How do you feel about the Branwen Tribe? Were you satisfied with their portrayal in canon, or will Redux make significant changes to them?
I am so happy you asked me this, anon, because I’ve been wanting to talk about this topic for a while.
The short answer to your questions, in order: meh, no, yes.
The long answer (with emphasis on long) boils down to a handful of factors:
Why do the tribes exist? This question can be answered from both a storytelling, meta, and worldbuilding perspective. Basically, it’s discerning the intentions/motives of the writers, either definitive or presumed.
Do the tribes add anything meaningful to the story? As in, can we quantify the impact that the tribe had on character arcs and plot development. If we were to remove the tribe from the story, would their absence noticeably affect how it’s told?
Are the tribes being used to their fullest extent? It’s worth pointing out that the tribes are, functionally, a writing tool, and therefore a resource at the writers’ disposal. Can we imagine different ways that the tribes could be interacting with the story, but aren’t? What reasons are preventing the writers from doing so?
Does the worldbuilding for the tribes justify their existence, or enrich the lore? As in, does it make sense for the tribe to exist within the context of the story. What sort of forces within the world—cultural, economic, political, natural, or otherwise—created the ideal conditions for bandit tribes to emerge?
Do the tribes complicate/contradict the story, or create noticeable plotholes/discrepancies in the worldbuilding? When we look at the tribes critically, we have to ask ourselves what about them does or doesn’t make sense. How the tribes operate, how characters interact with them, and such.
Before I go any further, I want to preface this post by saying that my thoughts were sort of everywhere. This will be less of a structured essay and more of a bulleted rant, in part because all of my grievances with the tribes (not just the Branwen) intersect and can’t be neatly compartmentalized.
And yes, tribes, as in plural. Because in case any of us forgot (and it’s forgivable that we would, since we only ever see one throughout the series), Mistral has at least a few of them running around.
“Wandering bandits are another threat. These groups of usually fairly-skilled fighters travel the lands, never settling in one place. They often prey on convoys sending goods between Kingdoms. That's not all. These raiders will often wait for a town to be at its weakest—maybe after a Grimm attack or while its fighters are out hunting, before finally moving in at night and striking.” | Source: World of Remnant, Volume 4, Episode 5: “Between Kingdoms.”
Now, the technical reason why we only see the Branwen Tribe is because of contrivance. Raven is, after all, Qrow’s sister, Yang’s biological mother, a former member of Ozpin’s inner circle, and the Spring Maiden. The production team isn’t going to waste time or money writing and animating other bandits, when Raven already fulfills several roles within the story.
The drawback here is that reducing their existence to a few throwaway lines, and omitting them from the story, creates a vacuum. And it doesn’t take long for questions to fill that newly-created space.
1. What exactly are the tribes?
For once, I swear, I’m not asking just to be pedantic. RWBY gave these wandering bandit factions a unique designation—a tribe. Not a gang, or mob, or ring, but a tribe. And that word has a very specific meaning:
tribe /tɹaɪb/ n. a socially, ethnically, or politically cohesive group of people; [1] a social group composed chiefly of numerous families, clans, or generations having a shared ancestry and language; [2] any aggregate of people united by ties of descent from a common ancestor, a community of customs and traditions, adherence to the same leaders, etc. [3]
It’s not some arbitrary label. Tribes have a commonality, something which links its members together into a distinct, recognizable entity. We know this because “tribe” isn’t used interchangeably with other criminal organizations. The Spiders aren’t a tribe. Roman Torchwick’s gang isn’t a tribe.
This word was chosen by the writers deliberately. Granted, the writers could have called them “the Branwen Tribe” in order to make them sound more threatening (which has its own not-so-great implications), but there’s no ignoring that this term is selectively applicable. In RWBY, tribes refer to a group of semi-nomadic reavers who inhabit Mistral.
That, coupled with Raven’s survival of the fittest creed, [4] sounds a lot like the Old Way practiced by the ironborn in A Song of Ice and Fire. If this is true, then it’s entirely possible that the tribes aren’t just a loose coalition of marauding criminals, but a distinct cultural and ethnic group.
That’s a massive revelation from a worldbuilding standpoint, one which holds up surprisingly well under RWBY’s framework.
Let’s keep using the ironborn as an example. In ASOIAF, the ironborn hail from a storm-battered archipelago known as the Iron Islands. The climate of the region has significantly influenced the geography, rendering the soil nutrient-poor, stony, and unsuitable for farming. The only resource that’s readily-accessible is fish. It makes logical sense that the Old Way (their reaving culture) emerged as an outgrowth of their dependence on piracy.
Mistral’s bandit tribes occupy a similar niche. Canonically, the tribes wander from place to place to avoid Grimm. A non-sedentary lifestyle makes agriculture difficult, and thus creates a predisposition for raiding towns and villages in order to survive. Give it a few generations, and it’s easy to see how this practice could have been integrated into the bedrock of their culture.
That, in turn, could lead to all sorts of worldbuilding and storytelling questions: Would certain legal sanctions or concessions have been granted in order to preserve their culture, under the assumption that the tribes represent a protected minority? Are there any tribes that voluntarily gave up aspects of their heritage so they could avoid being arrested? In which case, how would they have adapted to changes in their way of life? If the tribes collectively refused to relinquish their raiding culture, then did the Mistral government retaliate? Would all members of the tribes’ ethnic group be recognized as criminals on-sight? What traditions or customs are exclusive to the tribes? Do they practice their own religion, or speak a language separate from mainstream Mistrali? Do children born in the tribe undergo rites of passage, like going on their first raid, or killing someone for the first time? How would that sort of cultural immersion have influenced Qrow’s and Raven’s childhood? What if someone wanted to voluntarily leave the tribe, and eschew their way of life? Would they be ostracized? Would the tribe do something as drastic as put a bounty on them? How would a person who grew up in a culturally-isolated environment like theirs navigate society? Would it be similar to the trauma faced by ex-Mormons who were excommunicated?
Do you have to be born to parents in the tribe in order to be considered a member? Or do the tribes actively recruit from outside sources? Maybe it’s like in One Piece, where Nami was made a member of Arlong’s crew because she demonstrated a valuable skill (cartography). Or perhaps the tribes recruit survivors from their raids, similar to Davey Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean 2, when he invited the helmsman from the scuttled ship to join The Dutchman after the kraken attacked.
…You know, looking back on the examples I used, it might not be a coincidence that all of them are pirates.
Anyway, the issue here is that all of the worldbuilding I posited hinges on an assumption: that “tribe” actually means something in this context, instead of Rooster Teeth just throwing a dart at the dictionary and picking whichever word it landed on. Without any sort of elaboration, the bandit tribes are left rather vague, with Raven’s group being the sole representative.
All we’re left with is the canon.
And that’s where things start to break down.