Rabble: A tumultuous crowd.
Rabble rouser: One who stirs up the passions of the masses.
Who are the characters that lead the mobs carrying flaming pitchforks? The characters that inflame the passions of the people or the common folk. Who are the characters that sow dissent? The characters that fuel the fires of conflict. Figures that cause social upheaval and are bent on upending civil society. The ones determined to curtail the powers of monarchs and leaders. These characters are often portrayed as revolutionaries that rise up with a revolt or crowd to take over the city or region and oust the existing rulers.
What causes characters to form uprisings? Why do they rebel in this fashion? Here is another list.
Dissatisfaction: When a character is dissatisfied with their ranking or place in society. They may believe they have been wronged in some fashion and are out to get revenge. They might believe that what belongs to others or to those more fortunate should be theirs. This can also be a recipe for creating a certain kind of villain. When a character is repeatedly wronged and life continually falls short for them, and they are given the mucked-up end of the stick or have been dealt a crappy hand in life, they turn to questionable motives and actions in order to change the trajectory of their lives. Often they resort to extraordinary measures to ensure they get the outcome that they want. This can lead to a character believing they deserve much more than they actually do regarding what they have had to put up with. The rewards they reap far outweigh the drudgery they were forced to endure, but many characters will make such emotionally driven justifications. They argue and positively affirm to themselves that they deserve this much in X amount of currency, bounty, treasure, land or titles because they had to put up with X,Y, and Z and therefore they have earned it or are entitled to it, and thus it shall be theirs. Many characters have rationalized their way into getting whatever they want. And they successfully surround themselves with henchmen, armed servicemen, a mob, or other kinds of underlings to assist them in getting away with their schemes.
Reshaping of Society: Drawn from the previous example, a highly motivated character is led to believe that demonstrable and drastic actions must be taken. They must reshape the current state of society, they must reorder the hierarchy of power or remove it altogether. They believe they could do a better job as ruler, or they are very ambitious and crave the power of being in control of everything. They might have greater ambitions for the kingdom or region than the previous ruler had, and they believed them to have been ruling in stagnation. They might want to expand borders and territories. They might want to enter into a war. They might want to open a new trade route. Whatever their motives, the previous ruling body was not living up to their standards and did not share their vision of how things ought to be. When turning points in a story are considered, this can make for some very dramatic moments when a ruler is eliminated and how they are killed, especially when it happens to be a very theatrical Caesar-style execution. It can also mark the moment of a heavy betrayal when an already established ruling body or persons in an assemblage turn on their leader. The traitorous co-conspirator is often the Captain of the Guard, the General, the second-in-command, or one of those in close council to perform this Judas-style betrayal. In the Netflix series The Spy, one of the more memorable episodes demonstrates a brutal takeover of the ruling houses of Syria. The pre-existing regime is infiltrated and deposed of, through bloody raids and invasions that occur in the middle of the night where several prominent elites are slaughtered in their own homes. This information however is omitted and what is broadcast instead to the general public is a forthcoming deal that has been made and a peaceful transference of power. This highly coordinated takedown of a leader is an example of a deadly and chilling exchange. It could also be the case where a character with a birds-eye view of how a story is unraveling does not like how the timelines or events are unfolding and decides to intervene, they rally their own resources in order to do so and change the course of history in the story.
Spurious Superstitions: When a crowd assembles to eliminate a common enemy. This is done in the name of safety and peace-keeping and the removal of a perceived threat. When the crowd has been rallied to eliminate a creature or monster or a group of invaders. Or to clear away a property, haven or residence believed to harbor evil beings or spirits. In the children's film Beauty and the Beast, the character Gaston organizes an angry mob to march upon the palace where the Beast lives. He convinces the townsfolk that the creature will snatch their children in the night and carry them off, but in reality, he believes Belle has affection for the creature and wants the Beast killed to remove any competition. Gaston is also a hunter and wants to mount the creature's head on his wall for another trophy kill.
Righteousness: When a character is disturbed by the deterioration or moral decay of society and they are determined to change things. They believe a whole social upheaval needs to take place in order to prevent any further degradation. Or to reset society back to simpler times. They believe this can be achieved by way of a mass cleansing or scourging of society and through a puritanical rule. This character could be a religious zealot or holy figure, the last of their kind from a dying or forgotten religion. The current state of contemporary society or modern civilization does not appeal to them, and everything must be reset. They might present themselves as a kind of false prophet who can see the future demise of the people, and in their many spoken calumnies, they grip the public with fear and fill their minds with dread. As one who plays upon their superstitions, they motivate the people to participate in a rebellion in order to save themselves. The League of Shadows attempts to destroy Gotham, they believe that the city is too steeped in corruption to be fixed, this occurs in Batman. Characters like the guileful Shepherd in Game of Thrones who through the bile of his sermons enrage the masses and manages to convince them to march upon the Red Keep and Kings Landing. Figures like Savonarola who rally crowds together in the destruction of culture in great smoking bonfires. They might be fearful of anything that provides pleasure and entertainment, and whatever objects of culture that facilitate this kind of experience or enjoyment must be depreciated or destroyed at some level. These characters all articulate the common characteristic of being highly persuasive with others when drawing them into their cause.
Oppression: The organization of certain characters into citizenry status, classes, and hierarchical groups. This is often seen in fiction or fantasy stories where the oppressed woodland folk, the Fae, Fairy Kind, or other hybrid creatures are exiled and displaced from the rest of society and driven further away from civilization. They are forced to live in secrecy underground, they hide in areas of the woods that are not trafficked, they flee to the hills, they take refuge in caves, they climb high into the mountains, and so on. Many of them belong to separate tribes and they band together in a kind of solidarity to ensure the collective survival of their disparate groups. If only those pesky woodlanders would just die off so that the rest of society could get back to business and remain a single homogenous majority. In order for them to retrieve their livelihoods and reclaim their homes or stolen territory they must defeat the evil villain oppressing them. This character is likely a tyrannical ruler thinning out the numbers of their populations and each separate clan is forced into league with one another where they plan their own revolt against the accursed villain to remove them once and for all. This sequence and ordering of events are successful for a reason as they quickly establish which players belong to which side and they help to overlap certain character arcs with the ball of the overall plot that needs to be kept rolling along.
Chaos, Anarchy and the Dark Ages: Chaos & Anarchy for their own sake. "Some people just want to watch the world burn." The purposeful dismantling of law and order. There are varying degrees to the extent certain characters are willing to go when seeing through their vision of destruction. Some characters might simply want their region or city still fully intact just without the undesirable figures that belong to the rule of law. Other characters might want to fully reduce everything to ash and bring about an actual armageddon with hell fire reigning down upon everyone. Effectively plunging the world into a darkness where progress, time, and all hope are lost. Stripping away all the levers of society that allow it to function and bring humanity into the dark ages and blanketing the world in darkness. It is not enough for certain characters to have an enslaved world of busy little workers. The hive and the colony of worker bees are not the end game. Total obliteration of any structured life forms is what is sought after. Those that survive this degree of societal destruction and live to see through to the other side of the post-apocalyptic world find that scarcity is the ruling currency of everything. Those still alive have next to nothing, and there is nothing for anyone anymore. And every other character is likewise a nobody in a wasteland just barely getting by.
"Royalty, nobility, the gentry, and ... how quaint. Even the rabble." -Maleficent
Who are some other demagogues or characters of this nature that come to mind?