Worldbuilding 203: Martyrs
Greetings and Smegmatic! …I could use some soap now, if I am to be honest. It is Easter time, and what is better than talking about martyrs on a holiday of a supposed martyr? Well, nothing, if you ask me, so here we go!
Definition
A definition is never wrong, unless it’s an absolutely terrible definition, and we never have those here at Stellima! …I hope. So, here we go with a definition!
A martyr is a person who works for a cause and is then subsequently killed by the opposing side of the cause and, with death, becomes a symbol for the cause.
For virtually all martyrs, the death aspect is crucial. This is because for the symbolism to work, the to-be martyr needs to make a great sacrifice, and what sacrifice is greater than death? (Anne: Another important element of dying for the cause is that you’re not then able to ruin your image with your actions. A dead person’s actions and words are set in stone and ended with grandeur. If you keep living, you could easily mess it up and die in ignominy). That is a great addition: if they died a hero, they will forever stay a hero.
And if you ask me, having afterlives and such tends to… kind of ruin the whole martyr thing. If you are promised all kinds of goodies for dying and guaranteed to get them after you die, is it really a sacrifice then? I don’t think so.
Everyone’s a martyr!
Well, not really. Lots and lots of people die while being for a cause and are subsequently forgotten. So, how does one become a martyr? Honestly, it is a complicated process that is 80% luck, 40% effort, and 25% being helpless.
Jokes aside, the helpless bit has a lot of truth to it. If you are big and strong for the cause, you rarely become a martyr. You are a champion for the cause, but not a martyr. Often, a martyr is, at least at the time of their demise, very much helpless. Your entire army might have been ground down, and now you stand there with yourself and 10 other warriors, after having started at 10 thousand men strong. Then you do a heroic sacrifice to let those other 10 get away. You didn’t have a chance in hell to ever survive against an army that could destroy your own army so devastatingly, but you stood there anyway, knowing you would die.
Or maybe you tried to show something non-violently, and you were brutally killed while refusing to do any harm to those who ended up killing you. Why do these become martyrs but not the hulk warrior? I’d say it is because they demonstrate something enormous. Namely, to them, the cause and principles outweighed everything else, including their own lives. But not only that, it is also part of the human psyche.
When an army of millions destroys an army of a thousand, it is unimpressive. The end result was known before you started, so what you did counts for really nothing. But turn it around: when you stand up against an army of a million with only one thousand, that is impressive. That takes bravery and determination that few have. Because it is so impressive and you were so determined for your cause, you are elevated far higher than anyone should be.
Of course, as said, this happens to a lot, so there is a lot of luck involved as well. Having a lot of popularity already before your inevitable demise will naturally help you become a martyr. (Anne: There aren’t too many nameless martyrs.) Thank you, one thing to note also is that it is exceedingly rare for someone who WANTS to be a martyr to become a martyr. That is because there is a lot of ego involved in such statements and desires, which makes for a terrible tale that can easily be used to undermine the martyr by your enemy. So almost all martyrs didn’t want it.
Martyr’s impact
So what does a martyr DO? Well, nothing; they’re dead. But their image can do a lot. If the martyr is on your side, you have something fantastic on your hands. You have a person, a formerly living person, and a fantastic story to go along with it. And… Anne, did I put this in a post already or not? If not, I say it now, truth doesn’t move people, stories move people. And now that you have a fantastic AND real story, that means you can move a lot of people quickly! (Anne: If it wasn’t in a post, it is now! And an excellent addition, and just one more reason why storytellers are sometimes more powerful than anyone else in a society, and why artists are seen as dangerous to those in power).
Anyway, the martyr might be dead, but their story lives on, and with it, there is no stopping the people! Stories will evolve and become more exaggerated, new symbolism will be derived from the martyr, and their words will be immortalised. And that is fundamentally the power of a martyr: not the actions themselves that the martyr took in life, but the symbolism that grows out of their life and death. And all this symbolism can be used to get emotions going.
And anyone who has dealt with people knows that once you get enough emotions going and get people into a frenzy, whoever is on the other side is in for an unpleasant time. With these things, the movement and cause become much stronger.
Martyrs are a problem
Of course, if you are on the other side, martyrs are a problem if you create one. Many times in history has the big, mean empire tried to crush rebellions and uprisings, only to create a martyr in the process and find themselves in a much worse position.
The problem is that once the other side has one martyr and starts galvanizing around that image, and you try to violently crush them again… you risk creating even MORE martyrs, which keeps stoking the flames of rebellion. And unless the area is incredibly small, you are unlikely to be able to smash it all down endlessly.
The rebellion will inevitably start spreading, and if the rebellions have martyrs that connect with other people as well, well, it is like lighting a match while swimming in a gasoline lake. It will spread, and you are in for a bad time. So, as an empire, try to avoid creating martyrs. (Anne: 👀 I feel called out).
Avoiding martyrs
So, you want to avoid a big, mean martyr being created under your watch, but how do you do it as the big empire? Maybe you’re good… mostly good, probably good, alright, you’re pretty trash, but you want to avoid it anyway; how do you do!?
Well… don’t kill 🙂 That takes care of it most of the time. But that means you have to be careful when you engage with those nasty rebellions–so ungrateful for what you’ve done! Anyway, if you have your army go in and try to deal with it… Armies are going to do what they do best: harm and kill. ANY wound, no matter how minute, can kill, and that means you can accidentally create a martyr by using violence alone, even if you aren’t trying to use lethal violence.
A classical way, if you manage the difficult task of not killing the popular potential would-be martyrs, is to… lock them away. Don’t lock them in an awful prison with terrible food and treatment; that only risks killing them! Have it be decent, maybe even luxurious, and they are treated decently. It is difficult to tell a great story where the supposed martyr was treated nicely, even if locked away.
So, even if they get out, they have much less of a leg to stand on to be a martyr. Martyrdom is marked by sacrifices and hardships, and if you make their lives easier, well… it’s not a good story. But then you have another benefit… People have the memory of a goldfish-hamster hybrid. So, if their maybe martyr is locked away, it is out of sight and soon out of mind. The person becomes forgotten over time, which helps remove them as a potential martyr, even if they are killed later. It is hard to become a martyr if everyone has forgotten you existed.
In my own setting, I have the Divine Dominion, a theocratic star nation. They are, due to their religious nature, vigilant on any potential martyr that can be created for any group within their Dominion. Their general approach to dealing with it is primarily non-violent, but if they have to use violence, then for anyone who has any reasonable possibility of becoming a martyr for their enemies, they capture them and lock them away to be forgotten.
Setting up a martyr
Let’s say you are on the rebel team and want a martyr; can you create one?
Technically… Yeah, you can. But that requires a conspiracy… ANNE! Add conspiracies to the list of topics! (Anne: I didn’t have to… They already did!) And anyone who isn’t a nutjob will know one infallible truth about humans: Humans blather about everything. I am a teacher, and I am not allowed to tell a lot about my students… I still blather about students. I just make sure what I say cannot be traced to any individual, so it is fine.
But that demonstrates that people talk, and the larger the group gets, the more people blather because they think it cannot be traced to them. So conspiracies naturally collapse in on themselves when they are sufficiently big.
So, why did I go on this tangent? Because the larger the group that needs to plan this, the more likely it is to leak, and once it leaks that the supposed martyr was set up, it ruins the image and story, meaning they cannot become a martyr. This is on top of the fact that you are hoping that the enemy will cooperate and kill your wanted martyr, while they are likely unaware. Anyone in the military knows that no plan survives contact with the enemy.
And let’s be honest with this: if you are willing to be this ruthless… You have a lot of bad apples on your side. (Anne: And depending on the story you’re writing, that might be exactly what you want: a whole lotta bad apples. You don’t even need to get the enemy involved. Maybe one of your small group of plotting evil people dresses as the enemy, makes sure they’re seen as they kill the potential martyr, and oh, whoops, did they also get killed? Shame, that, guess they won’t be blathering! And gosh, was the wine at the small group’s celebration poisoned? I guess the sole survivor doesn’t have to worry about anyone other than themselves blathering! Of course, at this point, you could make them truly noble and kill themselves because while it seemed like they were a villain, in reality, they were just willing to be seen as a villain in order to advance the movement. They were the truest believer! If anyone finds out, that is! It’s a perfect plan… and in your story, you can do things like this! Would it work in the real world? Probably not. In your story? Absolutely!)
Of course, that got long… Oh well, I love my sister. (Anne: I’m not Lady Verbosa for nothing!)
Create a martyr
All right, so the rebel side probably isn’t going to be making a martyr… But what about us? We’re worldbuilders: how do we create an actual martyr for our world to use? As with everything, it is highly specific to the setting. But a crucial thing is hardship and sacrifice. It is rare for nobility or members of the upper echelon of society to become martyrs because it makes for an awful story. The noble prince going off to help a cause feels much more like they are trying to grab power than help an actual cause, even if they die in the process.
Compare this to the beggar boy who grew up on the street and, through sheer determination, rose up the ranks and joined a cause. Then, in a battle, he led the charge, was at the forefront, and was killed during the impossible battle… Which one sounds better? Which FEELS better to hear?
To almost all, the latter will sound better; it will feel better, and it sounds way more heroic. So when you want to create a martyr, have them face hardships, things in their life that keep punching them down, but not too much–it becomes unbelievable then. Unless it is the exaggerated stories that people tell after the martyr’s death, then it can be insane because it is not facts then; it is pure story.
Then, have them go out in a way that is befitting of the setting and situation. How that is done is dependent on the setting, but it is by the enemy and in a way that has them being helpless.
A half example is my character Kwxents, from my Workers’ Federation. I say half because Kwxents wasn’t killed by their enemies (the capitalists) in any direct fashion. They were killed by illness, which is more of an ignoble death. But they became martyr-like after their death and are still held up to this day.
Their life was marked by hardship–think industrial England–coming from a poor working-class home at the bottom. A thing with the capitalists here is that they were smart enough not to kill Kwxents; instead, Kwxents was constantly thrown into prisons and beaten–less smart because that COULD kill Kwxents, but they hadn’t read this blogpost yet, so the capitalists are forgiven. Despite it all, Kwxents never gave up what they believed in, workers’ rights, and despite their more ignoble ending, they were raised above others for the sacrifices and hardships they had to endure in life.
(Anne: Sorry, had to jump in for my hero, Kwxents! I think two other things made them a martyr: first, they nobly chose to hide their illness and continue rallying their people until literally minutes before their deathbed. That’s a pretty decent death story even without being killed by the enemy. Second, the (good) people around Kwxents understood the martyr potential and made sure Kwxents’s body was hidden. That created mystery and also prevented either side from using their body in a way that hurt the movement. So yeah, they weren’t killed by the enemy. But I’d say there were other ways they managed it, or at least came close enough with their story).
Great addition as always! Yeah, not a martyr in the strictest sense, but they sure got close with all the circumstances.
Summa Summarum
Martyrs are powerful for their immense symbolism and the stories that can arise from their lives and deaths. If you want to make an empire appear competent, then martyr management, which is a funny phrase, is an important aspect of it. They need to be aware of the harm a martyr can do to whatever empire you have. It doesn’t need to be perfect, especially in more ignorant times, because historical empires have failed catastrophically at this.
If you want to create a martyr, hardships and epic death are the way to go. It is all about the story that is created; reality has to align closely enough to the story for it to take off, and a martyr is created.
But one thing to remember from Kwxents is that a person doesn’t need to be a martyr to have that kind of power in their story after death.
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Copyright ©️ 2025 Vivian Sayan. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as martyrs, how they are made, and how they function are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. However, specific ideas such as Kwxents, the Worker’s Federation, and the Divine Dominion, plus all language or exact phrasing, are individually copyrighted by the respective authors. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
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