Big Brother Instinct / Literature

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• James of The Alice Network treats his little sister Charlie kindly and teaches her how to do things, like drive.
• In American Dirt, Soledad's core priority on her journey to el notre is protecting her younger sister, Rebeca. Previously Soledad was in a forced sexual relationship with a wannabe sicario, Ivan, and when he learned she had a sister and told her to bring her to him and his group, she set their escape in motion. The sisters have each others' backs throughout the journey, but Soledad especially looks out for her younger sister. When Lorenzo shows his true colors by trying to rape Rebeca, Soledad kills him.
• In The Amy Virus, Cyan's older sisters Annabeth and Tam treat her with much more respect and understanding than their parents do. For example, when Cyan's father tries to force clothes on her and hold her down so she can go to school, Tam instantly stands up to him and points out that Cyan actually threw up the previous night, so she was too sick to go anywhere.
• Angel Child, Dragon Child: Little sister instinct, but Ut finally fights back against Raymond when he throws a snowball at her older sister.
• In Angelfall, Penryn's whole motivation to infiltrate the aerie is to get her little sister back by any means necessary.
• K.A. Applegate's Animorphs:
  • Tom does everything he can, which isn't much, to keep his brother from being infested and goes nuts at the thought of the Yeerks getting to Jake. Jake displays a similar protectiveness towards Tom besides being younger. Also, Elfangor towards Ax.
  • At one point in the series, when Jake and Controller Tom are talking (which they do often, being brothers, obviously), "Tom" lies to Jake to cover his status as a Controller, and, if only for a second, Jake notices Tom's face twitch strangely. Jake suspects that Tom is trying so hard to fight against his Yeerk that he momentarily wrestled control of his body away from the Yeerk, which is established as being practically impossible.
  • Rachel, for all that she's annoyed by her little sisters, is fiercely protective of them.
• The entire storyline of Along The Winding Road is because of this. Despite not even knowing if her little brother is alive, Charlotte is determined to cross the zombie-infested remains of Texas just in case he needs looking after.
• Bazil Broketail:
  • Go on, try to hurt Relkin in front of Bazil or vice versa. Or any dragonboy in the presence of his dragon, for that matter. You will most likely regret it.
  • Gryff's a rather pathological example among dragons. He is not just attached to his dragonboy Rakama, but all too happy and ready to cheer him on when he beats up others. This is evidenced with his behaviour after Rakama has a brawl with Swane and they both seriously injure each other before Relkin breaks them up. He is dissatisfied with Relkin's intervention as he's convinced Rakama would've won and comes to Vlok right thereafter just to rub it in his face. He also laughs off his comment that the fight went too far and left both dragonboys unnecessarily injured.
• In The Blue Codex both Trini and Jazlyn are very protective of each other even going so far as calling each other sisters even though technically they are step-sisters.
• In Blue Iguana, Clarice yells at a boy who kills her autistic little brother Joe's pet millipede.
• Tane's backstory in the first book of The Braided Path trilogy. He comes home to find his father has raped his little sister, with the excuse that Tane was not around to take the abuse instead. Tane invites his father to have a drink with him, and then poisons the man, leaving him to die in agony.
• In Bridge of Clay Matthew Dunbar, although barely 18 himself, has to look after his four younger brothers after their mother dies and their father leaves them. And he is very good at it.
• Played for some tragedy in Broken Gate on Tora's end. In chapter 11, he remembers the time with his sister and he can feel Nezumi dying but can't do anything about it. Subverted, as would be expected on Ryuuji's end, as he did mistreat Nezumi, said mistreatment got him cursed.
• Eldest Whistler in A Brother's Price is this way to her whole family, including sisters-in-law — as she declares, "We Whistlers have an unbreakable rule — you mess with one of us, you mess with us all!" — but particularly her vulnerable brother Jerin. When she believes he was raped by the crown princess, she plans to kill the woman but is enough of a Reasonable Authority Figure to listen to him. Most of Jerin's sisters are like this to some degree. Even Corelle is motivated by the desire to protect him.
• The Cal Leandros series gives us Niko, who loses his characteristic cool when someone so much as implies that his brother is a monster, and goes berserk with rage when he thinks Cal is dead. Cal is no better, going to extreme lengths to protect his brother.
• Camp X: George's older brother, Jack, won't allow anyone else to pick on his little brother. When a trio of bullies try to take newspapers from George by force, Jack decks one of them in the face.
• Catwoman: Soulstealer: Well, Big Sister Instinct. Selina adores her little sister Maggie. In the end, it turns out that everything Selina did was to save Maggie, who was incurably ill with cystic fibrosis, and could only be saved by a Lazarus Pit. She succeeds too.
• Len Maynard of Chalet School Practically ever since she is a baby, she is pigeonholed as the 'responsible one', and as the oldest Maynard child, she is often put in charge of the other Maynard children. She has a major one where Margot is concerned, protecting her from Jack's wrath and lying to cover up for her in Triplets of the Chalet School after the bookend incident. Miss Annersley even calls her on it.
• The Chronicles of Narnia: Peter is this toward all three of his siblings who he is very protective of, but is especially this for his youngest sister Lucy. He vehemently rebukes Edmund for humiliating her at the beginning of the series, up to the point where he looks like he's about to deck his younger brother in the movie adaptation. Later, despite having never wielded a sword before, Peter kills the monstrous wolf Maugrim to protect his other sister Susan.
  • The movie version of Prince Caspian portrays Susan falling in love with Caspian. Peter definitely seems to oppose Caspian in every matter, getting to the point where they almost battle each other. It's almost as if Peter is destined, from the beginning, to hate the guy and bash him, while his little sister is instantly swept off her feet by him.
  • Edmund also develops this for Lucy, after his Heel–Face Turn. When Peter and Susan doubt that Lucy saw Aslan, Edmund stands by her completely.
• In The Chronicles Of A Strange Kingdom series by Oksana Pankeyeva, this trope goes full triangle among the surviving men of Ortan (the titular kingdom)'s royal family. They grew up together and lost most of their family together, and though they aren't as closely related as the most other examples (King Shellar and Prince Elmar are cousins, and Prince Mafey is Elmar's little stepbrother), each of them is exceptionally powerful in some regard - Shellar intellectually and politically, Elmar physically, Mafey magically - and fiercely protective of the other two.
• In Jeramey Kraatz's The Cloak Society, Alex and Misty, despite her annoying traits.
• In Coda (2013), Anthem is very protective of his siblings, Alpha and Omega.
• Colin Fischer: When Colin's brother Danny was born, Colin learned everything he could about child care, spent as much time as possible with him, and even created a dossier called "Things We Know About Danny" for Danny's first birthday. His feelings are not reciprocated — Danny mostly finds him weird and annoying.
• A Court of Thorns and Roses: Rhysand had a younger sister he adored. She and her mother were brutally murdered and had their wings clipped off and kept as trophies by Tamlin's family.
• Crescent City: Bryce and Ruhn don't get along that well, really, but Ruhn is very protective of his sister.
• Daisy Jones & The Six: Billy Dunne is initially very protective of his younger brother Graham. When someone suggests they replace Graham as The Six's guitarist Billy flatly refuses and makes it clear he'd replace everyone else before letting go of Graham. However, as time goes on and the band's success grows, Billy starts to neglect Graham to focus on his own issues. When Graham presents a song he wrote alone Billy completely dismisses it. Graham finally quits the band when he tries to reach out to Billy for support during a major personal crisis, only for Billy to completely ignore him.
• The Darkest Powers series gives us Derek. He has a Big Brother Instinct for his foster brother, Simon. Derek is also a werewolf. So on top of the fact that he is, personality-wise, very protective of Simon (and anyone else he cares about), he also has the wolf's "protect my pack" instinct to deal with. Assaulting one of his "pack" will get him really angry. Unfortunately for Derek, since he can't usually control his reaction when his brother is in danger no matter how much he's tried to coach himself, his supercharged Big Brother Instinct has led to at least one My God, What Have I Done? moment.
• Played with in Dark Places. In the Satanic Panic of The '80s, Libby Day testified against her older brother, Ben, for the murders of their mother and two other sisters. In the present day, she realizes over the first few chapters that it might not be that simple. When the Plot Twist towards the end of the book happens, it's revealed that Ben didn't kill his family, but he did stand and watch his girlfriend, Diondra, strangle his sister Michelle after Michelle found out that Diondra was pregnant. Immediately after Michelle dies, Ben runs to find Libby and tells her to stay where she is so Diondra won't kill her, too.
• In Dead Space: Catalyst, Jensi has spent most of his life taking care of his older brother Istvan who has a mental illness that can sometimes cause violent outbursts. Unusually for this trope, Jensi's protectiveness of his ill brother is shown to be a bad thing. Jensi gets in trouble trying to protect Istvan, guilt over failing to protect Istvan from things Jensi could not control causes Kensi to live a depressed and meaningless life, and since this is Dead Space, Jensi extreme desire to keep his brother safe eventually lands him in the middle of space zombie outbreak.
• Devils & Thieves: Crowe may have a generally antagonistic relationship with his sister, Alex, but when the chips are down, he cares very much about keeping her safe. When she goes missing, he nearly starts a new gang-war just to find her.
• In Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Getaway, in a rare case of Rodrick actually having a heart in the books, he willingly tried to help Greg to safety when he saw him in serious danger of getting beat up by an angry mob.
• Dragonlance Chronicles: Critical to Raistlin Majere's backstory. He spent his youth under the overprotective influence of his twin brother, Caramon. While Caramon grew up tall, handsome, muscular, and a bit dense, Raistlin was intelligent, but sickly and alienated, with no friends but his brother. Seeking to prove his worth to his smothering "big brother" and the world at large, Raistlin seeks the power to topple Gods, and gets it. Deprived of a little brother to protect, Caramon falls into alcoholic depression.
• Dreamblood Duology: Ehiru is supposed to take a role between big brother figure and mentor towards his apprentice Nijiri for the duration of Nijiri's apprenticeship, and act accordingly. However, the situation turns out complicated because while Ehiru does love Nijiri like a brother and has to constantly remind himself not to underestimate and coddle Nijiri, Nijiri's feelings and motives are more complicated. In the long run, it's Nijiri who takes that role towards Ehiru, going to great lengths to keep trouble away from him and coddling him.
• In The Dresden Files:
  • Harry frequently reversing it with his half-brother Thomas despite the fact that Thomas is the older brother.
  • Thomas also has a brother instinct. He has followed Harry around town without Harry's knowledge, and in several books, the only time Thomas hasn't come to Harry's aid was when the White Council was directly involved. He is also very protective of his little sister, Inari.
• Eclipse Hunter: Devon falls under this trope very easily, and fills many different archetypes. He's willing to shoot his own father if it means protecting Daren.
• Ellen and Otis: In Otis Spofford, when Austine's older brother Bruce catches Otis bullying her and Ellen one day, he suggests that they turn the tables and bully him (the implication being that he would beat Otis up if he tried to retaliate).
• In Ender's Game, the reason that Ender was willing to go to Battle School and join the International Fleet was to protect his sister Valentine, although he was actually her little brother.
• Inverted with Bruno Riefenstahl in Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte. The original reason for him to begin training in both swordplay and magic to because he wanted to protect his Delicate and Sickly older brother August.
• Halfway through The Faerie Queene, Campbell gets so fed up with suitors pestering his sister that he says that any man who wants to propose must defeat him first. He ends up killing two powerful knights to give his sister some peace.
• Failure Frame: Do not abuse a child around Mimori Touka. Child abuse is a Trauma Button for him. If you abuse children, pray to whatever god(s) you worship that he doesn't learn of it, or worse, see it, because if he does, your death will be especially graphic. The mistress of the bar where Lizbet worked got beat up by Eve when she saw the abuse, before Eve took custody of Liz and Liz's "Back pay." Mimori didn't think that was enough, so he went back when nobody else was around, and really made her pay...
• Family Skeleton Mysteries: When Georgia was nearly molested as a child, this is what prompted Sid to come back from the dead and protect her — seeing her reminded him of his own little sister, who'd predeceased him.
• Fighting Fantasy: In the gamebook Night of the Necromancer, your vendetta against the titular necromancer your evil former advisor, Unthank becomes strictly personal the moment he abducts your younger sister Orianna and intends to have her sacrificed to the powerful Shadow King.
• Farrah in The Gauntlet (2017) goes into the game to find her little brother Ahmad after he rushes in.
• Jonas towards Gabriel in The Giver, despite his growing disillusionment with his Community, it's not until he learns that Gabe is going to be killed that he decides to leave.
• Katsa from Graceling has her moments. She is incredibly protective over Princess Bitterblue. She made it her entire goal to protect the ten-year-old princess, no matter what it meant for her or anybody else.
• Hani and Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating: Nikhita (Nik), Ishu's older sister, is very protective of her. Even though she's living in London, she flies over immediately to help her when Ishu's accused of cheating on a test falsely, exposing the accusation as false.
• Played straight and inverted with Frank and Joe Hardy respectively in The Hardy Boys. While both are capable of taking care of themselves and both know it, the quickest way to scare one of them or piss them off is to threaten or harm the other one.
• Harry Potter
  • Fred and George seem to take a slightly more protective role when it comes to Ginny. They tell her not to cry and promise to send her "loads of owls" in the first book. They also tell her they'll send her a Hogwarts toilet seat, which makes her laugh. They used to pick on Ron at school and at home, but they love him regardless of their treatment towards him and don't hesitate to attack Malfoy when he insults their younger brother in the fifth book. Later, Fred and George are seen tag-team comforting a first-year who suffered a punishment from Umbridge. They also take Harry under their wing, sticking up for him when he's being called a liar about Voldemort's return and cheering him up when everyone else believes he's the Heir of Slytherin. They also get revenge for Harry by tricking Harry's bully of a cousin Dudley into eating a Ton-Tongue Toffee.
    Mr. Weasley: It isn't funny! That sort of behavior seriously undermines wizard-Muggle relations! I spend half my life campaigning against the mistreatment of Muggles, and my own sons—
    Fred: We didn't give it to him because he's a Muggle!
    George: No, we gave it to him because he's a great bullying git. Isn't he, Harry?
    • In Goblet of Fire Arthur specifically leaves them in charge of Ginny while Death Eaters are running around. Given Arthur's Papa Wolf status, that says a lot.
  • Ron Weasley reveals this in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets while nearly cursing Malfoy (with a broken wand that has already backfired once on him) for being mean to Ginny. Two sure-fire ways to anger Ron are to insult either Ginny or Hermione.
  • Ron gets a bit of this from Percy after the Second Task in Goblet of Fire. Percy, who's supposed to be acting as an impartial judge gives Harry full marks for rescuing Ron and then physically drags Ron out of the lake and onto dry land... to his younger brother's annoyance.
  • In Deathly Hallows, after catching him and Ginny kissing, Ron drags Harry outside and confronts him for toying with Ginny's feelings (they had broken up last book, albeit with Ginny not knowing why).
  • In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, while Harry is searching for the locket horcrux with Dumbledore, Dumbledore starts pleading (after taking a nasty potion), “Don’t hurt them. Hurt me instead!” Harry is taken aback by it but doesn’t really pay it too much mind. It’s not until about a year later when he gets a chance to talk to Dumbledore’s brother, Aberforth, that he realizes that he was trying to protect Aberforth and their sister Ariana from his “friend” Grindelwald who’d been torturing them because Aberforth was trying to stop him from running off with Grindlewald with the fragile, mentally unstable Ariana in tow.
  • A small example but Viktor Krum, who is an older famous athlete and used to dealing with media, quickly comes to Harry's defense when Rita Skeeter hounds Harry.
• In He Is Your Brother, Mike tells off anyone who insults or makes fun of his autistic little brother Orry.
• Her Crown of Fire: Big Sister, rather. Rose is extremely protective of Tyson, a reversal of their roles on Earth, as he has no magic and will be killed if discovered by the Lotherian authorities. "She Will Start A War To Save Him" is the tagline of the book.
• The Heroes of Olympus:
  • It's revealed in the first book that the reason Thalia didn't escape home sooner than she would have was that she's afraid her mother would endanger her little brother, Jason. When she thought that he was killed (actually presented to Hera), she flipped out and wasted no time to leave her mother. It's apparent that she still has the trauma of losing him as she never told anyone about him.
  • Hylla to Reyna. She protected her when their father locked them up in his fits of PTSD and accompanied her during their overseas travels after killing their father's insane spirit. And at the end of the second novel, Hylla leads her company of Amazons to assist Camp Jupiter (led by Reyna), which are being attacked by the Giants. Hazel mentions that Hylla is possibly "the best sister anyone could have".
  • Do not suggest you aren't willing to rescue Nico if Hazel is in the room. She will not like it.
  • While Nico never really gets a chance to pull a Big Damn Heroes for Hazel's sake, he's still Hazel's big brother. He seems to go out of his way to cheer her on at Camp Jupiter.
  • Jason develops this for Nico in The House of Hades after he finds out about Nico's crush on Percy.
  • Reyna also develops this for Nico, at one point forcing herself not to tuck him and try to make him comfortable as he sleeps, because he is her comrade, not her little brother, and he wouldn't appreciate it. It goes out the window by the end of the book, where she goes out of her way to make sure he knows he has a home at both camps and promises herself that he will be recognized for his bravery.
• Bush in Lieutenant Hornblower. He quickly picks up on the fact that Hornblower pushes himself far too hard and pulls rank to make sure that he drinks water, eats, and sleeps. He also speaks up for Hornblower's daring plan to take the Spanish fort and insists that he get full credit for it. Later on in their careers, this turns into Bush unconsciously thinking of Hornblower like a son.
• The Hunger Games:
  • Katniss Everdeen of will go to any lengths to protect her younger sister Primrose, including volunteering for the titular Deadly Game in her sister's place, a seemingly suicidal gesture.
  • Katniss takes on this role for Rue as well, as she reminds her of Primrose, doing her best to protect her in the Deadly Game.
  • Rue to her siblings, and Thresh to Rue. See their character page for how.
  • To a degree, Finnick Odair is this for Katniss Everdeen, especially in Mockingjay. Katniss is enduring a Trauma Conga Line while she is trying to take care of her little sister and she is a symbol for a rebellion. Her childhood friend Gale isn't around much — doing undercover work with Beetee — and isn't entirely supportive while her love-interest Peeta is a captive of the Capitol for the first half of Mockingjay and, as a result of being brainwashed by the Capitol, is no longer himself and a danger to Katniss until he is able to recover toward the end of the book. Katniss's mother, while better than she was in the first book, is unable to truly understand Katniss's ordeal. Finnick, on the other hand, who is himself prone to trauma and currently enduring a seemingly endless case of PTSD, does all he can to make Katniss feel safe and comfortable, despite his own issues. Until he dies. Boggs is this too. Until he dies as well.
• Ward of Hurog is very protective of his siblings, which is sorely needed because of his father's abusiveness.
• In If I Fall, If I Die, bullies leave Jonah alone because they're so afraid of his brothers. Once a hockey player whipped Jonah's face with a birch switch. His oldest brother went to the hockey player's house to demand a written apology. When the boy's father refused, Jonah's brother broke his cheekbones, as well as those of two neighbors who tried to intervene, and then sat down to wait for the police.
• In the In Death series, Roarke tends to harbor protective instincts toward Eve's female colleagues, though they're not particularly weak. This is probably due to his dead little sister.
• The Infernal Devices:
  • Will says the reason Gabriel hates him so much is that he compromised the latter's sister's virtue. But then again, it's Will, so we don't know if that's true or not. As of The Clockwork Prince, it's apparently because Will rejected his little sister's advances (in his defense, she was a lovesick twelve-year-old) and broke Gabriel's arm in public.
  • Gideon Lightwood towards his younger brother, Gabriel.
• The Irregular at Magic High School:
  • Masaki isn't opposed to his sister and George eventually getting into a relationship, but he warns the latter that if he does anything while she's still in elementary school (George is a teenager and five years older), there will be a reckoning. Fortunately for all involved, this won't be a problem- the only reason Masaki brought it up is because of little Akane's Precocious Crush.
  • Robert Sun develops a seething vendetta against all Japanese magicians after one kills Richard, his nephew's cousin and fellow mafia member. When given the chance to assassinate one, he commandeers an entire airship to make it happen.
• Bertie of Jeeves and Wooster tends to develop this easily. In one story he suddenly decided that he wanted a daughter for precisely this reason: "Something to look after, if you know what I mean."
• Journey to Chaos: Eric thinks of his teammates and Kasile as his younger siblings and is thusly protective of them. This is especially the case with Kasile because she is a queen and a target for Evil Princes. You don't want to get between an angry grendel and his siblings.
• In The Kane Chronicles, Carter and Sadie are this to each other. Sure, they bicker a lot, and their ideals and personality clash many times due to their estrangement, but beneath that is the strong familial bond of all Kanes.
• In A Kind of Spark, Addie's older sisters Nina and Keedie defend her to her cruel teacher after she's almost suspended for beating up a bully.
• In the Legendarium of J. R. R. Tolkien, aside from Lord of the Rings, we have Túrin, who was equally protective of his sister Urwen Lalaith, until she died in the plague only three-years-old. Word of God has stated that Túrin always had a weak spot for blondes after this, a Freudian Excuse for his protectiveness of Finduilas, and later for Nienor — who, as it turned out, was his sister. The main reason for his suicide was the realization that he had ultimately failed her.
• The Lord of the Rings has two prominent examples of this: Boromir, who actually looked after and protected his younger brother Faramir throughout their childhood, and Éomer, who was batshit protective of his younger sister Éowyn. The main reason Boromir volunteered for the trek to Rivendell boils down to this — he deemed he was better suited for it (which turned out to be wrong in the end). When Éomer found his sister deadly wounded at the Pelennor field, he and his entire army went into suicide death squad mode, sweeping all their enemies aside in the process. Clearly Éomer, in the moment of blind rage, found it hard to carry on knowing his sister probably had less than hours left.
• The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali: Aamir is Rukhsana's younger brother, but he's nonetheless protective of her and this has been his way since childhood.
• The Mark of the Dragonfly: Piper is very protective of Micah and eventually Anna.
• Marcus demonstrates this towards Julia in The Mark of the Lion trilogy (at least until her betrayal of Hadassah at the end of book one, after which he declares This Is Unforgivable!), and is the only one who indulges her more headstrong tendencies manifesting from her being spoiled.
• Carl Dalisay to Noel Dalisay in Mars Evacuees, by Sophia McDougall. Not only does he physically protect his younger brother, Carl goes to great lengths to make sure Noel doesn't realize how dire things are.
• The Mortal Instruments:
  • Jace tends to be very protective of his adopted siblings.
  • Alec takes his job as the oldest Lightwood sibling very seriously. And he's also the only one of them to be at least eighteen, making him legally an 'adult'.
  • Simon's sister Rebecca becomes increasingly concerned about Simon's cutting communications with her over the course of City of Lost Souls, and eventually manages to meet with him. When she briefly believes that their mother has brainwashed or harmed him in some way, the way she reacts indicated it would not have gone well for their mom if that had been the case. And when he reveals his vampirism to her, she accepts it almost immediately after getting over the shock, and assures him she'll love him no matter what
• Mother of Learning: Zorian finds his little sister annoying, but he still likes her better than the rest of his family, and resolves that after the time loop ends, he'll help her to go to Cyoria, learn magic and get out of the Arranged Marriage their mother has planned. After her friend is kidnapped, leaving Kirielle distraught, he spends weeks tracing the forces responsible. Then, at the height of his skills, approaching the Final Battle, he takes time out of his very busy schedule to make her a magical doll.^note It wasn't actually just for sentimental reasons. The doll is a miniature combat golem, packed with weapons and defensive wards, to protect her during the invasion of Cyoria. Which it does, making a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Murder for the Modern Girl: Ruby Newhouse is particularly protective of her younger twin sisters. She taught them how to fire guns, soothe them when they have nightmares, and is determined to keep them safe after their father almost got assassinated. Later on in the story, Ruby's protectiveness gets exploited by Ferry, who kidnaps one of the twins, Henrietta, predicting that Ruby will go rescue her. He's correct as Ruby heads to the Bull and Owl bar to save Henrietta.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!
  • Nicol often protected his little sister Sophia from all the discrimination she faced for being albino when they were younger. It caused her to develop a crush on him in the game's timeline. One of the reasons he ends up falling in love with Catarina in the novel's timeline is her being the first person to befriend Sophia.
  • Catarina always wanted a younger brother in her past life, and when she gets the opportunity she becomes a doting older sister to Keith. A big part of the reason she does so is that if she doesn't he'll grow into a playboy whose pursuit of Maria would eventually result in her death or exile, but she also just finds him cute and lovable enough to deserve doting on.
• Lynn Flewelling of Nightrunner is fond of this:
  • Before their Relationship Upgrade to the Official Couple level Seregil had this to Alec, though there had been subtones early on.
  • And both Alec and Seregil are always and at any time rather protective towards Beka (in Seregil's case it is also a rather paternal feeling; he states himself she's as close for a daughter to him as it will ever get) — including being suspicious about her lover, checking him up, threatening him not to harm her... Beka is not impressed.
  • Tamir Triad: You better not insult Tobin when his squire/best friend Ki is around. (and in fact thanks to plot this brother-friendship later gets rather difficult)
  • An even creepier example might be the ghost Brother. Tobin's older twin who died after birth and turned into an angry spirit. After Tobin learned how to keep him in check Brother actually got extremely protective — despite the claims of some characters this troper never could shake the feeling that Brother DOES feel affection and brotherly love towards his sibling. Albeit in a twisted way.
• In Nory Ryans Song, Nory is extremely protective of her little brother Patch and makes it her duty to watch over him in their father's absence. So much so that, near the end, she willingly gives him up to Sean's family so he can go with them to the ships at Galway to travel to America.
• John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men has a western example of this trope in which George Milton, a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, cares for Lenny Small, a mentally disabled Gentle Giant.
• One Nation, Under Jupiter: Despite being her younger brother, Diagoras acts this way towards Relicta.
• Outlander and its spinoffs has Lord John Grey's older brother Hal, who really cared about him and it's implied that he knew about his sexual orientation of being homosexual which, at that time, could get someone executed. John realizes this when he learned that Hal reassigned him to be the warden of the Adsmiur prison in Voyager just to protect him from the scandal of being associated with a serial killer. In the eighth Outlander novel, he demands Claire Fraser regarding the whereabouts of his brother.
• In The Outsiders, everyone was this towards Johnny since his abusive parents couldn’t care less about him. Also, Ponyboy's two older brothers Sodapop and Darry, especially after their parents' death.
• Pax: Bristle and Pax have this towards Runt.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians:
  • Luke and Thalia were this to Annabeth before the trio arrived at Camp Half-Blood. Keep in mind that the two were just 12 years old by then, yet they had to essentially take the role of parents in front of the 7-year-old Annabeth and at the same time protect themselves from monsters who hunted them.
  • Bianca to Nico, before her death. It's explained that she joined the Hunters of Artemis because for once in her life she wanted to be something besides Nico's big sister. And even after that, she takes a stray figurine for Nico (who is an avid collector), which directly results in her death.
  • Apollo has this for his sister Artemis in The Titan's Curse (though they don't agree on whether he is actually older than her). He defies Zeus's orders to give Percy information on how to save her.
    "Nobody messes with my baby sister. Nobody."
  • Percy was this to Tyson before he even knew they were brothers, protecting him from bullies and comforting him whenever he was upset.
• Pride and Prejudice:
  • Mr Darcy towards his younger sister Georgiana, whose legal guardian he is due to their parents' deaths. There's nothing he won't do for her, and his concern for her reputation prevents him from telling anyone but Elizabeth about her near elopement with Wickham.
  • Inverted with Elizabeth, who has this instinct toward her softer, sweeter older sister Jane. When she learns that it was Mr. Darcy who dissuaded Mr. Bingley from proposing to Jane, breaking her heart, Elizabeth is beside herself with rage – creating the worst possible timing when Darcy proposes marriage to her just after she finds out.
• Psmith seems to feel this way about Mike. They're the same age (they met at Boarding School), but Psmith acts much older. Try to fire Mike from his job, and you'll get blackmailed.
• Quarters: Garek is protective with Magda, his little half-sister, offering her immediate help and care whenever she needs it.
• Race to the Sun: Nizhoni has Big Sister Instinct and is very protective of her younger brother Mac, even though he's just 10 months younger and they are both still kids. Still, he is an artistic soul and bullied at school, and she tries to stop the bullying, even by attacking the bully. And she is even ready to give up her biggest dream to save him.
• Red Moon Rising: Rae has this towards her younger sister Temple.
• In the Relativity series, Michael takes it upon himself to protect his sister Sara from any potential boyfriends he doesn't approve of. Since she's an adult and can take care of herself, she's not happy about this.
• Rick Brant: The villain of Stairway to Danger causes a car accident that injures Rick's younger sister Barby while fleeing the police. Rick has a personal beef with the guy for the rest of the book.
• In Rogue, Chad is this towards his five-year-old brother Brandon. When the house isn't clean, Chad always takes the blame so their parents will beat him and leave Brandon alone.
• Rules: Catherine defends her autistic brother David from The Bully, Ryan Deschaine. Once she got in trouble with the bus driver for shoving Ryan.
• The Scholomance: As the seventh-highest scoring senior, Maya Wulandari can write her own ticket into any number of enclaves, but has spent her school career trying to cozy up to the Toronto enclave because admission to that group means that they'll take in her whole family and her little brother and sister will have the protection of being enclavers when they attend the schoolmance. She volunteers for the dangerous mission in the climax in exchange for admission to the Toronto enclave, which will extend to her siblings whether she survives or not.
• Violet Baudelaire in A Series of Unfortunate Events frequently recalls the promise she made to her parents (twice, the first time being when she was two) to protect Klaus and Sunny. Given what the three children survive, she seems to do a pretty good job.
• The Silver Codex: Dominique is very protective of her siblings to the point that scares even her.
• Sky Jumpers: Aaren is very protective of his younger sister, Brenna. In fact, his family is so big, that each of the older kids are assigned a younger sibling to look after.
• In Solar Defenders: The Role of a Shield, when David's little sister stumbles across a Fundament crystal, he vehemently vetoes any possible thought of her putting herself in danger as a member of the team, and insists that Aderan remove her powers. He knows exactly how dangerous being a Sentai hero can be, and wants no one else in his family to have any part of it.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Brandon Stark was this for his younger sister Lyanna in the series' backstory. When he heard that Crown Prince Rhaegar Targaryen abducted Lyanna, Brandon rode off to King's Landing with a few companions to kill Rhaegar and rescue his sister. It didn't go well...
  • Jaime Lannister is this for both of his siblings, Cersei and Tyrion. Technically, his sister is a minute or two older than he is, but that's hardly the most complicated thing about their relationship. For the first few books, at least, he'll do anything to protect them — and if it involves killing someone, so much the better. Notably, he is also the only person to show nothing but love for his brother Tyrion, who is subjected to a great deal of prejudice and resentment for being a dwarf — even from their father Tywin and sister Cersei. Tywin and Cersei also hate Tyrion for their mother's Death by Childbirth when she gave birth to him. Jaime never shows any resentment or disgust with Tyrion and is willing to start a war to protect him, and not for political reasons like his father, but because he genuinely loves his little brother.
  • All the Stark siblings (Robb, Jon, Arya, Bran, Sansa, and Rickon) love each other, are (usually) close, and are protective of each other.
    • Jon, in addition to his Big Brother Instinct for all his half-brothers and sisters, is particularly this for his youngest sister Arya — to the point that his efforts to rescue the girl he thinks is Arya in the latest book led to his death.
    • And later, after a rocky start, Jon is this for some of his Night's Watch brothers, particularly his best friend Samwell.
  • In a gender-reversal, the tough and practical Meera Reed acts as a protector to her much frailer younger brother Jojen.
  • This does not to all families in this series though: this trope is averted big time in several cases, most dramatically by Gregor Clegane toward Sandor Clegane.
  • Genna Frey (nee Lannister) mentions that when her weak father agreed to betroth her as a seven-year-old to Emmon Frey (a second son, and thus a somewhat insulting match for a girl of her rank,) Tywin (himself only 10-years-old at the time,) publicly called out their father and Lord Frey for it being a poor match. While she says she did not approve of everything he did as an adult (or even enjoy his company that much) she couldn't help but love him as a protective big brother.
  • An inverted case for Oberyn Martell with his deceased older sister, Elia. He clearly wants to exact revenge on the Lannisters and wants Ser Gregor Clegane dead for killing her and her children and this ends up getting Oberyn brutally killed. His eldest brother, Doran, seemed to be an aversion at first when he remained passive for not doing anything about his siblings' deaths — much to the contention of his nieces and daughter, but it's straight example when it's revealed that Doran and Oberyn had been planning to destroy the Lannisters for Elia's death all along. Though, since Oberyn managed to kill Gregor at the cost of his life, Doran became bitter that he didn't get the chance to kill Tywin because Tywin's son Tyrion got to him first. However, he's glad that the guy is dead and still continues his revenge plans against the remaining Lannisters. Before that, he's also angry at Rhaegar for putting Elia in a bad light after he abducted Lyanna Stark.
  • In relation to the Martells, the three oldest of Oberyn's bastard daughters learned from their uncle Doran about Cersei's False Flag Operation to kill their younger cousin, Trystane, en route to King's Landing in order to end the engagement with her daughter by a group claiming to be Tyrion. This revelation made them horrified that the eldest, Obara, wanted give the queen a bag of heads.
• Prince Jonathan and his group of friends in Song of the Lioness developed this for the new page Alan. Even before Ralon started bullying Alanna, they regularly helped and kept an eye out for her. And when Ralon first beat up Alanna, Raoul pulled him aside and roughed him up as a warning. When Ralon later broke Alanna's arm in retaliation, they all thrashed him thoroughly. Despite continuing to harass Alanna, Ralon didn't lay a hand on her again.
• Kaladin from The Stormlight Archive develops one of these for every relatively (around 14) young male he comes across in the course of the story. This stems from his feelings of guilt over failing to protect his actual younger brother in the course of a minor border dispute between rival lords of his nation. Every one of these individuals ends up dead.
• One of the sharp contrasts between Huntingdon and Markham in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is how well Markham handles Arthur. He plays with Arthur, dotes on him without spoiling him, is protective of him, and defers to Helen's parenting choices, all things Huntingdon won't do.
• In The Thief Lord, Prosper's protectiveness of Bo is the main motivation behind his character. He runs away from his aunt with Bo to prevent their separation, joins a gang of urchins, and steals to make sure his brother is well fed and sheltered and goes into a major Heroic BSoD when Bo is finally taken away.
• Togetherly Long: Oukii's always there for Chiisai when she cries or needs anything, and once when the evil Emperor Von Mal insulted her severely, he threatened to knock out his teeth and make him swallow them if he didn't apologize.
• Trapped on Draconica: Three examples:
  • Daniar sees her little sister Erowin's safety as her personal responsibility. She doesn't take it well when Erowin is killed.
  • Rana's makes a big electric BOOM to save Daniar from wind witches. "LEAVE… MY SISTER… ALONE!"
  • Averted, oddly enough, with the eldest sister. Zarracka can't stand any of them. In the sequel she develops Aunt Instinct for her nephew, Benji.
  • In the sequel, Legacy of the Dragokin, Ravage joined Jiahdain's group because his little sister was already part of it and he wanted to keep her safe.
• Under Heaven: When Shen Tai finally finds out about his sister's arranged marriage (after spending almost two years burying battlefield corpses on the far west end of the country; the family property, and country's capital where his brother now works, are in the east), he switches almost completely from wanting revenge for a friend's death to wanting to kill his older brother, who set up the marriage as part of a political maneuver. He also seems ready to try to chase after her to bring her back home.
• Universal Monsters: Sister case in book 1 — when Dracula comes to abduct Angela Chavarria, her big sister Devin tries to save her. It doesn't work, as Devin falls under his sway again, but it's the thought that counts.
• In Vampire Academy, Adrian Ivashkov acts as a protective big brother to Jill Mastrano. She is fifteen-years-old, and kind of timid. He is an adult, several years older than her, and takes an interest in her well-being.
• Although Damon Salvatore of The Vampire Diaries likes to make his brother's life hell, he does go out of his way to save or protect Stefan.
• In The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara, Quentin Leah already has a pretty serious big brother complex towards his cousin Bek. Following his failure to save a girl he liked, this is magnified a thousandfold and helps to fuel his change into a badass.
  • Terry Brooks loves this trope. The vast majority of heroes in the very long running Shannara series have that sort of sibling relationship, starting with the very first book. It reaches its logical conclusion in the penultimate series, The Defenders of Shannara. Its first book, High Druid's Blade, is basically Big Brother Instinct: The Book.
• In Warrior Cats, Squirrelflight is very protective of her gentler sister Leafpool, will tell anyone off for verbally ganging up on her, and even adopts Leafpool's kits and raises them as her own (to hide the secret that they are a result of Leafpool's forbidden relationship).
• In Watership Down, Hazel is usually calm and collected but god help you if you mistreat Fiver or Pipkin.
• What to Say Next: David's older sister Lauren, aka Miney, used to be the most popular girl in Mapleview High. Nobody dared to bully David while she was there because she'd make them pay.
• Hartboy spends much of The Wild Way Home with Identity Amnesia. The only thing he can remember is the need to find and protect his baby sister, Mothgirl.
• In The Windwater Pack, Ashtree becomes Zephyr's "spirit sister", acting like his protective elder sister, and he returns the favor when she becomes Sín Nara, despite considering her his big sister.
• This is a feature of the entire MudWing society in the Wings of Fire series. MudWings live in family clans composed of all the siblings from a particular nest. The first to hatch among them is the "bigwings" and official leader of the family, who leads and protects all of their siblings. Clay, the MudWing among the main characters, is The Heart for precisely this reason — he instinctively acts as the "bigwings" of his surrogate siblings.
  • Darkstalker was also this for Whiteout, helping her calm her down when their parents start arguing and telling off some dragons when they insult her for interrupting their marble game.
• In Daniel Woodrell's novel Winters Bone, Big Sister Instinct is one of Ree's main concerns. She frequently worries about how to provide for her two younger brothers, who she is essentially raising.
• In David Baldacci's novel Wish You Well, when the protagonist, 12-year-old Lou Cardinal, is confronted by a schoolyard bully, she is content to endure his harassments...until he makes the mistake of pushing down her eight-year-old brother. She then rather handily mops the floor with him.

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