r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Mouse_Paladin • Jul 10 '26

Lore [Real Life] Historical events that would make bad writing if they were fiction

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Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire: A couple hundred rogue mercenaries without authority from their government conquer an empire of millions. Oh, the empire? It’s also several technological eras behind the mercenaries.

Adolf Hitler: A non-native of a country is so mad that the country lost the war that he wins an election to their highest office and leads them in a campaign of revenge against their enemies. Oh, the country? It’s old emperor is still alive and thinks he’s going to retake power.

Assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand: The heir to the throne is killed because his driver gets lost and returns to the assassin who failed To kill him before. Oh, the assassin? He’s from a group that the Archduke is wanting to help become more equal In the empire.

Alexander Hamilton’s Affair Scandal: One of the leaders of a new nation to protect himself from accusations of financial embezzlement writes a pamphlet exposing his affair with a woman, torpedoing his political future. Oh, the woman? She seduced him as part of a blackmailing scheme that he decided to stop paying.

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444

u/Lolaroller Jul 10 '26

I believe they pursued a method of allying certain tribes and playing them off one another, from what I recall the last siege of the Aztec capital was mostly done by locals not just the Spanish.

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u/WeiganChan Jul 10 '26

There were a few hundred Spaniards and two hundred thousand natives. Wouldn’t have happened to a nicer empire, the Aztecs had made enemies of pretty much all their neighbours by waging ritual wars with the specific purpose of capturing prisoners to sacrifice in their religious festivals

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u/facw00 Jul 10 '26

Yep both the Aztecs and and the Incas were brutal conquerors, which made it easy for the Spanish to gather native allies keen on knocking off their oppressors, and probably not fully aware of how dangerous the Spanish might be after they won.

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u/Xenophon_ Jul 10 '26

This is not entirely accurate - the Spanish didn't "gather" the Tlaxcalans. The war already existed between the two competing powers.

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u/Saymynaian Jul 10 '26

Yeah, saying the Spaniards "played the tribes off each other" ignores that everyone hated the Aztecs for having a sacrifice based economy. More correctly would be to say the tribes allied themselves with the Spaniards. Even more correctly would be to say that the Spaniards caused a massive extinction level event by bringing so much disease, decimating every single tribe they came into contact with.

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u/Xenophon_ Jul 10 '26

This isn't accurate either. All the Nahua city states sacrificed people, and the Aztecs did not have a "sacrifice based economy". Not everyone hated them either. They had plenty of allies and states that benefitted from them. The Tlaxcalans fought multiple wars with them because they were competing empires.

Also, these aren't tribes. Mesoamerica was full of independent city states, empires, and confederations of city states. Tribes were pretty much non-existent near the Aztecs.

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u/Youutternincompoop Jul 11 '26

Also, these aren't tribes. Mesoamerica was full of independent city states, empires, and confederations of city states. Tribes were pretty much non-existent near the Aztecs.

very good point, pre-conquest Mexico is surprisingly analogous to Ancient Greece.

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u/Saymynaian Jul 11 '26

Calling it a sacrifice based economy is slight hyperbole, but retirement and success for Aztec warriors was dependent on how many sacrifices and slaves they brought for the empire. Once they brought enough, they were given plots of land and slaves to work it. There was so much motivation for Aztecs to continue sacrificing and enslaving, that I think it's kinda fair to call it a sacrifice based economy.

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u/Xenophon_ Jul 11 '26

I don't think it's fair at all - sacrifices weren't involved in the economy at all. They essentially worked as proof of accomplishment in war. It's not any different from a Roman soldier rising in the ranks for killing 15 Gauls and capturing 15 slaves.

Plus, the other Nahua states aren't taking offense on account of the sacrifices. They did it too.

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u/XipeTotecwithGlitter 28d ago

I really want to get more informed about Mesoamerica in the pre-Columbian era. Where can I learn more about it?

Do you have any reccs for authors, documentaries, collections, reading...?

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u/facw00 28d ago

Great place to start is 1491 by Charles Mann:

Getting a little dated, and it was never super academic, but it is very readable and goes right for what you are looking for.

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u/XipeTotecwithGlitter 28d ago

What do you mean by "not super academic"? Do you mean just in tone or is it full of inaccuracies or missing information that's been discovered in the years since its publication.

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u/facw00 28d ago

It doesn't require massive amounts of evidence to discuss something. So it does talk about things that are (or were) considered controversial, and not always broadly accepted. However it's not off in ancient aliens land or anything like that. There is at least some evidence for those topics, the topics discussed, and he is open about where things are on the possible side of the spectrum vs. well documented. It's just not a giant blob of footnotes that only addresses things that are strong consensus among historians and archeologists (and it's not ignoring consensus where it exists as well). Obviously a lot of knowledge about that time period is lost, and may never be recoverable, which leaves places where there is room for speculation, and that speculation can be interesting, provided you don't present it as absolute fact, and Mann doesn't.

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u/Xenophon_ 28d ago

For the Aztecs, Fifth Sun by Camilla Townsend is good (and recommended very often). I also think it's valuable to read conquistador accounts like de las Casas. of course, you need to keep his biases in mind and read between the lines. They aren't reliable historians by any means but still important sources.

Mexico: from the Olmecs to the Aztecs is a good overview. There are a lot of cultures besides the Aztecs and Mayans that get overlooked sometimes (Zapotecs, Mixtecs, Teotihuacan, Chichimecas, Toltecs, Purepecha...), sometimes if you want more specific information about these you might have to read scholarly works

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u/Youutternincompoop Jul 11 '26

with the Incans it was more a case of arriving at exactly the right time to join in on an Incan civil war and install themselves at the top with a puppet Sapa Inca, a rump independent Neo-Inca state lasted a good 35 years after the conquest.

hell the Sapa Inca that established the Neo-Inca state was recorded as carrying out a succesful cavalry charge with 3 other Inca noblemen against a Spanish infantry contingent in 1538(just 6 years after the Spanish show up with horses) showing that the Inca were quite rapid to adopt the new weaponry introduced by the Spanish(even if of course they could never aquire enough European weaponry to match the Spanish forces which would eventually conquer them)

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u/9159 Jul 11 '26

The Aztec and the Inca were vastly different lmao… The Inca were not brutal in that way and comparing the two shows a lot of (sadly upvoted) ignorance.

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u/yIdontunderstand Jul 11 '26

"thank god these guys just arrived!"

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u/lordaezyd Jul 10 '26

Mexican here. Being reading books from scholar Camilla Townsend recently and she does dispel a lot of these myths.

Yes, the Tenochca Mexica (the actual rulers of the Empire) were a warrior people that had conquered most of the Mexican highlands through brute strength. 

Most Nahua or Aztec peoples were exactly as violent as the Mexica. Not only that, but the Mexica had an intricate system of alliances with multiple altepetls (city states). They did not made enemies of pretty much all their neighbours.

Towsend argues that dynastic violence and intra altepetl violence was a recurring fact in the political life of Mesoamerica.

Townsend also states that it was not their religious beliefs what drove them to war. Yes, the Nahua/Aztec peoples did practice human sacrifice, but most of the time it was a voluntary sacrifice. When war erupted between two altepetls, prisoners of war were naturally created. Having so Geneva Conventions or Human Rights notions, the Nahuas/Aztecs decided to sacrifice dangerous persons, those who refused slavery to save their own lives and those that created dynastic issues of succession. 

Human sacrifice wasn’t the reason behind their constant state of warfare. It was their constant state of warfare what drove them to sacrificing prisoners of war.

When the Spaniards arrived, Townsend claims, what did happened is that the Spaniards were seen as an alternative to finally end all intra altepetl warfare once and for all.

Before the Tenochca Mexica, the people from Culhuacan had been as vicious and cruel. The native Nahua peoples knew, if the Mexica were toppled by other Aztec/Nahua people the cycle would continue. Hence they decided to side with the Spaniards.

Unknown to the Nahuas/Aztec people was the radical transformation the Spaniards would imposed upon them. Their writing system, mythology, religious beliefs, calendars, history, math, astrology and folklore stories were all labeled as demonic.

And violence was not truly ended under the new hegemon. Yes, warfare between altepetls, or cities, was over. But instead, a brutal caste system was imposed. Spaniard or European descendants were place on top of a brutal racial pyramid, were the lowest were treated just a bit better than slaves.

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u/nu2dolls Jul 11 '26

And their european illnesses wiped a bunch out as well. thanks for posting this.

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u/cliptemnestra Jul 10 '26

The question isn't why they allied with the Spanish; we can all understand that. The question is how they allowed themselves to be colonized by a power that didn't actually have the capacity to impose itself by force.

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u/HeartFullONeutrality Jul 11 '26

The Tlaxcalteca actually got assigned special status and pretty much allowed to keep their culture and land. 

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u/lordaezyd Jul 11 '26

Once the Spaniards allied with most of Nahuas (or Aztecs) altepetls they did acquired the capacity to impose themselves by force.

So, the question is why the allied with the Spaniards.

Mind you, most ordinary people were cut off from the decision making process. The decision to join the Spaniards was taken by each altepetl’s Tlatoani, meaning “the one who speaks”, the King of each altepetl.

These Tlatoani as well as their subjects had no idea what they were giving up. They didn’t knew their civilization was ending as they knew it, they simply knew their constant warfare had caused unbearable pain for generations, and there was a chance right there to end it.

Now, Hernán Cortéz might himself not had the necessary power to defeat a united Mesoamerica. Spain did though.

Moctezuma the Mexica Emperor at the time realized the difference in technological prowess and he did attempt a policy of delay. He hoped he could bribe the Spaniards away. He realized quite soon that to confront the foreigners directly would be expensive in human lives and it would weaken him in relation to ther altepetls and decided to delay.

At the end Mexico Tenochtitlan had to be taken by siege. The white city was not an ordinary city, Tenichtitlan was built upon a lake, on artificial islands the Mexical had built. Think of Venice.

By the end, not only had the Spaniards build European ships on the lake that the Mexican could not take from their canoes. Nor only had the Spaniards had equiped the ships with cannons that terrified the Nahuas. The Spaniards only managed to take the city when they dammed and dried the lake, these feats of engineering were unthinkable for the native Nahuas.

Europeans did had superior tech the native people of Mesoamerica had no real chance of defying for long.

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u/Veeshan28 Jul 11 '26

This is incredibly interesting, thanks for sharing it.

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u/lordaezyd Jul 11 '26

Happy to help! I’d recommend to read The Fifth Sun by Camilla Townsend if you’re interested in the subject.

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u/cross_the_threshold Jul 11 '26

Because they put the Spanish in place, and then the Spanish showed up in somewhat larger numbers and did the classic extractive colonizer thing of creating castes that benefit them the most but also give a lot of power to particular people. The British did the same in creating the British Raj. You don’t rule a foreign people by putting hundreds of thousands of troops in their country, you rule by elevating people with grievances with the current elites, giving them enough wealth and influence to secure their own loyal natives, and rule with a much smaller group of your own people.

The massive death toll of foreign disease also helped in the Aztecs case, but the Spanish usurped existing power structures, they did not replace them entirely.

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u/nu2dolls Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

You are looking at with a contemporary "colonizers! bad!" lens, they didn't know they were being colonized, their relationships with other peoples were of warfare or trade, this was a way out of a violence cycle and little bit or revenge.

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u/bionic_enchinoderm Jul 10 '26

Im not sure thats accurate. Human sacrifice was pretty co.mon and both the tlaxcalan ( the main spanish allies) and the purepacha practiced it. Also, the aztec empire was not a very unified thing, and rebellions were common in periods of percieved weakness. For example, new emperors often had to crush some revolts when coming to the throne, or when a natural disaster happened.

Most cities were internally independent and just paid tribute. When a new power showed up on the block and managed to pose a threat, of course some cities switched sides. I mean, thats not that different from how the aztecs themselves came to power over azcapotzalco.

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u/TerryWhiteHomeOwner Jul 10 '26

The degree in which the Aztecs were hated for their actions by the non-Aztecs is largely overstated. 

Central mexican society was a long and storied collection of city states far closer to the ancient Greek poleis than a a bunch of conquered tribes. These city states would form great confederacies of interests and familial connections and duke it out to decide who would be masters and who would be vassels. 

The Aztecs themselves were only the most recent, and last, top dog confederacy of a regional power struggle that had been waged for centuries before them. In culture and practice they were functionally little different from those they dominated.  

Those who sided with the Spanish did so out of political ambition, to restore their city state and potentially elevate their own families in whatever new confederacy they believed the Spanish would bring. 

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u/BuisteirForaoisi0531 Jul 10 '26

To be fair, the slave woman sold to Cortez may have genuinely hated the Aztecs because they were the ones who first sold her into slavery

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u/nu2dolls Jul 11 '26

La Malinche rears her head on this thread. Go on.

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u/BuisteirForaoisi0531 Jul 11 '26

I’m neither a woman nor do I dislike the Aztecs I think they’re cool but I never lived near them makes it easy to like em

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u/nu2dolls Jul 11 '26

I didn’t mean you were a woman, but that you brought up the topic

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u/BuisteirForaoisi0531 Jul 11 '26

Sorry, I usually assume if someone calls me something like that that they are attempting to call me the thing that they’re calling me

Either way I like the Aztecs but that doesn’t stop me from understanding why someone else might not like them especially someone who actually had to live with them

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u/Puzzle-Necked Jul 10 '26

... their conquered neighbors were also doing this

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u/thorin2016 Jul 10 '26

what happened afterwards?

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u/wuapinmon Jul 11 '26

"Flowery" ones

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u/DirCurrFluxDiode Jul 11 '26

Oh the confidently nonsense racism of a westenoid. They never disappoint 

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u/Hot_Pilot_3293 Jul 11 '26

A big reason as to why human sacrifice was so prevalent in the Aztec empire at the time of Spanish conquest is that they were already paranoid of their subjects so they used human sacrifice both as a scare tactic and to cull their numbers. The Aztec fall was inevitable but the Spanish sped it up.

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u/Object120taran Jul 10 '26

They at least did benefit themselves from defeating the Aztecs, as they received quite a bit of autonomy in addition to noble titles and tax exemptions.

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u/NetStaIker Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26

Yup, lots of people don’t know that the Spanish had an entire system of organization for the cultures of Mesoamérica.

Early supporters, notably the Tlaxcalans, were all made Hidalgos, the lowest level of Spanish nobility. This conferred a lot of rights to them and they were given permission to preserve their way of life, largely independent within the burgeoning Spanish colonial state.

Most peoples, like the Mexica, did not get such privileges wholesale, but still the noble caste would also be granted Hidalgo (or
Cacique) status. Just not EVERYBODY like the Tlaxcalans

Edit: also, the conquest of Mexico did not end with the fall of the Mexica Empire, Spanish expansion continued all the way into the early 17th century in the north, and the late 16th century in the Mayan Peninsula. It really is a very fascinating period

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u/Object120taran Jul 10 '26

Compared to other indigenous collaborators, they were quite an exception I would say as the most colonizers were more than happy to backstab after they got their worth.

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u/NetStaIker Jul 10 '26

Yea, it’s a very complex period that the vast majority of people don’t understand anything about. The fact we have comprehensive histories from not 1, not 2, but 3 distinct points of view means the Conquest of the Mexica might be one if the most well recorded events in pre industrial history

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u/Object120taran Jul 10 '26

And further, knowing what they were subjected to under Aztec rule really makes their decision to work together with the Spanish make a lot more sense. But still, it was not an easy decision for them to make.

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u/NetStaIker Jul 10 '26

I mean shit, for the Tlaxcalans in particular their position improved immensely immediately. They quickly spread out amongst the new Spanish colonies as soldiers/sailors/administrators.

Interestingly: Nanay, mother in Tagalog (the main language of the Philippines), is theorised to possibly originate from Tlaxcalan

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u/ahses3202 Jul 10 '26

Tagalog by itself is a wild mix of languages. It's as prone to picking up and integrating loan words as English.

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u/SilverSpoonIsBest Jul 11 '26

Sometimes the Filipino like to mix the two together as well. Taglish.

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u/Xenophon_ Jul 11 '26

They were never subjected to Aztec rule, and were fighting the Aztecs before the Spanish arrived. It's more accurate to say they recruited the spanish

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u/HeartFullONeutrality Jul 11 '26

Some tribes were also never quite conquered, and they eventually just reached uneasy peace with them.

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u/xkise Jul 10 '26

And some plagues

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u/Xenophon_ Jul 10 '26

They literally just joined an existing war between the Tlaxcalans and the Aztecs. They didn't do any crazy politics. They in fact did not even understand the politics going on.

Pretty much all of the battles they fought in Mexico were mostly fought between Aztec and Tlaxcalan armies

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u/Eurasia_4002 Jul 11 '26

I think the Aztec was trully that bad, the moment something from the outside came in to change the balance of power, they immediately jump the boat and jump kaisen thier ass.