[HoneyBadger]

Agema: Tridents aren't difficult to weild in one hand. Easy enough to catch fish with them, anyway, or even throw them over short distances. And gladiators typically used them with nets. It's just a game convention, not something that's true in real life.

The big
polearms that evolved from them would be 2 handed weapons, but not the trident itself, which would often be shorter than a spear, and could be used either 1 or 2 handed.

You're right about them being mostly ceremonial, but that's a bit beside the point, which is their extraordinary longevity in the face of obsolescence. They were officers' weapons (master sergeants' weapons, anyway, approximately, or whatever the equivalent rank would have been), and were certainly still used *as* weapons, when the necessity arose--they examples I've seen, the ones that actually saw combat, weren't blunted or faked. And I suspect there was a good reason such weapons were chosen as "symbols", that had atleast something to do with them being useful in a pinch.