I think it's just because of the religious/military implications combined with the fact that the Knights Templar are reasonably well-known.
I agree that the trope name is lame. "Fatal Fanatic" or "Fanatic" would be more culture-agnostic. Doesn't make any sense to assume every templar who ever lived was somehow villainous when templars hosted one of the first forms of banking open to the public.
This is the most unfortunate Trope Namer, cause true or not in fact most of the Templar's current fame are the conspiracy theories saying they where NOT the true believers they claimed to be at all.
Hide / Show Replies
It'so one of those tropes where the name may not be perfect, but it's the best we could do. And changing it would mean having to go in and fix a lot of wicks.
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
I agree that this trope should be renamed to something culture-agnostic like "Fanatic" or "Fatal Fanatic" since it doesn't make any sense from a historical perspective to assume all Knight Templars were evil for some reason. I descend from templars who lived in England and have a lot of pride with that identity. Imagine if this trope was named something relative to another ethnicity's ancestry because we assumed all of them were "schemers" or "crooks".
As someone who descends from knight templars from England, it's a bummer to see that "Knight Templar" is a trope that explicitly refers to someone who is a villain. I don't really understand the justification behind this trope bearing the name of a specific piece of a culture's history outside of it being a Christophobic/Europhobic gesture. It would be good if this trope had a culture-agnostic label like "Fatal Fanatic", "Fanatic", or "Megalomaniac". Imagine if we took the ancestry of some other ethnicity and referred to them as "schemers" or "crooks".
Edited by a08072cd5
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: VOTEQuote for the Knight Templar Page 
, started by Viv123 on Jan 3rd 2011 at 6:50:26 AM
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: The Inquisitor would be better, me thinks., started by Frank75 on May 3rd 2011 at 8:31:26 PM
Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Ambiguous Name, started by normp571 on Apr 7th 2013 at 5:45:52 AM
Blapper of Water
I just did a big change to this page. This was a revert and you can find the discussion in ATT. Search for "skidtroper" and it should be the discussion titled "skidtroper making deliberately misogynistic edits on contentious pages". This troper did a big rewrite on this page and other tropers jumped on the bandwagon.
Please discuss revisions and rewrites to the description in the trope description thread.
Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty
I think the examples need some cleaning up. It seems like tropers are just throwing in anyone who did bad things for what they thought was a good cause. I mean, if that's the definition of a Knight Templar, that makes it an extremely broad trope.
What's the difference between a Knight Templar and a Well-Intentioned Extremist? Can these two sometimes overlap with each other?
Hide / Show Replies
A Knight Templar believes that their motives are good, a Well-Intentioned Extremist is who someone else thinks their motives to be good. Methinks
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I think the difference is the Well-Intentioned Extremist still has some limits, while the Knight Templar has none.
The difference is that a Well-Intentioned Extremist knows that what he is doing is wrong, but sees it as necessary for a greater good, while a Knight Templar believes that they are good and everything they do is good.
I'm a Troper!!!
The Knight Templar is a subcategory of the Well-Intentioned Extremist. A Knight Templar is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who 1) really goes overboard, 2) has Black-and-White Insanity, 3) is utterly convinced of their beliefs, and 4) believes that they are completely in the right. It's basically what you get when you combine the Well-Intentioned Extremist and The Fundamentalist.
Edited by Starshock Not my circus, not my monkeys.
Actually, the Knight Templar is a pretty hard trope to explain... But you know it when you see it.
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
I'm sorry that I'm necroing this thread, but if you ask me, the Knight Templar CAN be aware of the morality of their actions. For example, take Grand Moff Tarkin from the Star Wars franchise: he's classified as a Knight Templar, yet he is fully aware of how morally wrong his actions are. He just doesn't give a shit that's all.
And of course there's Bane, who states that he's "necessary evil".
Edited by superboy313
All the Well Intentioned Extremists or are not aware of the their evilness or guess that they are Necessarily Evil.
Does Adolf Hitler count as a real life Knight Templar?
Edited by superboy313
Everybody's dead, Dave.
Jesus Christ, could the opening paragraphs be any more vague? Newer readers will have to rely on the Laconic version and image to understand what the hell is going on.
H.B. Ward Hide / Show Replies
You can ask here for a rewrite.
The Dark Lord of Hawaiian Shirts
Just asking. Are Social Justice Warriors modern Knight Templars?
Edited by Hawaii_Knut Srg. Dornan: Troper, what are you doing here?! Get back to your post!!!
Why is Master Chief considered Knight Templar? I just fail to see the logic in citing a non-emotive Super-Soldier as a morally insane maniac.
The key to overthrow any tyrant is not to show the people he is evil, it's to prove that he's incompetent. Hide / Show Replies
Yeah... the writeup seems to be more "obeys the orders of someone weaker than him" which doesn't seem to be this trope at all.
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
The Extremist Was Right, or Downplayed Knight Templar. Well-Intentioned Extremist might also work. Then again, this trope is technically alignment neutral.
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
Some cases of Good Is Not Nice and Good Is Not Soft. A good example of this is Joshua Graham in Fallout: New Vegas. A friendly, religious man that looks after his flock. Also a brutal Blood Knight who wants to flat out exterminate a tribe that threatens his flock to the last man. But said tribe is a legitimately evil and destructive tribe which the world is better of without.
Edited by Hawaii_Knut Srg. Dornan: Troper, what are you doing here?! Get back to your post!!!
^^If i am remembering well, the line about extremely brutal anti-heroes being included was not in the original text, but the edit that included this was already erased in the edit story.
Can anyone explain what a rivalry between a Card-Carrying Villain and Knight Templar would be like?
Edited by superboy313 Hide / Show Replies
Might want to ask in the forums on this. Chances are more people will see it there.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
When you think about it, most villains are Kight Templars - they either genuinely believe they're doing the right thing, or think evil is justified in their particular circumstance. Exceptions would be totally Ax-Crazy villains like Fenrir Greyback who are just in it For the Evulz.
Hide / Show Replies
In Real Life maybe. Most fictional villains are either power-mad, greedy, or insane.
I'm a Troper!!!
is All Elite
I'm a bit curious: when/where was it decided that this page needed its own subpages?
"Stealing is a crime and drugs is a crime too BUT if you steal drugs the two crimes cancel out and it’s like basically doing a good." Hide / Show Replies
Pages have to be split before they reach 500000 characters in length or the server has trouble. This one got too long, so most of the examples were put in subpages.
That was the amazing part. Things just keep going.
MagBas
- Naruto's Uchiha Itachi is a strange case. Sure, the manga seems to act like he's a hero, but he still killed every single one of the Uchihas, even the ones who had absolutely nothing to do with planning out the revolution, and at least in the short term caused more deaths than the rebellion might have. This can likely be chalked up to a combination of Danzo advocating a scorched earth policy and Madara wanting to kill them off for various reasons. The fact that both made a habit of collecting Sharingan like other people collect stamps didn't help.
- Steve Ditko's titular Mr A is meant to be the personification of Incorruptible Pure Pureness, but it doesn't work. In fact, it veers into a direction the writer could not possibly have intended.
- Prayer Warriors: The Evil Gods (which has now been deleted) involves Percy Jackson and his friends converting to Christianity and going on a rampage, killing anyone that doesn`t agree with them, including the Greek gods. It's as bad as it sounds. Worse, it was written by a Knight Templar, so the protagonists are supposed to be considered the good guys.
- Interestingly, both Indigo and Crimson, the two contacts you use to stop Malta, could be considered 'good' versions of this. They will do anything to stop Malta, and players see them entrap bad guys, trick civilians into dangerous traps, lie to compatriots to test their network for leaks, protect bad guys when their loss would empower Malta, provide false evidence to a villain group to cause someone's execution, and 'protect' good guys without warning them that they are at risk.
Knight Templar is a trope about a villain convinced of their own rightiouness. The removed characters are canonically good guys, by admission of the own examples.
Removed Master Eraqus of Kingdom Hearts from the list. He's not a villain and he understands the consequences of his actions, so he's more of a I Did What I Had to Do character. Also, he was trying to avert a potential genocide.
Edited by Eldrich
For the real life examples, the "tone argument" I'm familiar with has at least as much to do with "Good is Not Nice" and, on the other side, "Stepford Smiler," as with the Knight Templar concept (though one side is fond of attacking the other by trying to conflate their "Good Is Not Nice" stance with attitudes more consistent with "Knight Templar"). I'm hesitant to add that as an edit, though, especially after seeing some of the threads debating changes to page titles (on that note, I'm kind of new here, and, if the constraints and concerns in those threads are even semi-typical, this is an interesting idea you people have of "a buttload more informal." O.O But I digress.)
Thoughts?
Hide / Show Replies
Okay, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I needed to fix this one. Whoever posted it was pretty clearly trying to affect an air of impartiality, which you can't really do when you're presenting the argument from the perspective of one side, framed in fairly extreme terms. (And yes, comparing people who are quick-on-the-draw with verbal condemnations to the actual examples given on this page is extreme. Relatively few on the "restraint" side would go that far except as a joke.)
That entry shouldn't even be here, frankly.
In fact, I have recollections of deleting it but it seems to be back.
Are there really people out there who think purely verbal examples of Good Is Not Nice belongs on the same pages as Tomas de Torquemada and Joseph Mc Carthy? Really?
I Removed the image of Miyo, Because Miyo is Lawful Good and is contradictory to put it into a villain trope.
Hide / Show Replies
There is nothing good about Miko. She is an arrogant, self-righteous psychotic bitch who murders her own leader just for bending the rules a little.
Shamelessly plugging my comics, Oh yes.
"Yes, but it is canonically lawful good.
It is assumed that all the Knights Templar are lawful Evil.
Edited by cclospina
The Knight Templar thinks she is Lawful Good, but in practice usually behaves more like a Lawful Evil character.
Of course, as the Image Pickin' thread notes, this is still a bad image because, among other things, the picture alone lacks the context necessary to establish that Miko is, in fact, Lawful Good.
See you in the discussion pages.
Dude she is a frikkin paladin within a Dn D context. She only stopped being Good -aligned after she killed Shojo
...Er, no, she's definitely a villain, no matter how much she tries to justify her atrocities.
Shamelessly plugging my comics, Oh yes.
She is CANONICALLY Lawful Good pre- fall. Beyond it, she belongs to a good aligned organization. Standard Hero Antagonist.
"X and the Maverick Hunters start to fall into this in Mega Man X 4 and X5. Fast-forward 100 years to Mega Man Zero and Copy-X is protecting humans by mass extermination of innocent Reploids. "
You missed the fact, that it all happened after a Sky Lagoon fall, caused by Hunter's own Magma Dragoon which was a traitor. Finding Repliforce's Colonel in remnants of a Lagoon led Hunters to believe that it was Repliforce who crashed the Lagoon and labelled them as Mavericks. It turned out that everyone just got manipulated the Sigma, Repliforce was just a scapegoat and Hunters weren't blindly killing Reploids to save people.
Cut this from the Agora example:
- and the later joining the christians in taking down Alexandria's library
Okay just to mention that a bad guy believing what they are doing is right thing does not make them an Anti-Villain
MagBas
- Sailors Uranus and Neptune in Sailor Moon were willing to let the owners of the Pure Heart Talismans die if it was needed to stop the Silence from happening. Granted, they weren't happy about that either (especially when they thought Usagi had one of them), but they were pretty resigned and determined to do it. That was the source of lots of misunderstandings and bad blood with the other Senshi, who thought of them as villains. And they almost get a sort-of Karmic Death when it's shown they had two of the Talismans in their Pure Hearts. Uranus even wondered out loud if that's what they deserved.
- Later in S, they team up with Sailor Pluto to keep stopping the impending Apocalypse. And one of the "power trio"'s goals was to kill an innocent 12-year-old girl who just so happened to be the incarnation of the Senshi of Destruction, Sailor Saturn.
Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune are closer to Necessarily Evil than Knight Templars. They are totally conscious her ruthless acts are evil.
Crazed Lawrencian
....*sigh* Anyone have a picture of one of the Black Templars From Warhammer 40000? Somehow, I think anything from the Imperium could work here.
Proud member of the IAA What's the point of being grown up if you can't act childish?
Trope name - um, why is this trope named after one of two biggest medieval religious organizations (along with Cistercian order) that did not fall under it? All others being tied to one or both of them?
Don't the Hospitalers/Teutonic Knights fall under that quite nicely? It's a funny case of "He stole a bike, or they stole a bike from him... well he was involved in a bike theft!" right now...
Hide / Show Replies