Proud Warrior Race
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The Proud Warrior Race is a fairly common archetype in speculative fiction for various civilizations and cultures, both sci-fi and fantasy. The basic idea is based (and this must be stressed, very loosely) on a variety of IRL cultures like the Vikings, Sengoku era Japan, medieval Knights, Spartans, Mongols and certain Native American tribes such as the Apaches. In any case what they have in common is this...
- Placing extreme value on marshal prowess and master of combat techniques. One should dedicate one's life towards mastering combat.
- A veneration of heroic figures, often by oral record. To join their ranks in memory is often the end goal in a warrior's life.
- Position in this society is generally dictated by being the best fighter one way or another.
- A strong and strict code of honour outlines the life of a Warrior, especially in combat.
- An attitude towards death that's at the very least accepting and usually glorifies dying in Honorable combat. Often to the point that it's disgraceful to simply fade away in a hospital bed, as opposed to falling in battle.
- A decentralized society with power divided over small tightly knit sub-groups (often familial) which often fight with each other for position.
- A societal reverence towards war at the expense of other aspects of their society (economic, commercial, scientific, cultural, etc).
- A tendency to try to shoehorn warrior stuff in every aspect of their culture.
It should be noted that the "Race" part, while often a thing here, is not essential. You can have variations on this in which heritage is easily trumped by commitment to the code.
Problems
There are a lot of issues with the Proud Warrior Race and how they function, but the stem of it is that any society is complex and reducing them to one part of that greater makes as much sense as designing a car and only designing an engine.
The first and most obvious point is that even in a Warrior Culture, someone needs to keep them fed, clothed, armed and armoured. To get their sword, a warrior gets a blacksmith to forge it. To do so, the blacksmith needs food, fuel, metal, and a forge to work them in. This requires peasants to feed him and supply him, as well as a mason to build his forge (who needs to be fed, requiring even more peasants) and the peasants will need metal tools, so you'd probably want another smith, etc. In the end for every full time warrior, you need a bunch of other people behind them providing support.
Similarly, even in warlike cultures not everything was about war and fighting all the time. The Vikings and the Mongols were not only warriors, but skilled traders. The Samurai produced a lot of capable poets and artist and eventually largely evolved into a class of Bureaucrats.
In both fiction and IRL. 95% percent of the time they always get their asses kicked by dedicated infantry or a more technology advanced opponent. More so when firearms are involved.
Examples
- Green Martians in John Carter of Mars
- Klingons in Star Trek - probably the most well known incarnation.
- Sontarans in Doctor Who are a rare exception to the rule, as their militaristic traditions are shown in a negative (or humorous) light rather than positive or at least neutral.
- Sangheili in Halo
- The Clans in BattleTech
- Orcs often fall into this trope.
- Saiyans in Dragonball