Trope-a-Day: National Weapon

National Weapon: There are really too many local variants on this theme to play it straight in the modern era; about the closest you can come are the Two Swords of the Old Empires (see Choice of Two Weapons), which the initial spread of the Empire on its own world spread to lots of other places as at least an option.

Another potential item for the list might be the kaeth battleax, a weapon closely resembling the lochaber axe which, with some modernization as to materials and some of the less functional accessories, is the linear ancestor of the modern legionary boarding ax/space-ax.  (But in these modern days and times, the signature weapon of the kaeth is “the biggest guns it’s possible to carry”, so a true national weapon it is not.)