History GreyAndGrayMorality / Literature

* ''Literature/StarWarsVisionsRonin'' takes place in an AlternateUniverse to the normal ''Franchise/StarWars'' setting, where this trope is in effect: here, the Jedi are much more like historical Samurai, serving as the military arm of various feudal lords, with a strong MyMasterRightOrWrong mentality, making them far less heroic and noble than their mainline-counterparts; the Sith were a faction of [[DefectorFromDecadence Defectors From Decadence]] who rebelled against this system, but they also committed a ''lot'' of atrocities in the process (the main reason their rebellion survived as long as it did was liberal use of {{Necromancy}}), so they can't really be seen as heroic rebels either. It's telling that the cast of characters includes both Ex-Sith ''and'' Ex-Jedi who are trying to be TheAtoner for actions taken in service to their respective sides.

* ''Literature/TheBlackArrow'': Set during the Wars of the Roses, the story depicts both Lancastrians and Yorkists as people doing bad things for -they think- a just cause. Protagonist Dick Shelton joins the House of York out of convenience, but he does not believe his side is morally superior, and he has serious concerns regarding their leader Richard Plantagenet's treatment of prisoners of war.

* ''[[Literature/{{Reckless}} The Mirrorworld Series]]'': Kami'en and the Goyl versus Empress Therese and the Imperials. The Goyl seem like the logical villains until you find out more about [[ManipulativeBastard Therese's]] ruthless tactics. Not to mention, their hatred of humans is a natural response to years of human aggression. Then again, Therese and Austrya aren't entirely unsympathetic either...

* The war between the Hominum Empire and the orcs in ''Literature/TheSummonerTrilogy'' is this. While the orcs may be AlwaysChaoticEvil who have long preyed on the humans, the Hominum Empire escalated the conflict by invading and clearing the orcs’ forests to fuel their industrial revolution, dragging the two races into a nearly-decade-long war with casualties so high, the humans have resorted to using Child Soldiers and conscripting prisoners.

* Discussed and defied in ''Literature/CarpeJugulum''. Reverend Oats, a pastor from a formerly fire-and-brimstone faith that's undergone massive schisming, reformation, and debate, tells Granny Weatherwax that moral questions have many shades of grey. She scoffs at the idea, as her life has been a grudging understanding that knowing the difference between right and wrong she must always choose right and that any shades of grey are merely "white that's got grubby."
* ''Literature/WolfHall'', set as it is in the court of Henry VIII, has a lot of this. Thomas Cromwell comes off as the most sympathetic character because he's the protagonist and displays many admirable qualities--he's a good father, incredibly loyal to Cardinal Wolsey, and for most of the story has a genuine admiration for Henry, but as Henry becomes increasingly volatile, Cromwell follows his orders not only to keep his own head but to exact revenge on his enemies. Thomas More is presented as TheFundamentalist who unapologetically tortures and burns heretics, but who is willing to die on the block for his own faith. Anne Boleyn, though often unpleasant, is nonetheless to be pitied as she's led to the scaffold. The Tudor court was not a pleasant place to live.
* In ''Literature/TheWitchlands'', most people aren't truly evil or completely good. Most of them are simply trying to protect their families and their countries, leading to conflicts of interest.

* ''Literature/TheIliad'', by Creator/{{Homer}}, and the rest of the Literature/TrojanCycle, making this OlderThanFeudalism.

** Daenerys Targaryen is "heroic" because she is fighting to reclaim the Iron Throne, despite being constantly reminded that her father, Aerys II, was a lunatic and that commoners would rather be left alone. She initially believed that the commoners secretly prayed for her return, but even when disabused of this notion she still thinks of wreaking revenge on the "usurpers" instead of considering if Westeros even ''wants'' the Targaryens back in the first place. As the story progresses, she becomes a crusader against slavery and exploitation but conquers whole cities in the effort to eradicate the practice which proves equally problematic. She also shows no remorse for ordering deaths, including burning a woman alive.

* ''Literature/OldMortality'': On the one hand the Covenanters are [[TheFundamentalists fundamentalists]] and mostly unpleasant people to be around. On the other they have legitimate grievances about the way the government's treated them.

* David Drake's Hammer's Slammers does a good job of showing how this trope [[CombatPragmatist applies]] [[IDidWhatIHadToDo in]] {{war|IsHell}}; both the titular mercenaries and their opponents do some [[ShootTheDog pretty]] [[ObligatoryWarCrimeScene despicable]] things in order to hold their own losses down, like nuking a rebel stronghold because attacking it any other way would result in unacceptable losses for the attackers. When the series deviates from Gray and Gray, it's usually to go to {{Black and Gray Morality}}, especially if [[TheUnfettered Major]] [[PsychoSidekick Joachim Steuben]] is involved.

** The White Council is portrayed as axe-crazy templars in the first few books due to picking on Harry personally. Later we seed they're genuinely serving the greater good, and that that good is actually the best of a lot of bad options. Even once Harry realizes they are genuinely trying to do good he strongly disagrees with their hardline stance on executing people who break the laws of magic, as they are often (like he was at one point) just teenagers who were never even told the laws of magic in the first place.

* The situation between humans and centaurs as alluded to in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix''. On the one hand, the Ministry's laws regarding centaurs clearly imply a very unfair situation [[InjunCountry similar to that of the Native Americans]] with a hefty dose of implied racism, and that Centaurs do not have anywhere near as many rights in the eyes of the law as they almost definitely deserve. On the other hand, the centaurs aren't the most sympathetic people themselves. The centaurs we see are shown, with only one exception, to be [[SmallNameBigEgo pathologically arrogant assholes]] with backwards and barbaric cultural practices and they're stirred to a murderous rage by anything even tangentially insinuating a master-servant relationship between humans and centaurs (a concept so loose that it includes a human admitting to performing a BatmanGambit on them or even a centaur ''accepting a paying job from a human''), and even the nicest one we see, Firenze, says some rather patronizing and offensive things about humans in the first lesson he teaches.

-->'''Celia:''' I understand the difference between right and wrong, and what you've done is wrong!
-->'''Dr. Hudson''': You're being naïve. Wouldn't it be simple if everything was really as you see it? Black and white, right and wrong. But I'm afraid life is more complicated than that. Those messy grey areas keep getting in the way.
* [[Literature/{{Reckless}} The Mirrorworld Series]]: Kami'en and the Goyl versus Empress Therese and the Imperials. The Goyl seem like the logical villains until you find out more about [[ManipulativeBastard Therese's]] ruthless tactics. Not to mention, their hatred of humans is a natural response to years of human aggression. Then again, Therese and Austrya aren't entirely unsympathetic either...
* Literature/TheNexusSeries: Multiple factions come into conflict over how to use the titular Nexus 5, which allows a user to have a permanent and unobtrusive BrainComputerInterface. The developers of said technology just want to see how many cool things they can do with it, believing the benefits outweigh the risks. As soon as the technology becomes available, however, terrorists and criminals begin using it to create slaves and suicide bombers. At the same time, parents of autistics use Nexus to communicate with their afflicted children and help them socialize. People using Nexus start to resent being subjugated by the anti-transhuman laws designed to protect the rest of the populace, and some are driven to become exactly the monsters that the laws were drafted to fight. With very few exceptions, it's pretty hard to write one side or the other off as being completely in the wrong.

* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' falls under this trope in the later books. At first it's a pretty clear cut case of the bad guys (the Yeerks, taking over the planet parasitically) and the good guys (the Animorphs, and by extension the Andalites, who also hate the Yeerks). As time wears on, however, it's revealed that the Andalites' response to the Yeerks infesting the Hork-Bajir homeworld was to release a deadly virus into the atmosphere of the planet, killing nearly all Hork-Bajir on their homeworld. If the Animorphs fail to stop the Yeerk invasion, the Andalites have plans to do exactly the same thing to Earth. As well as that, some of the Yeerks start to be portrayed as true characters, with individual motivations and emotions, instead of just a pack of slugs. Even the Taxxons, giant centipede-like creatures get some of this; they're revealed to be total slaves to their own hunger, literally unable to stop eating as long as there is food around. Then there are the Animorphs themselves; over the course of the books they morph from idealistic kids doing the best they can to a hardened guerrilla force with no qualms about sacrificing the new bunch of idealistic kids in the name of winning the war. This seems to have been [[AnAesop the point of the series]].

* The ''Literature/ChaosWalking'' trilogy is all about this. While Mayor Prentiss is a darker shade of gray, Mistress Coyle and the Answer's methods of stopping him (no matter what the cost) can be those of a terrorist or a freedom fighter. This is heightened when the heroes are forced upon the two different sides, while being aware of how much rubbish the whole war is. Also the fact that it's practically a gender battle heightens the uncertainty of the war. In the third book [[spoiler: they team up in an alliance against the Spackle, even though the Spackle are the ones that were treated so terribly]]

* The ''Franchise/StarWars'' [[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse Expanded Universe]] flies up and down the morality scale DependingOnTheWriter; most of them have pretty clear bad guys, and with Creator/TimothyZahn most of those bad guys [[WhiteAndGreyMorality aren't so bad]], but his book ''Literature/OutboundFlight'' fits here. There are a lot of major characters, but they end up falling into one of three categories: Jedi and civilians on Outbound Flight, Chiss and captives, and Darth Sidious's agent. None of those are entirely good or evil. Outbound Flight is led by Jorus C'baoth, an arrogant and domineering Master who believes himself to be the ultimate authority, and whom the others are reluctant to contradict. The main Chiss character is Thrawn, who... well, he's at his most heroic here, but [[OfficerAndAGentleman he's]] [[ShootTheDog Thrawn]]. Sidious's agent is planning to destroy Outbound Flight, but he doesn't exactly [[CardCarryingVillain cackle]] and he respects Thrawn. The few unambiguously good characters have subplots, but in the end all they're able to do is [[HeroicSacrifice die to save]] fifty-seven out of the fifty thousand who were on Outbound Flight.
* On the one hand DORLA in Kit Whitfield's ''Benighted'' uses police state tactics and functionally, if not officially, operates on a "guilty until proven innocent" mentality. On the other hand they do a dirty, dangerous and very necessary job and get less than zero appreciation for it from the public.

** The Lannisters are "villainous" because they hire people like [[BloodKnight Gregor Clegane]], the [[PsychoForHire Bloody Mummers]] and [[spoiler:[[FaceHeelTurn later House Frey]] (whom the Lannisters [[EvenEvilHasStandards regard with some disgust]] after a bloody violation of SacredHospitality)]]. Despite this, it is mentioned several times that commoners at least respect Tywin (never love him: he brutally suppressed and reversed Aegon V's reforms, much as his sacking of King's Landing was... brutal), because while he might be an {{Abusive Parent|s}} and a [[FourStarBadass certified hard-arse]] you'd [[DisproportionateRetribution never want to cross]], he was nevertheless an excellent ruler who gave Westeros some measure of peace and prosperity while he was [[TheGoodChancellor Hand of the King]] to [[TheCaligula Aerys "The Mad" II Targaryen]]. But he has also gained the ire of other people like House Martell for the murder of Elia and later [[spoiler:Oberyn]] Martell. Even with his ruthless but well meaning decisions, he has left the Riverlands in ruin with millions dead.
** The main Baratheon family is a mixed bag, because King Robert is shown as a charismatic ruler who is at least savvy enough to surround himself with able advisers. On the other hand, his son [[spoiler:(by his wife Cersei through BrotherSisterIncest with Jaime)]] Joffrey is psychotic, immature and capricious, with his only redeeming trait being his yearning to win his father's approval.

** Daenerys Targaryen is "heroic" because she is fighting to reclaim the Iron Throne, despite being constantly reminded that her father, Aerys II, was a lunatic, and that commoners would rather be left alone. She initially believed that the commoners secretly prayed for her return, but even when disabused of this notion she still thinks of wreaking revenge on the "usurpers" instead of considering if Westeros even ''wants'' the Targaryens back in the first place. As the story progress she becomes a crusader against slavery and exploitation but conquers whole cities in the effort to eradicate the practice which proves equally problematic. She also shows no remorse for ordering deaths, including burning a woman alive.

* Daniel Suarez' ''Literature/{{Daemon}}'' series, or more specifically the 2nd book of the Duology ''Freedom™''. While one side is depicted as evil from the beginning of the first novel that notion gradually changes throughout throughout the novel. Furthermore iconic characters of the novel show sympathy, respect and even adoration of key members of their opposing side.

* In ''Literature/LonelyWerewolfGirl'' no one is really heroic; Kalix killed her father, Sarapen is batshit insane, the rest of the werewolves downright callous and manipulative, Moonglow cheats on her boyfriend, Daniel is trying to be a DoggedNiceGuy to Moonglow, Malveria a RetiredMonster, and the Avenaris Guild of werewolf hunters are trigger happy sociopaths.

* ''Literature/FugueForADarkeningIsland'' invokes this trope, 70's Britain split into civil war as thousands of African refugees flee into Europe to escape a nuclear war. The refugees are innocent and desperate, but often violent and thuggish. The fascist government is cruel and oppressive, but the only thing preventing the total collapse of the country. The secessionist movement is liberal and free, but weak and elitist.'

** Judeo-Christian God, [[GodIsGood who is the source of the saintly Knights of the Cross]] mentioned above, [[GoodIsNotNice also has an archangel acting as a spy and assassin.]] The same archangel is the one responsible for all the divine punishments laid waste in the Bible, like the burning of Sodomon and Gomorrah, and the slaying of the firstborns of Egypt. Even beyond that the main purpose of divine agents is to allow people to exercise their free will, not to stop evil, which can leave people very frustrated that God's angels make no effort to stop terrible things from happening.
** The fae courts are more BlueAndOrangeMorality than black and white to begin with, but the almost-human members and even many fae seem to have the same mix of malice and innocence as vanilla mortals. Mab (Queen of Air and Darkness) and the Winter court in general are brutal, vindictive and almost certainly evil by most standards. However they're also responsible for defending the rest of reality from the Outsiders, meaning that in some ways they are the BigGood in the setting.

* The situation between humans and centaurs as alluded to in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix''. On the one hand, the Ministry's laws regarding centaurs clearly imply a very unfair situation [[InjunCountry similar to that of the Native Americans]] with a hefty dose of implied racism, and that Centaurs do not have anywhere near as many rights in the eyes of the law as they almost definitely deserve. On the other hand, the centaurs aren't the most sympathetic people themselves. The centaurs we see are shown, with only one exception, to be [[SmallNameBigEgo pathologically arrogant assholes]] with backwards and barbaric cultural practices, and they're stirred to a murderous rage by anything even tangentially insinuating a master-servant relationship between humans and centaurs (a concept so loose that it includes a human admitting to performing a BatmanGambit on them or even a centaur ''accepting a paying job from a human''), and even the nicest one we see, Firenze, says some rather patronizing and offensive things about humans in the first lesson he teaches.

* Literature/TheNexusSeries: Multiple factions come into conflict over how to use the titular Nexus 5, which allows a user to have a permanent and unobtrusive BrainComputerInterface. The developers of said technology just want to see how many cool things they can do with it, believing the benefits outweigh the risks. As soon as the technology becomes available however, terrorists and criminals begin using it to create slaves and suicide bombers. At the same time, parents of autistics use Nexus to communicate with their afflicted children and help them socialize. People using Nexus start to resent being subjugated by the anti-transhuman laws designed to protect the rest of the populace, and some are driven to become exactly the monsters that the laws were drafted to fight. With very few exeptions, it's pretty hard to write one side or the other off as being completely in the wrong.
* ''Literature/KindlingAshes'': Each side believes that this is a case of BlackAndWhiteMorality but the dual protagonist system shows that each side has grievances. One dragon recalls how humans killed his mate, broke his Flyer, and smashed eggs, while in the next chapter, that human recalls how that same dragon teared down towers and burned humans alive.

* Daniel Abraham's ''The Dragon's Path'', book one of ''The Dagger and the Coin'' series, has, as one of its most sympathetic, likable, and humane characters, a mass murderer who burned down an entire city, killing thousands of innocent civilians, out of pride. One of the main conflicts is between two factions of aristocrats, one of which wants to liberalize the empire, allowing greater representation within government to the common people, but which is willing to use assassination and treason to accomplish its ends, and the other, which is trying to maintain the privileges and powers of the aristocracy, but is more honorable and patriotic.

* In ''Literature/TheKingBeyondTheGate'' Ananais, the whitest morally of the three protagonists, has "freed" prisoners ambushed and killed to prevent them joining the enemy again.

* Discussed and defied in ''Literature/CarpeJugulum''. Reverend Oats, a pastor from a formerly fire-and-brimstone faith that's undergone massive schisming, reformation, and debate, tells Granny Weatherwax that moral questions have many shades of grey. She scoffs at the idea, as her life has been a grudging understanding that knowing the difference between right and wrong she must always choose right, and that any shades of grey are merely "white that's got grubby."

* In ''Literature/TheWitchlands'', most people aren't truly evil or completely good. Most of them are simply trying to protect their families and their countries, leading to conflicts of interests.

* ''Literature/DreambloodDuology'': Whether Gujaareh or Kisua can actually be called morally superior to the other is a constant question in the books, and one that ultimately goes unanswered. Gujaareh's rulers actively deceive their citizens, but Gujaareh has known years and years of peace, while Kisuati enjoy more freedom in a notoriously unstable country and generally look down on anyone not Kisuati for not following in their footsteps.
* In ''Literature/TheMachineriesOfEmpire'', it's hard to say who the good guys are, or whether there actually are any. he choice is between an empire that uses {{brainwashing}} and crushes every rebellion with excessive force, but manages to keep peace, mysterious invaders with their own motives, and a general who wants to overthrow the empire and set people free, but is willing to commit untold atrocities to do so, and all of them have good and bad sides.

* ''Literature/APracticalGuideToEvil'' has this a theme, despite there being concrete proof of Gods above and Gods below, embodiments of BlackAndWhiteMorality , most people are somewhere in the Grey zone. Heroes lie, cheat, steal, even commit mass murder, and Villains Heal, bring order, and invent. There are a handful of pure black factions like Ratlings or Demons, but no pure white ones.

* In ''Literature/{{Worm}}'', almost none of the heroes and villains neatly fit the 'good' or 'bad' labels. Even the best heroes make questionable decisions and the worse ones like Shadow Stalker are needlessly violent and dangerous. Most of the villains care about their friends and family and do their best to avoid needlessly hurting bystanders, and VillainProtagonist Taylor spends the majority of her time actually trying trying to help people. The only really unambiguously evil characters are the Slaughterhouse Nine and the Endbringers, but even then [[spoiler: Bonesaw makes a HeelFaceTurn in the end and the Endbringers help in the fight against Scion.]]

* Creator/JacquelineCarey's ''Literature/TheSundering'' is a subversion of Tolkienesque fantasy where the Morgoth expy is a NobleDemoin AntiVillain, his three lieutenants consist of two [[WoobieDestroyerOfWoirlds Woobies, Detroyers of Worlds]] and an AffablyEvil PunchclockVillain while the forces of light, are lib erally sprinkled with [[KnightTemplar Knight Templars]], including the god they're fighting for

Creator/JacquelineCarey's ''Literature/TheSundering'' is a subversion of Tolkienesque fantasy where the Morgoth expy is a NobleDemoin AntiVillain, his three lieutenants consist of two [[WoobieDestroyerOfWoirlds Woobies, Detroyers of Worlds]] and an AffablyEvil PunchclockVillain while the forces of light, are lib erally sprinkled with [[KnightTemplar Knight Templars]], including the god they're fighting for

* The war between the Hominum Empire and the orcs in ''Literature/TheSummonerTrilogy'' is this. While the orcs may be Always Chaotic Evil who have long preyed on the humans, the Hominum Empire escalated the conflict by invading and clearing the orcs’ forests to fuel their industrial revolution, dragging the two races into a nearly-decade-long war with casualties so high, the humans have resorted to using Child Soldiers and conscripting prisoners.

* In Alexey Vinokurov's ''The Country of Three Lands'' there is a subversion of [[TheGoodTheBadAndTheEvil White, Grey and Black morality]], as the titular three lands are actually called White (for the good guys), Grey (for the in-between fraction), and Black (for ChaoticEvil). However, the White Land practices FantasticRacism and its rulers are WeakWilled enough to betray the main characters for their city's safety; the Black one, while its king does live up to his BigBad title, has many morally gray guys.

* Discussed and defied in ''Discworld/CarpeJugulum''. Reverend Oats, a pastor from a formerly fire-and-brimstone faith that's undergone massive schisming, reformation, and debate, tells Granny Weatherwax that moral questions have many shades of grey. She scoffs at the idea, as her life has been a grudging understanding that knowing the difference between right and wrong she must always choose right, and that any shades of grey are merely "white that's got grubby."

* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' falls under this tropes in the later books. At first it's a pretty clear cut case of the bad guys (the Yeerks, taking over the planet parasitically) and the good guys (the Animorphs, and by extension the Andalites, who also hate the Yeerks). As time wears on, however, it's revealed that the Andalites' response to the Yeerks infesting the Hork-Bajir homeworld was to release a deadly virus into the atmosphere of the planet, killing nearly all Hork-Bajir on their homeworld. If the Animorphs fail to stop the Yeerk invasion, the Andalites have plans to do exactly the same thing to Earth. As well as that, some of the Yeerks start to be portrayed as true characters, with individual motivations and emotions, instead of just a pack of slugs. Even the Taxxons, giant centipede-like creatures get some of this; they're revealed to be total slaves to their own hunger, literally unable to stop eating as long as there is food around. Then there are the Animorphs themselves; over the course of the books they morph from idealistic kids doing the best they can to a hardened guerilla force with no qualms about sacrificing the new bunch of idealistic kids in the name of winning the war. This seems to have been [[AnAesop the point of the series]].

* David Drake's Hammer's Slammers does a good job of showing how this trope [[CombatPragmatist applies]] [[IDidWhatIHadToDo in]] {{war|IsHell}}; both the titular mercenaries and their opponents do some [[ShootTheDog pretty]] [[ObligatoryWarCrimeScene despicable]] things in order to hold their own losses down, like nuking a rebel stronghold because attacking it any other way would result in unacceptable losses for the attackers. When the series deviates from Gray and Gray, it's usually to go to {{Black and GrayMorality}}ay, especially if [[TheUnfettered Major]] [[PsychoSidekick Joachim Steuben]] is involved.

* David Drake's Hammer's Slammers does a good job of showing how this trope [[CombatPragmatist applies]] [[IDidWhatIHadToDo in]] {{war|IsHell}}; both the titular mercenaries and their opponents do some [[ShootTheDog pretty]] [[ObligatoryWarCrimeScene despicable]] things in order to hold their own losses down, like nuking a rebel stronghold because attacking it any other way would result in unacceptable losses for the attackers. When the series deviates from Gray and Gray, it's usually to go to {{Black and Gr|eyMorality}}ay, especially if [[TheUnfettered Major]] [[PsychoSidekick Joachim Steuben]] is involved.

** Renly Baratheon's faction is "heroic" because they fight honorably, have several [[KnightInShiningArmour noble warriors]] on their side, and are one of the few factions that accepts all regardless of status, including women and homosexuals. That said, they are fools who are still fighting a bloody war for personal honor and glory rather than for a legitimate desire to rule Westeros peacefully.