Tiny Tyrannical Girl

She's small. Short. Petite. Vertically challenged. Yet, she acts like the worst of dictators.

She tells everyone what to do, and expects them to obey. Threats ensue if people don't. Sometimes even physical violence. Maybe she's Compensating for Something?

Perhaps it's the incongruity of a small young girl ordering people around as if she were the big alpha male, but it's a pretty common character design. Some people think she's cute. Others think she's annoying. Either way, this is a visually and verbally striking character and is rarely forgotten. Making large men the target of her orders just adds to the fun.

Often justified by having her be a spoiled rich kid or even royalty. Other times, she's just the only daughter in a family full of males, and her father and/or her older brothers spoil her immensely. At others, she's a mostly normal girl but either has a serious lack of social skills or is scared of being steamrolled by taller/older/etc. people, so she covers up her insecurities with aggressive behavior. She's usually pre-puberty age, but sometimes it can creep up into the teen years. There's a good chance when someone acts bossy and aggressive to them, she'll hate being so without a hint of self-awareness. It's possible for her to have character development and learn either humility or wisdom, but other times she'll never learn.

Certainly some Truth in Television, as plenty of parents and grandparents can confess to being amused by their daughter ordering them about in a very decisive manner.

Compare The Napoleon and Bratty Half-Pint. A gender-bent version could also be Tiny Schoolboy, but there are nicer forms of the character as well.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Teruko Okura from Bungo Stray Dogs is the Fiery Redhead vice captain of the Hunting Dogs with a childlike appearance, infamously known for intimidating her opponents with bloodlust and violent tendencies, earning her nickname as the "Queen of Bloody Thorns." In terms of combat, her ability, Gasp of the Soul, allows Teruko to manipulate age on anyone she touches, which is the big reason why she is feared by her allies and enemies alike.
• Katyusha of Girls und Panzer is a highschooler about half the size of every other character with a personality best described as channelling Stalin's ghost.
• Nonon Jakuzure of Kill la Kill looks like a petite Rose-Haired Sweetie who surrounds herself with stuffed animals, but is actually this, and totally domineering and aggressive when fighting. A big clue is that, of the Elite Four's Animal Motifs, hers is a snake.
• Evangeline and Anya from Negima! Magister Negi Magi. Evangeline is a Really 700 Years Old vampire who rather enjoys being the Token Evil Teammate, while Anya is Negi's Childhood Friend who has A-Cup Angst and takes it out on other girls.
• Nurse Hitomi's Monster Infirmary: Chisa Osanai is the shortest in the class, actually shrinking day to day, and she has quite the Height Angst about it. She's rather bossy and blunt, though it's only because she cares so much about her best friend Kyouko (she actually used to be taller than Kyouko before puberty).
• One Piece:
  • While Nami is older than most examples (18 years, 20 after the Time Skip), she still has the traits - she is the shortest and (probably) physically weakest member of the Straw Hat crew, but she is certainly also the most bossy and hot-tempered member, and she more or less becomes the de facto captain during the crew's daily life on their ship because Luffy cannot be relied upon to do this himself.
  • Sugar to the Donquixote Family. She's a little girl (but is actually a young woman), who's enough of a Spoiled Brat that she routinely bosses her minder around, even though he's one of the top 3 executives. There is a good reason for the family to keep her safe, though. Her Devil Fruit power to make enemies into toys and Ret-Gone them from people's memories has helped keep a lot of the Family's secrets hidden.
• Jane Turner from Onegai! Samia-don had more than one inkling of this, being small and pudgy but very stubborn and prone to tantrums when things didn't go her way... which always sent the Psammead into fits since her tears could potentially kill him.
• Tatsumaki (Tornado) from One-Punch Man. Only problems? She's 28, the older of two sisters and the second-best hero around. She believes she's compensating for her younger sister, Fubuki (Blizzard), but Fubuki is quite capable in her own right.
• Shinku from Rozen Maiden treats Jun like a manservant despite being a just over two-foot-tall porcelain doll who is dependent on him for the energy to move and fight and for a roof to stay under.
• Amy Rose from Sonic X is often a Bratty Half-Pint who loudly whines or even threatens people when she doesn’t get her way.

Comic Books

• Princess Morbucks in The Powerpuff Girls. In the comic book story "Spare Tyrant," she buys a small country called Splatvia, proclaims herself as ruler, establishes a militia and holds sway over the citizens after neutralizing the girls' powers.

Comic Strips

• Lucy from Peanuts isn't known as the "World's Number-One Fussbudget" for nothing; she does what she wants, will shout very loudly to get her way, and will slug the nearest person next to her when she doesn't.

Fan Works

• Danganronpa 52: Despair From the Heart: Rikona is about the size of a third-grader and acts like a spoiled princess, attempting to order the other students around and calling everyone a peasant.

Films — Animation

• Darla Dimple, from Cats Don't Dance is an outright villainous example; she's a famous and beloved child actress and the star of Mammoth Pictures, but in contrast to her many starring roles, she's secretly a Spoiled Brat Enfant Terrible who exploits her position as the main star of the studio and the darling of owner L.B Mammoth to crush anyone else who might possibly take away any spotlight from her, especially the funny animals employed by the studio (an allegory for the segregation of Hollywood in the 1930's when the movie takes place).

Films — Live-Action

• In Remember the Titans, pretty little blonde Sheryl Yoast yells at the football players as she assists her father coach.

Literature

• And I Darken has Lada, the main character, who isn't just bossy but will get violent if you don't obey her. Once her little brother Radu (by now far taller than her) watches with amusement how, when planning an attack, all the men in the room listen to her despite the fact she's the shortest one there.
• The first request of Aria the Scarlet Ammo's titular character to Kinji is to become her slave. She later orders the same thing to Shirayuki, and sometimes talks about how she has to "train" them. Don't try to disobey, or she'll make you full of airholes. She also gets very jealous whenever Kinji gets too close to another girl.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Karrin Murphy is a detective in charge of a small department in the Chicago PD meant to investigate and handle supernatural threats. As an expert marksman and swordsman, she is a true terror on the battlefield. Using a holy blade, she once chopped the head of an elder vampire and didn't stop to break a sweat. Knight of the Cross Sanya's epithet for her is "Tiny... but fierce."
  • The Archive is the living repository of all knowledge that is written or typed. The Archive has existed since ancient Greece and is passed down from mother to daughter on a family line. She is a Power with a capital P on the level of some gods. She once killed hosts of fallen angels using the bare minimum of magic. She did this when her current incarnation was just twelve years old. When she was five, she had enough power to set off Harry's warning system a few blocks away. Her bodyguard and surrogate father is a world-class assassin who can find her a bit spooky.
• Louise from The Familiar of Zero is super-aggressive, prone to violent outbursts, and fond of physical abuse, near-exclusively towards her familiar Saito. She's also very short and Compensating for Something, namely her A-Cup Angst.
• In A Feast for Crows, ten-year-old Willow rules the inn she lives in, and all the other children that work in it, with an iron fist.
• Tara the Terrible in the Goosebumps book The Cuckoo Clock of Doom REALLY lives up to her name. She's seven years old and makes her older brother, Michael's life a living hell by making him step in a huge wad of gum, embarrassing him in front of his crush, ruining his birthday party, and even gets him beat up by an older kid. What's more is that not only do his parents condone all of their daughter's sordid deeds, they even refuse to believe Michael when he tells them about Tara's true nature.
• Dalian from The Mystic Archives of Dantalian appears to be shaping up to be this, ordering Huey around like he's a servant, or she's a little girl he should be doing everything for, though she's a more subdued example.
• Ikkyu Tensai from Nanana's Buried Treasure is a combination of this trope and Sherlock Homage. While she has a tendency to boss other people around, it manifests most often when she's trying to show off her genius.
• Mary from The Secret Garden, mocked as "Mary Mary, quite contrary". It's seen as a negative trait, but one that allows her to go toe to toe with her cousin, the rich Spoiled Brat.
• In A Series of Unfortunate Events book 5, The Austere Academy, the Baudelaire siblings go to a Boarding School of Horrors and meet Carmelita Spats, a girl who's a year or so behind Violet, significantly shorter, sweet to adults, and an absolute terror to other kids. To the point where she teams up with Count Olaf himself to keep tormenting the Baudelaires after Prufrock Prep is shut down. And even he usually accedes to her demands if they don't get in the way of his own schemes.
• Toradora!: Known around school as the "Palmtop Tiger" for her short, "doll-like" body, her violent disposition, and her name sounding a lot like the English word "tiger", Taiga Aisaka is truly a force to be reckoned with, despite standing at only 4'9". She also happens to be a walking deconstruction of this kind of character — her stature and lack of curves badly screw up her sense of self-worth, thus her aggressive approach to other people (which is combined with other factors) turns her into a kid with deep emotional scars.
• The Twelve Kingdoms has Shushou, Empress of Kyou. Once the spoiled but also determined daughter of a rich merchant, she decided to save her run-down country by making the dangerous pilgrimage needed to see if she had what it took to become the Queen. Not only she turned out to be the real deal, but she has reigned very wisely and shrewdly over her lands — yet none would guess it upon seeing the orders come from a tiny, bossy, still spoiled girl in frilly clothes.

Live-Action TV

• Bernadette in The Big Bang Theory. She's under 5 ft but still scares the bejesus of her friends, husband, and co-workers (this includes her boss). When the pharmaceutical company she and Penny works for discontinues free coffee for employees, everyone is so afraid to tell her they just start pooling money to pay for it themselves. The only people shown not to be afraid of her are her father and, in one episode, a drunk Sheldon.
  Sheldon: She's so tiny! It's funny when she's mad!
• Lucy from the Criminal Minds episode "Supply & Demand" is a non-humorous example. A tiny, fine-boned young woman in her twenties, Lucy maintains total control over a human trafficking ring made up of huge, heavily muscled thugs.
• Mad Men: While not as scary and commanding as her taller work peers Joan Holloway Harris and Don Draper can get, 5'3" Peggy Olson went from a Shrinking Violet Secretary to a commanding to the point of prickliness Copy Chief.
• 9-year-old Sarah in the first season of Masterchef Junior US shows this when she was the loudest cheerleader during the whipping cream challenge.
• Odd Squad is an organization run by kids, most of whom are a few years shy of their teens. The youngest kid at Odd Squad (not counting baby Agent Orson) is Ms. O, the Cute, but Cacophonic Little Miss Badass Black Boss Lady in charge of Precinct #13579. She's loud, tough, and every agent in her precinct is terrified of incurring her anger. Later episodes play with this, showing that beneath all the yelling is a Reasonable Authority Figure and her more tyrannical tendencies are downplayed.
• The Office (US): Angela, in all her bossy, judgmental, diminutive glory.
• Several of the not-yet school-aged divas on Toddlers & Tiaras. One show had a 4-year-old ordering her mother around and haranguing her for not doing things right. Cut to the Confession Cam as her mother praises the behavior for showing her daughter's "dominance".
• Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger: Umeko/Deka Pink has elements of it. She has the shortest stature of the Dekarangers, but is by no means small. She's much more hotblooded than her female companion Jasmine, but she's in no way abusive. Also? She tends to claim herself as the leader of Dekarangers, but whenever she did that, things just never go her way.

Video Games

• Blue Archive: Clocking in at 4 foot 7 is Sorasaki Hina, The Leader of the Prefect Team and their strongest member, with such an iron grip on her subordinates that her Number Two and Overzealous Underling Ako only has the nerve to act on her own and unsanctioned when Hina is away on business. Even then, she completely loses her nerve the moment Hina returns to 'politely' ask where she is and what she's doing, with Hina being very quick to put a stop to Ako's unsanctioned mission the moment she realises what's going on.
• Chest: Rosy wants to defeat Zong to prove her strength, so she constantly hounds him with pranks. She's also the shortest party member at 140 cm, to the point where the status screen shows only her head, unlike the other party members.
• Disgaea:
  • Etna, a relatively young demon, is an abusive Bad Boss to Prinnies, particularly in their spinoff series Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?.
  • Raspberyl from the third game is about four feet tall, but also the school's most feared delinquent, capable of terrorizing demons far larger than her...into picking up litter and donating blood.
• Tori of Ensemble Stars! is a Gender-Inverted Example: though he's in high school he looks like a 10-year-old (being by far the shortest member of the cast) and deliberately cultivates a cutsey, childlike appearance, complete with pink hair, oversized jumper, and a little teddy bear hanging out of his pockets. However, he is also a Royal Brat who flaunts his status in the student council over everyone else and regularly refers to people as 'slaves', ordering them around at his own whim. Only Eichi does he truly see as above him, and is in fact desperate to please him. Over the course of the year, however, he undergoes Character Development, and while he remains bossy, becomes much more empathetic to those around him.
• Fake Happy End: Karin is the shortest party member and pressures the others into climbing the tower faster with little explanation The reason she's so impatient is because the tower will temporarily disappear if they take too long and because taking too long causes them to become invisible to the outside world.
• Little Miss Snarker Nah from Fire Emblem: Awakening is the shortest and among the youngest of the Future Children group, and despite being a good person at heart, due to several insecurities and issues that come from her and her friends growing up in a Crapsack World, she can also be very awkward, bossy and pushy.
• Amy Rose from Sonic the Hedgehog is sometimes portrayed as a Bratty Half-Pint who throws temper tantrums and whacks people with her mallet when they irritate her. She has grown out of this in recent years, though.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Deku Princess from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Upon being rescued from Woodfall Temple and finding out that an innocent monkey is being punished by her father the Deku King for allegedly kidnapping her, she has Link bring her back to the Deku Palace, where she proceeds to angrily pounce upon her father and direct a Death Glare at the other Deku Scrubs as she demands the monkey be freed.
  • Midna from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess spends the first half of the game mocking Zelda of her (and Hyrule's) plight and belittling Link in his quest. It's not until Link and Zelda save her from death that she starts growing up.

Visual Novels

• Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: Hiyoko Saionji is the smallest and youngest-looking of the students, but she's also a brat and a foul-mouthed bully. No one seems particularly sorry to find she was one of the victims in Chapter 3, even if it was only because she stumbled upon the real killer trying to set up a fake suicide.
• Ilyasviel von Einsbern from Fate/stay night is very bossy toward her servant Berserker, and even to Shirou.
• At 4'10", Princess Rayfa Padma Khura'in of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice is the second shortest girl in the cast, only beaten out by the ludicrously short Pearl Fey (who, at 4'6", is short enough that she would be considered to have dwarfism in real life). Rayfa is, naturally, a very bossy tsundere.

Webcomics

• Bad Moon Rising has Madison, who is noticeably shorter than almost everyone else in the cast, and gleefully bullies everyone about to get what she wants.
• Katamari features Ichigo; she only comes up to The Prince's waist, and Macho is even taller, yet she bosses them around with ease. The Future Prince explicitly describes her as 'fierce'.

Web Original

• The Nostalgia Chick is a rare example of an adult woman being this. She's 5'2" and tries to invoke Kawaiiko but is really a Psychopathic Womanchild and is dominantly abusive to everyone.

Western Animation

• Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender is a champion of an underground earthbending ring and regularly both defeats and trash-talks grown men several times her size. When she's teaching Aang earthbending, she becomes a Drill Sergeant Nasty in the process and nicknames him "twinkletoes" soon after meeting him. And she hasn't changed her demeanor in The Legend of Korra.
• Sarah from Ed, Edd n Eddy, who is one of the most violent kids in the Cul-de-sac (her older brother Ed is absolutely terrified of her), and about the second smallest overall.
• Pistol on Goof Troop. Though she doesn't threaten much beyond tattling, her persistence at trying to persuade people to give her what she wants causes everyone in her family to either cave or pass the baton. She's just as good at bossing her older brother around as her father is.
• Mandy from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is tyrannical, bossy and mean. In fact, almost everyone in the show is afraid of her.
• Heloise from Jimmy Two-Shoes is not merely bossy and mean, but a sadistic psychopath. Even her boss, Lucius Heinous VII, knows better than to get on her bad side.
• Vendetta from Making Fiends, an evil little green girl and the maker of the titular fiends with which she uses to force the people of her home town of Clamsdale to cater to her whims, while terrifying them For the Evulz. The only one in town she doesn't have under her thumb is her "friend", Charlotte, a Nice Girl too innocent and naive/dumb to even register Vendetta's attempts at intimidation/to kill her.
• Little Suzy Johnson of Phineas and Ferb. She emotionally and physically abuses those who threaten to take attention from her family, then gaslights the people she's manipulating by acting docile and cute when said family appears.
• Princess Morbucks in The Powerpuff Girls is the same age as the titular superheroes and also one of the main villains of the show.
• Angelica from Rugrats, although she seems like a big bully rather than tiny since she's three and the protagonists are babies.
• Amy Rose from Sonic Boom is a very bossy 12-year-old girl.

Real Life

• This poor boy knows you're doomed when one of these girls decides to marry you. You'll find plenty more like this on YouTube. Demonstrating that it's not just amusing in fiction (as long as she's focused on bossing someone else).
• One of several anecdotes about Patty Maloney:
  Mike Collins: I grew up with her in the forties and have known her and have been in contact with her ever since. My parents and I lived next door to the [Maloney] family in Orlando. The whole family was the best and I considered them my second home. Patty was actually the baby sitter for her sister, Diane, and myself, when her parents and my parents would go out together. She [Patty] was smaller and a few years older than we were, but she ruled us with an iron fist. We were actually afraid of her. Of course, we deserved her wrath, since we were somewhat mischievous.

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