A typical scene in a Fire Nation colony established on Earth Kingdom land, with rulers and subjects Color-Coded for Your Convenience.
Captain Kevin Darling: I'm as British as Queen Victoria!
Captain Edmund Blackadder: So your father's German, you're half-German and you married a German?
Captain Edmund Blackadder: So your father's German, you're half-German and you married a German?
— Blackadder Goes Forthnote
A Foreign Ruling Class is a ruling class whose culture, language and/or religion are different from those of the populations they rule. Simply put, it is the other end of Ethnic Menial Labor. Different from a military occupation since this situation lasts in peacetime too.
This situation can rise as a result of the conquest of a population by another; a protagonist might be moved to overthrow this oppression. Another cause might be the acculturation of the local ruling class by another culture, perceived as more prestigious.
This can be a characteristic of the society in which the story takes place, and can explain conflicts between the rulers and the ruled.
Over time, this class can go native, their local subjects can assimilate into their masters' culture, or the two cultures can hybridize to some extent and create a new cultural identity. It is very similar to, and can be considered a subtrope of Led by the Outsider, but shares some differences in how the leader behaves.
Compare Evil Colonialist, Tribe of Priests, Master Race, Blue Blood, and Noble Tongue. Contrast Servant Race, Slave Race, and Cadre of Foreign Bodyguards.
Example subpages:
Other examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The premise behind Code Geass is an Alternate History where the British empire abandoned England in order to reestablish itself in North America after quelling the American uprising. They went on to take over most of the world, including Japan. The main story takes place in Japan, where the native citizens are ruled over by the Britannian Empire, their local culture (seemingly) suppressed. Most members of the Royal Britannian Family look and act the part, though — fancy European inspired outfits, powdered wigs, etc.
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Zeon views the Earth Federation as basically being this for the space colonies, believing them to be Earth elites keeping the Spacenoids under heel. They launch their campaign to conquer the Earth Sphere under the pretense of liberating their fellow Sides from this purported oppression.
- In Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, the Atlanteans fled their homeland to come on Earth and, as they weren't numerous enough, they created to themselves Slave Races, first trying with whales, who were too big. They then moved to primates, modifying them to move them to the Atlantean form to create human beings. However, the Atlanteans destroyed themselves in several internecine wars, and Neo Atlantis aims to make Atlantis great again.
- Voltes V: The Boazanians invade Earth with this mindset. Though they are ultimately unsuccessful, they manage to capture a large amount of humans and turn them into slaves, fulfilling this trope.
Comic Books
- In The Authority, Sliding Albion is part of an alternate reality in which an alien race called the Blue conquered Italy prior to its formal unification, intermarried with the various ruling families, and then used the resulting mix of political, military, and technological might to take over the rest of the world. Consequently, Albion has a twofold foreign ruling class, as they are taking orders from Italians who are in turn taking orders from the Blue.
- The Walking Dead: Rick's group is seen as this when they start taking over leadership positions in Alexandria. Some welcome them being in charge as they are far more competent in the roles due to their experiences before arriving. Others resent them as outsiders showing up, taking control, and telling them what to do. This comes to a head when Rick becomes the leader of Alexandria and a conspiracy to oust them is formed. It doesn't get far before being discovered. After hearing their concerns, Rick then forms a larger council to rule Alexandria with more of the earlier residents on it, including a few of the conspirators.
Fan Works
- A Thing of Vikings:
- Drago is an East Asian foreigner ruling over the Turkic Pechenegs, which some of them don't accept.
- There were already Norse cities in Eire, ruling over the native Eirish, but Berk takes it to a new level by conquering much of the island (in self-defense), and they raise the standard of living so much that the remaining kingdoms want to become part of their empire.
Films — Live-Action
- The 36th Chamber of Shaolin - A young man travels to the Shaolin Monastery to learn kung fu, so that he can teach the techniques to anti-Qing rebels.
- Abbot of Shaolin - The Manchurians destroy the Shaolin Monastery, and a different fugitive monk plans his revenge against the same treasonous priest, who is responsible for it in this one too.
- The Adventures of Robin Hood involves Robin Hood and his band, standing up for the Saxon peasants versus their Norman rulers.
- Le Capitan: As in Real Life, Concino Concini and Leonora Galigai are Italian nobles who ingratiated themselves with Queen Regent Marie de' Medici (the Italian consort of the late King of France Henry IV) and gained much power at the French royal court.
- Executioners from Shaolin - The Manchurians destroy the Shaolin Monastery, and a fugitive monk plans his revenge against the treasonous priest responsible.
- Master of the Flying Guillotine - The title character is a servant of the Qings, hunting for heroic rebels who hope to restore the now-defunct Ming Dynasty (who were ethnically Chinese, and are presented in a much more positive light).
- Robin Hood (1991) features Robin as one of the last Saxon earls amid a Norman aristocracy, who all speak in French accents of varying degrees of intensity. At one point, Robin meets a Welsh bowyer who points out that, from his perspective, the Saxons are also foreign invaders - just ones who have been in Britain a bit longer.
- Ten Tigers from Kwangtung - A band of martial artists (one of whom is a refugee from Shaolin) take revenge on a Manchurian general for his crimes. Years later, their disciples must fight off an attempt at a Cycle of Revenge from the brother of the general.
Live-Action TV
- Blackadder:
- Parodied in Blackadder Goes Forth: Charged with ferreting out a suspected German mole (actually, it's George sending letters to his German uncle, because George is an idiot), Captain Blackadder grills Captain Darling for his own amusement and and brings up the fact that the British royal family is German-descended, like most of Europe's remaining monarchs at the time.
- Frequently referenced in Blackadder the Third with regard to The House of Hanover, most notably when the Prince Regent declares that of course they can re-write the entire dictionary in a single night because "We're British, aren't we?" and once he's out of earshot, Blackadder retorts "You're not, you're German."
- Also applies to the TV adaptation Game of Thrones. In fact, in Season 7, Randyll Tarly says he'd rather be ruled by Cersei Lannister than Daenerys Targaryen, because at least Cersei was born and raised in Westeros, rather than a "foreign invader; one with no ties to this land" (although Daenerys was technically born on Dragonstone and forced to flee as an infant). Also in the series, Daenerys ends up becoming ruler of all the Dothraki, which they accept pretty readily because they believe in Asskicking Leads to Leadership; Daenerys killed all the other khals (Dothraki lords), leaving her few rivals and has a sizable army and three dragons at her back, so she is quite easily the strongest among them. She incorporates their warriors in her conquest of Westeros, which in Randyll's opinion is just another point against her.
- The Magicians (2016) deconstructs this. For some reason, Fillorian laws only allow Earth natives to become rulers of Fillory,note so naturally the plucky twenty-something protagonists wind up being crowned kings and queens of the magical realm. However, they are thoroughly unfamiliar with the geography and customs of the country and tend to cause more harm than good with their flaws and less-than-stellar decision making.
- The Man in the High Castle: Both puppet states established in the former US are dominated by their foreign overlords. In both cases, simply proving you're one of the ruling class is enough to get cops to leave you alone for most transgressions.
- The Americans in the Pacific Coast States are essentially second-class citizens, compared to the Japanese that seem more directly in control of the government. In fact, the Japanese are contemptuous towards even Japanese-Americans who settled there before the war, basically considering them traitors to the homeland. Due to this, we see at least one Japanese-American is part of the Resistance.
- The Germans are initially less hands on, with (depressingly) plenty of Americans willing to work with them, but by Season 3, the Greater German Reich is actively and spectacularly obliterating American history and replacing it with a "pure Aryan future".
- Robin of Sherwood makes much of the fact that the ruling classes are Normans, and the peasantry, including Robin of Locksley, are Saxon.
- Belgian TV thriller Salamander uses this motif to make a point about Belgian society and government. While the "good guys" fighting to get to the heart of the quasi-governmental conspiracy that threatens to rip Belgium apart are all Flemish, the highly placed people at the heart of the scandal are all French-speaking Belgians. When the conspirators are seen, they speak French together: the only time they use Flemish is to instruct employees and servants. The implication is clear (Salamander was made by Flemish TV, so this might not be an objective point): Flemish is the language of the serfs and peasants, French is that of a ruling class who do not have the best interests of the Belgian people at heart.
Mythology and Folklore
- In the Primary Chronicle (also known as the Chronicle of Nestor or The Tale of Bygone Years), a medieval chronicle from the 1110s Kievan Rus, the Slavic tribes of what is now northwestern Russia are dissatisfied with the fact that there is constant warfare among them, and therefore invite three princes of a "Varangian" (i.e. Scandinavian) tribe called the Rus to rule over them. The princes, who are three brothers called Rurik, Sineus, and Truvor, cross the Baltic with "all the Rus" and set themselves up as rulers of the Slavic cities, with Rurik residing in Novgorod as supreme ruler.
- A notable aversion (if only because it's so common in modern works) is the original tales of Robin Hood. By the 13th or 14th century, the Norman/Saxon divide wasn't really a thing; everyone was English, and even if a nobleman was more likely to have ancestors that arrived in the country in 1066, that was hundreds of years ago. The peasantry may well have resented the nobility, but their origins weren't a factor.
Tabletop Games
- Extremely common in BattleTech, where planets often shift hands multiple times during a single period of wartime. And this is before we even get into the subject of the Clans, who conquered a good fifth of the Inner Sphere and replaced the native Feudal Overlords with their own administration.
- The main emphasis on this trope belonged to Draconis Combine. In contrast to the relatively secular and multicultural facade maintained by the Successor States despite their cultural mainstream (Anglo-American based Federated Suns, Germanic Lyran Commonwealth, and Chinese-Russian Capellan Confederation), Draconis Combine's demographics tend to have Japanese-dominated nobility being outnumbered by non-Japanese who made up the large majority of commoners with the former pursuing Japanization policies with a few compromises towards religious tolerance (such as Azami's Islam and Rasalhague's Christianity).
- In the current ilClan era, the main emphasis on this trope is the contrast between how the different Invader Clans have handled their rule of Spheroid subjects, a century after the original invasion. Clan Sea Fox (formerly Clan Diamond Shark) doesn't really have anynote , Clan Ghost Bear have successfully merged with their subjects of the former Free Rasalhague Republic to the point of falling out of this trope and abandoning the name "Ghost Bear" in the name of their combined state (they now call it the Rasalhague Dominion), Clan Snow Raven is slowly becoming this trope (technically the Raven Alliance is supposed to be an equal alliance and union between Snow Raven and the Outworlds Alliance, but the Snow Ravens have been gaining more and more control while still remaining culturally separate). Clans Hell's Horse, Wolf and Jade Falcon maintained dominion over occupation zones of subjugated Spheroids, with Hell's Horse on one end of how lightly they rule (mostly letting locals handle things on their own while Hell's Horse oversaw things from enclaves) and Jade Falcon on the other, but recent events have put the Wolf Empire under serious pressure and collapsed the Jade Falcon domain with only a small rump still maintaining proper Clan rule (some of the other emerging statelets have Clan origins, but have to varying degrees compromised with locals).
- Eberron:
- Valenar's rulers are Tairnadal elves from Aerenal, with a hired administrative class of House Lyrandar half-elves and the mostly human lower classes mostly just left to their own devices while the elves are off fighting. The Lyrandar half-elves have noticed that the Tairnadal seem largely uninterested in the actual kingdom and are wondering about the prospect of making it a nation for half-elves once the Tairnadal move on.
- The ruling class of Riedra isn't even from the Prime Material Plane; the entire nation is firmly under the control of nightmare creatures from the Plane of Dreams. Of course, since quori can't manifest physically in Eberron, even most Riedrans don't know this.
- Played with in the Mystara D&D setting, where the land of Traladara was annexed by the Thyatian Empire, then bequeathed to Grand Duke Stephen by the Emperor in exchange for his family's homeland estates. Currently, its ruling class is mostly of Thyatian ancestry, but Stephen encourages rapid integration of the two cultures in his renamed and autonomous Kingdom of Karameikos, the better to forge an independent and unified identity for his realm.
- Ironclaw:
- The Kingdom of Calebria is ruled by the foxes of House Rinaldi, de jure, after they vassalized the island's other kingdoms of boars, horses, and wolves. Though at the time of the game the Rinaldi's actual power is waning and their vassals are getting ambitious.
- The otters of the Anatolian Empire replaced the cobra Pharaoh of the Delta with a Sultan of their own species, but heavy resistance from Deltan crown loyalists has convinced them to co-opt existing power structures in their later conquests.
- Shadowrun: Aztlan, which controls most of Mexico and Central America, styles itself heavily around the trappings of the Aztec Empire, but it's noted that for all the nation's leadership likes to play up their Aztecness, the overwhelming majority of them have no native ancestry whatsoever.
- Traveller: Humanity's first two interstellar Imperiums were fairly straightforward examples, ruled by Vilani and Solomani respectively. The Third Imperium's nobility however, come from many different human and non-human cultures assimilated by the Imperium.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- The Tau Empire has annexed several planets inhabited by other species, including humans, who are usually treated well though still ruled by Tau Ethereals.
- While the Imperium of Man tend to be portrayed as Absolute Xenophobes some writers mention minor Xeno races who are just enslaved by the Imperium.
- Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: The Cities Of Sigmar are comprised of settlers and colonists from the Realm of Azyr, sent out by Sigmar after the Age Of Chaos, and people referred to as "The Reclaimed," descendants of tribes that survived the Age Of Chaos alone before joining the settlers in exchange for shelter and safety. While the Reclaimed have been living in those lands for centuries, the Azyrites tend to view them as, at best, barbarians in need of "civilizing", and at worst as potential Chaos spies. Exactly how bad this is varies from city to city; Hammerhal is much more equal, and has been led by Reclaimed nobles at various points, but others treat the Reclaimed as second-class citizens.
Video Games
- Crusader Kings
- Crusader Kings II
- Simulated by making a distinction between a province's culture and religion, and that of the character holding the title (who will spawn courtiers, minor nobles, of his own culture). The province will tend to shift to match that of its ruler over time, or the ruler can change cultures to that of their capital province, but in the meantime, there's a small increase in revolt risk.
- Additionally, some cultures, such as English and Russian, are programmed to be created by having a province of one culture be controlled by a ruler of a different culture.
- Hilariously enough, players managed to combine a random event where a crazy ruler names his horse to his council with this mechanic, spawning actual horses as courtiers which can then be married off to humans to produce a ruling class of, yes, horses.
- In Crusader Kings III, the tradition Ruling Caste allows more easily rulers to suppress populations of a different culture.
- Crusader Kings II
- The Elder Scrolls:
- After the death of Reman Cyrodiil III, the last in the Reman dynasty, at the end of the 1st Era, his Akaviri advisor, Versidue-Shaie, took over the Empire. Following his death, his son Savirien-Chorak, would continue to rule. The Akaviri Potentates were members of the Tsaesci race, supposedly Snake People right down to having scales and serpentine lower bodies (though other accounts state they were men little different than those from Tamriel with some East Asian features). Ultimately Savirien-Chorak and his heirs would die under mysterious circumstances, leading to the 400+ year Interregnum before Tiber Septim's rise to power. There was an attempt during the Interregnum by the most firmly Akaviri-descended faction (the Rimmen, founded as a result of a pogrom against Akaviri by one of the many, many short-lived warlord emperors) to team up with the remnants of another Akaviri invasion (by the Kamal rather than the Tsaesci) to take over the throne, although historians going on to describe it as an attempt to rebuild the Empire suggests Going Native was strong by then.
- The Septim dynasty, ruling family of the Third Tamriellic Empire during the first four games in the main series and a Vestigial Empire by the fifth, actively took steps to Downplay this trope in order to better pacify the provinces under their control. While their empire expanded to include all of Tamriel, they had a habit of appointing Puppet Rulers in the provinces drawn from Imperial loyalists of the native races. One prominent example is Queen Barenziah of Morrowind. At the onset of Tiber Septim's invasion of Morrowind, his forces sacked the major, capital-potential Morrowind city of Ebonheartnote and killed all but the young Barenziah of her noble Dunmeri family (or possibly Barenziah was saved from some other disaster that befell Ebonheart. Sources disagree on whether Tiber ever actually invaded Morrowind or if things didn't progress beyond skirmishes and armies massing before Vivec brokered the Armistice that brought Morrowind into the Empire but extended Dunmeri autonomy). Convinced by his Dunmeri General Symmachus to spare her as a useful pawn, she would be later appointed as the Imperial-supporting Queen of Morrowind in order to make the Dunmer more supportive of the Empire. (Barenziah is considered a very successful Queen who would outlive Tiber Septim by centuries, but the ultimate result of Imperial rule in Morrowind is very mixed.) Another prominent example are the Nords of Skyrim. Dating back to the Pact of Chieftains (which was agreed to following a Succession Crisis where the last in Ysgramor's line died without an heir), the Jarls of Skyrim hold a "Moot" where a new High King of Skyrim is elected whenever the previous one dies. The High King is subservient to the Empire, with Skyrim having been one of the founding nations of the Septim Empire: Tiber Septim himself began his career as a Nord warlord named Talos, though he adopted Cyrodiilic, "Imperial", culture after taking the central province. (Of course, Ulfric Stormloak in the eponymous game seeks to change that...)
- Gehn from Riven is a dictator who forces the people of Riven to worship him as a God and learn his language, D'ni, or else they get fed to a whale-shark hybrid called a wahrk.
- Can happens in Stellaris as a result of the main species having Full Citizenship and xenos being classified as Residents or Slaves.
Web Comics
- In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, the insectoid Nemesites are this to the dragons of planet Butane. Relations have become more strained recently, partly because the Nemesites' princess Voluptua has taken up residence on Butane to rule them directly, rather than through a proxy. Further complicated by the fact that, compared to most Nemesite royals, Voluptua is actually a pretty decent person.
Western Animation
- The Fire Nation outposts/colonies on the Earth Kingdom continent in Avatar: The Last Airbender are mostly this trope, with Fire Nation citizens forming the ruling class and Earth Kingdom citizens mostly working as laborers. Partially averted with the older colonies, as there have been numerous intermarriages between Fire and Earth residents (most notably, the Fire Nation mayor of Yu Dao has an Earth Kingdom wife, and their daughter is an earthbender who is loyal to the Fire Nation).
- The Legend of Korra:
- By the time of the sequel, the capital of the former Fire Nation colonies (now called the United Republic) has a ruling council with representatives from each of the four nations (two from both the north and South Water tribes and one from the rather severely depleted Air Nomads). When Avatar Korra arrives in Republic City at the start of the series the council is now composed entirely of benders which has widened the gulf between them and non-benders (flashbacks show that Sokka was the Southern Tribe's representative in the past), making them kind of "foreign" to their non-bender constituents, something which the Equalists use as part of their rhetoric to bring down the current system. By season two, the council has been abolished and a resident non-bender was elected as president.
- During the same time period, the Water Tribes are ruled by the Northern Tribe's chief Unalaq, who isn't thrilled with what he perceives as the spiritual laxness of the Southern Tribe, his decision to effectively put the Southern Tribe under martial law after Korra unlocks the southern spirit portal increases the tensions between the two tribes. Which may have been Unalaq's intention, as his patron Vaatu feeds on negative emotions. At the end of season two, the tribes decide to formally separate and Korra's father Tonraq is named as Chief of the Southern Water Tribe, who used to be Crown Prince of the Northern Tribe before he was banished, but has married into the tribe and adapted so much that he doesn't really count for this.