Proud Warrior Race Guy / Literature

• Agent Of The Terran Empire: The protagonist Imperial secret agent Dominic Flandry is kidnapped by a race of Proud Warrior Race Guy. They sneer at him for being part of the "decadent" Empire. It takes him quite a bit of work but he winds up corrupting them all into fighting a civil war over power. He points out that their whole system of honor wasn't really too embedded into the culture, otherwise he could have never convinced so many to abandon their principles when power was offered to them.
• Alien in a Small Town has the genetically engineered super-soldiers the Tesks, and the alien Jan's Warrior Caste. Ironically though, the only Tesk we actually meet is retired and trying to put his violent past behind him, and the only Warrior we spend any time with is murderously insane even by his own people's standards.
• Always Coming Home: The Dayao are that, with a good dose of Putting on the Reich. Causes Terter Abhao a lot of trouble with Willow and other people in the Valley, for whom all his achievements and heroics are meaningless or childish.
• Animorphs: The Andalites have a lot of these characteristics, but it seems to have evolved as their society evolved. Warriors are expected to be not only soldiers, but also cultured poets and scholars. It's revealed at the end of series that this is largely due to the war with the Yeerks having lasted so long. Ordinarily, Andalite warriors were supposed to put their civilian lives first, and be warriors only when needed, but the size and severity of the war with the Yeerks meant that they were always needed.
• Apotheosis (Swann): Nickolai Rajastan's homeworld considers the pursuits of the warrior to be holy religious observances. Nickolai is disgusted at his need to sell his holy skills as a mercenary.
• Ascendance of a Bookworm: The Dunkelfelger duchy as a whole. The average resident considers playing ditter (a Fictional Sport whose functions includes training knights for actual warfare) the best activity to kill time, get more familiar with new acquaintances and settle disputes. Their response to getting beaten at ditter can be best summed up as "Yay, a new Worthy Opponent! Let's do this again one of these days.". In a setting where nobles who are not obligated to learn leadership skills because of birth or adoption can choose to be knights, attendants or scholars, Dunkelfelger has such an excess of children who want to become knights that there is a selection process in the three years between their debut in child society and them starting Wizarding School. Those who don't make it have to follow another carreer path, but can do combat training during their free time if they wish. The duchy has the terms "scholar of the sword" and "attendant of the sword" for people who are technically scholars or attendants, but have just as much combat training as the average knight, sometimes at the expense of the skills required for their actual job.
• Bazil Broketail:
  • This is one of two main reasons why dragons readily join the legions of Argonath (the second being their hatred of Padmasa). They enjoy fighting — both in real battle and friendly competition — and take pride in their martial prowess.
  • The Teetol, an uncivilized tribal people who live near Argonath are another example, and their men engage in frequent non-lethal duels with poles over sleights. Foreigners that insult them are challenged to the same, and they love fighting generally.
  • The Baguti horse nomads are much given to fighting others, and making raids for slaves, collecting scalps or heads of their dead enemies. While fighting they often harangue other Baguti for cowardice if they retreat.
• Belisarius Series:
  • The series is stuffed to the brim with these what with Persians, Rajputs, and Axumites. In rather a subversion the most Badass Army of them all is the Roman Army which really is not this as they are Combat Pragmatists who put reason equal to honor in priority. The Malwa are not particularly badass though some of their vassals are. Malwa also do not put Honor Before Reason; however, that is because in their case, unlike everyone else, they have almost no honor at all.
  • They each have a different sort of flavor to them. Rajputs are aristocratic and chivalrous and always put Honor Before Reason. Kushans are grim and stoic. Marathas are hardy frontier folk that have to be sharp and are informal about hierarchy, though reasonably respectful. Axumites have a sort of "anti-ostentation" that resembles Sparta; not only are they modest they make a point of displaying their spartan-ness until it is an affectation in itself. And they demand vigorously that their kings be soldiers like themselves. Persians have a combination of central asian wildness and Imperialistic splendour. Ye-Tai who serve as Malwan military police, are always savages and not particularly noble savages either but no one questions their bravery.
• Edgar Rice Burroughs has several:
  • The Green Martians of John Carter of Mars are perhaps particularly notable.
    ''There are other and natural causes tending toward a diminution of population, but nothing contributes so greatly to this end as the fact that no male or female Martian is ever voluntarily without a weapon of destruction.'
  • The Red, Yellow and Black Martians are the same way, as are the Orovar White Martians. The Therns and Lotharians (other White Martian races) are notable aversions, however. Not coincidentally, neither race is particularly respectable (the Therns in particular are close to Always Chaotic Evil).
• Captive Prince: Akielos has a martial culture and is very serious about honorable combat. When Akielon and Veretian forces fight together, the Veretians are utterly perplexed that the Akielon commander gives their enemy notice of an impending attack, as is proper in Akielos. More significantly, a large part of the enmity between Akielos and Vere stems from the Veretians attacking during a parlay.
• The Haruchai in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant fit this trope to a T, what with the practice of sending their 500 best warriors to aid the Lords of the Land, replacing any who fall in battle as soon as his body is returned to his family. They also dislike the use of any weapons or magic—in the later books, they decide to prevent anyone else from using Earthpower, as such power in the hands of mortals leads only to destruction in their eyes.
• Codex Alera:
  • The Canim (wolf-people) and the Marat (barbarians) fit quite well.
  • The Alerans themselves have a very strong martial tradition, as do the Icemen, though both of those cultures are more complex than just proud warriors. Really the only race in these books that doesn't count in any way is the Vord, on account of being, well, alien locusts.
• A Court of Thorns and Roses: Illyrians. Childhood in that legacy is....rough, to say the least.
• Iain M. Banks's Culture novels:
  • The Idirans. They were an aggressive warrior species which considered it their holy duty to bring order to the universe and its lesser races. They're best known for their 48 year war against The Culture, which they lost.
  • The Affront are like this as well, best illustrated by the fact they're proud to be called the Affront. The Affront Diplomatic Service consists entirely of the most xenophobic and violent Affronters, lest other races think they're going soft by even having a Diplomatic Service. They're basically an entire race of General Melchetts, where buffoonish jollity barely masks deep-rooted sadism. Unlike the Idirans they're basically friendly to the Culture as long as there's no particular reason not to be, a friendship the Culture finds exhausting and frustrating. Which is why a group of Minds form a conspiracy to encourage the Affront to declare war, so the Culture has an excuse to slap them back down.
  • The books like deconstructing this type of race. Warrior races have one ultimate flaw: They enjoy war. No matter how much they pretend otherwise, they don't actually want their wars to end, and have no problem with them continuing forever. This contrasts with the Culture, communist space hippies, who hate war, and therefore fight in the most brutal and efficient manner possible. Furthermore, it's shown repeatedly that merely being physically bigger, tougher and stronger than your opponents ultimately counts for very little in a galactic war where the enemy technology outclasses your own.
• In the sci-fi The Damned Trilogy by Alan Dean Foster, humanity is the proud warrior race. By virtue of being the only species in the galaxy that has evolved to be able to stomach fighting and killing other sentient beings, without fainting out of horror or revulsion, humanity is freakishly strong (capable of breaking other species' bones just by swatting their hands away), enormously resilient and completely batshit crazy. So much so, in fact, that the galactic community refuses to grant humanity citizenship for centuries after co-opting them to fight in a war against the Scary Dogmatic Aliens.
• The Patryns of The Death Gate Cycle, to better contrast their rivals the Sartan. Imprisoned in a Death World millennia ago, they honed their strength, skill, and ruthlessness in order to survive and escape. Though they often come across as cold, cynical and contemptuous to outsiders, it's gradually revealed that Patryns form extremely tight-knit familial (or quasi-familial) groups to which they will be loyal to the death and have strong codes of conduct governing their interactions with each other in a more general sense. Somewhat unusually, they're also a witchs, making them a Magic Knight Race.
• In the Dinosaur Planet and Planet Pirates series, heavyworlders hit most of this trope without usually being warriors. While they have as wide a variety of professions as anyone else, they're big and tough, place a higher value on strength and courage than most Federation races^note leading to a bit of In-Universe Values Resonance when they accept the life-threatening challenge of meeting the Seti through the Door of Honor, and hunt and eat animals on their homeworld (which is forbidden in the Federation in general). When they revert to primitivism on Ireta, they fully embrace this trope, including hunting for both food and sport and attempting to kill the "lightweight" normal humans who came with them for being weak.
• In Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels:
  • Trolls appear to be a Proud Warrior Race, but are actually just durable enough that hitting each other with clubs isn't particularly harmful. When they become aware they can't do this to humans, they're usually Gentle Giants.
  • The dwarves also look like this but the truth is different. To them, a chain-mail shirt and battle-axe count as politely dressed rather than heavily armed.
  • A twist in a different angle is also explored first in the book The Wee Free Men: the title refers to the Nac Mac Feegle, six-inch high kilt-wearing blue tattooed thieves, whose swords glow blue in the presence of lawyers. They have their own sort of honor and are powerful allies, if you can understand a word they say, and are properly fairies (they guard those really nasty thistle flowers, because they need fairies too!)
  • Werewolves as well; most lack the self-control to really function in society (even Angua struggles sometimes).
  • The D'Regs are humans, but they're also the most feared of the various peoples of Klatch. They refuse to follow laws and regulations, and Vimes wins their respect by being outrageous enough to try and challenge two armies at once (one of them being nominally his own). When Carrot worries that they may have "views" on women fighting, the D'Regs respond "yes, we expect them to be good at it!"
• Doctor Who Expanded Universe
  • The Chelonians are a heavily militarised race of hermaphroditic cyborg turtles, at least when they appear in the books — we're told that eventually they get a more enlightened leadership and dedicate themselves to flower-arranging instead.
  • Death and Diplomacy features a classic Proud Warrior Race and a Proud Soldier Race (and a Proud Spy Race, if that were a trope), all at war with each other ... along with a theme that societies like that could never work unless someone was pulling the strings.
• Dragaera features two varieties in Dragaeran culture: the Dragons are militaristic and lust for conquest. The Dzur are self-styled heroes who lust for glory.
• The minotaurs from the Dragonlance saga are this to a T. They're brutal and violent, but also honourable and surprisingly cultured. Perhaps best illustrated by the character of Kaz from The Legend of Huma and its follow-up Kaz the Minotaur, but deconstructed in the same book when the Silver Dragon noted that if the minotaurs weren't constantly killing each other in their ritualistic duels, they'd probably have overrun the world already. It was further deconstructed by the unnamed minotaur in the short story 'Definitions of Honor', who questions whether Honor Before Reason is truly the best way to live and ultimately dies for his beliefs.
• The Nadir in David Gemmell's Drenai books, who live for war and, at the time period of Legend, had spent most of their time engaged in inter-tribal hostilities until Ulric hammered them together into an army at swordpoint. After Druss's death, some of the high-ranking defenders go and visit the Nadir, who are giving their fallen Worthy Opponent an honourable Nadir funeral; they abide by the terms of Sacred Hospitality when invoked, share drinks and stories with the leaders of their enemies, and Ulric even agrees to ensure that, when Dros Delnoch falls, Rek is buried next to his wife rather than given a Nadir-style pyre or left for the crows.
• David Eddings:
  • The Belgariad has several — the Arends have the Knight in Shining Armor with Honor Before Reason as their cultural ideal (and as such, are great people to have by you in a fight, but generally shouldn't be trusted with anything requiring intelligence or subtlety); the Chereks are seagoing Boisterous Bruisers with a strong Viking influence; the Algars are a nomadic horse-based people justly famous for their cavalry; and the Murgos, who were descended from the warrior/aristocratic caste of the original Angaraks, are an arrogant and warlike people who consider themselves to be the Master Race.
  • Atans in The Tamuli are a deconstruction: beginning as a breeding experiment within the Tamul race, they eventually became so fierce and belligerent that they had to enslave themselves to others so they wouldn't fight to self-destruction.
  • The Arums in The Redemption of Althalus.
• In The Edge Chronicles: hammerhead goblins, tottering between this and Always Chaotic Evil. They are not cowards and do have some sort of code of honor (though to them, a bloodbath of unarmed innocents is just as satisfying as a worthy challenge).
• In C. J. Cherryh's The Faded Sun trilogy, the humans of the Alliance initially thought that the mri were this. Actually only one caste is like that; the other two thirds of the mri are non-combatant.
• Empire of the Vampire: The highlander clans of Ossway count among the toughest warriors in the Empire, with an incredibly ferocious, martial culture and endemic warfare between clans even in times of peace. The high prevalence of duskdancers among their number, as well as their religious dispute with the rest of the realm, only serves to entrench their already fierce indepence. As the saying goes:
  I war with my sister, until,
  We war with our kinfolk, until,
  We war with the Highlands, until,
  We war with the world."
• 1356 presents the Scots and the Gascons as two separate subtypes.
  The Black Prince: "Go with God, my lord, and fight like the Devil."
  The Captal de Buch: "Even the Devil doesn't fight like a Gascon, sire."
  And...
  The Scots, he had told King Jean, were the finest fighters in Christendom. "If indeed they are in Christendom, sire."
  "They're Pagan?" The king had asked anxiously.
  "No, sire, it is just that they live on the world's edge and they fight like demons to keep from falling off."
• Harry Potter: The giants are a deconstruction of the trope, since any in Britain were hunted down and killed for being so vicious, and the few who remain are quickly dying out because they keep killing each other, too. This is why the most prominent giant in the series, Hagrid, is only half giant.
• Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar has the Shin'a'in and the Northern Barbarians. The Haileigh, also, although they have a more of a veneer of civilization.
• His Dark Materials:
  • The armored bears in His Dark Materials. Ahem, let's rephrase that: Polar Bears that build their armor from meteorite iron. As their king put it, "War is the sea I swim in and the air I breathe."
  • In the third book of the trilogy, when we meet the Gallivespians, who are a fierce and vicious assassin-race who are born with poison spurs in their heels and ride about on dragonflies, because they're all about six inches tall. It's hard to notice an assassin that's smaller than your hand.
  • The Witches also show signs of this. If a Witch has the hots for you, just go with it — you'll live longer.
• The Hunger Games: The Career district tributes are trained from childhood to fight and to treat the Games like a game and an honorable tournament. They usually proudly volunteer at the reapings for the opportunity to win and bring pride, honor, and of course, extra food to their district.
• Little Bear in The Indian in the Cupboard...he is an Iroquois warrior.
• The urgals of the Inheritance Cycle could possibly count. Their entire society and social standings are based on feats of combat, and they're certainly quite proud. They're frequently in conflict with the other races due to their violent tendencies.
• Larry Niven's Known Space: The Kzinti are feline aliens who historically tended to treat "first contact" and "declaration of war" as largely synonymous. In their society, all males are expected to become part of the military and gain their names and status through martial service, and duels to the death over points of personal honor and pride are very common. However, they find out the hard way that humanity is much, much better at it. The Kzinti mainly conquer much more primitive races, and rarely fight each other in organized mass combat, so "war" isn't really something they've had much practice at.
• The book "Land and Sea" by controversial german philosopher Carl Schmitt theorizes that almost every Major war in human history was between a proud warrior culture and a proud Merchant culture. This book also theorizes that a proud warrior culture prioritizes the army over the Navy, while a proud Merchant culture prioritizes the Navy.
• Foster used this much earlier in his novelization of The Last Starfighter: one of the reasons that the Star League has to go to such lengths as hiring an interstellar Con Man to recruit from planets so primitive they aren't even on the map is that the "civilized" races have put war behind them ages ago. Those few with a talent for violence — the Starfighters — are considered dangerously psychotic by most of their own people.
• Last of the Breed gives us Major Joseph Makatozi USAF, fighter jock, test pilot, and proud Sioux warrior. If you get on his shit list, he will send you a concise note explaining the history and cultural significance of the practice of scalping. Written on your dragon's scalp. With a nice little PS at the end warning you that he's coming for yours next.
• The Legend of Drizzt:
  • The novels were originally supposed to be about a Proud Warrior Race Guy, Wulfgar son of Beornegar of the Tribe of Elk (one of the barely-Viking-ish warrior tribes of the northern region of Faerun), captured in battle and made an indentured servant by a dwarf king. He eventually went out the way all Proud Warrior Race Guys want to — defending friends and family from a great menace, and succeeding. He didn't stay dead for more than three books — but that was over six years of world time.
  • Drizzt himself is basically a Proud Warrior Race Guy, having grown up for around 30 years in an underground city full of vicious assassins who are trained from birth in the most efficient, vicious ways of killing living things. His homeland is, in essence, a gigantic, sadistic special forces unit (his race possess remarkable prowess in the areas of stealth and unit tactics, while at the same time possessing a huge superiority complex over all other living creatures including each other and having a vicious sadistic streak, making them more Arrogant Warrior Race Guys). It sounds like he's even more noble and sacrifice-loving than any Proud Warrior Race Guy ever, but he possesses a remarkable survival instinct and is portrayed as too badass to actually die, even when he tries self-sacrifice. He does die once, in a duel to the death against his archenemy, but only for one page, not counting the year between the end of the book he dies in and the very first page of the next. Then we get into the Arrogant Assassin Race Guys issue, which is quite different. The drow are an example of why Always Chaotic Evil does not make for good proud warrior races — they have no concept of honour, often even no interest in a good fight, just getting ahead at everyone else's expense at minimum cost. The way Drizzt demonstrates he has (to a small extent) learned to think like a drow during his training, is when he challenges his last remaining opponent in a free-for-all between students to an open, honourable single combat. He knows he can win — only to have the opponent step into a trap he has set up. Drizzt proves that he would not do anything so stupid as to issue an honourable challenge anymore.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rohirrim are a society of horse-breeders and cavalrymen inspired by the Anglo-Saxons. Faramir points out that while they are brave and loyal, they also love war as an end of itself, and laments that his own people, the Gondorians, have grown more like them after long association and alliance.
• A Mage's Power: The Stand Stinger Society of Kyraa functions this way. They are the chiefdom's warrior caste and so they are charged with maintaining order. They enforce the decisions of the elders, patrol the desert for monsters and invaders, and have ritualized duels. Tiza becomes an honorary member by winning one such duel.
• Malazan Book of the Fallen:
  • The Teblor are a Proud Warrior Race, and Karsa starts as one of the proudest. Even as he moves away from their customs, he doesn't lose his relish for combat, though he is not averse to learning from other people and cultures as time goes on.
  • The Seguleh challenge everyone whom they perceive to be a strong fighter. To rise in their society they have to challenge people who are stronger than them. If they win, they will then take that person's place. Indivitual rank is indicated by the number of marks on their masks; the fewer marks, the higher the rank.
• The Khaev in Django Wexler's Memories of Empire. The Two Hundred, literally the two hundred best warriors in the entire Khaev nation.
• Wolpertings in the books of Walter Moers are basically intelligent, bipedal dogs with the antlers of a deer, with enormous strength and speed, plus a fierce killer instinct. They're renowned fighters and treated with terrified respect by most of their contemporaries — though in a curious twist, they begin life as the cutest, cuddliest, most adorable creatures in the world and are sometimes adopted as pets and lap puppies... until they grow older and (often to their owners' surprise) begin walking on their hind legs, talking and displaying huge tempers.
• Only Walk So Far: Hagen, the chief of the Cimbri, and his son, Jungbern.
• In the Paradox Trilogy, xith'cal have a reputation for this, due to their focus on hunting and honor. In fact, while it's generally true of male xith'cal, female xith'cal are extremely skilled scientists.
• The Batu of Zadaa from The Pendragon Adventure. They live on a hot planet with scarce water, and hostile creatures all about. Becoming a warrior is a necessity.
• Phoenix Rising: The Saurans, who greet each other formally with the armed bow, showing all their weapons openly. Visitors to the Sauran King's court are thoroughly checked for weapons before entering the throne room — and if they don't have any, they are loaned some out of a collection kept for that specific purpose, because going unarmed into the King's presence would be taken as a deadly insult, implying that he would be afraid of you if you were armed.
• The Holnists from After the End novel The Postman by David Brin are a sort of deconstruction. Descended from the followers of a Crazy Survivalist who fancied himself an Übermensch, the Holnists are excellent fighters and seem to have some sort of code of honor. However, the book primarily focuses on their innocent victims whose lives have been made living hells. The Holnists conquer huge swathes of territory, rape the local women and then induct them into their harems, castrate all the men who are too peaceable to have the kind of "warrior spirit" the Holnists value, and kill the men who do have a "warrior spirit" if they refuse to be inducted into Holnist society. Brin seems to be arguing that a real Proud Warrior Race Guy wouldn't be a Warrior Poet, he'd be a Jerk Jock.
• The Zoku from The Quantum Thief are a peculiar example. They are a Transhuman upload collective completely focused on bettering themselves in all their abilities, often acting as mercenaries to this end. They utterly denounce all ideologies or codes beyond victory and increase of skill for their own sake, and call those who are guided by ideals "meme-zombies", and treat them like plague-bearers. The reason for all this is the fact that they descend directly from 21st century MMORPG raid guilds!
• * The Oulhamr, the protagonists of Quest for Fire, are a raiding horde of neanderthals. As brutal as they are, they are shown to be more honourable than some of their enemies, being notably disgusted by cannibalism.
• The Derzhi in Carol Berg's Rai Kirah series, of the 'probably based on the Mongols' flavor. Their warrior braids, showing them as blooded warriors, are of high social/cultural importance, and those who do not earn them are relegated to life as underlings. At this point in their history they also have an empire.
• The Reynard Cycle: The Calvarians, whose entire country is run like an armed camp. You have to have killed at least two people in personal combat in order to have more than one child there. In spite of that, they lean heavily towards being Proud Soldier Race Guys (and Gals).
• From The Riftwar Cycle:
  • The Tsurani appear to be this, and it's understandable that you get this impression after reading the Riftwar novels because you really only see the outward appearance of the race. The Empire Trilogy takes you into the society itself, and it doesn't take long to learn that the "honorable warrior" culture is almost entirely subverted by the rulers and nobles of the Empire, who consider the Tsurani concept of "honor" a weapon, to be used alongside assassination, manipulation, espionage, bargaining, and all sorts of other tools in The Plan toolbox, in order to gain an advantage.
  • The Valheru also initially give the appearance of this, as the closest thing to a Valheru we meet, Tomas, is only half-Valheru: his Valheru warrior nature is tempered by his human (and later Elven) cultural honor. The actual Valheru really aren't this at all, as they make no pretense of operating under a code of honor, and openly admit to serving only their own desires.
    Draken-Korin: We are. We do. What else is there?
  • The Dasati from later in the same series are this trope take to Always Chaotic Evil extremes. Even the Demons have elements of this, being both proud and warriors, though these traits in them stem less from honor and belief and more from their extremely animalistic natures.
• In Gemmell's Rigante novels, the Rigante are a culture of proud warriors inspired by the Celtic tribes of Scotland.
• In the Saga of the Borderlands, of the Argentine writer Liliana Bodoc, the Husihuilkes combine this trope and Badass Native, since they are inspired by the Mapuche people. The Boreos of the Ancient Lands are another example, since they are the equivalent of the Vikings, although their relatives of the Fertile Lands seem to be much more peaceful.
• The Scylvendi from the Second Apocalypse take this trope to a scary extreme. They call themselves "the People of War" or sometimes just "the People". To them, war is both the method and object of worship. Cnaiur, the main Scylvendi character, scoffs at the concept of a Holy War. To him, all war is holy.
• The Icecarls of The Seventh Tower. Brought up under a warrior tradition, all their great epics and stories seem to be about people dying heroic deaths on the Ice. Tal, the protagonist, at one point thinks to himself, upon finding a skeleton in a cave, that it couldn't be an Icecarl skeleton, because it is unarmed.
• Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series has four variations on this theme. There are the Mantids and Dragonflies who are pure examples of this, the Weaponmasters of the Mantids doubling as Martial Monks, The Ant and Wasp-kinden are more Proud Soldier Guys.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire there are various peoples who embody different versions of this:
  • The Dothraki are based on the "violent raider" image of Mongols, being expert horse archers.
  • The Ironborn are a Viking-ish culture, but resemble more a pirate race than the historical Vikings.
  • The wildlings have aspects of the trope, but are more anarchic in nature.
  • The Northmen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros reflect the gruff, straightforward "code of honor" aspect, whilst the southern half of Westeros embodies genteel chivalry. And then there are the Northern Mountain Clans, who are essentially are as to Northerners as Northerners are to Southerners.
  • Most of Westerosi society at its core, and a lot of the Deliberate Values Dissonance comes from their pride as warriors above all else. Women, scholars, artists, and merchants, people who are valued and respected in modern times, are generally disdained because they aren't expected to be warlike, or their trades aren't directly connected to warcraft, despite the invaluable service they can and do provide to others and society as a whole. Being a Proud Warrior Race also entails a very flippant attitude to war itself, as wars are started over land, wounded pride, and broken marriage contracts, with few of the instigators ever pondering on the human costs involved.
• In S.L. Viehl's Stardoc series, the Jorenians are a Proud Cultured Warrior Race.
• In Starship Troopers, there's mention of territories were around 20% of the population join the Service.
• The first two books of the Star Trek: Klingon Empire series show what happens when the Klingons meet another Proud Warrior Race, the Children of San-Tarah. The two get on swimmingly, with many bloody battles between them. Interestingly enough, the Klingons' more notable rivals, the Romulans, show themselves to be this in the Star Trek Novel 'Verse. It's a bit of an Alternate Character Interpretation; while the TV series (Star Trek: The Next Generation onward, at least) focused on their sneaky, politically manipulative Chessmaster tendencies, the novels portray the hot-blooded warrior aspect of Romulan culture far more prominently. They certainly don't lose their Chessmaster traits, though.
  • Another novel has the Enterprise visit an empire that arose from a group of Chinese colonists on a remote planet. Riker teaches the local nobles how to play poker but finds it far too easy to beat them. Then he realizes why: they never fold. When he asks them about it, they tell him that a true warrior never backs down from a fight. He then explains it in a way that makes sense to them: a good general will cut his losses and pull back his troops in order to win a battle or a war. Once they start seeing the game in this way, they get much better at it. Another local starts a rivalry with Worf and demands a duel to the death. They postpone it until the end of the book, but then they (quite sensibly) decide to settle this matter with a game of poker.
• Lots of examples in the Star Wars Expanded Universe:
  • Chewbacca and the other Wookiees. They have customs like the life-debt and a strict taboo against using their tree-climbing claws in a fight.
  • Their main rivals (the homeworlds are in the same system), the Trandoshans, take this to an even further degree, with an entire culture based around amassing as many points (in reverence to their Goddess Scorekeeper) as possible by hunting and killing powerful game. Failure to do so results in all points being revoked, essentially making an individual worthless unless they manage to regain those points by revenge-killing the target that originally caused them to lose the points. This explains why so many hire themselves out as mercenaries, bounty hunters, and assassins; while most are generally violent and completely amoral, their most famous representative, the psychopathic bounty hunter Bossk, takes this to a whole new level. Hunting non-sentient big game qualified for points as well, so long as it was dangerous enough to be life-threatening, but Bossk was one of many Transdoshans who specifically focused on Wookiees as prey, seeing them as the most dangerous game of all and thus worth the most points. The rare Trandoshan characters not to engage in such behavior presumably just didn't adhere to the Scorekeeper religion.
  • Mandalorians subvert the trope by not always being a Race or Species. Instead they're a Warrior Culture. They were first made up of aliens called the Taung but were replaced by Rodians, Twi'leks, Zeltrons, Humans and others as Taung numbers were worn down during the Mandalorian Crusades. Humans dominated their culture by the Empire era, but members of other species are still allowed to join Mandalorian society. ^note  If you follow their warrior code, wear the armor, and an established Mando adopts you into their clan, it's just as good as being born into it. This is a possible path for the Bounty Hunter in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Mandalore the Vindicated offers to adopt the player character. Their other hat is being family-oriented; part of the code involves marrying and raising children. Your spouse is of a different species? Same sex? Infertile? Well, go out there and adopt a few kids! As one of their historical leaders, Mandalore the Destroyer put it, Mandalorians aren't merely an army or even a race, they're an idea, and this makes the Mandalorians as a whole immortal no matter how many of their warriors fall in battle. And despite the historical enmity between the Mandalorians and the Jedi, there were examples of Jedi Knights and even a few Jedi Masters renouncing the Order to become Mandalorians over the centuries. Ironically, Humans and the Taung fought for control of Coruscant as far back as 25,000 years before the rise of the Empire. The Taung retreat from Coruscant led to the founding of Mandalorian society.
  • According to Expanded Universe material, every Gungan who isn't Jar-Jar. They are mainly limited by their reliance on primitive weapons. Many Expanded Universe materials have it assumed by many other Gungans that Jar-Jar is one too; they don't realize that he's just bumbling his way to accidental victory, often without even knowing that he's fighting.
  • The Kaleesh, the race General Grievous belonged to.
  • The Noghri also fit the bill. Their Death World of a homeworld has turned them into apex predators and born hunters. Given their Low Culture, High Tech state (they were pre-space-flight until Vader found them) and clan-based structure, honor means everything to them, and Vader has found a way to exploit it. The Noghri find the Wookiees a kindred race and understand the concept of a Life Debt quite well.
  • In the expanded universe, the Zabrak (Darth Maul's race) are shown to be this. The Zabrak have some of the best hand-to-hand fighters in the galaxy, with Zabrak children learning martial arts at a young age. They are also seen by other citizens of the Galaxy as being proud, fierce, and independent.
  • The Yuuzhan Vong, main villains of the New Jedi Order, are psychotic warrior race guys (especially the actual warrior caste). In fact, to die gloriously in battle is the fondest hope of most Vong warriors, because they believe that death is more important than life, and that is how their gods will judge them. Somewhat unusually, they are willing to lie and cheat to get what they want, though that is more to do with their code of honor not applying to 'infidels' (and members of the non-warrior castes are bound by much more lenient codes to begin with). There are non-warrior-caste Vong, and while they share some central tenets (strength through sacrifice, the transitory and painful nature of life, the abhorrence of machinery) the other castes tend to be just as fanatically honor-bound to pursue some other objective, such as the shapers (hat: Mad Science) and the intendants (hat: bureaucracy. Fanatical bureaucracy).
  • Ewoks are a proud warrior race... of Teddy Bears.
  • The whole idea of the Proud Warrior Race is deconstructed by the X-Wing novel Starfighters of Adumar. Because they are big on ritual duels to the death, the resulting high attrition means they never live long enough to develop much competence. It's also Played for Laughs (as when one such duel interrupts a Will They or Won't They? moment). The Adumari are humans, but humans can have hats too. Throughout the book Wedge finds the Adumari way of life repellent — the only way anyone can work their way out of poverty is by putting their lives on the line, royalty can't be parents to their children, and everyone's killing each other. Now and again he says something about it — "Are you fighting so that your family will be proud over your grave, or so they can be proud when you come home?" — and he really gets wound up over the issue. Turns out that it's really only one nation that's so obsessed with honor in combat.
    Wedge: Circular thinking. I'm honorable because I kill the enemy, and I kill the enemy for the honor. There's nothing there, Cheriss. Here's the truth: I kill the enemy so someone, somewhere — probably someone I've never met and never will meet — will be happy. [...] I told you how I lost my parents. Nothing I ever do can make up for that loss. But if I put myself in the way of people just as bad as the ones who killed my family, if I burn them down, then someone else they would have hurt gets to stay happy. That's the only honorable thing about my profession. It's not the killing. It's making the galaxy a little better.
  • The Chiss are an interesting example: they manage to combine this with militant neutrality. The upshot is that every other power in the galaxy makes a pretty wide berth around Chiss space, turning it into Switzerland In Space! The Chiss consider it the height of dishonor to ever strike first, but are undisputed masters of striking second. And they have no qualms whatsoever about manipulating a soon-to-be enemy into making their first strike prematurely.
  • The Echani from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic are similar to the Mandalorians except that they don't go around conquering bits of the Galaxy (naturally, both hold the other in contempt). They aren't bloodthirsty or imperial, but as Brianna/Handmaiden will tell you, how fighting and honor permeate every aspect of their culture down to courtship rituals. In fact, they think that it's impossible to truly know a person until you've fought them, and that a life without conflict is a life of weakness—many become mercenaries or professional duelists to seek out such conflict. Politics is seen as a battlefield of words. Their methods of fighting eventually end up being used by the Emperor's elite guard.
• The Stormlight Archive:
  • The Alethi (and to a lesser extent their neighbors the Veden) are a deconstruction. During the days of the Silver Kingdoms, they were the kingdom charged with "maintaining the terrible arts of killing" while they waited for the next Desolation to come. After the last Desolation, they were no longer needed, but they never gave up their arms. After over four and a half thousand years they degenerated into Blood Knights fighting for no other purpose than the fighting itself. They see peace and negotiation as signs of cowardice, scoff at any masculine arts that don't directly involve killing, and spend most of their time fighting themselves in what would be considered civil war if they hadn't been doing it for so long that it had become routine.
  • In another deconstruction, many Alethi highprinces don't even adhere to what would be typical "warrior race" traits. For example, some of the highprinces are outright cowards who refuse to go into battle unless absolutely necessary, and will send waves of expendable slaves ahead of their armies to protect the "real" soldiers. They use deception, legal loopholes, spies, assassins, and social mores to manipulate others in a ruthless game of politics. It turns out that when a society is based around ferocious competition to see who is the strongest, anything that helps one get ahead is fair game.
  • The Parshendi, or "singers" in their own tongue, prove to be one of these when they are in warform, which causes them to grow stronger and develop armor over their skin. They also develop a tendency toward discipline and control, and enjoy following orders from someone they consider a superior. In Oathbringer, it's revealed that the Alethi Parshmen are also this once they've been awoken from their mental limitations, adopting a militant and defensive stance that they inherited through cultural osmosis due to countless generations of living in Alethi territory.
• Terry Pratchett's non-Discworld novel, Strata, gives us the paranoid but violent kung, an alien race accurately described as "frightened of everything except immediate physical danger". The audience's representative of the race, Marco, can decapitate dragons mid-air, but otherwise lives in terror that Someone is out to get him. As another character put it, "These Northmen have a word, 'Berserker'. It was made for Marco."
• The Ythrians of Technic History are a Downplayed example. They're really no more violent or warlike than humans, in fact they're maybe less so. Make no mistake, though; concepts like honourable death and poetry in war is a big part of their societal psyche, and when they fight, they are good at it. Heck, they beat us.
• Okonkwo, from Things Fall Apart, is a proud warrior race guy. Anything that doesn't involve beating someone up is womanly. Deconstructed in that he lives out his life in fear being weak and fearful, and his fear of seeming weak leads him to quickly give in to society's demand that he kill his adopted son, and eventually to kill himself rather than live with the Europeans.
• Trapped on Draconica: First a deconstruction: a childhood spent on martial training means Kalak has no idea how to do anything more than fight and march. Then a reconstruction: "I don't deny that I was frightened that day. And I know that fear is unacceptable in our laws. But we all were frightened once. At the beginning of our training, we were just scared little children....Our kingdom is gone, we'd just be rovers, wanderers, nomads, vagabonds –- call us what you will. I call us homeless soldiers, reduced to petty mercenaries." That shared childhood of training makes them a unified culture.
• In Uplift Saga, species that can make great warriors are highly prized as candidates for uplifting, and those that don't are often heavily modified (as is the case with Jorfur, for example), and a hundred thousand years of war are bound to shape cultures irreversibly. Warrior races seem to be some of the worst to have as patrons as they're as ruthless to their clients as to their targets, and in general are quite unpleasant, no matter whether they're the honor-bound or ruthless savage type, with some of them, like the genocidal Tandu, being humanity's worst enemies. Interestingly, humans themselves, being the sole well-known "wolfling" race (ones that evolved civilization and sapience on their own rather than being uplifted) are viewed as this by many, and really enjoy playing up their perceived savagery in diplomacy and in combat.
• Villains by Necessity: The desert plainsmen of Ki'kartha. They've become more understanding and less hostile in recent years, in the sense that they now arrest trespassers in their land and hand them over to nearby civilized authorities rather than casually kill them as soon as they're found.
• Vorkosigan Saga:
  • The series has the Vor Lords of Barrayar, and the Ghem Lords of Cetaganda. So when the Cetagandans invaded Barrayar, it was a bloody mess for all involved.
  • The Vors are actually a subversion, as the series demonstrates. Miles Vorkosigan is trying to convince the Marilican Resistance (who are very much not Proud Warrior Race Guys) to continue the rebellion against Cetaganda instead of knuckling under:
    Miles: The odds were worse for Barrayar, in its day, and they ran the Cetagandands right off. It took years, and more blood than either of you have seen in your lives combined, but they did it.
    Leader: Barrayar had those crazy Vor warriors. Nuts who rushed into battle, who liked to die. Marilac just doesn't have that sort of cultural tradition. We're civilized — or we were, once....
    Miles: Let me tell you about the Barrayaran Vor. The loonies who sought a glorious death in battle found it early on. This rapidly cleared the chain of command of the accumulated fools. the survivors who learned to fight dirty, and live, and fight another day, and win, and win, and win, and for whom nothing, not comfort, or security, not family or friends or their immortal souls, was more important than winning...
• War and Peace: Several characters, mostly because joining the army and fighting for the fatherland is seen as one of the best ways to achieve fame and glory.
• Warrior Cats: The Clans all act like this: to fight in battle to protect one's Clan is the highest honor one can achieve. They look down on housecats (whom they refer to derisively as "kittypets") because (most) housecats are cowardly and unable to fight well. They do, however, pride themselves on honor, codified in their "Warrior Code", which forbids killing (even in battle, unless their enemy is willing to kill them), and tells them to help another Clan if it is in danger. Every cat, bar MedicineCats and those who are seriously disabled, is expected to become a warrior and live by the Warrior Code. Kittens start training to become warriors at six moons/months (roughly the equivalent of ten to thirteen in humans) and become full warriors at twelve moons. It used to be younger, however the Clans changed it generations ago so that fewer kits would die (though ShadowClan still uses barely-weaned kits as warriors at the start of the series due to their corrupt leader). The desire to fight is so engrained into warriors that Cinderpelt, a warrior apprentice who ultimately became a medicinecat because of a leg injury, was allowed to reincarnate so that she could experience the life she truly wanted as a warrior. The idea that the Clans should get along is repeatedly scoffed at throughout the series.
• Well World: The Murnies, a species of large, headless humanoids with faces in their chests, live in a tribal society that, while extremely violent, also prizes honor. They are extremely hostile to outsiders, attacking and trying to kill anyone who enters their hex, but greatly respect those who fight against them valiantly. In the first book, the characters trying to cross Murithel win their respect by enacting a daring plan to run headlong across it while setting a wildfire to cover their tracks and, when caught out anyway, by engaging in a furious running fight until they physically collapse from exhaustion. Had they surrendered, the Murnies would have killed and eaten them; however, their display of courage and honor impressed them enough that they took them in and healed them instead.
• Wings of Fire: This is a common attitude, especially among the IceWings in Pyrrhia and the Poison faction of the LeafWings in Pantala. The IceWings believe their tribe to be superior to any others, and start training their dragonets to be soldiers much earlier than other tribes, putting great emphasis on fighting for their queen and fellow IceWings. The most prominent example of this is Winter, though his character development dampens this a lot. Sundew is the best LeafWing example, although her tribe is more warlike as revenge for when the HiveWings attempted genocide on them than in a purely cultural way.
• The Wheel of Time:
  • The Aiel, desert-dwelling group of clans, based on a number of real cultures, are justified and reconstructed exapmle. They have constantly warred against each other for centuries. However, they only rarely fights with their neighbours (mostly if there is a good reason to do so), they are more cultured than people think (at one point, the character is much surprised to see that Aiel is not only literate but also buys books in bulk), and they actually value their non-warriors (to the point that blacksmiths and pregnant women should not be taken into servitude). They live by strict and complex ji'e'toh code, which in the Old Tongue means "honor and duty". Said ji’e’toh serves not only as code of honor, but as a set of laws, including laws of war, allowing to minimize collateral damage and minimize violence in everyday life. Still, Aiel is universally feared for their combat prowess. The only thing that can stop an Aiel? Learning that their ancient ancestors were a pacifist culture. Discovering this caused their race to suffer a Heroic BSoD en masse as they were forced to confront the shame of forgoing their original vows of nonviolence.
  • The Shaido clan is a deconstruction, being a much more straightforward and definitely not-idealized example. They hold “wetlanders” in utter contampt; they are ready to turn their backs to an actual prophesied messiah, because he is “not a true Aiel”; they invade Westlands killing civilians, ravaging villages and taking slaves…
  • The Borderlanders from the same series also qualify, though they're not as extreme about it as the Aiel. Living on the edge of the Great Blight while engaged in perpetual warfare against Trollocs and their Myrddraal masters will do that to a culture.