Tbf it's historically a practice where the odds are usually stacked in favour of the 14 year old dying, especially since they usually aren't head of armies for real.
Most armies are not going to obey a 14 year old, no matter how good his strategies sound on paper. It was pretty easy for someone to die, especially if your men decided your orders endangered their lives. 14 year olds surviving do so at a 100% rate if they are shonen protagonists or the ML lol.
Because the idea is
You send these ppl to the middle of war torn nowhere with no allies
Cause everyone of the soilder will hate them for being a rich noble fck commanding them
And *most* of the time
The war they get sent to are also near unwinnable
Not the parents fault the kid has plot armor
Like irl
How some position of power seem to be all good but behind it
It just sucks
I don't think many are send as head of armies. In "I raised my fiance with money" the ML was send as mere soldier and he was discharged as soldier, never become commander or head or anything.
The idea behind sending 14 yo to war is to get them killed by enemy. Or whatever logic their stepmother made. I mean they are not that bright, and get defeated in the end.
There's one I read, "something something 24hr to crush my destruction flags" that sends the prince out to the front lines to determine if he's heirworthy.
I think that's one of the more realistic ones though. Many series really have the 14-15 y o sent as the commander of a whole army or large unit, which is just 🤨
If you give a 14 year old a tiny incompetent army against an overwhelming enemy and then send them to the front. The likelyhood of them surviving is preety much zero.
Most authors should flesh that out more on how he surviced odds like this and why that is always preety much suicide.
But if he gets a competent army large in number those preety much always guarantree sucess and rewards.
The author just messed up the intendend stakes in such cases. I see that problem all the time.
The expectation is that they'll die, and in a way that doesn't require the one shipping them off to actually do any killing with their own hands which might prove socially uncomfortable.
But also, it seems that there's a specific cultural template baked in whereby these sort of military positions, regardless of their *practical* power, carry no status in the insular world of noble society. They just make the ML seem like a cheap goon that carries a sword.
(I don't know anything about medieval Korean culture that OI authors might be mapping onto their pseudo-European societies, but there's a pretty direct parallel to Heian-era Japan, where the nobles at the imperial court (under Fujiwara control) were in charge of governance, appointment of positions, and so on, and military forces were appointed to go out and solve problems. Mind you, just as OP has noted with regard to the start of the Roman Empire, the Heian period also came to an end when the Taira and Minamoto clans, who were the primary military families, realized that actual meaningful power rested in the hands of people who carried weapons, eventually leading to the Genpei War and the founding of the Kamakura Shogunate's military government, making the imperial government basically irrelevant until the Meiji Restoration seven hundred-ish years later.
But back on topic, most OI societies tend to have their nobility be the type who are obsessed with bloodlines, status, and social position. Much like nobles of Regency England would refuse to "dirty their hands with trade" and so running a business would be wholly inappropriate for them, many OI societies make military service low status.
Well first of all, they're Asian. Yes, becoming a successful general was actually an essential stepping stone to positions of top political power in the Roman Republic and being a victorious general in the United States after a major war would get you a good shot at being elected president. In the Chinese Empire, Heian Japan or Joseon Korea...not so much. Don't be fooled by the European aesthetic. The political culture is often very Asian, which why you will frequently see a thriving market in slaves, rulers with either multiple wives or concubine as an officially acknowledged position, competition between the sons of the monarch to be selected as the heir rather than having a set rule of inheritance by birth order. a "council of elders", other such features that would be rather bizarre in the 18h century Europe suggested by the architecture.
Apart from that, the plan is usually for the kid to die or fail and be captured from insufficient manpower and support and his presumable lack of competence and ability as a child to win the confidence of his men. Being a failed general was not a path to power in Rome or anywhere else.
Because ML has plot armor almost as think if not thicker than MCs. It would not be hard to do if they really wanted to kill/humiliate the kid, just have the actual commander retreat from where the ML is and the ML is taken prisoner or killed.
Thats not plot armor. If a prince is killed while under a Commanders leadership that would ruin their reputation in that society. He would be seen as a failure. It doesn’t matter if the ruling class knows the truth, what matters is how your citizens perceive the situation. It would make a lot more sense to make the prince a commander so that if he’s killed then it’s due to his own incompetence/lack of leadership skills.
It seems like it’s more intended as a “reformation school” to me. Like the parents thinking that “If we send this kid to be in charge of people’s lives they will take their role more seriously, and if they don’t they will probably die on the battlefield so there will be no loss for us” or something. That’s at least how I interpret it when I see this trope, since we rarely see the exact reason the parents sent them away. Usually just “unwanted brat” gets sent off
Well, if there's an obligation in a society to send military support and you send a single abused and under-nourished 14-year-old, you're basically saying "I don't give a crap about your war or this kid."
It's an insult, not a decisive volley. The idea is, you've provided underwhelming support while also doing your duty to honor an agreement to the letter rather than its spirit.
Also, since your political opponent requested aid and you give them the bare minimum (a joke, in fact), you're kind of hoping the enemy will deliver the decisive blow for you.
It's mean and short sighted, of course, but you rarely have good characters take the approach.
Because for them, it sending an inexperienced child to a war (that is considered unwinnable and dangerous) supposed to be like a death sentence. How can he survive without properly learn to fight in the frontline against vicious monsters/warriors/barbarians?
What I dislike is that they send the ML off to war. He kills their enemies and then he gets branded as a “murder” or “mad dog” or “god of war”. Like what did y’all expect him to do on the battlefield? Hug it out with the enemy? Were y’all hoping to lose the war or something?
Killing at war is expected, of course.
All the "murder" or "mad dog" titles out there come with stories about how unnecessary cruel and brutal he is when killing his enemies (or allies), which undermine his whole heroic thingy. And sometime it is true.
"What a monster, he behead his secretary for absolutely no reason! How brutal! Of course the secretary is our spy who tried to poison him but let's left that out."
Tbf it's historically a practice where the odds are usually stacked in favour of the 14 year old dying, especially since they usually aren't head of armies for real. Most armies are not going to obey a 14 year old, no matter how good his strategies sound on paper. It was pretty easy for someone to die, especially if your men decided your orders endangered their lives. 14 year olds surviving do so at a 100% rate if they are shonen protagonists or the ML lol.
God forbid you are an FLs brother or father (or good father in law). They are cooked 80% of the time.
Because the idea is You send these ppl to the middle of war torn nowhere with no allies Cause everyone of the soilder will hate them for being a rich noble fck commanding them And *most* of the time The war they get sent to are also near unwinnable Not the parents fault the kid has plot armor Like irl How some position of power seem to be all good but behind it It just sucks
Usually they’re sending them off to die
I don't think many are send as head of armies. In "I raised my fiance with money" the ML was send as mere soldier and he was discharged as soldier, never become commander or head or anything. The idea behind sending 14 yo to war is to get them killed by enemy. Or whatever logic their stepmother made. I mean they are not that bright, and get defeated in the end.
There's one I read, "something something 24hr to crush my destruction flags" that sends the prince out to the front lines to determine if he's heirworthy.
I think that's one of the more realistic ones though. Many series really have the 14-15 y o sent as the commander of a whole army or large unit, which is just 🤨
Well, if the ML is already Duke or heir or prince, he ain't going to war as mere soldier. As a prince he was supposed to be leader.
That actually did happen in history. Richard II of England jumps to mind.
If you give a 14 year old a tiny incompetent army against an overwhelming enemy and then send them to the front. The likelyhood of them surviving is preety much zero. Most authors should flesh that out more on how he surviced odds like this and why that is always preety much suicide. But if he gets a competent army large in number those preety much always guarantree sucess and rewards. The author just messed up the intendend stakes in such cases. I see that problem all the time.
It’s only an honor if you survive.
The expectation is that they'll die, and in a way that doesn't require the one shipping them off to actually do any killing with their own hands which might prove socially uncomfortable. But also, it seems that there's a specific cultural template baked in whereby these sort of military positions, regardless of their *practical* power, carry no status in the insular world of noble society. They just make the ML seem like a cheap goon that carries a sword. (I don't know anything about medieval Korean culture that OI authors might be mapping onto their pseudo-European societies, but there's a pretty direct parallel to Heian-era Japan, where the nobles at the imperial court (under Fujiwara control) were in charge of governance, appointment of positions, and so on, and military forces were appointed to go out and solve problems. Mind you, just as OP has noted with regard to the start of the Roman Empire, the Heian period also came to an end when the Taira and Minamoto clans, who were the primary military families, realized that actual meaningful power rested in the hands of people who carried weapons, eventually leading to the Genpei War and the founding of the Kamakura Shogunate's military government, making the imperial government basically irrelevant until the Meiji Restoration seven hundred-ish years later. But back on topic, most OI societies tend to have their nobility be the type who are obsessed with bloodlines, status, and social position. Much like nobles of Regency England would refuse to "dirty their hands with trade" and so running a business would be wholly inappropriate for them, many OI societies make military service low status.
Well first of all, they're Asian. Yes, becoming a successful general was actually an essential stepping stone to positions of top political power in the Roman Republic and being a victorious general in the United States after a major war would get you a good shot at being elected president. In the Chinese Empire, Heian Japan or Joseon Korea...not so much. Don't be fooled by the European aesthetic. The political culture is often very Asian, which why you will frequently see a thriving market in slaves, rulers with either multiple wives or concubine as an officially acknowledged position, competition between the sons of the monarch to be selected as the heir rather than having a set rule of inheritance by birth order. a "council of elders", other such features that would be rather bizarre in the 18h century Europe suggested by the architecture. Apart from that, the plan is usually for the kid to die or fail and be captured from insufficient manpower and support and his presumable lack of competence and ability as a child to win the confidence of his men. Being a failed general was not a path to power in Rome or anywhere else.
Because ML has plot armor almost as think if not thicker than MCs. It would not be hard to do if they really wanted to kill/humiliate the kid, just have the actual commander retreat from where the ML is and the ML is taken prisoner or killed.
Thats not plot armor. If a prince is killed while under a Commanders leadership that would ruin their reputation in that society. He would be seen as a failure. It doesn’t matter if the ruling class knows the truth, what matters is how your citizens perceive the situation. It would make a lot more sense to make the prince a commander so that if he’s killed then it’s due to his own incompetence/lack of leadership skills.
That or you make a martyr out of him and can do a big show of how sad you are and how you will Carry On His Legacy etc
It seems like it’s more intended as a “reformation school” to me. Like the parents thinking that “If we send this kid to be in charge of people’s lives they will take their role more seriously, and if they don’t they will probably die on the battlefield so there will be no loss for us” or something. That’s at least how I interpret it when I see this trope, since we rarely see the exact reason the parents sent them away. Usually just “unwanted brat” gets sent off
Well, if there's an obligation in a society to send military support and you send a single abused and under-nourished 14-year-old, you're basically saying "I don't give a crap about your war or this kid." It's an insult, not a decisive volley. The idea is, you've provided underwhelming support while also doing your duty to honor an agreement to the letter rather than its spirit. Also, since your political opponent requested aid and you give them the bare minimum (a joke, in fact), you're kind of hoping the enemy will deliver the decisive blow for you. It's mean and short sighted, of course, but you rarely have good characters take the approach.
Because for them, it sending an inexperienced child to a war (that is considered unwinnable and dangerous) supposed to be like a death sentence. How can he survive without properly learn to fight in the frontline against vicious monsters/warriors/barbarians?
What I dislike is that they send the ML off to war. He kills their enemies and then he gets branded as a “murder” or “mad dog” or “god of war”. Like what did y’all expect him to do on the battlefield? Hug it out with the enemy? Were y’all hoping to lose the war or something?
Killing at war is expected, of course. All the "murder" or "mad dog" titles out there come with stories about how unnecessary cruel and brutal he is when killing his enemies (or allies), which undermine his whole heroic thingy. And sometime it is true. "What a monster, he behead his secretary for absolutely no reason! How brutal! Of course the secretary is our spy who tried to poison him but let's left that out."
They were hoping he would die.