Revenge Before Reason / Literature

Those who put Revenge Before Reason in Literature.

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By Author:

• Larry Niven:
  • Known Space:
    • From The Ringworld Engineers:
      "Harvey Mossbauer's family had been killed and eaten during the fourth Man-Kzin war. Many years after the truce and after a good deal of monomaniacal preparation, Mossbauer had landed alone and armed on Kzin. He had killed four Kzinti males and set off a bomb in the harem of the patriarch before the guards managed to kill him."
    • The short story "The Ethics of Madness" has a man inadvertently deprived of psychiatric medication go insane and kill some people. The end result is that the killer flees towards, basically, the edge of the universe in a ramscoop vehicle, with a relative of those killed chasing him. Advanced medical devices all but ensure neither of them will ever die of old age.
  • A World Out of Time: Corbell flees the State in a ramship. His "Checker" (effectively, slavemaster) sends his "personality" over and over at the computer in his ship, being unable to enforce his orders any other way. The computer very much wants revenge due to the personality overlay, but it's also programmed at a deeper level to obey Corbell's orders, which sets up an interesting dynamic that profoundly impacts the plot.

By Work:

• In Alouette, after the heroes' interference turns the tide of battle against Mardonale, Roban, the ruler of Kondal, orders a full-on nuclear assault. He is well aware that this could only result in the total destruction of both nations but claims that he must do it to avenge his people, so this is also a case of Honor Before Reason. Ultimately, the heroes have to remove him from power to prevent a nuclear war.
• Ascendance of a Bookworm: A knight commits insubordination by refusing to protect a person of lower status than himself. When that gets the knight executed, his family only escapes the same fate thanks to an arrangement with the archduke that includes never interacting with the Bodyguard Betrayal victim. The knight's mother nonetheless seeks revenge on the victim with absolutely no regard for the consequences for the rest of the family.
• Asian Saga: By the time Noble House rolls around, the feud between the Brocks and the Struans is well into this, not made easier by the fact that the oath each tai-pan swears includes a stipulation to hamper and kill descendants of Tyler Brock whenever possible. When Ian Dunross is sworn in as tai-pan one of his aides brings him information that they have found previously unknown descendants of Tyler Brock, a woman with two young children that are descended from one of his extramarital affairs and probably don't know about their lineage. Dunross simply nods and states that them not knowing about their family history or the feud will just make it that much easier to have them ruined and murdered.
• In Chance And Choices Adventures, the bandit Roy Butterfield wants revenge on the Williams sisters, supposedly for the death of his brother Hank though they weren't responsible and he knows it. After his initial few attacks the local Circuit Judge Atwood is called in and lets Roy off scot-free (because they're related) only ordering Roy and the Butterfield Gang to stay away from Harmony, Arkansas from now on. Instead, Roy comes back and burns down the Williams Farm.
• The Count of Monte Cristo: Dantès finds himself free, talented, and ridiculously wealthy. It reaches the point where he's able to offer bribes to the pope, bankrupt a major French bank, construct multiple elaborate secret identities, buy up half of the French property market, and care for a beautiful foreign princess. He could sail off into the sunset, attempt to live out a long and happy life... But by this point he is a broken man obsessed with vengeance. He eventually snaps out of it, but only when he sees the consequences of his actions.
• A Court of Thorns and Roses:
  • What Feyre destroying Tamlin's Spring Court ultimately was. Feyre admits she didn't think about the consequences of leaving it in ruins for Hybern to sweep through, and didn't think whether they'd need the army or political support because she was so focused on getting back at them for allowing Tamlin's abuse.
  • Amarantha was so fixated on getting revenge on Jurian for what he did to Clythia, she ignored the King of Hybern's summons to aid him and actually cost him the war.
• In The Divine Comedy, the infernal Master Adam boasts that if he could drag his dropsied, infected body at least an inch by the end of a century of concerted effort, he would be well on his way to scour the miles and miles of the Malebolge to attack the men who introduced him to a life of forgery and lies. According to Manfredi Porena's calculations, it would take Adam 700,000 thousand years to complete this petty act of hatred.
• The Dresden Files: In White Night, Harry finds that one of the antagonists is Madrigal Raith, who Harry damn near killed the last time they met. Said antagonist is working on a heavily subtle plan to usurp power from one of the major players in the book by unseating the White King and taking over the White Court, which has been in motion for at least half a year and has involved the significant investment of time, resources and effort to get this far. At the last, crucial days of the plan, they decide out of spite and anger to involve Harry by trying to frame another party that they hope Harry will kill, and then killing Harry one way or the other (there's an attempt to kill Harry about halfway through the book before the plan has been completed). Needless to say, bringing in a White Council Warden wizard with tremendous power and a continuously proven track record of deconstructing villainous plans with incredible destructive power does not end well for them.
• Ender's Shadow: this is Achilles's Fatal Flaw, in that he is psychologically unable to bear showing vulnerability to anyone, no matter how slightly or benignly. Everyone who ever has, Achilles tries to murder. This goes far beyond any realm of rationality, as it even includes the nurse who put him under anesthesia to fix his bad leg: there is zero reason for him to hate her, and every reason to be thankful to her... but he was unconscious and vulnerable in her presence, so he feels an irresistible urge to kill her.
• In The Fallen World, Alexandra briefly considers the Order as potential allies in the battle for the fate of the world against an opponent who has already laid waste to it once when she realizes they have a mutual enemy but quickly discards that idea in favor of destroying them first out of revenge for trying to sacrifice her. The Order may actually give her aid if she asks as to do otherwise would mean abandoning their master plan centuries in the making. Given that they already have advanced tech and connections, they would be powerful allies.
• A heroic example in Patricia A. McKillip's The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. After the Mind Rape that was intended to destroy her personality and turn her into a happy little slave, Sybel decides that no sacrifice — not even the love and happiness of those closest to her, and certainly not the death of uninvolved third parties — is too great to make if it will ensure that the man responsible suffers the depths of terror and despair before he dies.
• Harry Potter when he went after Bellatrix for killing Sirius. He even tried to cast a Cruciatus Curse on her.
  • Sirius himself did this before the series' beginning, when he went after Peter Pettigrew, who betrayed Sirius' best friend James Potter to Voldemort and caused his death.
• In the Honor Harrington novel Shadow of Saganami, when Captain Terekhov discovers that the pirate ship he's tracking is not only Havenite but a Mars-class cruiser, the same exact class as the one that destroyed his last command, he is filled with a burning desire to smash them. He admits that his desire for revenge may be why he chose a plan of attack that put his ship at a somewhat greater risk in order to ensure he could bring the enemy to action. Played with in that his plan worked more or less perfectly, with the enemy cruiser reduced to a floating wreck and his own ship unscathed.
• How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: This is national policy in the Principality of Amidonia, which suffered an invasion by Elfrieden under the king before Albert, which stole a third of their lands (including most of their arable land). As a result, the king of Amidonia went so far as to change his title to "Sovereign Prince", and changed Amidonia from a "Kingdom" to a "Principality", declaring that he would not be a king until he had reclaimed their stolen lands, a policy that was passed down to his successors. On top of that, Amidonia's entire culture shifted to militarism, with the intent of building up their strength until they would be able to take back their stolen lands by force; a policy that has driven most of the citizenry into poverty and starvation. Their sole use of the Jewel Broadcast System is to make a yearly announcement that they won't forget their hatred for Elfrieden, and that the recovery of their stolen lands is national policy. Even their national anthem was rewritten into a song calling for an invasion of Elfrieden. As it stands, Amidonia forgot that it had no legitimate basis to invade Elfriden, as asking for humanitarian aid from other countries generally solves food shortages better than declaring war upon a wealthy neighbor.
• In Insurgent, Tori becomes so obsessed with avenging her brother, she ignores Tris' pleads to spare Jeanine and kills her. Even after her revenge is complete, she brands Tris (a girl who she's interacted friendly with in the past) a war criminal, instead of hearing her out.
• In the Iron Druid Chronicles, the Norse god Thor is such a Jerk Jock that he makes mortal enemies wherever he goes. After Thor killed the family of the Viking Leif, Leif became a vampire and then spent the next thousand years preparing his revenge. By the time he is ready, he has become the most powerful vampire in North America. Whether he succeeds or fails the outcome of his attack on Thor will have profound repercussions in the supernatural world with a massive vampire war being the least of the problems. He does not care for the consequences as long as he gets a chance to kill Thor.
• The Last Days of Krypton: The members of the new Krytonian Council who were previously imprisoned in the Phantom Zone by Zod trigger Krypton's destruction by trying to lash out and destroy the Phantom Zone by dropping the projector into Krypton's core.
• The Locked Tomb: This is the most prominent Fatal Flaw in John Gaius's makeup. Over the course of the Just Before the End sequence in Nona the Ninth, his desire to save the Earth is gradually twisted into rage at the trillionaires who worked to escape and leave everyone else behind, until he ends up killing everyone on the planet himself, stealing the Earth-spirit's power to become a god, and resurrecting altered versions of the victims of his apocalyptic crimes in order to build an empire that would, eventually, kill planet after planet over the course of a ten thousand year campaign of vengeance against the unimaginably distant descendants of those who escaped.
  C-: Your problem is that you care less about being a saviour than meting out punishment.
  John: C-, I was just your best man!
  C-: You still are. That doesn't change the fact that you can be quite the most appallingly vindictive person I have ever met.
• Men in Black: The Green Saliva Blues: The norm when it comes to most races and the Zahurians. They don't care that Earth's MiB are already hunting down and killing the Zahurians, they want revenge for that race killing one (or more) of their own and want to deal it out personally.
• Captain Ahab of Moby-Dick endangers his life and crew to chase a white whale whom he believes bit his leg off out of pure spite.
  Starbuck: Vengeance on a dumb brute! That simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous...
  Ahab: Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then I could do the other.
  • Ahab's desire for revenge is contrasted against another captain who lost a limb to the same whale, but doesn't hold it against him, and asks Ahab to abandon his chase of Moby Dick.
• Mouseheart: Devon is determined to kill Firren and her family because she didn't help save Ira while they were in the hunting grounds, leading to his death. However, as pointed out by other characters, Firren was just a child at the time and petrified due to being in such a terrifying situation, so he was expecting too much from someone so young.
• Paths of Darkness has Le'Lorinel, who wants to fight and kill Drizzt, badly. Badly enough in fact, that he willingly allies himself with a group of dangerous pirates and ogres. Also, when Drizzt refuses to fight him after finding out his real identity, he employs desperate measures, like taking a potion that will mirror all his wounds on Drizzt's body. All the while he is absolutely blind to the fact, that Drizzt is not responsible for the death of his family, but rescued him as a child.
• Rain of the Ghosts has Renee, a sort of Alpha Bitch character who is amusingly petty about this. In the second book, she targets Miranda for accidentally stealing her seat on the first day of class. Miranda thinks that Renee is her friend; Miranda's father is also Renee's mother's boss, so her elaborate revenge plan requires careful, long-term planning. As Rain notes, Renee could just drop her plans and actually be friends with the nice girl who shares her father's luxuries with people, but Renee is pathologically determined to avenge any slight.
• This is what leads to Liu Bei's downfall in Romance of the Three Kingdoms after Guan Yu is killed, leading to a Heroic BSoD, and prime minister Zhuge Liang's advice on priorities is ignored; the resultant failed attempt at revenge costs the lives of two of his four remaining elite Tiger Generals — including his sworn brother and longtime companion Zhang Fei — the ruination of his army by Lu Xun's fire attack, his own health and eventually life, any realistic hope of an alliance between the kingdoms of Shu-Han and Wu within his lifetime, Jing province being forever lost to Shu (before Liu Bei's punitive expedition against Wu, its sovereign had offered the province back which Guan Yu had been fought for), and the ascension of the throne of his easily manipulated son Liu Shan.
• In Shadow of the Conqueror, Daylen's plan to save the city of Highdawn gets derailed by this, because Ahrek and Lyrah have just figured out that he's Dayless, and are both positively howling for his blood. It takes the presence of the Shade on the island before that changes.
• In Spells, Swords, & Stealth, the dark god Kalzidar has a reputation for never letting a slight to him go unanswered. It is for this reason that Kalzidar's Evil Plan in the fourth book includes a part specifically for Thistle the gnome, paladin of rival god Grumble who thwarted him in the second book, in which he arranges to steal the soul of Thistle's wife Madroria from the gnomish afterlife. Because Thistle's one condition for becoming a paladin was to eventually be Together in Death with Madroria, and Grumble is obliged to do that no matter where she is, this endangers Thistle as well as Madroria, should he die before she's rescued. This act of revenge against a single mortal angers several powerful people. Nearly all of the other gods in general, Grumble and the god of the gnomes in particular, a village full of Retired Badasses who might never have gotten involved except for befriending the protagonists, and, perhaps most dangerously, Thistle himself, who is prepared to pull out all the stops, including reassembling the setting's single most dangerous Artifact of Doom, to save his beloved wife.
• In Starlight and Shadows, the drow priestess Shakti's obsession with revenge against Liriel gets her temporarily banished to the Abyss. After watching her compatriot Gorlist's similar obsession likewise lead him to his demise, Shakti concludes that the drow's biggest weakness is their penchant for revenge before reason. Therefore, she deliberately chooses to avert this in her final confrontation with Liriel, abandoning her chance for vengeance in order to succeed in obtaining the magic artifact she's been seeking.
• The Sponsor in Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations has this. When a temporal agent finds out crucial info on him and tries to send a warning, the Sponsor maliciously deletes her from history. He didn't stop at merely preventing her from being born, but made sure that every single worthwhile thing she did in life was now done by someone else, just to rub salt in the wound. It's stated that this took years to fully complete, and he knew that his enemies would quickly figure out what happened anyway. When other agents were nevertheless able to use her last, shielded transmission to capture him, he's offered a plea deal in exchange for undoing his revenge scheme, and he has this to say:
  "If that revenge backfired and led to my arrest, then all the more need for the revenge itself to stand".
• Throughout the Star Trek Novel 'Verse, Bajorans are prone to holding grudges and vendettas long past the point of reason; this is particularly noteworthy in the Terok Nor series. In the first book, their stubborn commitment to stewing over wrongs both real and imagined becomes a fatal flaw when Dukat decides it's the perfect means of controlling them. All he has to do is fan the flames of their anger against a preferred target, and they'll be too angry and focused to see his agenda unfolding around them.
• Rebecca Reisert's novel The Third Witch, a retelling of Macbeth, is told from the perspective of a girl called Gilly who is obsessed with avenging the death of her father. He had been murdered by Macbeth, who then married Gilly's mother, the future Lady Macbeth. Gilly is so focused on her goal that she does not care if she dies, nor if she hurts others in the effort. She even relinquishes her entire identity, proclaiming "I have made my life an arrow, and his heart is my home". In the end, when the moment she has been waiting for arrives and Macbeth is vulnerable before her, she abandons the opportunity to kill him in order to save the life of Pod, a young boy she befriended. It is Macduff, of course, who then defeats Macbeth; though Gilly is left in an almost catatonic state for several days because she 'failed' her mission, she eventually gains a positive outlook and begins rebuilding her life.
• Warhammer 40,000: In the Horus Heresy novels, there are multiple cases. Some Iron Hands, such as those in The Damnation of Pythos, will risk anything to hurt the Emperor's Children; in that specific case, it ends very badly for them. Roboute Guilliman, usually one of the most even-tempered Primarchs, responds to Lorgar's treachery in Know No Fear by ordering his ship to fly right down the throat of Lorgar's flagship so he can personally rip out Lorgar's internal organs one by one, even though the tactical situation isn't really in a good place for that. He does get talked down from it, though.
• In The Witchlands, Merik slips into this after he's heavily scarred in an assassination attempt, and he becomes completely focused on taking down his sister, whom he believes responsible for the attack. He never once stops to consider a greater goal and completely ignores the fact that Vivia might not be the person behind the assassin.
• In The Wolf of the North This is a central theme of the series.
• In World of Warcraft: Tides of Darkness novelization, this is revealed to be a major reason for The Horde's defeat during its war with The Alliance. During the Horde's siege of Lordaeron's capital, the Evil Sorcerer Gul'dan, whose Shadowmoon Clan as well as Cho'gall's Twilight's Hammer clan have been left in reserve, due to Warchief Orgrim Doomhammer not trusting them, decides that now is the time to break with the Horde and sail for the island on which he has found the Tomb of Sargeras. After discovering this, Orgrim is facing a dilemma: he can either send forces to punish Gul'dan and all the other traitors, which would leave him unable to break through Lordaeron's gates and raze the city, or raze the city but leave the traitors unpunished. He decides to go with the former, sending the Blackrock Clan, constituting a full third of the Horde's strength, to obliterate the two renegade clans. With the Alliance army approaching, Orgrim has to cut and run, retreating to his fortress in Blackrock Spire. Meanwhile, the Blackrock Clan clashes with the Twilight's Hammer Clan and slaughters them all, although sustaining plenty of casualties, while the Shadowmoon Clan is destroyed by the demonic guardians of the Tomb. On the way back to the mainland, the orc transport ships are ambushed by the Kul Tiras fleet commanded by Admiral Daelin Proudmoore, and most of the transports are sunk. Basically, not only does this decision cost Doomhammer the city, but he ends up losing so many warriors that he ends up losing the war in short order.

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