Trope:The Alliance


 * You can build a perfect machine out of imperfect parts.
 * — Coalition Victory card flavor text,Magic: The Gathering

What La Résistance must eventually grow into if it wants to survive.

The Alliance is The Team of political entities: A group of smaller nations that band together for added political strength, economic assistance, shared technology, or just because The Empire is breathing down their necks. They may not be all that powerful alone, but together they may be able to match The Federation, or at least give them the edge they need againstThe Empire, if they join them.

In Science Fiction, this can be a motley collection of different races, a Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits that mostly stopped shooting at each other when someone bigger started shooting at all of them. Luckily they manage to put aside any racial hatreds and band together in time to survive. Even if the aggressor is humanity, in the case of the Anti-Human Alliance.

In Fantasy, it will stereotypically consist of the Five Races, perhaps with multiple human Fantasy Counterpart Cultures to bulk out the numbers. Expect them to be run by aCosmopolitan Council.

Another mostly-good entity that is at worst neutral, some Alliances may have one or more evil members that joined only because their deal with The Empire fell through, or because they happen to hate The Empire far worse than they dislike the other members. Keep your eye on them once the war is over.

Sometimes, given time, The Alliance will last beyond the conditions that gave rise to its formation and evolve to becomeThe Federation, or The Empire, depending on where you're sitting on Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism.

This is to whom Gondor Calls for Aid. It may be the result of aGenghis Gambit. Compare the Fictional United Nations, which is where the alliance has a formal governing body.

Examples

 * The Coalition completely averts this trope in that it is from a moral perspective purely evil. So evil.


 * The Federation often doubles as this.