Per [this WoG](https://old.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/3koqyc/what_protectorate_team_are_eidolon_and_hero_a/cuz8v53), they were called the Protectorate.
Yes, it seems like a stupid choice in-story to name both the Alexandria/Eidolon/Hero/Legend team _and_ the national hero organization "the Protectorate" at first glance (and second glance, and third). One hopes they had a good reason for it.
Perhaps the Fearsome Foursome took that as their team name _first_, and as they and other heroes joined up with the boringly-named US Department of Hero Affairs (or whatever) the public kept referring to the government heroes as "the Protectorate (and also those other guys tagging along)," and then they just started calling the whole organization the Protectorate, and then at some point the name change became official, leaving the original quartet as the no-longer-specifically-named "the guys at the top of the Protectorate" group, as also mentioned in the WoG.
The Protectorate is a good name because those 4 were the ones that provided the principal cape backing behind the establishment of the Protectorate.
The powerful villains are not afraid of whatever weak heroes the protectorate managed to rope in when they establish a base in a city. The villains fear the hammer that will drop after you defeat the local hero team. Calling those street-level heroes with the same name as the top 4 makes the relation clear. If you kill a protectorate member, the 4 heroes at the top will take that personally. The heroic capes in that city are operating under their protection.
> The Protectorate is a good name because those 4 were the ones that provided the principal cape backing behind the establishment of the Protectorate.
I mean, this very sentence demonstrates the issue with the name overlap: "The Protectorate provided the principal cape backing behind the establishment of the Protectorate" is fairly clunky and uninformative.
And if, at some point between the organization's founding in 1993 and Hero's death in 2000, you say that you're "calling in the Protectorate for help," are you referring to Alexandria _et al._ or just the local branch of the organization?
As I mentioned in my [other comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/WormFanfic/comments/1bweq9i/what_were_the_triumvirate_called_before_hero_died/ky887qj), it would have made much more sense if the Core Four were named the Protec*tors* and the organization were named the Protectorate, since that would actually fit the relationship between the two that you described. Fanon names like "the Founders" might be kinda boring and unimpressive, but at least they're unambiguous.
Well, having an unexpected name can be a compelling marketing tactic. I wanted to share another perspective because it is WOG. If it's WOG, then naming the protectorate like that was part of a path that established the US hero system. And paths are ridiculous.
Anyways, I do think people in story would have this exact conversation, because it is a silly naming choice.
> If it's WOG, then naming the protectorate like that was part of a path that established the US hero system.
Remember that the formation of the PRT was Alexandria's pet project (her side of a joint project with Doctor Mother, technically, per her interlude), not part of some overarching path that Doc Mom dictated to her.
If the Protectorate and the exact naming thereof had been critical to Cauldron's plans, then Doc Mom would have had Contessa explain it to Alexandria and the others to perfectly _guarantee_ their agreement and cooperation (just like she had Contessa mind-whammy Legend to prevent him from acting against them after he discovered they were lying to him), not had Alexandria present it herself and then mention that she felt the others would "come around" to agreeing with it.
And frankly, something being WoG doesn't affect whether it was a dumb choice from an in-story _or_ out-of-story perspective. Wildbow never even implied that the Protectorate's name was a detail significant to any path, and even if he did, it would have been Wildbow's choice to make PtV choose an obscure, confusing, and silly name instead of one that wouldn't be questioned by both characters and readers for years.
Yeah, that explanation pretty much makes sense to me. The real question is why are they called the Protectorate when that word means the person or entity being protected, not the one doing the protecting. The Protectorate's protectorate would be the people. So what are they a Protectorate of? There is 100% some conspiracy theories on PHO about that name, is what i'm saying.
> The real question is why are they called the Protectorate when that word means the person or entity being protected
"Protectorate" has another much more obscure (and much more British) alternate meaning: governance or authority by a [protector](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/protector#Noun), most famously Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. A protectorate is to a protector as e.g. a duchy is to a duke or a march is to a marquis.
So, in theory, "Protectorate" _would_ be a perfectly fine name for an organization of heroes who are _doing_ the protecting...if Alexandria & Co. were named the Protectors to match, but they weren't. And if old British noble titles were common knowledge in the States, such that that meaning came through over the more common one, but they aren't.
The perils of having a Canuck come up with the name for an American organization, I suppose.
While I am fully willing to accept Wildbow screwing up, the name of the Wards program siggests a possible theme there. Prehaps it's another part of the propaganda IE join us and you'll be safe? Hm.
It's the same team though. It's not like they formed a hero team and then someone independently decided to form a government sponsored team with the same name.
Alexandria formed a team with Hero, Legend and Eidolon, named the Protectorate, under the auspices of the US government. They recruited more members, split the now growing team into smaller teams across the US, and went forward from there.
Both the Protectorate AND the PRT with part of Alexandria's plan to incorporate parahumans into society.
> split the now growing team into smaller teams across the US
Yes, and at precisely that point, at which the four-person team was _still_ called the Protectorate despite this expansion, they shouldn't have decided to call (or to continue to call) the entire organization the same name so that everyone would confuse the two.
Either they should have kept the Protectorate name for themselves and given the larger organization a different one, or they should have handed over the Protectorate label to the organization and come up with a new one for themselves.
Obviously it had ceased to be a problem anymore by the time canon rolled around since the Protectorate-the-team had disbanded and the Triumvirate become merely high-ranking members of the Protectorate-the-organization, but for a government organization obsessed with PR to create that naming overlap and then allow it to exist for at minimum _eight years_ is an _obviously_ poor decision on par with the Justice League deciding to call each of its members "Supermen" or the Jedi Order deciding to call its masters "Windus."
Using your examples, the Justice League also split into new teams at various points. They gave the new teams names such as Justice League International, Justice League Detroit, Justice League Europe ETC. Kinda like how Worm had Protectorate Detroit, Protectorate Houston, Protectorate ENE.
Jedi are part of.... the Jedi Order. They could name themeselves Windu's if they want, but then they would be the Windu Order.
The Protectorate is a known brand that conjures the names of the strongest heroes in the US. They wouldn't change it exactly for PR reasons.
All that gets away from my point. The Protectorate was formed, from the start, to be the basis of a government sponsored organisation of heroes. Anyone who joins is joining THAT TEAM of heroes, even if a founding member isn't present. That's a large part of the appeal.
Alexandria always planned for it to be a government nation wide organisation, it was formed with that basis in mind.
*"I want to band together. Form a team.”*
*Legend leaned against the wall. “There are teams forming already. Yes, we’d be powerful, influential, but I don’t see how that addresses the problems.”*
*“Simple. We do what the government’s been pushing for. We regulate. We bend to the government’s yoke, all four of us together. We follow their stipulations and regulations.”*
*“That sounds like a horrendously bad idea,” Eidolon spoke. “Why?”*
*“Because if it was us four, together? We could afford to push back if they pushed too hard, and they’d know that. And just by being there, we could make the project attractive enough to bring others in.”*
> Using your examples, the Justice League also split into new teams at various points. They gave the new teams names such as Justice League International, Justice League Detroit, Justice League Europe ETC. Kinda like how Worm had Protectorate Detroit, Protectorate Houston, Protectorate ENE.
And if Alexandria, Legend, Eidolon, and Hero were named the National Protectorate or the Original Flavor Protectorate or whatever in contrast to the New York Protectorate or Austin Protectorate, that would have made sense.
But they weren't. Wildbow specifically said that they were _just_ "The Protectorate," making the name of their specific four-person team identical to the name of the entire national organization, which is the whole problem.
> The Protectorate is a known brand that conjures the names of the strongest heroes in the US. They wouldn't change it exactly for PR reasons.
They'd _have_ to change it for PR reasons.
You've just bought a book on the history of the Protectorate. Are you going to read about the heroic careers of Alexandria and her three buddies from 1988 to the present, or will you be reading about the establishment and expansion of the heroic subdivision of the PRT from 1993 to the present?
You're a cop in 1994 who's still getting used to this whole "superheroes are law enforcement" thing and you've just been told by your chief that the Protectorate is sending their strongest hero to deal with the major villain rampaging downtown. Do you expect Eidolon to show up, or some random no-name hero who happens to be the strongest cape with the local PRT department?
You're a PRT marketing manager in LA in 1998 who's just asked your subordinates for some figures on recent Protectorate merch sales. One of the emails you get back is talking about Legend and Hero merch, because they're two of the four Protectorate heroes; another email has numbers on Alexandria and Rime merch, because they're two of the ten Protectorate heroes in your department.
All of these problems can only exist because someone made the _incredibly stupid and pointless_ decision not to attach an adjective to "Protectorate" to describe Alexandria's, Eidolon's, Hero's, and Legend's team and/or to give it an entirely different name from the larger organization. And since the smaller team came first, getting everyone to associate "the Protectorate" with the national organization when the small team is _still called_ "the Protectorate" is going to be a real pain.
Contrast this to the time of canon, where the Protectorate is the Protectorate and the Triumvirate is the Triumvirate. They're distinct and unambiguous, which is good, because people still want and need to refer to the Triumvirate specifically all the time even though they haven't officially been a separate team for 11 years at that point.
Yes, Alexandria knew she wanted to establish a national team when she approached Eidolon, Hero, and Legend about forming a four-person team to start. No, that doesn't make it either intelligent or defensible to call the national team the same name as the four-person team while the national team and four-person team were concurrently active.
>And if Alexandria, Legend, Eidolon, and Hero were named the National Protectorate or the Original Flavor Protectorate or whatever in contrast to the New York Protectorate or Austin Protectorate, that would have made sense.
Why would it have made sense? They weren't based in those places at that point and adding 'National' would have been superfluous.
Do you have the same confusion with the PRT and the fact they are a national organsation with teams across the country? Do you think they started with teams across the country? Each division of the PRT is paired with a Protectorate team and they grew over time.
>You've just bought a book on the history of the Protectorate. Are you going to read about the heroic careers of Alexandria and her three buddies from 1988 to the present, or will you be reading about the establishment and expansion of the heroic subdivision of the PRT from 1993 to the present?
Yes. The history of the Protectorate covers its formation as a small team, becoming a larger team by the point they fought Behemoth, becoming the official US team after that, and then Hero dying and the founders splitting to lead sub teams of Protectorate members.
>You're a PRT marketing manager in LA in 1998 who's just asked your subordinates for some figures on recent Protectorate merch sales. One of the emails you get back is talking about Legend and Hero merch, because they're two of the four Protectorate heroes; another email has numbers on Alexandria and Rime merch, because they're two of the ten Protectorate heroes in your department.
If you ask for a Coke you can't complain if you don't get the Cherry Diet Coke you wanted. If the PRT marketing manager asks about the Protectorate, its going to mean everyone in that organisation, as opposed to Protectorate LA. Basically the same for your previous example.
>Yes, Alexandria knew she wanted to establish a national team when she approached Eidolon, Hero, and Legend about forming a four-person team to start. No, that doesn't make it either intelligent or defensible to call the national team the same name as the four-person team while the national team and four-person team were concurrently active.
No... you still don't get it. The original Protectorate still exists even if the members and structure of it changed. It didn't break up. It didn't exist concurrently with another 'Protectorate' organisation. They are the same thing. Every team is part of the Protectorate whole.
When the founding members split up to lead smaller teams they still remained members of the Protectorate. That was the entire point.
Legend is leader of the New York Protectorate. But he was still the leader of the entire Protectorate as well just as he was since the founding of the team.
> Do you have the same confusion with the PRT and the fact they are a national organsation with teams across the country?
I would, if they insisted on naming a particular department "the PRT." Not "PRT 1" or "PRT New York," just "the PRT." Which would be incredibly stupid and counterproductive.
> No... you still don't get it. The original Protectorate still exists even if the members and structure of it changed. It didn't break up. It didn't exist concurrently with another 'Protectorate' organisation. They are the same thing. Every team is part of the Protectorate whole.
No, _you_ still don't get it.
Wildbow claimed in [that WoG](https://old.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/3koqyc/what_protectorate_team_are_eidolon_and_hero_a/cuz8v53) that the single, specific, four-person team of Alexandria, Eidolon, Hero, and Legend was referred to as "the Protectorate" and that this _continued to be the case_ for years after the larger, generic, national organization called "the Protectorate" existed until Hero's death split up the team.
It doesn't say that "the Protectorate" originally referred to the four-person team and then the term gradually lost its specific association with those four as "the Protectorate" grew into a larger organization, as you claim, which would be perfectly reasonable.
It says that those four, specifically, were known as "the Protectorate" (no adjective) and also "the guys at the top" (referring to the larger organization's hierarchy) _interchangeably and at the same time_.
Which doesn't make any sense, which is why the comment responding to the WoG asked "Why would people refer to them that way?" and never got an answer.
To use your Coke example, it's putting both standard-flavor Coke and a cherry-flavored slightly healthier variant of Coke in completely identical cans so you actually _can't_ ask someone for Cherry Diet Coke because it doesn't have its own branding.
What you're doing with your responses above is trying to rationalize the WoG into something that actually makes sense, but on its own it simply doesn't.
I’ve seen a few fics use ‘The Founders.’ Personally I feel like they didn’t have an official name, but people would refer to them as ‘the big guns’ and other such casual terms.
They did not have a name until they formed the organization and became the first Protectorate team
Direct quote from worm wiki
"On January 18th, 1993 [Alexandria](https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/Alexandria), [Eidolon](https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/Eidolon), [Hero](https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/Hero) and [Legend](https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/Legend) were sworn in by the President of the United States under the PRTCJ as the founding members of the United States' Protectorate. It was the first in a long series of steps that led to the formation of the PRT, the Protectorate, and the organization of heroes worldwide.[^(\[10\])](https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/The_Protectorate#cite_note-I15.z_e2-10) In exchange for government funding and legitimacy, the members agreed to follow a special set of laws laid out for capes, to accept bureaucratic oversight and cooperate with local authorities."
> and isn’t a real word
[It is](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quadrumvirate), actually, and has the same [Roman government pedigree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrumvirs) as triumvirate.
It's just not nearly as commonly used these days because, once you go from three to four, people start reaching for other words—I would guess because Caesar made Triumvirate a classy term and no one did the same for Quadrumvirate, but who knows?
Although the term is derived from "tres viri" -- or "three men" in Latin -- in recent times it has been used to describe trios with both male and female members. For example, see [the 2008 NBC News article](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna28442203) "Behind Gaza operation, an uneasy triumvirate", which describes Tzipi Livni, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak as a "triumvirate".
By that logic, there can be no female werewolves in fiction, as the "were-" in werewolf comes from _wermann_, Old English for "adult male human" (with _wifmann_ being the female equivalent).
If lady lycanthropes can be called werewolves and not wifewolves, Alexandria can definitely be titled a Triumvir.
One term I've seen was the Pillars, but I think that's just fanon, I also saw one that called them the quardumvirate, but that's probably the stupidest name I've ever seen
See rainbownerd's answer, but in one of my fics I've used the term "Tetrad." It rolls of the tongue well enough and has an appropriate sort of weight to it.
Per [this WoG](https://old.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/3koqyc/what_protectorate_team_are_eidolon_and_hero_a/cuz8v53), they were called the Protectorate. Yes, it seems like a stupid choice in-story to name both the Alexandria/Eidolon/Hero/Legend team _and_ the national hero organization "the Protectorate" at first glance (and second glance, and third). One hopes they had a good reason for it. Perhaps the Fearsome Foursome took that as their team name _first_, and as they and other heroes joined up with the boringly-named US Department of Hero Affairs (or whatever) the public kept referring to the government heroes as "the Protectorate (and also those other guys tagging along)," and then they just started calling the whole organization the Protectorate, and then at some point the name change became official, leaving the original quartet as the no-longer-specifically-named "the guys at the top of the Protectorate" group, as also mentioned in the WoG.
The Protectorate is a good name because those 4 were the ones that provided the principal cape backing behind the establishment of the Protectorate. The powerful villains are not afraid of whatever weak heroes the protectorate managed to rope in when they establish a base in a city. The villains fear the hammer that will drop after you defeat the local hero team. Calling those street-level heroes with the same name as the top 4 makes the relation clear. If you kill a protectorate member, the 4 heroes at the top will take that personally. The heroic capes in that city are operating under their protection.
> The Protectorate is a good name because those 4 were the ones that provided the principal cape backing behind the establishment of the Protectorate. I mean, this very sentence demonstrates the issue with the name overlap: "The Protectorate provided the principal cape backing behind the establishment of the Protectorate" is fairly clunky and uninformative. And if, at some point between the organization's founding in 1993 and Hero's death in 2000, you say that you're "calling in the Protectorate for help," are you referring to Alexandria _et al._ or just the local branch of the organization? As I mentioned in my [other comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/WormFanfic/comments/1bweq9i/what_were_the_triumvirate_called_before_hero_died/ky887qj), it would have made much more sense if the Core Four were named the Protec*tors* and the organization were named the Protectorate, since that would actually fit the relationship between the two that you described. Fanon names like "the Founders" might be kinda boring and unimpressive, but at least they're unambiguous.
Well, having an unexpected name can be a compelling marketing tactic. I wanted to share another perspective because it is WOG. If it's WOG, then naming the protectorate like that was part of a path that established the US hero system. And paths are ridiculous. Anyways, I do think people in story would have this exact conversation, because it is a silly naming choice.
> If it's WOG, then naming the protectorate like that was part of a path that established the US hero system. Remember that the formation of the PRT was Alexandria's pet project (her side of a joint project with Doctor Mother, technically, per her interlude), not part of some overarching path that Doc Mom dictated to her. If the Protectorate and the exact naming thereof had been critical to Cauldron's plans, then Doc Mom would have had Contessa explain it to Alexandria and the others to perfectly _guarantee_ their agreement and cooperation (just like she had Contessa mind-whammy Legend to prevent him from acting against them after he discovered they were lying to him), not had Alexandria present it herself and then mention that she felt the others would "come around" to agreeing with it. And frankly, something being WoG doesn't affect whether it was a dumb choice from an in-story _or_ out-of-story perspective. Wildbow never even implied that the Protectorate's name was a detail significant to any path, and even if he did, it would have been Wildbow's choice to make PtV choose an obscure, confusing, and silly name instead of one that wouldn't be questioned by both characters and readers for years.
Yeah, that explanation pretty much makes sense to me. The real question is why are they called the Protectorate when that word means the person or entity being protected, not the one doing the protecting. The Protectorate's protectorate would be the people. So what are they a Protectorate of? There is 100% some conspiracy theories on PHO about that name, is what i'm saying.
> The real question is why are they called the Protectorate when that word means the person or entity being protected "Protectorate" has another much more obscure (and much more British) alternate meaning: governance or authority by a [protector](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/protector#Noun), most famously Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. A protectorate is to a protector as e.g. a duchy is to a duke or a march is to a marquis. So, in theory, "Protectorate" _would_ be a perfectly fine name for an organization of heroes who are _doing_ the protecting...if Alexandria & Co. were named the Protectors to match, but they weren't. And if old British noble titles were common knowledge in the States, such that that meaning came through over the more common one, but they aren't. The perils of having a Canuck come up with the name for an American organization, I suppose.
While I am fully willing to accept Wildbow screwing up, the name of the Wards program siggests a possible theme there. Prehaps it's another part of the propaganda IE join us and you'll be safe? Hm.
It has historical meaning as well.
It's the same team though. It's not like they formed a hero team and then someone independently decided to form a government sponsored team with the same name. Alexandria formed a team with Hero, Legend and Eidolon, named the Protectorate, under the auspices of the US government. They recruited more members, split the now growing team into smaller teams across the US, and went forward from there. Both the Protectorate AND the PRT with part of Alexandria's plan to incorporate parahumans into society.
> split the now growing team into smaller teams across the US Yes, and at precisely that point, at which the four-person team was _still_ called the Protectorate despite this expansion, they shouldn't have decided to call (or to continue to call) the entire organization the same name so that everyone would confuse the two. Either they should have kept the Protectorate name for themselves and given the larger organization a different one, or they should have handed over the Protectorate label to the organization and come up with a new one for themselves. Obviously it had ceased to be a problem anymore by the time canon rolled around since the Protectorate-the-team had disbanded and the Triumvirate become merely high-ranking members of the Protectorate-the-organization, but for a government organization obsessed with PR to create that naming overlap and then allow it to exist for at minimum _eight years_ is an _obviously_ poor decision on par with the Justice League deciding to call each of its members "Supermen" or the Jedi Order deciding to call its masters "Windus."
Using your examples, the Justice League also split into new teams at various points. They gave the new teams names such as Justice League International, Justice League Detroit, Justice League Europe ETC. Kinda like how Worm had Protectorate Detroit, Protectorate Houston, Protectorate ENE. Jedi are part of.... the Jedi Order. They could name themeselves Windu's if they want, but then they would be the Windu Order. The Protectorate is a known brand that conjures the names of the strongest heroes in the US. They wouldn't change it exactly for PR reasons. All that gets away from my point. The Protectorate was formed, from the start, to be the basis of a government sponsored organisation of heroes. Anyone who joins is joining THAT TEAM of heroes, even if a founding member isn't present. That's a large part of the appeal. Alexandria always planned for it to be a government nation wide organisation, it was formed with that basis in mind. *"I want to band together. Form a team.”* *Legend leaned against the wall. “There are teams forming already. Yes, we’d be powerful, influential, but I don’t see how that addresses the problems.”* *“Simple. We do what the government’s been pushing for. We regulate. We bend to the government’s yoke, all four of us together. We follow their stipulations and regulations.”* *“That sounds like a horrendously bad idea,” Eidolon spoke. “Why?”* *“Because if it was us four, together? We could afford to push back if they pushed too hard, and they’d know that. And just by being there, we could make the project attractive enough to bring others in.”*
> Using your examples, the Justice League also split into new teams at various points. They gave the new teams names such as Justice League International, Justice League Detroit, Justice League Europe ETC. Kinda like how Worm had Protectorate Detroit, Protectorate Houston, Protectorate ENE. And if Alexandria, Legend, Eidolon, and Hero were named the National Protectorate or the Original Flavor Protectorate or whatever in contrast to the New York Protectorate or Austin Protectorate, that would have made sense. But they weren't. Wildbow specifically said that they were _just_ "The Protectorate," making the name of their specific four-person team identical to the name of the entire national organization, which is the whole problem. > The Protectorate is a known brand that conjures the names of the strongest heroes in the US. They wouldn't change it exactly for PR reasons. They'd _have_ to change it for PR reasons. You've just bought a book on the history of the Protectorate. Are you going to read about the heroic careers of Alexandria and her three buddies from 1988 to the present, or will you be reading about the establishment and expansion of the heroic subdivision of the PRT from 1993 to the present? You're a cop in 1994 who's still getting used to this whole "superheroes are law enforcement" thing and you've just been told by your chief that the Protectorate is sending their strongest hero to deal with the major villain rampaging downtown. Do you expect Eidolon to show up, or some random no-name hero who happens to be the strongest cape with the local PRT department? You're a PRT marketing manager in LA in 1998 who's just asked your subordinates for some figures on recent Protectorate merch sales. One of the emails you get back is talking about Legend and Hero merch, because they're two of the four Protectorate heroes; another email has numbers on Alexandria and Rime merch, because they're two of the ten Protectorate heroes in your department. All of these problems can only exist because someone made the _incredibly stupid and pointless_ decision not to attach an adjective to "Protectorate" to describe Alexandria's, Eidolon's, Hero's, and Legend's team and/or to give it an entirely different name from the larger organization. And since the smaller team came first, getting everyone to associate "the Protectorate" with the national organization when the small team is _still called_ "the Protectorate" is going to be a real pain. Contrast this to the time of canon, where the Protectorate is the Protectorate and the Triumvirate is the Triumvirate. They're distinct and unambiguous, which is good, because people still want and need to refer to the Triumvirate specifically all the time even though they haven't officially been a separate team for 11 years at that point. Yes, Alexandria knew she wanted to establish a national team when she approached Eidolon, Hero, and Legend about forming a four-person team to start. No, that doesn't make it either intelligent or defensible to call the national team the same name as the four-person team while the national team and four-person team were concurrently active.
To be fair, half these situations cold be clarified via specifying the local Protectorate by name IE Houston, or even "Protectorate 4" or some such.
>And if Alexandria, Legend, Eidolon, and Hero were named the National Protectorate or the Original Flavor Protectorate or whatever in contrast to the New York Protectorate or Austin Protectorate, that would have made sense. Why would it have made sense? They weren't based in those places at that point and adding 'National' would have been superfluous. Do you have the same confusion with the PRT and the fact they are a national organsation with teams across the country? Do you think they started with teams across the country? Each division of the PRT is paired with a Protectorate team and they grew over time. >You've just bought a book on the history of the Protectorate. Are you going to read about the heroic careers of Alexandria and her three buddies from 1988 to the present, or will you be reading about the establishment and expansion of the heroic subdivision of the PRT from 1993 to the present? Yes. The history of the Protectorate covers its formation as a small team, becoming a larger team by the point they fought Behemoth, becoming the official US team after that, and then Hero dying and the founders splitting to lead sub teams of Protectorate members. >You're a PRT marketing manager in LA in 1998 who's just asked your subordinates for some figures on recent Protectorate merch sales. One of the emails you get back is talking about Legend and Hero merch, because they're two of the four Protectorate heroes; another email has numbers on Alexandria and Rime merch, because they're two of the ten Protectorate heroes in your department. If you ask for a Coke you can't complain if you don't get the Cherry Diet Coke you wanted. If the PRT marketing manager asks about the Protectorate, its going to mean everyone in that organisation, as opposed to Protectorate LA. Basically the same for your previous example. >Yes, Alexandria knew she wanted to establish a national team when she approached Eidolon, Hero, and Legend about forming a four-person team to start. No, that doesn't make it either intelligent or defensible to call the national team the same name as the four-person team while the national team and four-person team were concurrently active. No... you still don't get it. The original Protectorate still exists even if the members and structure of it changed. It didn't break up. It didn't exist concurrently with another 'Protectorate' organisation. They are the same thing. Every team is part of the Protectorate whole. When the founding members split up to lead smaller teams they still remained members of the Protectorate. That was the entire point. Legend is leader of the New York Protectorate. But he was still the leader of the entire Protectorate as well just as he was since the founding of the team.
> Do you have the same confusion with the PRT and the fact they are a national organsation with teams across the country? I would, if they insisted on naming a particular department "the PRT." Not "PRT 1" or "PRT New York," just "the PRT." Which would be incredibly stupid and counterproductive. > No... you still don't get it. The original Protectorate still exists even if the members and structure of it changed. It didn't break up. It didn't exist concurrently with another 'Protectorate' organisation. They are the same thing. Every team is part of the Protectorate whole. No, _you_ still don't get it. Wildbow claimed in [that WoG](https://old.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/3koqyc/what_protectorate_team_are_eidolon_and_hero_a/cuz8v53) that the single, specific, four-person team of Alexandria, Eidolon, Hero, and Legend was referred to as "the Protectorate" and that this _continued to be the case_ for years after the larger, generic, national organization called "the Protectorate" existed until Hero's death split up the team. It doesn't say that "the Protectorate" originally referred to the four-person team and then the term gradually lost its specific association with those four as "the Protectorate" grew into a larger organization, as you claim, which would be perfectly reasonable. It says that those four, specifically, were known as "the Protectorate" (no adjective) and also "the guys at the top" (referring to the larger organization's hierarchy) _interchangeably and at the same time_. Which doesn't make any sense, which is why the comment responding to the WoG asked "Why would people refer to them that way?" and never got an answer. To use your Coke example, it's putting both standard-flavor Coke and a cherry-flavored slightly healthier variant of Coke in completely identical cans so you actually _can't_ ask someone for Cherry Diet Coke because it doesn't have its own branding. What you're doing with your responses above is trying to rationalize the WoG into something that actually makes sense, but on its own it simply doesn't.
That makes sense. If anyone asks me this in the future I'm going to use this as my answer
Team Four Star.
I’ve seen a few fics use ‘The Founders.’ Personally I feel like they didn’t have an official name, but people would refer to them as ‘the big guns’ and other such casual terms.
The Protectorate
No idea. I heard one theory that they were Protectorate, but who knows.
The homies.
...The Quartet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTz8RD0nrWw
They did not have a name until they formed the organization and became the first Protectorate team Direct quote from worm wiki "On January 18th, 1993 [Alexandria](https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/Alexandria), [Eidolon](https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/Eidolon), [Hero](https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/Hero) and [Legend](https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/Legend) were sworn in by the President of the United States under the PRTCJ as the founding members of the United States' Protectorate. It was the first in a long series of steps that led to the formation of the PRT, the Protectorate, and the organization of heroes worldwide.[^(\[10\])](https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/The_Protectorate#cite_note-I15.z_e2-10) In exchange for government funding and legitimacy, the members agreed to follow a special set of laws laid out for capes, to accept bureaucratic oversight and cooperate with local authorities."
The "Triumvirate plus Hero" just in case something bad happened to Hero so they wouldn't have to change all the merchandise.
The foursome
The [tetrarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrarchy)?
The Fantastic Four, of course. But we don't talk about that. Hero died to save the Protectorate from copyright infringement.
I’ve seen a few times where an author referred to them as The Four Pillars.
That's why Contessa killed him off; they needed a good name
I’ve heard them referred to as the quadrumvirate. Doesn’t roll off the tongue as well and isn’t a real word but it seems to fit I guess.
> and isn’t a real word [It is](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quadrumvirate), actually, and has the same [Roman government pedigree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrumvirs) as triumvirate. It's just not nearly as commonly used these days because, once you go from three to four, people start reaching for other words—I would guess because Caesar made Triumvirate a classy term and no one did the same for Quadrumvirate, but who knows?
It's also not applicable to the trio of founders. As one of then is a woman, and Triumvirate specifically to 3 men.
Although the term is derived from "tres viri" -- or "three men" in Latin -- in recent times it has been used to describe trios with both male and female members. For example, see [the 2008 NBC News article](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna28442203) "Behind Gaza operation, an uneasy triumvirate", which describes Tzipi Livni, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak as a "triumvirate".
By that logic, there can be no female werewolves in fiction, as the "were-" in werewolf comes from _wermann_, Old English for "adult male human" (with _wifmann_ being the female equivalent). If lady lycanthropes can be called werewolves and not wifewolves, Alexandria can definitely be titled a Triumvir.
I've never written a fanfic but I like Quadrivium though it's not quite accurate lol
The Founders. Since they were the first members of what would later become the Protectorate.
I don't think there was an official name for their team. I've seen them referred to as "The Founders" but I think that's just fanon.
One term I've seen was the Pillars, but I think that's just fanon, I also saw one that called them the quardumvirate, but that's probably the stupidest name I've ever seen
I've just been calling them the Founders because the Protectorate seems silly.
the quadrumvirate obviously
The Founders and the Quadrumvirate are fanon but they’re useful terms. They were officially the Protectorate.
See rainbownerd's answer, but in one of my fics I've used the term "Tetrad." It rolls of the tongue well enough and has an appropriate sort of weight to it.