Exploring the concept of people being Easily Forgiven for their mistakes and crimes in Literature.
- Accomplishments of the Duke's Daughter: Subverted. Despite eventually working with Van, Iris is just using him as a tool and not a particularly trustworthy one at that. After all, he doesn't seem to have learned a thing, or even apologized for his actions.
- LEPrecon doesn't have any problems with working with Artemis Fowl, even though their first contact with him was Artemis kidnapping one of them and threatening to break the masquerade.
- In A Brother's Price, Keifer Porter managed to be easily forgiven for everything he did, including hitting the thirteen year old Trini over the head, chaining her to his bed, beating her bloody, and servicing her. It was only Trini's eldest sister who forgave him, though, Trini never forgot it.
- Kieran from The Dark Artifices reveals Mark and Cristina because he wants to have a romantic relationship with Mark again and sees Cristina as a competitor. This leads to two of the protagonists being flogged by vengeful fairies. When Kieran is a prisoner in the dark yard a volume later, Cristina and Mark immediately come to rescue him and his act is no longer mentioned.
- Ultimately inverted because Kieran feels guilty about it in the last volume, and Emma (one of the persons who were flogged) assures him that she has long forgiven him and considers him a friend because his good deeds do one more bad deed than weigh out.
- In Divergent, Tris' parents forgive her for going into the Dauntless regime, especially when her father has to go into hiding with the Abnegation.
- This is an irritant for Mr. Knightley in Emma. He is not impressed with how quick everyone is to forgive the fact that Frank Churchill willingly deceived his father and stepmother for months, pretended to be in love with Emma when he wasn't, and made his actual fiancee so unhappy that she broke their secret engagement. It might have turned out all right because Emma never reciprocated enough to be hurt by the deception and Frank was able to convince his fiancee of his sincerity, but Knightley thinks that Frank's lengthy insincerity and carelessness of others' feelings deserves more anger than it gets.
- Fingerprints: A major villain from the first six books suddenly joins the heroes in the seventh. The reason for the Heel–Face Turn makes sense; the speed with which the main character accepts it does not. The villain even admits to being baffled by the hero's easy forgiveness.
- Goblins in the Castle: Once the goblins find out Igor (whom they'd called their "greatest enemy" for his betrayal of them) was just an Unwitting Pawn for the real villain and was tricked into leading them into a trap rather than betraying them of his own free will, they forgive him without any issue. It takes Igor a while to finally realize this though.
- In The Hammer (2022), Aslan quickly forgives Tiny for slapping "Baron Narsa von Rendsley" despite the fact that Tiny struck him almost entirely without provocation. This alleviates Tiny's concerns that he could be put to death for assaulting the crown prince of the Aslan Empire.
- The revelation that Severus Snape was a Double Agent in Harry Potter leads to quite a bit of this. He was Good All Along, sure, but he was also a racist, abusive bully and a demonstrably terrible teacher who took clear pleasure in his assumed role, and his motivation for being good was entirely self-centered. He was a seriously flawed figure at best, which makes his eventual labeling by Harry as "the bravest man I ever knew" and the namesake of one of his children more than a bit jarring.
- The Heroes of Olympus shows Annabeth Chase. Percy was kidnapped against his will and imprisoned in the Roman camp for many months. When Annabeth sees him again, she throws him to the ground with a judo flip and threatens to never leave her again. She hasn't seen him in months, and the first thing she does is attack him. But Percy forgives her immediately and kisses her.
- When Jeffery from Hollow Places gets a new job, Monica asks if he wants to get back together. Jeffery forgives Monica and accepts her offer without a second thought despite the way she ended their previous, ten year relationship the moment he began to face hard times. Austin questions this, but Jeffery brushes him off by simply saying she loves him and will always love him.
- In The Host (2008), Wanderer, a parasitic alien known as a Soul, starts off the book fully prepared to murder Melanie (the titular human host) and steal Melanie's memories so that Wanderer's fellow Souls can hunt down Melanie's resistance group, including Melanie's little brother and boyfriend, and kill them too. This is a fate Melanie threw herself down an elevator shaft in an attempt to avoid. (Now, to be fair to Wanderer, she doesn't believe it's murder, she really thinks she's going to make the planet better by doing this, and she does come to see she's wronged Melanie deeply. But the Souls are going to straight-up murder—"discard", in their words—most of the resistance, not just kill by implantation and Death of Personality, as they've decided adult humans are too good at resisting takeover to be safe hosts. The kids are still good candidates, though. And she was going to help them do this, and spends most of the first few chapters trying to and frustrated that she can't.) Nevertheless, very quickly Melanie comes around to liking and trusting her, to the point of willingly showing her the way to the resistance camp, and in fact being shocked when the other members of the resistance aren't happy to see Wanderer in her body and want to kill her.
- Hothouse Flower and the 9 Plants of Desire:
- Armand puts Lila through numerous meaningless, life-threatening tasks until she finds a certain plant. When he tells Lila about this, she just laughs it off.
- After Lila poisons and almost kills Diego with mandrake root in an effort to use its aphrodisiac propertied to make him have sex with her, she risks her life to save him, and he forgives her instantly, accepts "responsibility" for seducing her without intending to follow through and even falls in love with her.
- The House of Night:
- In Hunted, Zoey comes across Stark forcing a girl to have sex with him. She is outraged by this and intervenes. Immediately after, she lets him kiss her, and a scene later, Zoey lets him sleep in her bed, next to her, because Stark says that being with her 'makes [him] feel more human'.
- In Lenobia's Vow, Martin forgives Lenobia for lying about her identity (and impersonating a dead girl) after they have a two-page conversation about it. This could be a Justified Trope, as the two have only known each other for a few weeks...except for the part where Lenobia confesses her love to him immediately after, Martin does the same, and they go on to be a lovey-dovey couple. The fact that she has been lying to him since they met apparently doesn't affect their relationship at all.
- In How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, all the Whos down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot, but the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, did not. So he stole all their Christmas accoutrements and all their food. But he gave it back after, which apparently justified making him the guest of honor at Christmas dinner.
- Hurog: In Dragon Bones, Oreg is easily forgiven for talking rat-like beings on a ship into spoiling the food, causing Ward's blankets to be wet all the time, and gnawing holes into Ward's clothes. Justified, as Oreg is Ward's slave (Ward doesn't want a slave, he doesn't even approve of slavery, but A Wizard Did It and he has to cope with it.), and Ward did make a decision that Oreg views as betrayal. Ward also easily forgives Oreg for putting him into the awkward situation of having to kill him. Oreg apologizes, and ... well, one just can't be angry at The Woobie. As the magic on Oreg prevented him from committing suicide, that was his only option.
- Jane of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre silently forgives her fiancé Rochester when he begs it even though he didn't tell her that he was already married to the Mad Woman In The Attic Bertha who was hidden in the same mansion. Though it takes time for the relationship to repair.
- In November 9, Ben is a contender for one of the top recipients of this in fiction. Ben intentionally started the fire that nearly killed Fallon, ruined her acting career and gave her both permanent scars and a lot of trauma, never once told her this in all the time they knew each other until she finds out herself and did a lot of other shady stuff that greatly upset her. Yet in the end Fallon not only forgives Ben and proclaims her love for him, she says she needs to apologise to Ben for not accepting his love sooner and ditching him last year (when she first found out what he did). Fallon's mother also forgives Ben's misdeeds even faster than Fallon and chastises her daughter for not doing the same because of how guilt-stricken and tormented he claims to be.
- Averted with Renfield in Project Tau. He forcibly mutates Kalin, uses the handlers to inflict corporal punishment, refuses to listen to Kalin's explanations, abandons him to be beaten, starved and overworked and finally threatens to have Tau tortured if a barely-conscious Kalin doesn't do what he says right now. When he finally tells Kalin that he believes him and wants to help, Kalin doesn't take it well.
- Ruslan and Ludmila: Chernomor and Farlaf, despite their numerous crimes, are fully forgiven in the end amidst the general rejoicing.
- The Scholomance: Liesel answers El's insult with a potentially deadly Booby Trap, but changes her mind at the last moment and pulls El to safety. El lets it slide, musing that being angry enough to kill but held back by conscience is actually very familiar to her.
- At the end of Shadows Fall, all of the characters who have died in the previous battles come trooping through a door, arm in arm and chatting like best buds, even though the Knight Templar villains among them had been attempting to exterminate all the non-villains for the crime of being magical mere minutes before.
- Sisterhood Series: This trope certainly pops up. For example, Charles sends presidential men with gold shields to scare Jack Emery, but the men misconstrue the orders and give Jack a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in the book Payback. Jack Emery knows that Charles is responsible for this, but after the book Free Fall, in which Jack becomes an honorary member of the Vigilantes and is revealed as this to the entire group, it seems that Jack has pretty much forgotten about the whole affair. Also, Jack and Ted Robinson start out as friends, become enemies by the book Free Fall, but once Ted more or less becomes a member by the book Collateral Damage, it's all cool now. Although Jack did say that they are trying to take it one step at a time.
- Star Wars Legends:
- Particularly in media set during the early days of the Rebel Alliance, the Rebels are such a small presence that they're always eager for new recruits, even recruits who have defected from the Empire. Even when these former Imperials have killed Rebels. Some of their best people are ex-Imperials who quit for various reasons. By the time of the X-Wing Series, around three or four years after Endor, attitudes have changed and members of the New Republic are suspicious of new ex-Imperials; Wedge Antilles is very ready to forgive former enemies, even ones he's flown against personally, but he's the exception. He and other characters argue about whether it's ever too late to change. An in-universe decade later in Black Fleet Crisis, Admiral Ackbar also calls out one of his officers for being unwilling to swear Plat Mallar, a refugee fighter pilot from a nominally Imperial world massacred by the Yevetha, into the New Republic Defense Force, rhetorically asking him how many heroes of the Rebellion would have gotten in under the NRDF's new recruiting standards.
- A repeated theme throughout numerous works mention that while Luke Easily Forgave Darth Vader for years of death and destruction after ten minutes of good behaviour (admittedly good behaviour that was essential in toppling The Empire), the rest of the galaxy most certainly did not, and still generally consider him one of the greatest evils in galactic history. Leia in particular was originally outraged that Luke would forgive the "monster" that tortured her (and said something similar directly to Anakin Skywalker's Force ghost in The Truce at Bakura), and later decided Anakin was essentially a good man, he was also a good man that did horrible things.
- Kyp Durron. Despite turning to the dark side and wiping out an entire solar system in the Jedi Academy Trilogy, everyone seems to forgive him once he helps destroy the Sun Crusher. In his defence, he was under the influence of Exar Kun's ghost. Later works in Legends almost uniformly portray Durron as The Atoner, and in I, Jedi, protagonist Corran Horn (a former Space Police officer) comes to view accepting him back into the Jedi Order as a kind of community service.
- Tortall Universe: In Song of the Lioness, King Roald the Peacemaker quickly forgives Alanna for her Sweet Polly Oliver deception, which is understandable since she just unmasked and stopped Roger's plot to take the throne which involved (among other things) slowly killing the Queen. When Roger apparently comes back from the dead, though, Roald gives him his lands and position in court right back because he hates conflict.
- The Twilight Saga:
- In New Moon, when Edward breaks up with Bella he gives her a number of different excuses and pretty much blatantly lies to her and hurts her feelings as he leaves. She then spends most of the book in a stupor because of this. Not once does she bring this up when they are reunited at the end of the book.
- In Eclipse, Edward bribes Alice to essentially kidnap Bella while he's away and hold her hostage in their house. This includes spying on Bella while she's at school, not letting her out of the house, and almost not letting her use the phone. Bella is understandably angry with Edward because of this, but the instant he comes back, she forgets all about that and starts making out with him.
- Lissa Dragomir and Mia Rinaldi used to be bitter enemies in Vampire Academy. They hurt each other deeply at every opportunity. After Mia's mother is killed, Lissa has a change of heart and befriends her.
- Warrior Cats:
- During the fifth book of Omen of the Stars, Hollyleaf returns to ThunderClan and nobody cares about her crimes, even when they find out that she killed Ashfur.
- An unintentional example in the Expanded Universe manga Ravenpaw's Path. During Shattered Peace, Ravenpaw and Barley are chased off the farm they live on by the farmer because he is tricked into thinking they killed his chickens. The farmer says that if he sees them again, he'll shoot them. However, when they come back and defeat the rogues who took over their home in The Heart of a Warrior, the farmer doesn't care, despite still thinking they killed his chickens.
- A rather odd example in Tigerclaw's Fury. In the Warriors universe, fleeing from battle before your leader tells you to do so would be considered treachery and cowardice. Fleeing from battle when Tigerclaw is your leader would be considered suicidal. But the cats who abandon him when it looks like he's losing don't get any sort of comeuppance.
- In the fifth book in A Vision Of Shadows, Needletail is allowed into StarClan in spite of treacherously helping Darktail overthrow Rowanstar and take over ShadowClan. Not helping her case is when Needletail tells cats blaming themselves for the fiasco that they should blame Rowanstar instead for being a weak leader. But cats don't talk negatively about her, and Violetshine (the young cat whom Needletail had manipulated) calls her a hero and even names her daughter after her.
- Worm: Armsmaster gets a dose of this trope as well. After violating a truce to defend Brockton Bay from a giant monster so he can get all the glory and then revealing Skitter's identity as an informant during the aftermath, he is placed under house-arrest and striped of his titles. His actions even earn him a nomination into the Slaughterhouse Nine when they come to town, but he uses the chaos to join a different team under a different name. Under his new identity, Armsmaster acts like more a hero, but is never questioned more than once for his past actions, as he's now on the side of good. That said, the heroes not exactly being good people either is a major theme.
