Small Name Big Ego / Literature

• Adrian Mole believes he is a gifted author and celebrity chef. In reality his unpublished work is terrible, his only published book was written in his name by his mother, and he was once the presenter of a low-budget cable show about how to cook offal. All of this goes right over his head as he tries to use his "celebrity" status to his advantage; and frequently writes to people who are actually famous to ask for favours (such as to speak for free at the Christmas dinner for his book club), ask for his own show on radio, or to offer insulting suggestions about their lifestyles.
• Agent to the Stars: A given, in the novel's Hollywood setting. Among Tom's clients we can find:
  • A semi-popular singer whose career is mostly driven by the fact that she is built like a Barbie doll and has no qualms about appearing nude or near-nude in promotional materials, but thinks she's Mariah Carey, Madonna and Beyoncé rolled into one.
  • A short, pudgy middle-aged man who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar several decades ago, refuses to take anything that isn't a leading part, and also refuses to notice that Danny Devito has the niche sown up and does not share.
  • The resident Mr. Fanservice from a late-night softcore crime series, who wants Tom to push a film career for him, completely oblivious to the fact that his appeal begins and ends with his ass.
  • The star of a Mexican telenovela, who wants to transition to Hollywood but refuses to learn English.
  • Michelle is a borderline example; she has an embryonic career as B-movie eye candy which is surprisingly lucrative, but she insists that she (a blonde 22-year-old Caucasian ex-cheerleader) is the right person to play the lead role in a low-budget biopic about a middle-aged Jewish Holocaust survivor turned Civil Rights activist. She claims she wants the part to "hone her craft", in spite of not being able to articulate what that means or what the Holocaust was. Tom, who knew several Holocaust survivors, does not take this well.
• In Animorphs, the rogue Sixth Ranger Traitor Animorph David acquires a series of powerful morphs that he can use against the others, including a lion, a golden eagle and an orca whale. However, once he started actively working against the others, while David declared himself "smarter" than the rest of the team, this was operating on the premise that the Animorphs were idiots where he was the only one 'smart' enough not to focus on the Yeerks. In reality, David relied on raw power and his knowledge of the Animorphs' civilian lives to be a threat, but he didn't have any clear plan beyond taunting them with his knowledge to make them give him the morphing cube, and was eventually caught and trapped in rat morph because he underestimated them.
• Kristy from The Baby-Sitters Club has a tendency to overestimate how important she is to the eponymous club, and how important she and the club are to people in general. In one book, she's babysitting for her siblings when a friend of her brother's she's never met before comes over, and the friend's parents are hesitant about leaving their son with a thirteen-year-old they don't know. Kristy mentally fumes about this, don't these people know who she is, she is president of The Babysitters Club!
• Dead Famous by Ben Elton has a few examples of the trope. Layla believes she is smarter and more attractive than the other House Arrest contestants; but is the first to be voted off the show because the others hated her. She also describes herself as a fashion designer but is just a shop assistant. David proclaims himself to be an incredibly gifted actor, to the point of hypocritically berating Kelly for "prostituting" her talent by appearing as a movie extra; but in reality his career is going nowhere and he lives off his earnings as a porn star. Geraldine thinks that Kelly herself is this, and thus resolves to destroy Kelly's public image through Manipulative Editing.
  • As Geraldine points out in her "The Reason You Suck" Speech after the murder, all the House Arrest contestants are this to varying degrees; they're all convinced they're witty, glamorous and attractive people who all deserve to be famous, whereas Geraldine quite rightly informs them that they're actually just a bunch of self-obsessed, bitchy narcissists who have somehow deluded themselves into believing that they're entitled to fame despite having very little talent and being no more interesting than the thousands of other cookie-cutter reality show contestants who've came before them.
• In the Gamebook Deathmoor, you have The Rival, Fang-Zen, who constantly brags about how he's entitled to finish this quest and way better than you, if he's with a crowd of his own thugs and at an advantage. If you're facing him alone, he tries an ambush by throwing a spear at you In the Back and when you fight him, it turns out Fang Zen's SKILL is two points below yours.
• In Deep Secret, one of the guests at Phantasmacon is Mervin Thurless, a writer whose ego outstrips his career and who goes loses his temper any time he's crossed, regardless of how insignificant the inconvenience or how much the person he's raging at is actually responsible.
• Diary of a Madman's Poprishchin, the eponymous madman, believes himself to be an important person, that his holding an unimportant position at age 40 is non-indicative of his career, and those trying to dissuade him from pursuing the director's daughter are just envious.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • The main character Greg imagines that he'll be famous one day, even though he has no skills to make him popular.
  • Krisstina the singer calls herself internationally famous, but Greg doubts that she's even performed in another state.
• Discworld's Lord Rust believes himself to be a fine military commander despite ignoring such factors as provisions, location, and the respective size and experience of forces. When justifying his tactical decisions, he frequently cites battles when the people in that scenario lost, or on a couple of occasions, were nursery stories.
  General Ashal: I believe the motto of his old school was "It matters not that you won or lost, but that you took part."
  Prince Cadram: And, knowing this, his men still follow him?
  • He shows up several times in the books, usually to be a thorn in Vimes's side. He, like many nobles in the past, believes himself to be superior in every way to the common rabble when really he's an Upper-Class Twit.
• Lorenzo Smythe, the main character of the Robert A. Heinlein novel Double Star. While he is a very good actor (enough that the Emperor says that he's Smythe's biggest fan), he considers himself to be an artist par excellence, and the standard by which all other actors should be judged. He prefers to refer to himself as "The Great Lorenzo." When he goes missing, not even his agent notices for a long time. His obituary only mentions that he hadn't had a job in months, and that he was likely Driven to Suicide by depression.
• Several early villains in The Dresden Files, most notably Victor Sells, Leonid Kravos and the unnamed "Darth Wannabe" in Day Off. All of these are people who think that that lucking into a smidgen of magical power gives them the power to take on a guy who... let's just say that at least one species of supernatural predators has ended up extinct because they managed to get themselves onto his shitlist.
• "The Dung Beetle" by Hans Christian Andersen. The title character seems to believe the world owes him honor and special treatment because he... lives in an imperial stable. His first action is to be offended that the emperor's horse is getting golden shoes instead of him. He spends the rest of the story flying in a huff from place to place and complaining about being treated unfairly, while never accomplishing anything of his own volition.
• Elizabeth Chadwick
  • Shadows and Strongholds: The first half of the trope is somewhat downplayed with the lady Mellette de Metz. Although she takes immense pride in her descent from William the Conquerer, she rarely acknowledges that the line consists of multiple generations of bastards - herself included - and seems oblivious to the fact that virtually no one else considers her ancestry of much importance. Proud and haughty even as a young woman, she fiercely objected to her arranged marriage to a travelling mercenary, and even decades later is still holding onto immense bitterness. She is also hyper critical towards everyone around her, viciously demeaning even her own family when they fail to live to up the the standards she perceives as worthy of their lineage.
  • To Defy a King: Zig-zagged by William Longespée. As the bastard son of King Henry II of England and raised in the royal court, his life starts out better than most. Yet his illegitimate status means that even into adulthood, his life and opportunities are much more restricted than they would be if he was true-born. He also develops a surprisingly petty rivalry with his half-brother Hugh Bigod (despite his lower status, Hugh is born in wedlock to twice Longespée's wealth). The latter regularly finds himself on the receiving end of Longespée's heavy-handed behavior, which Longespée himself rarely seems to consider as such. They do grow somewhat closer towards the end due to mutually inhibiting circumstances.
• In Emma, Mrs. Elton assumes that her £10,000 dowry and her position as the vicar's newlywed wife entitles her to act as Lady Patroness of Highbury. She often positions herself as more refined and worldly than the people who are actually the most respected figures in town (the Woodhouses, the Knightleys, the Westons) and treats them as uncultured bumpkins who need her guiding hand. Emma is frequently outraged by this behavior.
• This is recurring theme in Flatland, as it was intended as a satire of Victorian attitudes, particularly the Cultural Posturing of The British Empire, every "Land" believes itself to comprise the entire universe, utterly ignorant of higher dimensions. Pointland however, takes the cake, it is a single sentient speck floating alone in a void of nothingness—the speck comprises Pointland itself, and its sole inhabitant, king and self-proclaimed God. All of those are the same entity by the way, simply existing in nothingness while constantly singing its own praises. It is visited by a square and a sphere, but when the square tries to talk to it, the Point assumes that what it is hearing is merely an aspect of itself, and it begins to wax lyrical about how awesome it is to be able to have a conversation with itself, because it simply cannot conceive of the existence of something other than itself.
• Harry Potter:
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Gilderoy Lockhart is a big name, but his fame is taking credit for what others have done. Of course, it could just be an act designed to keep his fraudulent reputation afloat. His vanity about his physical appearance is almost certainly genuine, though. J. K. Rowling has admitted that Lockhart is one of the few characters in the series explicitly based on a real person. While refusing for obvious reasons to reveal that person's identity, Rowling has said he was actually even worse than his fictional counterpart and suggested that he's out there now claiming to be the inspiration for Dumbledore, or that he wrote the books himself and just let her take the credit out of the goodness of his heart. As his actor, Kenneth Branagh, put it, Lockhart "feels himself to be terrifically important, thinks of himself also as being terrifically modest. He is neither of those things."
    • Worse is hard. Lockhart's ego drives him over the Moral Event Horizon when he tries to incapacitate the only person who can save Ginny, simply because He Knows Too Much.
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: While Cornelius Fudge didn't start out as such, he certainly comes across as one by this time, given his complete confidence that he can haul Dumbledore off to jail without a fight. He also awarded himself an Order of Merlin, First Class award, which is meant to be awarded for "acts of outstanding bravery", despite most people considering Fudge's career "less than distinguished".
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: As Dumbledore shows Harry via Pensieve Flashback, Marvolo Gaunt is absolutely this. Despite living in complete poverty, he felt being a Pureblood descendant of Salazar Slytherin justified his blatant prejudice and made him legally untouchable. No one cared by that point, and his attempts to flaunt his supposed status were met with utter failure.
• Owen Thyll in A Harvest of War, the Big Bad's son and heir as well as plant as "mayor" of Draeze to aid in subduing the city. He's so useless his own mother casually discards his life.
• Zaphod Beeblebrox from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, who's actually a pretty big name (he became President of the Galaxy because he wanted to steal a ship, created the most potent alcoholic drink in the universe(s), then saved the universe a few times. Mostly while drunk) with a truly colossal ego:
  If there's anything more important than my ego on board this ship, I want it caught and shot!
  • The Restaurant at the End of the Universe introduces a device called the Total Perspective Vortex, a simulation that drives people insane by starting on an image of them, then pulling an Epic Tracking Shot that shows them how tiny and insignificant they are when compared to the totality of the universe. Zaphod becomes the only person to ever walk away unaffected, because as he saw it, it showed him as the center of the universe, which only validated what he already believes. Oddly, his "most important person in the universe" status is a Justified Trope: This was in a fake universe which was created specifically to shelter him, so in there he was the most important person in the universe.
• The Magic School Bus in the Ocean features a character named Lenny the Lifeguard, a good-natured but somewhat arrogant lifeguard at the beach, who is first seen showing other beach goers pictures from his 'daring rescues' (which, judging from the pics, weren't that daring). He ends up The Drag-Along when he sees Ms. Frizzle drive her bus into the ocean, getting swept up in the latest field trip. Throughout the story, he tries to maintain an air of authority, despite being pretty much redundant. Once the madness ends, he is elated to have "saved a whole class."
• Clip from the Malazan Book of the Fallen sure isn't known outside his immediate group of travelling companions considering he claims to be the Mortal Sword of Mother Dark herself and a part of the Deck of Dragons' current roster as Herald of High House Dark — both highly powerful and widely known positions. Of course, there is the question if he even is those things he claims to be...
• In one of Michael Innes' Sir John Appleby stories, "A Matter of Goblins", a character who initially introduces herself as Miss Jones announces she's actually Miss Brown with such gravitas that another suspect can't resist sardonically asking "Not, surely, the Miss Brown?" Completely missing the irony, she replies "I guess so." Nobody present has the slightest idea who "the Miss Brown" might be.
• Peter Pan: Peter is very cocky. Wendy notes this very early on.
  Peter: [after Wendy has sewn his shadow back on] How clever I am! Oh, the cleverness of me!
  Wendy: You conceit! Of course I did nothing.
  Peter: You did a little.
• Olivia Goldsmith had a few examples in her novels.
  • In The First Wives Club, each of the exes of the wives consider themselves a major big shot in their fields and even self-made men. This ignores how it was the support and money of their wives that made them successful in the first place. Thus, when the Club start going after them, it's not long for each of the exes to be brought down.
  • In Flavor of the Month, Neil is a rising stand-up comic in New York who lands his own sitcom. He fires his agent and ignores the man's warnings for Neil not to burn his bridges. A reporter does an interview with Neil who's living a flashy lifestyle and bragging about how he'll be the biggest star on TV in no time. She openly notes how she's seen this story countless times before. Sure enough, the show is a quickly canceled flop and Neil is soon back to working odd jobs while ruining each audition with the assumption any job is his. Neil never grasps that while he may have been a good name in New York, there are literally a thousand guys like him in Los Angeles.
  • In The Bestseller, Alf is a third-rate agent whose sole client is a romance writer on the downslide of her popularity. Yet, as other characters openly note, Alf thinks he's a hotshot in the literary world whose phone calls are always returned.
    • The same novel has an arrogant author (clearly based on Bret Easton Ellis) who throws a fit when he finds a bookstore isn't stocking his latest novel. The store's owner gives a short but sweet "The Reason You Suck" Speech stating this man is nowhere near as talented as he thinks he is, his books are hacks hyped by their publishers and that in a few years, no one will even remember him.
• John Putnam Thatcher: Dozens of people Thatcher deals with are arrogant but can't live up to their own expectations.
  • Klaus Englehart from Double, Double, Oil, and Trouble is involved in the bidding for an oil pipeline. By everyone's account, he spends far more time bragging about how his proposal and his company are naturally superior than he does actually trying to conform to the client's needs.
  • Craig Phibbs from Sweet and Low views himself as a genius filmmaker who brilliantly exposes greed, corruption, and sleaze in a way that enlightens and captures the public. While he does have his admirers and past successes, he's a patronizing, snide man who is too self-absorbed to realize that he has valuable evidence in a murder. He's also insulting and disrespectful toward people he wants to appear in his films, openly talking about how unflatteringly he'll portray them while expecting that they'll still be honored to accommodate him.
  • Mitch Scovil from Something in the Air considers himself a blessedly lucky, brilliant, entrepreneur and is in total denial about how his plans for expansion are full of holes, while deriding the idea that anyone knows better than him.
• The Phantom of the Opera: Opera's administrators Richard and Moncharmin and The Prima Donna Carlotta. Madam Giry is lampshaded like this (see It's All About Me), a humble usher who thinks of herself as an equal to the Opera’s administrators just moments before they fire her. But Fridge Brilliance shows us the trope is subverted: in Parisian society, it’s not what you do, it’s who you know. Madam Giry knows the Phantom and he is happy with her work. Therefore, she is more important than Richard and Moncharmin. She gets her job back.
• Several characters in Pride and Prejudice:
  • Lady Catherine, for example, is not always treated with the automatic reverence which she seems to expect (except by Mr. Collins).
  • Speaking of Mr. Collins, the reason he isn't able to accept Elizabeth saying "no" to his proposal and insisting that she must be playing hard to get, is that he believes he's such a fabulous catch for her that he cannot conceive of her not wanting to marry him.
  • Mary expects that everyone will want to hear her sing and know her opinion about every subject, but she's treated as just as silly as her younger sisters.
  • Darcy at first appears to be a Subversion of the trope (since he has close friends even if his casual acquaintances think he's full of it), but we later found out he's not as conceited as he first appears to be.
  • Mrs. Bennet's fretting about what will happen if her daughters fail to find suitable husbands before Mr Bennet's death tends to focus more on what the effects will be for her more than anyone else.
  • Lydia might have this the worst, however, since she treats her elopement with Mr Wickham as a big game for her own benefit despite the fact that it could lead not only to her ruin but the ruin of all her sisters, and displays nothing but simpering glee at her 'good fortune' once she's actually married.
• Verluck from The Secret Agent considers himself to be both a master spy, and an anarchist firebrand capable of motivating a revolution. Both his bosses in the government and other revolutionaries consider him unexceptional at best.
  • The Professor, an anarchist bomb maker, likewise considers himself a force to be reckoned with and thinks the only reason he's able to walk free is because the police are terrified of him. In truth the police consider him more weird than dangerous, and he secretly lives in terror of the truth that the masses not only are unafraid of him, but barely realize he exists.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Cersei Lannister is a rare female example. She believes herself to be, among other things, clever, ruthless, and irresistible to men. Of those qualities, only 1.5 are true. Unfortunately, she's the queen of Westeros, leading to some problems in her reign.
  • Mace Tyrell is Lord Paramount of the Reach and Warden of the South, so he is a pretty big name, and has an ego and pomposity to match. However, he's widely regarded as a joke, his one major accomplishment is due to the work of his vastly more competent bannerman Randyll Tarly, and he receives only the bare minimum of respect required by etiquette from everyone, including his own children.
  • Ser Gerold "Darkstar" Dayne, who boasts at length in ridiculous ways and tries to convey himself as a dark, dangerous badass, even though his greatest on-page accomplishment thus far is trying (and failing) to kill a defenseless child.
  • Janos Slynt, former commander of the City Watch of King's Landing spends a solid amount of his appearance talking about his own importance or how his "friends" the Lannisters are lucky to have him as an ally, never seemingly cottoning on to the fact most of the Lannisters detest him and none of them moves a finger or even lifts an eyebrow when Tyrion ships him off to the Night's Watch. This trait gets even more ridiculous when he arrives at the Wall and seems to think that everyone there should be automatically bowing down before him due to being a "lord" and continues to call himself Lord of Harrenhal, even though he never saw it and has lost all claim to it. He also seems to be under the delusion that his status gives him licence to do as he pleases and repeatedly insults and disobeys Jon Snow for his youth and bastard nature, despite Jon being far more competent than him and technically his superior in the Watch. Slynt is only cured of this when Jon finally gets fed up of Slynt throwing Jon's attempts to be reasonable with a man he has good reason to hate ^note  Jon makes a lot of effort to overlook the fact Slynt played a major role in his father's death back in his face and orders Slynt executed; Slynt goes to the block sobbing and begging Jon for mercy.
• Star Wars: The Living Force: The Lobber is a cocky pirate who delights in responsibility and getting to act smart, but he is a Butt-Monkey and (according to his friends) Know-Nothing Know-It-All (although he is ultimately more likable than most examples of the trope).
  Wungo You're not the brains, and you're not the boss, Lobber. You're not anything. You're just louder.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Honor Among Thieves: Hunter Maas is a small-time thief and gunrunner who carries himself as a man of great importance. He dresses outrageously, hits on beautiful women ineptly, and speaks of himself only in the third person. But he lucked into a score big enough—the Empire's notes about a No Warping Zone device that could control who can travel in the galaxy, and the map to find it—that everyone he deals with has to treat him with the respect he doesn't deserve, so that he might sell it to them. Eventually it gets him killed when he runs into Bounty Hunter Baasen Ray, who has no patience for his posturing.
    Hunter Maas: Hunter Maas has no enemies. He has only admirers and the jealous.
  • X-Wing Series:
    • A character who was never seen alive, Captain Darillian, was "a petty guy who reached his ultimate level of usefulness driving a minelaying barge for a warlord and then had to be scraped off the floor." His ego was big enough that he kept a Captain's Log in full holo and talked into it like he was always on dangerous missions upon which the fate of his sect of the Empire rode.
    • His boss, Admiral Apwar Trigit, is also an example, albeit a much quieter one. He falls for every single trick the Wraiths set up. Aaron Allston addressed why in his FAQ.
      Because he's not as bright as he thinks he is. He's creative in certain intelligence-gathering functions, but that has led him to believe that he is brilliant at everything. It's this assumption of his own infallibility that leads him into several errors.
    • And then we have Trigit's boss, Warlord Zsinj—although with Zsinj, it's a form of Obfuscating Stupidity which he knows a lot of people can see through. He's certainly got an ego, but it's not as unrestrained as it seems.
    • In Wedge's Gamble, the "commanding officer" of a crew of repair technicians on a fully automated power relay station takes his job way too seriously. When the Alliance invasion fleet appears in orbit and commandos hijack the power relay network, he tries to rally his crew to join the defense of their homeworld, until they explain to him that there is nothing they can do to shut down the station, that it doesn't have any kind of weapons, and he should just relax and join their card game.
    • At one point, Wedge notes that this seems to be a racial failing of the Bothans, pointing out how, despite the fact it's well-known now that they were supposed to get the Death Star 2 information to lead the Rebels into a trap, they still bring up how many of their agents died getting that info and use it like a club to try and make other races respect them more.
• In The Tower Of Geburah by John White, we have Theophilus, a flying horse with an ego the size of a small mountain. Among his claims are that Gaal (the Jesus-allegory of that fictional universe) often consults him for advice. Theophilus's arrogance nearly gets the female primary and secondary leads killed when he deviates from the flight path Gaal told him follow, causing the three to be out after sunset (until the Big Bad is defeated, flying after sundown is freaking dangerous).
• Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle: Alma Kilzrake thinks she's a much better Drag-Knight than she actually is. She's an EX-class Drag-Knight and knows one of the three secret Drag-Knight techniques, which is admittedly above average... however, this puts her on par with Velvet Barth (the antagonist of the very first volume) and far from the level of the main characters.
• Warrior Cats:
  • Berrynose and his Expy, Beetlenose.
  • Tigerstar claims he's greater than StarClan after changing the number of Clans from 4 to 2.
  • All the other Clans seem to believe Firestar is this due to his tendencies to try and talk things out instead of fighting and the fact that he's helped each Clan in the past; the other leaders consider him arrogant.
  • In Bluestar's Prophecy, Thistleclaw and Oakheart are both said to be arrogant pricks...though Oakheart later turns out to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• High Lord Weiramon from Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time novels. He thinks he's charming, witty, the perfect general, and a clever enough liar to make the protagonist think he's totally loyal to the cause. He's actually so unbelievably suicidally stupid that some fans think he's actually The Mole, sabotaging the goodies from within by "accidentally" screwing everything up.
  • He was.
• Józef Papkin, who dines with princesses, has riches untold, has killed scariest monsters and is the silliest character in Zemsta

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