You know how a lot of bandits in fantasy novels actually don't have a bad reason for becoming bandits? They were starving farmers and their life was being exploited by nobles and bandits. I mean it doesn't excuse their crimes expect theft partially. Maybe you'd wanna be a Robin Hood type then, but you don't have any weapons, armor or training so you can't actually attack pretty much anyone who has it coming as they will have defenses so all that's left is small merchants and villages. What would you do if you were a starving exploited farmer?
Fantasy bandits almost always are never shown to be the "starving, uneducated, exploited farmer." If anything, they are usually portrayed as the kind of people that transport humans from rural villages to urban cities, and not in the nicest ways possible.
Lead a peasant rebellion, sex up women, then die gloriously on the battlefield so I'm not tortured alive.
Doesn't matter what's popular to tell the story about. Logically that kind wouldn't be most common. Most common would be small bands just trying to get food and gold casue they have no choice or army deserters, be it from defeated armies or those who came back from the war to find their village burned.
The following are conditions that determine whether your peasant rebellion is successful or not. 1. The peasants are starving. 2. The peasants are uneducated. 3. The peasants are either unarmed or ill-equipped. 4. The noble's guards have proper weapons and are trained in combat. 5. The noble's guards are wearing armor and/or using shields. The more you check off, the more likely it is that the battlefield you, as well as the other rebels, die on is the first.
Fair enough. But to be honest, I would probably die of starvation or illness long before I am even capable of becoming a minimally-qualified bandit. On the off-hand I do become a bandit, I am fairly sure that I would not last long.
I would never. Just think about it for a few seconds and realize how shitty an actual bandit lifestyle would be. I mean, try to imagine it for real. Most fantasy novels or even movies tend to idealize bandits (well they idealize a lot of things not just bandits) and put some filters over it to make it look clean but in reality... yeah no.
Plenty of people would do it when desperate. You mean romanticized bandits? That's pretty rare, mostly they're shown as scum.
I was talking about the life of a bandit in itself. Living in the wilderness, without a home or even basic amenities with a bunch of men that are pretty much the dregs of society. Probably next to zero hygiene, barely any order except for might makes right, no stable source of food, little to no medication if you're wounded or ill. Can't enter any town, always living on a knife edge, wanted dead by the authorities and all of this knowing that you will never be able to come back to a normal lifestyle. So yeah, you would have to be pretty desperate to live like that and I don't think any of us here has ever reached that level of desperation to actually tell us how it feels.
Bandit groups are pretty much just forest/mountain gangs in novels. Plus, in Eastern fantasy, you aren't really going to come across charismatic bandit characters like Luigi Vampa that often. But as a mob character, the likelihood of you dying because of something stupid is high, so I think the danger of being a mob character is significantly higher than that of being a bandit. Basically, as a mob, your very existence sucks no matter what, so it doesn't matter if you are a bandit or not. But yeah, criminologically speaking, your typical bandit would fall under theories such as the Merton's Strain Theory or the even the Conflict Theory, where people are pressured by their economic system (primarily capitalism) and cultural (the need to strive for a better materialistic living) values into committing crime. Let's not get too deep into it though, you can just Google this stuff. Basically, they would feel like they would have to commit crime (in this case becoming a bandit) in order to make a type (even if it is shit) of living for themselves (or even just for survival) because of the society they grew up in. However, I'll leave the moral or ethical contemplations for you to decide upon.
Isn't Robinhood a Western version of the concept of Asian bandits? The difference is that he helps the poor.
If life and society is truly shot down to such extreme lows that there's no other option than 'eating other peoples food' and 'not eating any food', then I'd at least seriously consider it. Look, I'm not trained in enlightenment, if it's my family or someone elses family, anyone would choose their own. It'd have to go pretty damn far for me to consider it though. I'm definitely not the kind of person who would enjoy even a glorified version of a bandit lifestyle, not to mention the shitty living conditions.
As far as I know, the only peasant that succeeded in revolting and becoming emperor was Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming dynasty. Of course, your success rate is much higher if you just want to overthrow the ruling monarchy and don't care about the throne.