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alt title(s): Daddys Little Villain
Rava serenely contemplating how she will betray and overthrow her uncle.
"If I have children and subsequently grandchildren, I will keep my three-year-old granddaughter near me at all times. When the hero enters to kill me, I will ask him to first explain to her why it is necessary to kill her beloved grandpa. When the hero launches into an explanation of morality way over her head, that will be her cue to pull the lever and send him into the pit of crocodiles. After all, small children like crocodiles almost as much as Evil Overlords and it's important to spend quality time with the grandkids."
She's the daughter/niece/granddaughter/etc. of an Evil Overlord, who shares her parent's ambition, cunning, and/or cruelty. She could be anything from a simple Spoiled Brat or an Overlord in waiting. Also likely to be a Princess (but almost never wear pink, almost).
But she is a villain just like her guardian. Viewers should neither expect her to be The Ingenue nor expect a Heel Face Turn from her, even if she falls for the hero. That would more be her just wanting him for herself than willingly joining his side (and his refusal is likely to inspire Woman Scorned, however little reason she had to believe that he might accept). She may be a Dark Action Girl but never Dark Magical Girl.
Okay, she might team up with the heroes, but only for the same reason any other dragon would team up with them. Then it's enemies again.
Of course if she's above a certain age, she is going to be hot, is often a cooler character than the female lead, and might wear less. If the bad guys are the Yellow Peril or otherwise "Asian-themed", expect her to be a Dragon Lady.
If her father ever gets defeated, she will be the one doing the avenging.
The Distaff counterpart to Overlord Jr.
Compare Mad Scientists Beautiful Daughter (while also the child of the Big Bad, eventually does a Heel Face Turn), The Evil Prince, Protected By A Child.
Contrast Princess Classic.
Examples
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Anime
- Eureka Seven's Anemone is very much this trope towards her commander Dewey Novak, with a dash of Yandere thrown in for good measure. Unlike most, she actually does make a Heel Face Turn in the end.
- HUGE subversion in Dangaioh. Pai Thunder, the Big Girl from the Five Man Band, was actually the daughter of Big Bad Garimoth and had a Face Heel Turn once she recovered her memories. But when Garimoth told her to kill her teammate Roll before taking her back, Pai rebelled and rejoined the group.
- Subverted/Inverted in the Fullmetal Alchemist manga. Wrath's adopted son Selim is not only the villainous homunculus Pride, he actually outranks Wrath in both age, authority, and evilness. Hence, if anything, Wrath is the "little" villain, not the other way around.
- She's not actually his daughter, but the Millennium Earl and Road Kamelot of DGrayMan behave like this.
Comic Books
- Sin, the Red Skull's completely Axe Crazy daughter.
- In the comic book series Empire, Golgath, supreme villainous overlord of the world, has only one joy in life: his sweet, innocent daughter. Only she's not as innocent as he thinks, as she's been sleeping with one of his lieutenants and eventually convinces him to betray her dad for her. Then it turns out she had been manipulating the guy all along, intentionally setting him up to be caught and executed just for her own amusement, and the whole thing was just a way of expressing her disturbing obsessive feelings toward her father.
- Even worse, she poisoned her own mother and made it look like a suicide because she felt she was making Golgath soft.
- Captain Marvel has a good example of the difference between this and Mad Scientists Beautiful Daughter. Marvel's archenemy Sivana has four kids. Two of them are beautiful and good, siding with Captain Marvel. While his other two children are ugly and evil like him.
- Planetary: Flashbacks explains how Doc Brass fought mysterious Fu Manchu-like Hark and eventually convinced him to join the side of the good guys. Hark's daughter Anna, however, had been raised as a villain, survived her father and became a thorn in the heroes's side.
- It Takes A Wizard: The little girl the Corrupt Corporate Executive valued so much that he busted the hero out of his impending death sentence so he could rescue her? Not only did she join the Big Bad in the wasteland of Manhattan, her father supported her decision to do so. Sending the hero on this mission was all part of a grand plan — to avenge Gaia by dethroning humanity from its place at the top of the food chain.
- Recently, in Superman Superman's sister-in-law Lucy Lane has become Superwoman, a supervillain, because she believes dear old dad, General Sam Lane's idea that Superman and the other Kryptonians are a threat to national sercuity.
- Alexandria von Fogg from PS 238.
- Winnowill from Elf Quest was vaguely retconned to be Haken's daughter, though the hinting started pretty early on in the series. She really takes after him... and once she starts living inside Rayek's mind, she flesh-shapes his body to look pretty much exactly like her father's. So Yeah.
Film
- In the Danish film Pusher 3, Serb druglord Milo's daughter clearly wears the pants in the family, ordering her flustered father around to prepare for her 25th birthday party. After Milo discovers that her boyfriend is an independent drug dealer and forces him to buy his product for distribution, his daughter finds out and hardballs his price down. What a family!
- Though we don't get to see them in action, Mr. Han from Enter The Dragon trained his daughters to be his most loyal guard. As Roper says upon finding out how tough they can be, "No one's more loyal than Daddy's little girl."
Literature
- Fah Lo Suee, the daughter of Fu Manchu embodies the "beautiful but at-least-as-evil-as-he" version of the evil mastermind's daughter, making this Older Than Radio.
- Sonia Steiglitz is the beautiful and sadistic Knife Nut daughter of the ex-CIA chief/archaeologist villain of The Takers, a modern Two Fisted Tale by Jerry Ahern.
"My mother would drink while my father was out searching for the damned Gladstone Log. Some nights she'd beat me because she couldn't love him. I'm twenty-six years old. I stopped playing with dolls twenty years ago. I taught myself to hurt things and feel nothing — all so I could be with him when he searched — be with him…it was never my mother — I don't know if he loved her. It was always finding the Gladstone Log…the power…the power he wanted…"
Live Action TV
- Despite not really being his daughter, Faith winds up very much playing this role to The Mayor on the third season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer — she's his loyal Dragon, whom he is clearly protective of. Buffy sending her into a coma led to his one swear word and Buffy taunting him about said defeat led to his defeat. Many scenes between Faith and the Mayor involved him giving her gifts and general life advice alongside assassination missions.
- Nice little call back in the Season Eight comics, showing that Faith remembers him fondly despite her Heel Face Turn.
- In the Star Trek The Original Series episode "The Conscience of the King", the daughter of a former villain in hiding uses their cover as a performing theater troupe to kill off the remaining witnesses to her father's previous crimes as a way of "protecting" him from recrimination. In a subversion, however, her father is extremely displeased with her when he finds out, having hoped to start a legitimate new life in their cover identities, and appalled that the blood on his hands had irreversibly stained her, as well.
- Elle from Heroes.
- Princess Ardala of Buck Rogers In The25th Century
Mythology
- Medea of Classical Mythology is an excellent illustration of what this character type is like when they are in love with the hero. To aid Jason, she murdered her father and siblings, but when Jason married someone else, she murdered his wife and children from that marriage. She's also a major Karma Houdini, since her fate was to become a goddess and get paired with some handsome hero in the Elysian Fields, although it makes some sense, as she was part-divine, and from her actions, she was clearly following in the footsteps of the rest of that pantheon.
- Similarly to the above, there is a Jewish folktale about a merchant's son who fell in love with the daughter of the Demon-king Ashmodeus and while she aided him against her father, found that her spouse had a roving eye, and likewise killed his entire human family.
Video Games
- Tabitha/Larissa from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, who is Caulder's Dragon. She's also the most loyal to him (though not slavishly so; for some reason they seem to have a relatively normal father-daughter relationship).
- Nina Cortex, the niece of Dr. Neo Cortex (although it has been speculated that she may actually be his daughter) in the Crash Bandicoot series.
- Wendy O'Koopa from the Super Mario Bros games.
- You'd think Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord would feature this... but it really doesn't. The current Darklord is all Evil Overlord, but according to the intro and the previous game, My Life As A King, her father was an Anti Villain who just wanted to protect monsters and provide them a place to live in peace.. but was more than willing to kill those who stood in the way of this goal.
Western Animation
- Princess Azula in Avatar The Last Airbender.
- Rava from Galtar And The Golden Lance (pictured above) is even more full of scheming and betrayal than her uncle Tormak. Heck, when she's given a Love Potion to agree to an Arranged Marriage, she retaliates by killing her husband when she snaps out of it.
- The adopted (we assume, anyway) daughter of Killer Moth in Teen Titans. She steals her father's technology purely to create mayhem and get Robin's attention.
- And when her boyfriend Fang dumps her she latches on to Robin purely as a trophy boyfriend to make Fang jealous. And unleashes a horde of man eating moths on the city just because cake was inadvertently splattered on her dress when the two boys fought.
- Shreeky from the Care Bears series is a different type. She is spoiled and bratty. And as a villain, she and Beastly act like a Terrible Trio (with No Heart being the leader).
- From Dave The Barbarian, Princess Urmaplotz is pretty much a parody of the concept, as well as the Princess Classic.
- Cerina in Skysurfer Strike Force
- Goldie, Goldfinger's daughter in the animated series James Bond Jr.
- Charmcaster has this sort of relationship with her uncle Hex in Ben 10.
- On the cartoon show Jimmy Neutron, Beautiful Gorgeous, the Femme Fatale daughter of Professor Finbar Calamitous, constantly bickers with daddy when they scheme together. Their one mission together involved kidnapping Action Hero (real and TV star) Jet Fusion.
- Subverted on Phineas And Ferb: the evil Dr. Doofenshmirtz wishes (or deludes himself into believing) that his daughter Vanessa wants to get into "the family business," but in reality she's just a Deadpan Snarker who cares less about good versus evil than, say, whether or not her father's going to embarrass her in front of her friends.
- After seeing "Finding Mary Mc Guffin", This Troper thinks that she may actually play this trope straight in future episodes. Only time will tell...
Real Life
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