, was promoted to Field-Marshal, with a heavy hint from Hitler that no German Field-Marshal had ever been taken prisoner alive. Paulus's response, according to one of his aides, was "I'm not going to do them such a favour."
- Joshua Chamberlain of the American Civil War received what was meant to be a deathbed promotion to brigadier general after receiving an expectedly fatal wound in 1864. While this prediction turned out to be accurate, the expected timing of the effect was not. Chamberlain did die from the wound, but not for another 50 years, in 1913. He was the last recorded civil war veteran to die from battle wounds.
- Also in the Civil War, Colonel Strong Vincent was mortally wounded while gallantly leading his men to victory on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. Vincent had climbed on top of a boulder to rally his men, and while this move was successful, it made him a very easy target for enemy fire, and he was soon blasted off it. Vincent received a promotion to Brigadier General dated on the next day, but it is unclear if he lived long enough to personally receive it before his death at age 26 on July 7. (one soldier's account states that it was read to him minutes before he died). To add to the tragedy, Vincent's wife gave birth to a baby girl two months later who died before reaching age one, leaving him with no heirs.
- On September 19, 1980, U.S. Air Force Senior Airman David Livingston was sent as part of a two-man crew to turn on an exhaust fan at an LGM-25C Titan II ICBM silo in Arkansas, where the missile inside had sprung a leak. The fan immediately arced electricity, igniting the fuel-laden air, causing the first stage of the missile to explode. Airman Livingston died instantly, and 21 others were injured. Livingston was given a posthumous promotion to Sergeant.note
- British peerages:
- Dying of sweating sickness, Charles Brandon became 3rd Duke of Suffolk for one hour after his elder brother, Henry Brandon, 2nd Duke of Suffolk, died from the same disease on July 14, 1551.
- Painter Frederic Leighton was made a baron one day before his death of angina pectoris, on January 11, 1896.
- On April 16, 1941, during the Blitz, Wilfred Carlyle Stamp technically became the 2nd Baron Stamp through a legal fiction: as he had died alongside his father when their house was bombed, his father has been deemed to have predeceased him.
- William Carmona, seminarist from Tennessee, was ordained on his deathbed by Bishop David Choby as he was dying of cancer.
- Similarly, seminary student Donald Wagener was also ordained early by Bishop Doran of Rockford, Illinois when it was found he was dying of a brain tumor.
- Educational institutions often grant students who died while enrolled at their institutions the diploma or degree they were studying towards.
- In a variation, some religious orders specify in their rule that a novice can be permitted to make their final vows — becoming a full and permanent member of the community — earlier than usual if they are terminally ill or otherwise in danger of death.
