Royal Brat / Literature

• Ascendance of a Bookworm: Wilfried is the oldest son of a nobleman who's giving primogeniture a try in a setting where potential heirs usually compete for the succession before one is chosen. As a result, the attendants intended to educate Wilfried have limited motivation to force him to attend the classes he doesn't like. On top of this, he gets spoiled by his grandmother. This has made him into an entitled boy who gets extremely upset when he doesn't get what he wants and hates everyone who isn't a Yes-Man towards him. His eventual Humble Pie moment is the direct result of him getting jealous of his slightly younger adoptive sister having nice things that she put work into getting.
• Belisarius Series:
  • Eon, prince of Axum, played the part of an ostentatious Royal Brat who was Too Important to Walk and couldn't get enough Sex Slaves as part of his cover in an elaborate intrigue. In real life, he was a Modest Royalty, who was kind to servants, and a brave soldier. And all the slaves gotten for the job were treated compassionately (having been in on the whole thing), and afterwards freed and sent to be handmaidens of the princess they were rescuing except for one that he fell in love with and invited to his home.
  • Venandakatra the Vile. The way he's described suggests that he would be thin if he didn't eat so much, he travels around in a pavilion so obscene that it might as well be a palace, he inflicts the Cruel and Unusual Death of impalement on a short stake on anyone (servant or foe) who makes him angry, and he keeps a harem of young girls who apparently tend to die in captivity on account of him being a Sadist. He also reacts with extreme anger when he's not in control; his response to rebellions in the Deccan is to have his soldiers Rape, Pillage, and Burn indiscriminately, and when unable to punish Damodara over a disagreement, he simply blows up in his face.
• The Oscar Wilde short story The Birthday of the Infanta involves a Spanish princess being given a misshapen dwarf as a birthday gift. The dwarf is unaware of his own appearance and believes the Infanta to be in love with him. Unlike the opera adaptation (see Theater), she doesn't intentionally toy with him; but when she learns that he has died of a broken heart, she replies, "For the future, let those who come to play with me have no hearts."
• In Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40,000 novel Brothers of the Snake, the Princess Royal objects to the Space Marines who took her car. When a bodyguard points out that, after all, they are Space Marines, she slaps him hard enough to knock him over. Then she tries to compel the Marines to escort her. (At which point an Inquisitor intervenes, and she runs off screaming.) She also tries to shoot the Sergeant with a mini-lasgun built into her ring. The marine's response can be summed up as "Did you really just do that?"
• A Brother's Price:
  • The young princesses, none older than eight. They aren't cruel, but they're somewhat spoiled and definitely imperious, used to obedience and deference, contemptuous of some things, and highly dismayed when, playing soldiers with Jerin, he doesn't just let them win. It's noted that in this world a good father, not too biddable, is said to raise good children, and the little princesses' father died when they were no older than two. Since Jerin's marrying into the family and can act as their father/husband once they're of age, it's believed they'll grow out of this.
  • Keifer Porter, who is dead at the beginning of the novel, but was a veritable brat. He is a sadistic psychopath. He was not born into royalty, only married into it.
• Calchas in Teresa Edgerton's Green Lion trilogy. His mother, the Princess Diaspad, knew that the worst revenge she could take against his biological father — a man raised in a culture that is deeply sentimental, particularly about children and family life — would be to raise his firstborn son as a warped creature, even though the father didn't know for sure that the boy was his.
• In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian, Valerius from The Hour of the Dragon knows better. He also knows that You Have Outlived Your Usefulness is hanging over his head, and so in a Taking You with Me gambit, acts like this to destroy the kingdom, so the man who will kill him will not profit from it.
• Shannon Teverius from Doctrine of Labyrinths is the arrogant, rebellious younger brother of the much more grounded and sensible Lord Stephen. He comes across as fickle, bitchy, and extremely petty during the first two books of the series, although he does undergo some character growth later on, showing kindness to Mehitabel and Vincent, and expressing remorse for his past mistakes.
• From Dragon-in-Distress there is Princess Florinara Tansimasa Qasilava Delagordune, who screams and complains to her father about wanting a dragon, kidnaps one, refuses to give it back, cries when defeated, is annoyed that Sir George and Drafir ignore her crying... Credit where credit’s due, however: she does manage to successfully capture a dragon.
• In Andre Norton's Dread Companion, Kilda's employer is more languid than most, but her attitude is nicely summed up when she informs Kilda that she will have to do, she can't interview anymore, as if Kilda could not possibly reject the position. Then she sticks her with the children for the space trip.
• Ella's stepsisters Hattie and Olive are incredibly spoiled and bratty in Ella Enchanted.
• In Stephen King's The Eyes of the Dragon, Prince Thomas is somewhat similar to a Royal Brat, although he's not as personally vile as some of the other examples here; he's just depressed, confused, alcoholic (at the age of twelve), and a puppet monarch for the villainous Flagg.
• In Graham McNeill's Warhammer 40,000 Horus Heresy novel False Gods, Petronella Vivar shamelessly uses her connections to get herself appointed as Horus's remembrancer, and is relentlessly demanding of her servants; in particular, she recounts with no shame that Maggard's vocal cords have been destroyed to prevent him speaking in an unfitting manner before her, exploits Maggard as a Sex Slave, and when Maggard's defense of her wins him the respect of soldiers, is bitterly resentful and regards it as inappropriate.
• In Gene Stratton-Porter's Freckles, Freckles's grandfather.
  He always had been spoiled, because he was an only son, so he had a title, and a big estate. He would have just his way, no matter about his sweet little wife, or his boys, or anyone.
• Augusta Hozenberg-Lemonov-Bouragne in The Harem Protagonist Was Turned Into A Girl!! And Doesn’t Want To Change Back!!!?? is an heiress to various European royal lines with a huge estate and is the most abrasive of protagonist Svetlana's love interests. She was only interested in Svetlana as she wanted to have a baby with her, pre-Svetlana's transition when Svetlana was still going by "Kevin", and is the most outright resistant and transphobic member of the group - partially due to a baby now being off the cards until she finds out alien technology can bypass this issue and partially due to her religious upbringing. She also starts arguments with the other girls the easiest.
• Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter, through his family being from a long line of pureblooded wizards. Fortunately for him, he does grow out of it, though it nearly gets him killed in the process.
• In the first Heralds of Valdemar book, Arrows of the Queen, Princess Elspeth has made such a pain of herself that she's been nicknamed "the Royal Brat" by everyone who has to have anything to do with her. It's a subject of concern not only for the distraught Queen but for the rest of the court as well because if one doesn't have a pure enough heart to be Chosen by a Companion, by law they cannot be eligible to inherit the throne. The newly-Chosen Queen's Own Herald Talia's first responsibility upon arriving at the capital is therefore to try to figure out a way to civilize the Brat. Fortunately, Talia finds that Elspeth is not irredeemable and that a lot of her issues come from the influence of her evil nursemaid; by the time she's reached her teens, she's become a much more pleasant young woman.
• An adult version of this trope exists in Prince John of Ivanhoe. John is frequently referred to in the prose as petty and intemperate (as is the author's wont) and has all his attendants and subjects running in fear of his whims.
• In Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter of Mars:
  • O-Tar the jeddak, from Chessmen of Mars, is entirely self-centered, on top of being a Dirty Coward, despite being old enough to have a grown son, A-Kor. He is extremely jealous of his son's courage and popularity and imprisons him.
  • In A Fighting Man of Mars, Sanoma Tora: proud of her wealth, contemptuous of a poor wooer until she learns he is related to Royal Blood, cowardly in captivity, and treacherous. While her father claims to be a minor noble, many suspect he has no Blue Blood.
• Wolfram "Little Lord Brat" von Bielefeld from Kyo Kara Maoh!. He's in his eighties, (although he is also 14 years old mentally) so his skills and maturity are really very low. He also does not like to share his fiancé with others despite said fiancé being their new king. (Though with people throwing themselves at his betrothed it's a little hard to blame him sometimes.) He does grow up however largely thanks to Yuuri.
• In Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Land of Hidden Men, the Leper King Lodivarman. He takes many women into his harem and is angry that he has never succeeded in giving any of them his leprosy. And his promise to free the hero is worthless. Fortunately, the hero can cure his "leprosy", having deduced that it was really an allergic reaction to his favorite food.
• The Last Dragonslayer: The UnUnited Kingdom has dozens of small states ruled by spoiled royal families, with the Snodds of Hereford getting the most screen time. The despotic King Snodd shows up in book 1, but it's his daughter Princess Shazza who typifies the "royal brat" personality:
  • The Eye of Zoltar: Played Straight — Jennifer has to escort the spoiled Crown Princess Shazzine Blossom Hadridd Snodd on a mission into the fantastically lethal Cambrian Empire at the behest of Queen Mimosa (who is hoping that a dose of mortal peril will correct Princess Shazza's attitude). The Princess expects others to bow down to her every wish and threatens to execute anyone who insult her.
  • The Great Troll War: Discussed and Exploited — Although Princess Shazza has been humbled by her experiences in the Cambrian Empire, she's still got bratty tendencies just under the surface. The assembled princesses are able to tell Princess Shazza apart from an identical imposter because there's no way to fake being as spoiled and entitled as true royalty:
    'Being a princess... is not simply about external beauty, deportment, grace accessories, tiaras, footmen, castles, and so forth, it's what's inside. An impostor could look like the real thing, take on all the trappings and even appropriate a castle and staff, but they could never truly be royalty, for the haughty dismissiveness and deep sense of entitlement to an empty life of conspicuous wealth and luxury — the very soul of a princess — can never be learned.'
• There's a couple in the I, Richard Plantagenet Series:
  • George, Duke of Clarence, covets his brother's crown and he's demanding and preening, despite not being as good a solider as either of his brothers.
  • Edward V is a spoiled and arrogant bully. This makes it easier for his Uncle Richard to take the crown and it actually saves Edward V's younger brother Richard of Shrewsbury because Edward V takes his little brother's fine clothes and give them to a servant. It's that boy who is murdered by assassins sent by Buckingham, along with Edward V.
  • Averted with Richard of Shrewsbury, whom Richard III learns is personable and adjusting well to his new life as a Hidden Backup Prince.
• Lavinia in A Little Princess was the most popular and richest student in school before Sara Crewe came along. Naturally, she really dislikes Sara, and when Sara loses her fortune and becomes a servant, Lavinia wastes no time in taking her tormenting of Sara up a notch.
• In Gene Stratton-Porter's Michael O'Halloran, Minturn's sons after they were effectively brought up by a violently abusive nurse. When Minturn gets evidence that lets him pry them free from their mother, he is quite aware that much will be needed to straighten them out.
• In The Name of the Wind, Kvothe acts out this trope to obtain a decent set of clothes in spite of entering the store with no clothes and very little money.
• Subverted by Empress Petralka in Outbreak Company. She initially appears to be a royal brat, but it quickly becomes obvious that she works hard to try to be a Reasonable Authority Figure but is struggling under the stress of having been crowned empress at such a young age (with a little bit of Fantastic Racism that she ends up getting over as the story progresses and some annoyance at Shinichi's more obnoxious antics thrown in).
• The titular hero of the Prince Roger series, though not exactly a nasty person, starts out as a sulky and arrogant young man with a reputation as a handsome "clothes horse" and little else. His bad attitude is partly a reaction to being constantly looked down on and rejected by his mother, but he still comes off as whiny, complacent, needlessly argumentative, and very self-absorbed. He even knows he's an annoying brat and is secretly ashamed of himself, but doesn't snap out of it until fate knocks him on his ass and forces him to start living up to his potential.
• Princess Malty Melromarc/Myne Sophia from The Rising of the Shield Hero is this to the extreme. Not only does she consider everybody else beneath her because of her royalty status, but she also goes so far as to attempt to murder her younger sister Melty all to inch closer to the Melromarc throne. She ultimately takes the trope to its logical conclusion in that EVERYBODY, even her previously doting father Aultcray, wants her dead, and her downright horrendous personality is what ultimately does her in. Being a fragment of Medea probably had something to do with that.
• Schooled in Magic: Crown Princess Alassa of Zangaria begins as one, being an Alpha Bitch who bullies Emily, but they grow into friends, with her becoming nice over time.
• Colin Craven from The Secret Garden. He's referred to a few times as "the Rajah" because of the way he orders the servants around. Mostly he's just spoiled and cranky because he thinks he's going to die and his father doesn't pay any attention to him. He finally snaps out of it when he meets his cousin, Mary Lennox — not so much because of The Power of Friendship but more because she's the first person he's ever met who dares to stand up to him, being just as spoiled herself. Her parents neglected her, and the servants' only concern was to keep her quiet and out of the way. The two bond and help each other to grow into better people.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Talk about a lot of bratty, noble characters anybody with any morals, ethics, or sense would want to strangle...
  • 13-year-old Joffrey Baratheon, the Worst of His Name, King of the Vandals and the Rippers and the Worst Men, the reason this trope was almost called "The Joffrey", and the one whose portrait now adorns this page. He starts out as "merely" a spoiled and arrogant brat but later reveals himself to be a thorough psychopath through and through. He has been like this since childhood. He once was told that a pregnant cat had kittens inside her, so he killed the cat and proudly presented the kitten fetuses to his father. His father Robert Baratheon beat the shit out of him for it, but his mother didn't really give a fuck, implying that his behavior was encouraged by her (in the show, Cersei gets Character Development by admitting to Tyrion that she has always tried to control her son but is unsuccessful and has basically just given up even trying). Joffrey also tried to have comatose-Bran killed when he overheard his father drunkenly saying Bran would be better off dead, as an attempt to impress his father. He reaches new levels of depravity once he becomes king and orders the execution of Eddard Stark in front of his daughter, Sansa, who’s also Joffrey’s fiancée. Joffrey even forces Sansa to look at her father’s head mounted on a spike. Sansa calls him out on his promise that he’d be merciful for her father, but Joffrey coldly states that he never promised that he would spare Eddard and firmly believed it was merciful since he originally planned to torture Eddard to death, but Sansa pleaded for mercy, so he gave him a quick death. He just gets worse with his treatment of Sansa. Thankfully, his siblings Tommen and Myrcella are much nicer.
  • Flashbacks to Cersei as a child show that she was one herself when around his age. Which probably explains why she saw absolutely no problem with the show-and-tell project her son produced, later. It's implied that, even before the tender age of 13, she'd thrown her friend down a well to die (or had at least watched her die), had already enjoyed watching servants get whipped in punishment for various transgressions (some of which may have been imagined), and had enjoyed physically bullying Tyrion at every chance she got and all this while already practising her charming way with words. She may well have instigated the sexual experiments with Jaime in a manner that may even have had a little coercion involved, at first. What a pleasant little girl who grew up to be... well... a Psychopathic Womanchild and Queen and Queen Regent spawning a little hellion like Joffrey.
  • Lord Robert Arryn is a marginal example. He is an extremely young, sickly (he's implied to be epileptic), and sheltered boy with a particular interest in watching people "fly" by being thrown off a cliff. However, he doesn't really understand the consequences of his actions, being 6 years old, and doesn't seem to be knowingly malicious.
  • Viserys Targaryen is the rightful heir to the Iron Throne (and, don't you dare suggest otherwise within his hearing), living in exile. Like Joffrey, he is cruel and vindictive, treating everyone around him like his subjects, regardless of the fact that he's 1) in Essos, where his title is meaningless, and 2) dependent entirely on their goodwill for his survival. The Dothraki call him the "cart king" for his insistence on being carried around in a litter. He doesn't realize that it's a Stealth Insult — in Dothraki culture, carts are only used by the elderly and infirm, who are unable to ride a horse.
  • Aerion the Monstrous or "Brightflame" Targaryen was a little monster born to the Targaryen dynasty. He was arrogant and cruel, tormenting his youngest brother, Aegon, with such acts as throwing their cat down a well or threatening to castrate him. He even attacked a carnival puppeteer for the "crime" of showing a dragon losing in a puppet show depicting folklore, seeing as the dragon is the sigil of House Targaryen, so this had to mean treason! For this and other idiocies, he was exiled to Essos; but, unfortunately, it didn't teach him the sense it was supposed to. Thankfully, before his father Maekar I died and he could become The Caligula, Aerion got drunk and drank the infamous goblet of wildfire, all the while believing it would turn him into a dragon. He died really, really horribly, meaning the Iron Throne ended up passing to Aegon "the Unlikely".
  • Ser Duncan the Tall and his suspiciously violet-eyed squire got kind of invited to one of those trademarked horrible Westerosi weddings, once. Well... for the tourney attached to it, at least. Where they got to meet a spectacularly obnoxious little Walder Frey after he'd just ruined his sister's life by being a sneak. Yes, it's that one, all right. Back when he still had hair and baby teeth. Duncan starts thinking fondly of throwing the brat down a well, for some reason.
  • Historically, the Princess Aerea Targaryen or, quite possibly, her twin sister Rhaella turned into one of these after her mother Queen Rhaena took Dragonstone as her seat—and in doing so, took Aerea back with her, away from the court and city that she'd called home, and whose people had made her the center of attention. After that, Aerea became a terror—going so far as to empty a chamber pot on her father's head simply because she was angry at her mother—culminating in the fateful day when she mounted a dragon and disappeared for the better part of two years. The day she returns is the day she dies one of the most horrific deaths in Westerosi history.
  • A generation later, there came the Princess Saera Targaryen, described by her own mother as Aerea writ small and others as worse. Being the ninth-born child of the royal family, she was even more starving for attention than Aerea, and she becomes the terror of the Red Keep for just about all her days as a princess. Her own septas call her evil after all the mean pranks she delights in playing (including one where she convinces the poor court fool to climb the Iron Throne, only to be mutilated by its many blades). It all comes to a screeching halt when one of Saera's pranks ends up leaving one of her friends pregnant, Saera herself shipped off to serve as a silent sister—though this wouldn't last for long—and her royal father disowns her.
• Star Wars Legends: Prince Beju from the Jedi Apprentice book "The Mark of the Crown" resents his mother's choice to convert the planet's government into a democracy, believing that ruling is his birthright; so he throws his hand into the planet's upcoming election for governor. The Queen privately admits that she wants Beju to lose. It takes him learning he is not the rightful heir to the throne anyways to get him to back down and make a Heel–Face Turn.
• King Elhokar from The Stormlight Archive deconstructs this. He's an incompetent, dangerously insecure Manchild who generally serves as The Load to the protagonists and an easily manipulated pawn for people like Sadeas. However, it's shown he's aware that he's Unfit for Greatness and that he's an Inadequate Inheritor to his father, who was renowned for being The Good King. Elhokar legitimately tries his best, but he's filtered by bad intel, scheming and manipulative advisors, and just plain bad luck. As well, it's shown that a lot of this behavior is because his family treats him like a child, with his behavior being him lashing out. He eventually does start shaping up and becoming a legitimately good leader in his own right, but he's assassinated before he can complete this by Moash.
• Princess Violet in Wizard's First Rule is this taken to the extreme. As she enters the story, she's just starting to have people executed, and, later on, partakes in torturing the protagonist and threatening to have his love interest raped to death. Then he kicks her in the face. A few books later, she is taught to cast curses through magical drawings. Cut to a Little Miss Badass coming to visit; Well... Who's that on the drawing? Oh, that's right, it's me. (draws a few lines) Well, Violet, now it's you. Cut to Sound-Only Death.
• Ugugg in Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno
  "You ca'n't guess what my present is!" said Uggug, who had taken the butter-dish from the table, and was standing behind her, with a wicked leer on his face.
  "No, I ca'n't guess," Sylvie said without looking up. She was still examining the Professor's pincushion.
  "It's this!" cried the bad boy, exultingly, as he emptied the dish over her, and then, with a grin of delight at his own cleverness, looked round for applause.
• The Sunne in Splendour has a few.
  • George, Duke of Clarence, lets the fact that he is next in line to the throne go to his head. As a child, he bullies his little brother, Richard, until Richard fights back. George never gets over his obsession with getting the throne and as an adult, it leads to his death.
  • Edouard of Lancaster is the Lancaster heir to the throne and a spoiled, blood-thirsty bully who is not at all kind to poor Anne Neville during their brief marriage.
  • Edward V is this, much to Richard of Gloucester's dismay. The arrogant boy has been raised by his Woodville relatives and away from his far more politically astute father and uncle. Richard fears for the kingdom if he can't control the boy king, enough so that when Richard is presented with genuine evidence that the boy is illegitimate...well...what would you do?
• In Harry Turtledove's Tales of the Fox series, most of the Gods are this way, since no one is powerful enough to discipline them. Ferdulf, the demimortal son of an extremely impulsive wine god, grows up with nearly godlike power among ordinary mortals and is even brattier than his father.
• Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs: Everywhere, practically a Planet of Hats with their hat being Spoiled Brat, and most characters are nobles attending academies. Many exceptions fall under Spoiled Sweet. The author is clearly a big fan of the Break the Haughty trope, which this helps set up.
  • In Holfort, Leon's sisters as well as several unnamed girls, are Rich Bitch Girl Posse types, only seeing men as wallets, expecting to be escorted by full time gigolos and have the boys do all the work, only marrying for Gold Digger reasons, and expecting her future Hen Pecked Husband to pay for a distant palace where she'll live with her lovers. While the five princes are each a Sheltered Aristocrat who has major problems with It's All About Me and being Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense. King Roland likely started as one of these and never grew out of it. The Marie Route Alternate Timeline introduces more male brats from the rich, such as Earl Offrey's son and the Beudon Brothers.
  • Alzer nobles fall under this combined with a heavy dose of Smug Super (especially Pierre, but even the more sympathetic nobles), with Loic having an Entitled to Have You attitude with regard to Noelle added in.
• Princess Shoukei from The Twelve Kingdoms. Until her family is killed and she's dragged into the dirt.
• In Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell, Twilight becomes increasingly arrogant and disdainful of those around her, her irritation at the less than helpful suggestions of her friends and misinterpretation of Cadance's advice feeding the amulet's corrupting influence.
• The Virgin Widow: In the historical novel, Anne Neville loves her childhood friend Richard of Gloucester but is forced to marry the prince, Edward of Lancaster. The two young men are of similar age, but the prince has been overly indulged and protected by his mother and is given to tantrums, petty cruelty and empty boasts. Richard, on the other hand, has real-world experience in battle and politics and carries himself like a grown man.
• Prince Horace in The Whipping Boy. He forces his whipping boy Jemmy to run away with him in a fit of pique, and when the two of them get into trouble, he sulks and insists on his own way even when it undermines Jemmy's attempts to save his life. To be fair, when it's his turn to get whipped, he unexpectedly stays strong through the experience.
• Played with with Roshaun from Young Wizards— he starts out as the stereotypical arrogant entitled princeling, but later it's revealed that his people hate his family as much as they need them, and he's been a target for assassination for his whole life, not to mention required to die to save the planet if crisis comes.

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