Byronic Heroes in fan works.
- The Alexandra Quick series has quite a few.
- Not least is the main character. Aside from not being remarkably attractive physically, she fits all of the traits listed above being charismatic and magnetic, extremely intelligent and cunning, driven and rebellious but also brooding and arrogant, with severe self-esteem issues arising from her Dark and Troubled Past.
- The Dark Wizard Abraham Thorn, Alexandra's father, fits the bill even better, being a dark, idealistic, brilliant and ruthless political revolutionary as well as a womanizer and playboy. He has a Dark and Troubled Past of his own though less has been revealed.
- And Maximillian King, brilliant, brooding and devastatingly handsome but coping with lots of suppressed rage, shame, and more than a few dark secrets.
- Alexandra's classmate Darla Dearborn eventually turns into this: attractive, manipulative, cunning, absolutely obsessed with her goals and slowly going mad from guilt and anxiety.
- Special Inquisitor Diana Grimm. Intelligent, cunning and manipulative? Check. Cynical and Jaded? Check, Dark and Troubled Past and deep obsession? Check...
- Azula Trilogy: Azula actually presents a rare Reconstruction of this character archetype; Azula is a highly complicated and morally ambiguous individual who has lost her purpose in life after the fall of her father and coming to see the kind of person he truly is. However, this path of uncertainty leads the way for a lot of introspection for Azula, giving her time to see just when she made her mistakes in the past and where she went wrong in life, allowing her to rise above the flaws of her character when it mattered the most, making so she is able to become a better person and make a better life for herself after so much internal and external struggle.
- Cat-Ra: Becoming She-Ra does nothing to make Catra a better person, and she starts out only using Glimmer and Bow as a scheme to get her own kingdom from Angella. This causes several extra complications from canon.
- Child of the Storm:
- Loki is Tall, Dark, and Snarky, a little morally ambiguous and most definitely Reformed, but Not Tamed.
- Warren Worthington III is described, at one point, as 'more Byronic than Byron.'
- Harry himself has considerable elements of this, being a Hot-Blooded Magnetic Hero who draws people, powerful people, to him without even trying, a distinct anti-authoritarian streak, a tendency to brood over what happens when he lashes out, a borderline mania over protecting people and is a Shell-Shocked Veteran to boot (by chapter 74, he ticks all the boxes for PTSD - which is particularly worrying since he hasn't even turned 14 yet. He's later formally diagnosed with it in the sequel). All this leaves him with the potential to either become the next Captain America or the next Magneto.
- Doctor Strange ticks all the boxes, being Tall, Dark, and Snarky, suave and sophisticated, charming, brilliantly intelligent, deeply arrogant, bitterly regretful for what he has had to do in the name of the greater good and riddled with self-hatred under the arrogance, and is entirely aware of what he has become.
- Sherlock Holmes in the first season of Children of Time. Tall, Dark, and Handsome, check. Troubled, but Cute, check. Sugar-and-Ice Personality, check. I Did What I Had to Do, check. The Woobie? Hoooo boy.
- Author halfpromise, writer of A Cure for Love and Those Who Stand for Nothing Fall for Anything seems to love this trope, at least where Light and L are concerned. The two of them are Broken Aces prone to self-loathing and together they form a Destructive Romance that brings what feels like the whole world down with them.
- Mercury of Ocadioan's
'A dance of Shadow and Light' series is certainly one of these. Since the series as a whole is Darker and Edgier, it is also shown just how this affects those around him. At the end most that knew him or worked with him are either dead (often because of him or per his direct order), deeply traumatized (his Love Interest ends up being Driven to Suicide) or generally unable to let go of his memory...But hey, the world turned out slightly better... - Dave Stdider Pokemon Traner's protagonist Dave can be a real Jerkass sometimes, to both his friends and his enemies. Usually it's unwarranted in both the former and latter categories, such as when he refuses to help his girlfriend while she's being blackmailed with a nude photo, and when he threatens to beat up Team Bad's Jack Noir and Karkat Vantas despite them not doing a single evil thing at this point in the chapter.
- Courier Six of the Fallout: New Vegas/RWBY crossover "Dust In The Wind" has shades of this. Tall, Dark, and Snarky? Check. Incredibly capable individual plagued with Self-doubt? Check. Carries ideals, views, and methods that clash with the world they find themselves surrounded by? Triple check. Despite this, forms close connections to a small circle of people who he's slowly learning to let his guard down around? Undoubtedly.
- Blackjack from Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons is an alcoholic, barely functional whirlwind of self-destruction who is one of the Equestrian Wasteland's most morally upright ponies at her best, and a borderline monster when she isn't. And she leads a following of ponies that are so messed up she might as well have the Rune of Torment as a cutie mark.
- The Good Hunter has Cyril Sutherland/Klaus Tennstedt. Where do we begin? He's Tall, Dark, and Handsome, he's an adept killer of brutality, and in the perspective of others, he's a mysterious foreigner known for his stoicism and social withdrawal. Does he have a Dark and Troubled Past? Readers who have played Bloodborne before will know just how much he has to endure in Yharnam before stepping foot to Lescatie. Countless hours of slaying and being slain by beasts, madmen, and other otherworldly nightmares has left him heavily shell-shocked, numb and indifferent towards all sorts of bloodshed he causes in his wake. Furthermore, Cyril/Klaus finds it difficult to shake away the traumatic memories from the Night of the Hunt, in spite of his efforts in finding peace of mind, constantly walking on a thin line between man and beast. As determined as he is to avoid becoming the very beast he is supposed to hunt, he struggles to reign in the desire for violence. Is he intensely introspective? Cyril/Klaus often dwells on his perceived failings during his time in Yharnam, ranging from regretting his inability to save everyone he could help, to remembering the pleading or dead faces of the victims of the Hunt. What of his morality and worldview? He is a Heroic Neutral who desires to be left alone in peace, instead of actively looking for people to kill. Moreover, Cyril/Klaus is highly skeptical towards the two main opposing factions, namely the Order and the Monster Lord respectively, due to his defiance of What Measure Is a Non-Human? (or rather, his insistence that anyone will die if they cross him, man or monster be damned), in addition to his distrust of authorities who claim to destroy their oppositions "for the greater good". All of the above values he firmly believes in, together with his strength, practically invites conflict from both sides. His destiny, that is, him reuniting with the Plain Doll and the Hunter's Dream, and subsequently rising as the Master of the Wild Hunt, can be seen in two ways that are both Byronic in nature: a revolution (the Sleeping Giant has finally awakened, shaking the world forever), or a tragedy (destined to bear every secret, burden, and memory related to Yharnam forever, Cyril's desire for everlasting peace will forever remain a dream). All in all, Cyril/Klaus's character arc can really give his other counterpart a run for his money.
- The version of Quirrel/Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality comes off as a Byronic hero. That story's version of Harry Potter also has Byronic tendencies, and Snape's nature as a canon Byronic hero gets deconstructed.
- Smaug has a bit of this portrayal in The Heart Trilogy. The arrogant, bloodthirsty, greedy and self-absorbed dragon does come to love Kathryn whom he kidnapped because of her beautiful singing voice, but he does not easily comply to her wishes, and he has difficulties with changing himself for her, bringing misery both to her and himself. He's also highly knowledgeable and intelligent, as is expected of this trope. He even gains a human form that fits this archetype; he's seven feet tall, dark-haired, and physiqued like a warrior, but he has around his mouth cruel lines as if he has looked down on people unworthy of him for his entire life. If not for that detail and his personality, he would be considered handsome. Kathryn lampshades his complexity in Heart of Fire:He was a complexity if ever there was one. He was majestic yet frightening, powerful and quick, supremely intelligent but his guarded nature wasted his cunning on the pursuit of gold, he was utterly beautiful but deadly, and his lack of empathy only pushed forward his wickedness. He seemed to be a very angry creature, wanting to lash out at the first thing that drew his attention, but also… desperate for attention. Kathryn could find no other way to describe it; even when he was at his utmost cruel, even when he was playing mind games, even when he was stalking his prey, he craved for the respect and attention of another creature, so therefore he would have something to distract his mind. Even if he would eventually tire of whatever caught his interest. But he hadn't tired of Kathryn.
- In Hope for the Heartless, the Horned King becomes this in a case of Adaptational Heroism and Character Development after he's resurrected for his only chance to earn redemption by earning a human's love. The dreaded and calculative warlord lich is aware of what a monster he is and doesn't believe he can succeed, deciding instead to use his "parole" to find and kill Taran for foiling his plans and causing his death. However, after he takes the peasant girl Avalina as his prisoner and grows fond of her, the pure girl gradually brings out of him positive traits, even bringing his dormant heart back to life. While the Horned King remains ruthless and brooding to everyone else but Avalina and wrestles with darker temptations, he eventually decides that he cares more about her safety and company than revenge.
- Harry Potter/Tristan Winter in The Jaded Eyes Series. He's a passionate Broken Ace Villain Protagonist who begins with the Byronic tendencies when he goes into a self-imposed exile after murdering the Dursleys when he's only six years old. His driving goal is that he wants Revenge on his family and the world that abandoned him.
- Oddly enough, Arturia Pendragon gets this treatment in the crossover A Knight's Tale as Inquisitor, albeit on the more lighter end of the spectrum. Coming fresh off of the events of the Fourth Holy Grail War, the exceptionally intelligent, introspective, and charismatic Arturia is grappling heavily with the angst and regret born from being unable to prevent the fall of her kingdom, having constant inner reflections on her own shortcomings and failures prior to arriving to Thedas, something in which she takes immensely personally despite what the perfectly crafted persona she created during her reign would say otherwise. Still, despite being so jaded from those experiences, Arturia is very much determined, borderline desperate, to make sure that Thedas doesn't fall like Camelot had, seeing this has her opportunity to make up for the mistakes of her past life - something even more potent to the formerly dormant identity that she's uncovering for possibly the first time in her life after dropping the "mask" of King Arthur now that she is no longer bound by the previous obligations she literally was born for.
- Metroid: Kamen Rider Generations not only has Samus Aran, but also Mitsuzane Kureshima. Unlike Kaito, who is in the same series as him (listed below) Mitsuzane, throughout the story, is sarcastic, distant, cynical and jaded; and of course, self-destructive. He is continuously tormented by his actions in his past that made him never the same, to the point he spends most of his time thinking that the world hates him. On the other hand, he is passionately driven of making amends on his past mistakes ever since becoming The Atoner.
- My Immortal: Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, unintentionally (unless it's a parody). She's brooding to the point of being an Emo Teen, and does whatever she wants without any regard for authority.
- Necessary to Win, found here, not only has Maho Nishizumi, but also Teru Miyanaga, who, in this fic, is an accomplished tanker and one of Maho's two vice-captains. She lives and does tankery her own way without regard for others, especially not her parents, and is haunted by an as of yet unrevealed past incident that caused her to distance herself from Saki.
- The Night Unfurls has Kyril Sutherland. He's a Tall, Dark, and Handsome guy; he's an adept One-Man Army; he's an enigmatic Outside-Context Problem; and he's a jaded, brooding cynic with PTSD thanks to baggage from Yharnam. Often compared with a demon or similar dark, supernatural connotations. The only box that doesn't apply to him is emotional sensitivity, for he is a task-oriented stoic, not some moody, bipolar lunatic. Both versions of the story depict the conflict between his own philosophy and the values of the status quo in differing ways.
- Original version: Utilising his talents as a mentor and flag officer, Kyril disparages honour and "battlefield courtesy" in his pursuit to put the Black Dogs plus all the traitors associated with them to the sword (or cleaver), nary a compunction to unsavoury methods like torture or killing surrendered prisoners. This, combined with his apathy towards privilege, as well as his tendency to stand by his decisions in order to do what must be done, puts him at odds with the nobility and the honourable. Not that the status quo could make him budge anyways, not when he's delivering results, and certainly not when he's ridiculously strong.
- Remastered version: Kyril’s turmultuous relationship with the Seven Shields, the leading figures of the status quo, is further built upon compared to how it is portrayed in the original. Kyril is treated with fear and scorn, seen as an insufferable Jerkass (he isn’t), because of his sinister appearance, his apathy towards privilege, his uncanny effectiveness in combat to the point of brutality, and his Nay-Theist attitude towards the Goddess Reborn. Much to the consternation of his critics, he happens to be the Godzilla Threshold capable of lifting a huge burden off Eostia’s shoulders – to bring an end to the Forever War against Olga Discordia and achieve a decisive victory, the sole reason being that he’s ridiculously strong. Kyril later does exactly that, except he also kills Vault, Eostia’s greatest champion, after his ambitions of a Sex Empire come to light, ambitions that the Shields don’t get to hear due to them not being present. Consequentially, he is put under trial, which he responds with a Trial by Combat that goes entirely in his favour.
- Light in NoHoper. In this universe, he's an aspiring vampyre hunter turned vampyre and a soul in torment on a quest for vengeance. He definitely fits the bill: he's passionate, brooding, mad, bad, dangerous to know.
- Belladonna Tyrian of Pokémon Reset Bloodlines is a female example. Physically speaking, she's both intimidating and attractive and has enough personal magnetism to attract multiple lovers. She's got plenty of brains too, able to come up with cunning plans and sabotage complex machinery. She has a tendency to brood on her Dark and Troubled Past, and is very cynical about society, to the point she chooses not to interact with it in any significant way, and considers herself to exist outside the laws of humanity. As for her emotions, she tends to suffer from mood swings, and is noted to be rather passionate by both the characters and the narrative.
- Shattered Reflection: Rose, Robin's alternate-self-from-another-timeline, is a Rare Female Example. Emotionally damaged? Check. Extremely intelligent? Check. Dark and cynical? Double check. Attractive and charismatic? Of course. Intense drive and determination? Oh yes, check.
- Spoofed in 3 Slytherin Marauders when Snape snarks that Sirius is just a poor "misunderstood Byronic hero."
- Mister Sinister is portrayed this way in the excellent X-Men fanfic A Test of Power, which draws from The Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix for its inspiration rather than the caricature the character has become in modern day stories. His Dark and Troubled Past from that mini is given more depth and several chapters dwell on the psychology of how an intensely intelligent, emotionally sensitive but fundamentally self-centered person copes with immortality and the burden of his self-imposed purpose.
- Ultimate Sleepwalker: Even other-dimensional psychic aliens can pass into this trope. Sleepwalker obviously isn't cute, but he: is deeply torn about his identity as a Sleepwalker trapped in a world of humans, the different mentalities of the two races and whether he's starting to adopt a human mentality and losing his identity as a Sleepwalker in the process; wrestles with his feelings of loneliness and the very real friendships he's formed with many of the humans of the world; struggles with his desire to return his home dimension of the Mindscape and his feeling that he is not worthy to return home until he finally atones for his original sin of becoming trapped in Rick Sheridan's mind; broods over those same mistakes and failures, for which he has never truly forgiven himself; becomes extremely violent whenever Rick or his other close human friends are threatened and taking pleasure in brutalizing criminals who hurt them. While Rick and his friends have tried to show Sleepwalker that he's not alone, they don't really understand that Sleepwalker doesn't feel he can belong in this world the way they do...and more importantly, that he shouldn't be belonging in this world, for all the real good he's done as a superhero.
- Widget Hackwrench, the initial Big Bad of the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers fanfic Under the Bridge, not only becomes one, but even describes herself as such. She does do a Heel–Face Turn and even finds love and a soft side to herself, but she cannot simply shake off her Dark and Troubled Past which led to her actions earlier in the story, starting with her lack of fur color and a left arm and almost drowning as a newborn which she always thought was attempted murder, continuing with her life in an orphanage and with a drug addict, and culminating in building an advanced armed submarine out of mostly junk and hiring a war veteran mouse as its captain just to kill her more fortunate sister in revenge for her own miserable life. It even goes to show somewhat at her own wedding: She distrusts the world around her so much that she wears a Kevlar dress.
- Lord Shen gets this portrayal in The Vow. He's a highly intelligent and proud noble who has faced alienation because of his white coloring and seeks to assert his worth to the world. When he sets his mind to something, he strives for perfection, even at a cost to himself. Unfortunately, he crosses the moral line in his fervent ambition, commits mass murder to prevent his prophesied downfall, and faces exile as a result. He then dedicates three decades in preparation of taking revenge for all the perceived wrongdoings thrown at him. He cannot stop loving his former fiancée Lady Lianne even while hating her, but neither can he consider stepping from his dark road because that would be a waste of everything he has prepared for so long. In the end, Shen gets a Bittersweet Ending: he survives his defeat, loses his freedom and becomes crippled, but at least he can live with his wife Lianne and their son Zian in anonymity.
