Basic Trope: A revolution that successfully overthrows and replaces a tyrant ends up being just as oppressive, if not even worse.
- Straight: Alice organizes a revolution and leads the Troperian Liberty Front to overthrow Emperor Evulz. She wins, and establishes her own rule, only to change her title to Overlord Alice, turn the Liberty Front into her State Sec and enslave her people.
- Exaggerated:
- Meet the New Boss: Overlord Alice behaves almost exactly like Evulz did, and styles her regime after her predecessor, to the point where they are almost identical.
- From Bad to Worse: Alice overthrows Evulz, who was more authoritarian than totalitarian and whose citizens at least had full bellies. Alice meanwhile is a total totalitarian who starves her people.
- Revolving Door Revolution: Overlord Alice is then overthrown by Bob, leader of the Troperian Guardians of Justice, who promises to be a truly fair leader but then becomes the tyrant Baron Bob. He is soon overthrown by Princess Carol and her Warriors of Freedom for Troperia, and she becomes Queen Carol and is overthrown by President Charlie, who is later overthrown by General Daniel...
- Downplayed:
- The people under Alice's rule agree that, while she is a strict and sometimes unreasonable leader, she is still better than Emperor Evulz ever was.
- Alice does stay true to her ideals, but gets betrayed by her fellow Liberty Front commanders who wanted more privileges as the new military. The revolution still winds up betrayed, but it is clear that it happened in spite of the leadership, not because of it.
- Instead of a revolution, it's a President Evil succeeding another President Evil in a democratic election.
- Justified:
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized
- Alice became corrupted by the allure of power and wanted to keep it by any means necessary.
- Alice was always a power-hungry scumbag who only wanted Evulz gone to take the throne for herself.
- Alice is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who finds the realities of getting (and keeping) power require serious moral compromises, and she becomes increasingly violent as she begins executing whoever tries to overthrow her.
- The only ones capable of overthrowing the government have the support of professional fighters. Either the turning over of the selfish army of Troperia or greedy mercenaries who expect to be richly rewarded for risking life and limb is needed for overthrowing the government. This requires the sort of exploitation to fund the army, which leads to brutal measures to suppress dissent. Those who try to claim power without an army always fail, and those who fail to please them after using them get ousted.
- Alice's revolution was formed and paid for by Evulz's rivals in the elite, and the whole revolution was organized simply to get Evulz out of power. No one cares about actual social change.
- Alice is a Faux Affably Evil Politically Incorrect Bitch in Sheep's Clothing whose only goal is to rule Troperia with an iron fist where order can only be maintained through deceit and banning males from ever entering the land despite her disdain towards Evulz and having a kind exterior.
- Inverted:
- Aspiring tyrant Alice overthrows The Good King, Emmet, but ends up being just as kind and fair as her predecessor.
- Alice takes down Emperor Evulz, and creates a society where the government has very little power... which results in a dystopia in the opposite way: privatized police will only investigate crimes that the victim paid them to investigate, top executives of corporations and rich people rule the day and unleash their own 'security forces' on anything bringing discomfort to them, and Troperia's government can't do anything to reign them in.
- Alice takes down Emperor Evulz, and creates a society where the government doesn't exist... which results in a chaotic society.
- Emperor Evulz's heir, General Daniel, states a commitment to his harsh authoritarian society, yet ends up with a permissive, egalitarian, and just society.
- Evulz technically defeats the rebellion but is forced by degrees into liberalization for practical reasons, eventually resulting in sweeping reforms that turn his empire into a democracy, not even adopting the measures of the rebels to undermine their support but after a total military success.
- Subverted:
- It looks like Alice is going to become another tyrant, but she turns out to be a fair and just ruler.
- The flaw of Alice as a ruler isn't brutality but a failure to unify without Evulz resulting in a divided nation. She considers it Worth It despite the loss of power and somewhat reduced (but more equitably distributed) material wealth.
- Double Subverted:
- But she eventually becomes corrupted by power.
- Alice was only pretending to be kind to get everyone's guard down — then, she begins tightening her grip on the nation.
- Alice is overthrown/being manipulated by her scheming chancellor Fred.
- One of the warring factions wins the Succession Crisis and basically becomes another oppressive empire.
- Alice changes her mind and decides to take brutal measures to unify her people, resulting in her becoming a tyrant.
- Alice manipulated the factions into fighting each other to have an excuse to grab total power.
- Parodied: The revolution is more or less a Stable Time Loop; Emperor Evulz is overthrown by a Rebel Leader named Bob, who changes his title to Emperor Evulz, only to be overthrown by another Rebel Leader also named Bob...
- Zig-Zagged:
- Revolving Door Revolution: Alice overthrows Emperor Evulz and begins as a legitimately kind leader, but gradually becomes corrupted by power and begins oppressing the nation. However, it turns out she has no bad intentions; her chancellor is manipulating her, so she gets rid of him — and then starts oppressing people herself. Eventually, she realizes the error of her ways and tries to go back to helping the people — but before she can, she is overthrown by Baron Bob, who continues the cycle anew.
- Emperor Evulz's reign was Repressive, but Efficient, and things were sometimes calm before Alice took over. When she took over, she created a People's Republic of Tyranny that was too inefficient to truly oppress the populace like Evulz.
- Neither Alice nor Evulz were completely evil rulers, and each administration had its own strengths and weaknesses. Whether things improved or not after the revolution is mostly based on personal opinion and political views.
- Averted:
- Alice never becomes a tyrant and it is never even suggested that she would.
- Alice never defeats Evulz in the first place; she, along with several other leaders of the Liberty Front, was unceremoniously stabbed in her sleep by the Imperial Security Bureau agents, the Liberty Front itself disintegrated afterwards, and the revolution died down quietly.
- Alice never staged a revolution, instead quietly leaving Troperia for a foreign land.
- Enforced: The story is a Propaganda Piece supporting Bob against Alice's new government.
- Lampshaded:
- Alice doesn't even pretend to be any different from Evulz — she proudly announces this fact every chance she gets.
- A confused citizen asks why every new leader ends up being a tyrant.
- Invoked:
- Alice's manipulative chancellor Fred is actually Evulz' agent or Evulz in disguise, who is trying to retain/reestablish his control over the nation.
- Every new regime is being manipulated by Evulz and/or The Omniscient Council of Vagueness who put Evulz in power.
- Exploited: An anarchist group uses the vicious cycle of tyranny to advocate its anti-government position.
- Defied:
- Alice actively tries everything she can, including limiting her own power and surrounding herself with honest, trustworthy advisors, to avoid becoming a tyrant like her predecessor.
- Evulz brutally crushes the revolution before they have the chance to be corrupt, and later undergoes a Heel–Face Turn and becomes a more benevolent ruler to avoid another revolution like it.
- Discussed:
- Alice makes a whole speech to the people about how this has happened throught history and what she plans to do to avoid it.
- Frank, a Genre Savvy citizen, expresses her suspicions about Alice's new government, claiming that rebels often turn into oppressors and citing numerous Real Life examples.
- "You notice when Alice speaks about the way Evulz abuses his power, the only problem she seems to have is that the one in control is not her."
- Conversed: "Even for an Author Tract talking about how bad Alice's government was, that was heavy-handed and leaned on The Horseshoe Effect too much."
- Deconstructed:
- Eventually the people end up losing all hope that things will ever get better. The next would-be revolutionary leader gets little to no support because no one sees any point in helping to perpetuate the cycle, and the people would rather just stick with the current regime.
- Alice decides that saving a nation that would eventually fall back to a tyrannical regime no matter who takes over the throne is simply not worth it and the best solution is to kill everyone until there's nobody left in that nation.
- Reconstructed:
- The new revolutionary appeals to a foreign country for help. They promise to establish the new government only under the country's orders, hopefully ensuring they won't go mad with power.
- Alice is only able to avoid the cycle of overthrow and oppression through very questionable and bloody means that leaves them worse off like a getting the surplus of fighters killed in an unprovoked attack on Warlord Draco. Much of Troperia lays dead, enough of Draco's forces are too weakened to mount a counter invasion but starts a whole new other cycle of violence for future generations...
- Played for Laughs: The politicians and generals of Troperia stage coups against each other on a daily basis, even though there's not much in terms of difference in their political platforms — or, for that matter, platforms themselves. The citizens regard this as "well, we struggle for bread now, but hey, at least they provide free circuses".
- Played for Drama: Bob fought alongside Alice and her Troperian Liberty Front to bring down Evulz' tyranny. However, soon after their victory, Alice begins to get too eager to wield her newly gained authority and retain it indefinitely. Bob, still believing in the cause of freedom and democracy, tried to call her out on it, but she denounced him as too gullible and idealistic for his own good. When Bob called for an emergency meeting of the Liberty Front leadership to stop Alice's silent coup, he narrowly avoided being stabbed by an assassin sent after him. As Bob leaves Troperia, he looks at the capital city they recently claimed with a desolate realization that the struggle for freedom was in vain and bitterly asks himself if bringing Evulz down was even worth trying in the first place.
The Playing With Page has been overthrown by the main page, who is ruling the same way! It’s a Full-Circle Revolution!
