by BlitzRogue » July 25th, 2011, 7:29 am
[quote="DGFone"]Yey! First one to say Simba! And here is why:
My first reaction was to pick Mufasa. When he was the king, the land was free, prosperous, and there were no conflicts at all. My issue comes with this last point. Mufasa was the "best" king because he had the simplest kingdom to rule over. In fact, may I dare say it, as soon as a conflict arose, Mufasa rather, well, flunked it. (Scar's coup d'etat).[/quote]
Heh, I think you're doing that backwards a bit. He didn't appear to be a good leader because things were so easy; he was such a good leader that things became easy to manage.
And to be honest, the Scar comment is kinda a low-blow. He trusted his brother to, ya know, not try to kill him and his son to steal the throne. That's not being a bad leader. That's giving someone who, at first glance, probably would be scorned by everyone, a chance to be innocent until proven guilty. It just happened that the way he proved himself guilty was by offing Mufasa.
[quote="DGFone"]This is why I chose Simba: He proved himself to be a capable leader while having these hardships to face:
a) A mediocre training. Spending those years in the jungle, Simba had to catch up on a lot of learning and fast while under pressure.
b) Outside conflict. The Outsiders are more of a threat then the hyenas can ever be. The fact that Simba handled that successfully (granted,with Kiara's help), shows that Simba can rule the kingdom at a time of crisis.
c) Not in the movies: Simba had to rule the Pridelands at their weakest point: right at the end of Scar's drought. It's no easy task to bring the lands back from the brink.[/quote]
a) A good point, however, I feel I should point out that he was likely "babied" a bit when he first got back, and made most of his decisions by consulting his mother and some of the elder lionesses who actually lived IN the worst part of the drought.
Obviously, that's not shown, so I can't say for sure that's how it happened, but it would make sense.
b) Really, the burden was almost entirely on Kiara and Kovu. If they hadn't stepped in between the fight, there is no doubt that the Outsiders would've ripped through Simba and the rest of the pride and taken over. Just by the way the scene preceding K & K's entrance was animated, you know that Disney intended for them to be losing. BADLY.
So that really had very little to do with Simba's leadership.
c) Pretty much only thing to say is what I mentioned in the first point.
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Granted, I'm rather biased because I think Simba was/is a terrible leader, but still. :p