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"Manfred and the Witch of the Alps": One of Byron's Byronic heroes
"Mad, bad and dangerous to know."
— Lady Caroline Lamb, before she started having sex with Byron.
The Byronic Hero is a particular sub-type of Anti Hero. A character of larger-than-life flaws who is quite often placed into the story where an Anti Hero would go, he generally has very few (if any) redeeming qualities beyond panache and seldom performs any of the heroic actions that are usually required of an Anti Hero. In some cases, the "hero" part of the name seems to be there only because he tends to be a primary protagonist and thus is a Designated Hero.
Byronic Heroes often have many unpleasant characteristics, such as conflicting emotions, poor integrity, the status of exile, a lack of respect for rank or privilege, a troubled past, cynicism, arrogance, and self-destructiveness. They also have a number of characteristics which had been considered controversial by the audience of the author's time, even if those characteristics have been considered heroic by audiences during other time periods; for example, a Byronic hero is often nonconformist with a dislike for social norms, introspective, a man struggling with his sexuality, and (importantly) a loner. They are generally noted for, however, a vast extant intelligence.
A Byronic hero may have a vaguely suggested horrible crime behind him. This crime may never been made explicit; may indeed be so vague as to suggest that the hero is over-dramatizing himself. This is sometimes wise; Walter Scott had his Byronic hero in The Lady of the Lake commit forgery and lose his impressiveness. If a pirate, bandit, or other criminal, he may never commit the crime during the course of the work, to avoid bringing his crimes down to earth.
Though he can never ( some would say should never) leave his dark past behind him, he can still be redeemed by the Love of a Good Woman. Just be careful that it doesn't have the opposite effect on him...
There have been examples of Byronic heroes since well before Lord Byron's time; Byron just made them famous with both his writings and his private life.
Totally unrelated to Kari Byron.
Examples:
- The original heroes certainly fit this. The original definition of hero (as in, Heracles, Odysseus, etc.) was not a man who did good deeds. It was a man with the strength to do whatever the hell he wanted. Heracles, for instance, was a murderer, a rapist, a thief and a general thug. Most greek 'heroes' were like that.
- Lord Byron himself, of course. He was a serial womanizer who divorced a wife because she had a daughter, not a son. Possibly a junkie, he was...very close to his sister and seemed to be unusually close to his niece...almost fatherly...
- The semi-autobiographical poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage contains one of the earliest Byronic Heroes to be actually named as such.
- Er, Byron's wife left him — for womanizing, possibly specifically because she found out about that thing with his sister — not the other way around.
- Heathcliffe from Wuthering Heights is one of the most famous Byronic Heroes. Admired by millions of people throughout the world, even though he is quite clearly a very
bad evil man.
- Jane Eyre's love interest, Mr. Rochester, is decidedly 'Byronic'. A taste for such heroes seems to have run in the Bronte family.
- Mary Shelley's Frankenstein contains a rather nice Byronic Hero in the eponymous doctor (not the monster!). Victor Frankenstein is a vain, arrogant, self-righteous "creator of life" who births the monster only to satiate his own delusions of grandeur, and gets the shock of his life when he discovers his actions have consequences.
- Lord Ruthven of the novella The Vampyre as well as the Lord Ruthven from a novel by Lady Lamb above, both based on Byron. To be fair, Ruthven (and later, Count Dracula), are both stellar examples of a Byronic villain.
- The Count Of Monte Cristo, who one minor female character nicknames "Lord Ruthven" in reference to his pallor and mannerisms.
- And by logical extension, the Count of Monte Cristo in the anime Gankutsuou.
- Dream of the Endless in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comics.
- Sir Apropos of Nothing, who only became a squire because he would be killed otherwise. He loathes long tales of heroic derring-do, and even became a full-fledged villain for a while.
- Grigoriy Aleksandrovich Pechorin in Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time is both a good example and possibly a deconstruction, being very self-aware and all the more miserable for it. Also, he's not even the protagonist as such and dies "off-screen". The author apparently intended to stretch the idea of the Byronic Hero to its limits:
"You will again tell me that a human being cannot be so wicked, and I will reply that if you can believe in the existence of all the villains of tragedy and romance, why wouldn't believe that there was a Pechorin?".
- Jonathan Strange ends up as one for a while, although he did have a heroic motive. It was lampshaded with Strange explaining that he picked up some of Lord Byron's style from hanging out with him.
- Tsukihime's Tohno Shiki's split personality (Nanaya Shiki) is basically a murderous amoral lustful sociopath who seriously enjoys killing (and violating the female) non-humans. Despite all these, his killing instincts are the only reason Shiki can survive against his inhuman opponents, and it is highly likely that the entire story would not have been able to begin if it were not for Nanaya Shiki's homicidal impulse that arises around non-humans.
- Gully Foyle in The Stars My Destination starts out as this; he lives entirely to take revenge on the ship that declined to rescue him from his own crippled spacecraft (not the crew, mind you, just the ship; he's not that bright) and stops at nothing to do so, including raping perhaps the one completely likable character in the whole book. However, he gradually becomes more of a traditional hero and even a messiah of sorts.
- Travis Touchdown from No More Heroes seems to fit this trope quite nicely, being a Heroic Sociopath with more character flaws than an average politician.
- Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass, is arrogant, largely selfish (killing his own troops, and only feeling sad since his friend's dad died), lying to his own men about killing more of his allies, abandoning his men to save his sister, and slaughtering men and women largely out of revenge. Due to using an Evil Eye (and we do mean evil) he ends up losing most of what he cared about. While Lelouch sincerely wants to make the world a better place, his methods are so devious and underhanded that it's impossible to call him Chaotic Good. In the end, he succeeds in his noble goal of uniting the world... by becoming the evilest overlord in history.
- That last one is a case of Alternative Character Interpretation: yes, he did become the evillest overlord in history and it did unite the world... against him. And all according to plan. A plan that involves his best friend killing him at the very end of it.
- For a good period of some of the later series of Angel Wesley Wyndam-Price fills the the role of Byronic Hero as a cynic, self-destructive drunkard with a troubled past and horrible crime behind him and only a vast intellect to sustain him.
- Sol Badguy from the Guilty Gear series is often boorish, slovenly, aloof, ill-mannered, far more intelligent and well-informed than his appearance would indicate, and is the perpetrator of one of the most awful crimes in that world: being co-creator of the Gears. He might be a loose fit (perhaps more fitting as an Anti-Hero) due to his gruff concern for Dizzy, his (albeit rather violent) almost-brotherly relationship with Ky Kiske, and his deceptively high sense of self-sacrifice (In D&D parlance, he's very much Chaotic, but also most likely Good
 ).
- Raistlin Majere of the Dragonlance books fits this trope perfectly. He's arrogant, ruthless, cynical, emotionally troubled, and ultimately evil. He's also highly intelligent, strong-willed, and capable of extraordinary bravery.
- Bun-Bun from Sluggy Freelance, while normally just a Heroic Sociopath, becomes increasingly Byronic during "Holiday Wars" and "Oceans Unmoving." The only part of the Byronic template he doesn't fit is the brooding part. If Bun-Bun ever gets in a brooding mood, he just beats someone up instead.
- Dom Claude Frollo from Victor Hugo's The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, despite being the novel's primary antagonist, fits the mold of a Byronic hero. A compassionate, fatherly person for most of his life, by the time the novel begins, he, while still brilliant, is isolated by his alchemical studies and ultimately doomed by his lust for Esmerelda.
- Averted in Blackadder where a Byronic hero is someone who wanders round Italy in a big shirt trying to get laid.
- But also played relatively straight in the character of Blackadder himself, who's got all the typical Byronic qualities... except for the charisma.
- Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald from Cracker was a Byronic Criminal Psychologist. Best summed up by the conversation:
Thomas: Why do you drink so much?
Fitz: I like it.
Thomas: And smoke so much?
Fitz: I like it.
Thomas: And you gamble as well?
Fitz: Yes, I like it.
- The title character of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin can be both seen as an example and a deconstruction. On one hand, he fits the mold in his cynical, self-destructive nature, he has more than a little of the Upper Class Twit in him, and is kind of ineffectual compared to similar characters.
- Todd Manning of One Life To Live (Or So I Heard) is kind of a Heel Face Revolving Door version of this, sometimes a Byronic Villain, other times a Byronic Hero, but always Byronic.
- Widget Hackwrench, the initial Big Bad of the Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers fanfic Under the Bridge not only becomes one, but even describes herself as such.
- Wylfred from Valkyrie Profile is essentially a petty grudge seeking man whom blames the death of his sister and his mother's sanity on the fact that his dad was taken by the Valkyrie. He then goes on a plot to kill the Valkyrie.
- Edward Cullen from Twilight has most of these traits: conflicted emotions, a dark past, cynicism, arrogance, loner-ness, and definitely self-destructive tendencies.
- Dr. Greg House.
- Lord Asriel takes the Byronic hero to a cosmic scale.
- Jake La Motta from the film Raging Bull.
- Shinn Asuka from Gundam SEED Destiny, whose hate of ORB brings him much suffering and Character Derailment.
- Tara Chace from Queen and Country
- Both Sirius Black and Severus Snape in Harry Potter.
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