Dueling to resolve international conflicts

[Jabrosky]

I still say it's a viable idea. I am now tempted to swipe it!

You may if you so wish. I didn't really have a story to go along with this idea anyway, so I was just throwing out a setting concept.

 

[skip.knox]

I'm liking the idea, but not for humans. I've got dwarves, elves, orcs, trolls, etc. I think it would fit nicely into one of those.

 

[Trick]

This is not a new concept. For it to be the ruler himself fighting might be but in Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself the Northmen offer a battle between champions instead of all out warfare - it's rejected because the loss of a single bout would mean turning over the kingdom as if you'd lost a war but still.

Also, in the movie Troy, Achilles fights in this type of duel to avoid an all out battle. Shamefully, I can't remember enough of The Illiad to know if that was based on something from the book or not.

 

[wordwalker]

The Iliad did have one or two let-the-leaders-settle-it battles (including Menelaus vs Paris), but of course something always got meddled with-- usually by a god. So it came back to the armies.

 

[Addison]

Maybe it can depend on the source of the conflict between the countries. If one country's-let's say-carrot trade is falling adn the other's apple trade is falling, and that's the source of the conflict, then maybe it can be a duel of agriculture. Each country chooses one crop, the same crop, they must harvest and who ever makes the most and/or has the best for cooking or something, then they win not only another crop for trade but they no longer have to trade the crop in question (carrots) or they just don't have to trade so much.

Conflict settling by Gladiator battles sounds like a conflict of strength. If kingdom A was under attack and barely survived either because country B didn't help or they think country B didn't pull their weight, then they can resolve this issue by battles.

Again this is just my opinion.