The Ace / Literature

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• If Finn and Blake are to be believed, Cal from Abominable could be described this way. Finn's doubles as a Badass Boast for himself.
  "Seriously?" Finn was saying, his voice deeper than I had expected. "Cal is literally the only person in this town more dangerous than me."
• Adrian Mole:
  • Pandora Braithwaite has multiple advanced degrees including an MPhil from Oxford University. She is a renowned academic and author, speaks five languages fluently, and was one of the youngest MPs ever elected to office.
  • Barry Kent, whom Adrian looks down on, becomes a celebrated poet and novelist and very wealthy.
  • Barry's mother, who has spent most of her life as a housewife, goes to university in late middle age. She graduates with two first-class degrees, wins awards for her academic papers, and begins a successful new career.
  • Adrian's half-brother Brett is The Ace at pretty much everything until he goes bankrupt during the 2008 financial crisis.
• In The Adventures of Stefón Rudel, Stefón builds androids, trains karate and marksmanship, wins every athletics competition in his age group, picks up several military ranks (and girls) and changes the course of history for the better — all as a child.
• Animorphs:
  • The descriptions of Jake's pre-Animorphs life make him out to be generally all-around average, an unimpressive student and mediocre athlete (Not even good enough to make the basketball team), but he has this indescribable quality that draws people to him. After the war starts, this quality is what transforms him into the leader of the team.
  • Rachel is a beautiful, popular girl with an indomitable spirit, is recognized as having the makings of a world-class gymnast, and is a genius student (she gets a national award for academic excellence at one point). Unfortunately the war turns her into a violent Blood Knight until everything else disappears from her life.
  • Cassie is the best morpher of the group, even better than Ax. He compares her abilities to Andalites who use their morphing skill for art and entertainment purposes.
• The Aristoi are selected (as their name implies) on the basis of being a group of Aces. They're all Omnidisciplinary Scientists, artistic geniuses, and charismatic leaders.
• The Arts of Dark and Light has M. Valerius Magnus, the leader of House Valerius. A Wicked Cultured decorated former officer and savvy politician, he acts as a mentor of sorts to his nephew Marcus, and a foil to his more narrowly military-minded and honorable brother Corvus.
• John Galt of Atlas Shrugged, complete with one of the longest monologues ever written.
• Baccano!'s Claire Stanfield is a deconstruction. On the surface, he's brilliant, handsome, ridiculously athletic, talented and generally so awesome at what he does that one must wonder if the universe revolves around him... Which is exactly the conclusion he's jumped to. This is not the sort of world-view you want someone whose many talents include murder to have.
• Banished from the Hero's Party: Siblings Gideon and Ruti Ragnason are this. Ruti's blessing makes her absurdly powerful and capable of mowing down groups of enemies single handedly. Gideon, whose blessing gives him much higher than average power at the outset but has limited growth potential, is a lesser example as, while he's extremely capable, he still falls short of the other members of the Hero's party once they catch up to him.
• Bazil Broketail: Among the Ardu, Norwul is definitely this — a strong, skilled hunter and warrior, who at the same time is quite intelligent and open-minded, quickly picking lessons in combat from Relkin and proving himself to be a natural born leader.
• Several characters in Ben-To, but especially "The Wizard", legendary master of violent discount microwaveable dinner acquisition.
• Amanda 'The School Swot' Tweedle from the novel Blonde Genius and related short stories by J.T. Edson. She is better at most of her subjects than her teachers.
• BGQG has Reiji who placed at the top of his class.
• Judge Holden from Blood Meridian is strong enough to crush a man's skull with his hands and pick up and fire a Howitzer, can shoot a running target from a mile away, can dance and play the fiddle like nobody's business, has command of an exceptional vocabulary in at least ten languages, and is an expert in a wide variety of scientific fields ranging from anthropology to geology. Remember, this book takes place in the 1840s. Tobin remarks that he's never seen the judge do anything he isn't perfect at. This hints towards his Ambiguously Human nature.
• Buck in The Call of the Wild. He's strong, bold, intelligent, clever, patient, and just about whatever else he needs to be to thrive in his harsh conditions. Over the course of the story he kills the alpha sled dog, leads the sled pack, pulls a 1,000 lb sled, kills a bull moose by himself, slaughters an entire band of Native Americans and outfights in entire wolf pack to become their alpha. By the end of the story, he's a legendary figure.
• George Beard is established as this in the Captain Underpants book "The Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers." Within the span of five minutes, he outwits an auto mechanic who mocks a bullying victim, then intimidates the bullies into submission using only a tie — on his first day of kindergarten. He later masterminds the plan to humiliate and scare said bullies into reforming, and is only slightly fazed when he has to adapt his plans due to some lucky guesswork from Kipper.
• Appleby in Catch-22 is good at everything he puts his hand to. He's handsome and charismatic and everybody likes him. Yossarian hates that son of a bitch.
• Stella of Chivalry of a Failed Knight is one of the rare A-ranked Blazers. She possesses fifty times the amount of mana of an average student, is a skilled swordswoman, and has ridiculous brute strength.
• Franco Rocafirme, from Conciencia y Voluntad is basically good at anything that he puts effort in. Specially combat, but also philosophy, leadership, conspiration, and more.
• Damn Reincarnation:
  • Vermouth was The Hero of the Five Great Heroes known as "the Great". He was a master of every kind of weapon and known as the "God of War" and "Master of All". He's beloved by seemingly everyone in the setting aside from the demons and his influence on the world has ensured his descendant's lasting prestige, power, and wealth.
  • Eugene retains all of his skills from his previous life as Hamel, including his absurd skill-at-arms and talents as an Instant Expert. He quickly regains all of his martial talents from his previous life and studies to master magic too, utilizing his Lionheart mana cores in a way that no one else has ever attempted before.
• Max Demian from the 1919 novel Demian. He is not only smarter than everyone in his age group but is also capable of trouncing the bully who has the protagonist in his thrall.
• Dirk Pitt from Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt Adventures novels. Officially a marine engineer by trade, he also is an cunning action hero who has defeated the world-threatening schemes of a veritable menagerie of villains, made a number of discoveries that changed history and has little difficulty getting a Girl Of The Novel. I have not mentioned the nice collection of antique cars he owns, have I? ... I guess I just did.
• Discworld's Carrot Ironfoundersson. So much so that it was played for full shock effect when in The Fifth Elephant he challenged the Big Bad to a fair fight (a very foolish move in itself) and promptly got his ass handed to him.
• Doc Savage was raised from birth to be the pinnacle of human physical and mental achievement, to the point he could be the Trope Codifier. He is the world's greatest physician and surgeon (in the very first book, he is shown to be able to heal life-threatening wounds without leaving scars), a Nobel-level scientist in every field, a prolific and brilliant inventor, an explorer and cartographer of the wildest regions on every continent, an unequalled Omniglot, a Badass Driver, an Ace Pilot, a Master of Disguise and acting to go with it, a Great Detective — to sum up, here's what he's not great at; dancing and cooking.
• In the Dreamblood Duology, Ehiru is repeatedly called Hananja's favourite and considered the best currently active Gatherer. He is the strongest, most graceful, most compassionate, incorruptible and absolutely devoted to Hananja and her law. He can also easily perform two Gatherings per night, which most Gatherers struggle with. Both the other Gatherers and his apprentice Nijiri look up to him.
• Dr. Thorndyke is recognised in-story as the foremost authority on medical jurisprudence, and some of his cases begin with him being called in by other investigators faced with something beyond their skills. Some of the later book covers even dub him "The Ace of Detectives".
• Reiji Kirio of Drugstore in Another World is, bar none, the best alchemist currently alive. This is thanks to his Potion Making skill, which allows him perfect knowledge of what can be created in the world, the necessary ingredients, and how to process and create it through physical and magical means both. As his revolutionary (if mundane) products like dishsoap, anti-monster repellent, and especially his flagship product, Super (Energy) Potions (which act like caffeinated energy drinks and magical healing potions both), he gains more and more fame and more powerful individuals courting his skill, in a professional or romantic sense.
• Durarara!!: Kasuka Heiwajima is ridiculously pretty, brilliant, talented in everything (his list of hobbies is The Long List), filthy rich, extremely popular, and everything that can possibly make his brother Shizuo look horribly inadequate in comparison (Shizuo himself adores him, but it is killing his self-esteem — he doesn't even like having their names mentioned in the same sentence because he thinks it's insulting to his brother).
• Cid Kagenou, the protagonist of The Eminence in Shadow, is a master martial artist, a peerless swordsman, a magical prodigy, a master pianist, hyperintelligent and educated in multiple fields, can run at speeds approaching Mach 4, can unleash a magical nuke at will, has multiple women madly in love with him, and commands a fully functional and undyingly loyal Battle Harem (who in turn run a global business conglomerate for his benefit). On the other hand, he's an enormous Chuunibyou who's somehow obsessed with the idea of being a super-powerful cool guy pretending to be a weak background character, impulsively does whatever feels cool at the moment (including jumping from rooftops, leaping in front of an assailant so he can be "the forgettable mob character who gets killed instead of the main lead", and jumping into a dimensional portal without any idea where it leads), has absolutely no interest in girls, and is completely convinced he's just playing a silly chuuny game of pretend with his friends where they match wits against a sinister "Cult of Diabolos" he made up on the spot when the cult is in fact very real and a serious threat and they're in fact saving the world from it. Much of the humor comes from the schizophrenic juxtaposition of him being this trope and a complete idiot at the same time.
• Fate/Zero:
  • Kiritsugu Emiya is built up as one of these. Supremely talented, rich, has a beautiful wife and daughter who love him, wields a vaunted magical bloodline, is an adopted member of one of the most powerful Mage families, owns a massive and customized arsenal of weapons, has a devoted follower and capable assistant in Maiya, and is feared and respected as the "Mage Killer". He even gets to summon the most powerful Servant from the most desired class for the Grail War. Horribly deconstructed, sadly. The man has more issues than he does bullets, and he has to sacrifice his family if he wants to achieve his dream, which causes him constant emotional pain. He constantly clashes with Saber because they represent everything the other loathes while being a twisted reflection of each other, which destroys their teamwork and causes them both a lot of suffering. He gets broken down and has to sacrifice everything for his ideals in the end, leaving him a broken shell with almost nothing left other than regrets and an impossible legacy for his adopted son.
  • Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald is purported to be one of these, with a prestigious bloodline, amazing magical talent, a coveted position at the Clock Tower as both a researcher and instructor, a powerful and devoted Servant, and a beautiful fiancé. Unfortunately, between said fiancé's magically induced Yandere crush on his Servant, his overwhelming arrogance, and his hard-on for trying to outdo Kiritsugu in head-to-head confrontations (which Kiritsugu can just use against him), this doesn't hold up nearly as well in practice.
  • Among the Servants, Archer and Rider. Archer is one of the most powerful beings in the entire Nasuverse, owns at least one iteration of nearly everything in existence, and oozes power, intellect, money, and charisma. Rider is so amazing that he routinely performs impossible feats, and is a wise and charismatic leader. He manages to turn his Master into a devotee, and turns him from a cowardly boy into a fine man in the process. Lancer, Saber, and Berserker would all qualify as well, but they are Broken Aces for various reasons.
• Harry Potter:
  • Cedric Diggory is more of a textbook Ace in Goblet of Fire. Good-looking, popular, kind, and he is one of the best contestants in the Triwizard Tournament. Then he is killed in seconds upon confronting the villains.
  • Bill Weasley. He's a top Hogwarts student with 12 O.W.L.S, was a prefect, and later Head Boy. Appearance-wise, he was considered cool and handsome, and is much more pleasant and easygoing than his pompous younger brother, Percy, despite being as academically achieved.
  • Hermione is great at pretty much every branch of magic, save for Divination. In fact, her academic grades are so beyond compare, she accompanies Harry and Ron on their race to the Philosopher's Stone, which carries a real risk of expulsion based on their prior history of rule-breaking and warnings from both Snape and McGonagall, on the grounds that her grades make her immune to any threat of expulsion.
  • Dumbledore, who is considered the greatest sorcerer in the world and is the only person Voldemort is afraid of.
  • Lord Voldemort reciprocates every bit of fear in Dumbledore that he himself feels. Dumbledore goes as far to say that Voldemort is probably more powerful than himself. His younger self was one of the most decorated students in the history of Hogwarts.
• Haruhi Suzumiya:
  • The title character is ridiculously good at everything she does. She is beautiful, gets top grades in class, was invited to join every club in school (and she abandoned them all one by one when she got bored), and during the sports festival won every single event personally. Subverted in that she's generally known as "that weird chick" instead of The Ace, but she does prove her talents every once in a while. Kyon complains during the Endless Eight arc that the gods weren't being very fair when they divvied out the stats. All of this is perfectly justified, of course, since she's a subconscious Reality Warper.
  • The tenth novel gives us Yasumi Watahashi, a freshman girl looking to enter the SOS Brigade. She's cute, energetic, intelligent, eager to learn, earns everyone's trust instantly, can brew tea as well as Mikuru, and can even keep up with Haruhi in a marathon, a feat which should literally be impossible. In fact, she's too perfect, and a lot of the audience started calling Mary Sue. She is. Specifically, she's Haruhi's Sue, a younger copy of herself Haruhi subconsciously made to be able to use her Reality Warper powers to fend off an attack she sensed coming. Once the crisis is over, Yasumi conveniently disappears.
• High School Prodigies Have It Easy Even in Another World is an isekai story about seven Aces. Each of the seven protagonists are the best in their respective fields of interest.
• The History of the Runestaff has the scientist nobleman Count Brass, who's the World's Best Warrior and at the age of 60 was able to stop a charging bull with his bare hands. And he's every bit as smart as he is strong.
• Reno Bangs is this to Mina Davis in both Hungover and Handcuffed and Asshole Yakuza Boyfriend. She's nice about it, though, and that just makes Mina hate her all the more.
• Lee Child's Jack Reacher.
• Three words: Bond. James Bond. (The film version anyway; the literary version is somewhat more realistic.)
• Jules de Grandin is an Occult Detective who's not only the world's foremost expert on the supernatural, he's also a medical doctor who's the best in particular fields such as plastic surgery, cardiology, etc. Additionally he's the world's best criminology, a scientist expert in various fields and a top-notch soldier/field agent associated with both the Foreign Legion and France's state security.
• Keeper of the Lost Cities: You don't get a nickname like "Wonder Boy" for nothing. Fitz is handsome, a strong Telepath even at his young age, gets good grades, and is Foxfire's reigning Sploching Champion.
• Star Wars:
  • Kyp Durron averts The Ace, at least in I, Jedi. Yes, he grew up in a penal colony, where he was a slave. Yes, he is extremely powerful as a Jedi, rivaling Luke in raw talent alone. Then things go downhill: he gets possessed by the spirit of Exar Kun and goes on an anti-Empire rampage, killing his brother and twenty-five million innocents with the help of a superweapon. At the end of it, Luke lets him rejoin the Jedi after he breaks free, which causes Mara Jade and Keiran Halcyon^note aka Corran Horn to resign as Jedi students.
  • Darth Bane:
    • General Kiel Charny in Jedi vs. Sith.
    • Sirak is the star student of the Korriban Academy, an unstoppable swordsman and naturally gifted in the dark side.
• Jeeves and Wooster: Jeeves spends ninety percent of his time pressing Bertie Wooster's shirts and solving his problems for him, yet somehow manages to be highly popular and sought-after, know everything about what's going on, and have a more active social life even than his master. He additionally seems to possess every skill in the world except safe-cracking.
• The Lost Redeemer: Elias Raider. He's handsome, friendly, flirtatious, and considered to be the best student duelist in Whitecliff Academy. During his sister's POV chapters, she often remarks how easy things come to him compared to her.
• Kazuki, the protagonist of Magika Swordsman and Summoner, completely averts the normal portrayal of male harem leads. Good with swords, magic, and the ladies, he's also a genuinely Nice Guy who will tear himself to shreds for those he loves. In other circumstances, this would lead to accusations of Mary Suedom, but the story manages to dodge that bullet by never getting in the reader's face about it, and focusing more on developing the actual plot of the series than touting Kazuki's awesomeness.
  • This is actually brought up by Leme, Kazuki's Summon. She chose him precisely because he was both incredibly strong and fundamentally selfless person. His power was necessary to defend their country, and his attitude keeps him from abusing that power.
• Nancy Drew. She's only eighteen, but capable of pretty much anything — over the course of the books, she's a certified diver, master code breaker, Olympic-level equestrian and figure skater, actress who can memorize an entire part and go on stage with a day's notice, ski jumper, pilot, skilled florist... and that's just a few of her many titles. Nancy also has a virtually perfect memory, and is extremely beautiful, kindhearted, good with animals, friendly to everyone she meets (including her enemies, unless they're trying to actively kill her), an ally to the police (often doing their job better than they do), able to get herself out of every death trap, kidnapping, and lethal situation that villains place her in, and has solved mysteries dating back to the 1800s. And she does it all with a smile, and never brags once. The girl is perfect.
• Pete Marino is portrayed as one of these in One Fat Summer. Tall, handsome, athletic, rich, popular, he's also friendly and one of the few people to actually be outright nice to the protagonist. Slightly deconstructed in that he was responsible for re-escalating a deadly situation at the end of the book after the antagonist had been talked down. Captain Marks is a made up one, being an idealized version of Bobby Marks that he uses to replay scenarios the way he wishes he handled them.
• In Oroonoko, the titular character is intelligent, handsome, moral, has great combat skills, is admired by many of his people, and is a seasoned captain by the age of seventeen.
• In The Pet Girl of Sakurasou, Misaki and Mashiro are absurdly talented artists with No Social Skills (caused by Cloud Cuckoo Lander Syndrome and an unspecified mental disorder, respectively). Difficulties caused by their Min-Maxing, and the other characters' attempts to overcome Overshadowed by Awesome, is one of the main themes of the story.
• In The Princess Bride, Westley tracks down men on a secret mission and climbs a mountain with his bare hands before easily defeating a master swordsman at fencing, a giant at hand-to-hand combat, and a clever thief at a mind game. Later, through his skills and cunning he and Buttercup become the first people ever to survive the Fire Swamp, and in a physically weakened state after having been revived from the dead, he helps two other men storm a castle surrounded by sixty armed guards, all before bluffing his way out of a sword fight with a man dead-set on killing him, which the man had done once before.
• Sasha from REAL is a straight example: he is first introduced as one of the best video gamers in The Metaverse, one of the two only people Neru admires, and even though he is a minor character, he certainly lives up to his reputation.
• Rental Magica has a deconstruction. The Association's investigator Kagezaki, who is apparently powerful and knows a lot, just stands nearby with a confident smile and interferes only when he absolutely must, however dire the case is. He's also royal pain in Astral's butt as their curator and seems to enjoy constantly keeping the cast on their guard.
• The Reynard Cycle: Many, many examples. The crew of the Quicksilver in Reynard the Fox alone features folk who are all renowned for their excellence. Amongst the crew? The world's greatest archer, thief, strongman, swordsman, and psychopath.
• Ankoku, Aiden's Mahoka instructor in Rogue Sorcerer, is immensely powerful, to the point where she can easily overpower other masters.
• Shadows of the Empire has Han Solo's Suspiciously Similar Substitute, Dash Rendar. He's a very good pilot and a very good shot, and he's ridiculously arrogant, though this does annoy some of the characters. Failing to destroy something he was shooting at actually causes a Heroic BSoD on his part, and then he shapes up a bit. He also appears in Galaxy of Fear.

  If Zak were in a normal mood, Dash Rendar would have been just the kind of person he'd want to meet. Zak had always been more of a thrill-seeker than his sister, and he could tell that adventures followed Dash Rendar like the tail on a comet. But Zak had done enough adventuring lately, and now Dash just looked like trouble.

• Sir Derek And The Faeries: The titular Sir Derek is one, which is why no one in the king's court likes him.
• Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels: Henry "Hank" Jellicoe is introduced in Game Over as this. He is in charge of Global Securities, an organization that is like the Vigilantes, but it spans the entire world. It has network even greater than Charles Martin's, and indeed Charles looks up to the man like no one else does. However, the books Cross Roads and Deja Vu reveal that Henry is actually a Broken Ace.
• Space Academy: Vance Turbo despite his many flaws is intelligent, clever, charismatic, and skilled at virtually everything he does. What he is not is very good at coping with the stresses of command or losses among his crew. It verges on him becoming a Broken Ace.
• Space Force by Jeremy Robinson: Ethan Stone, despite being assigned to Space Force, is a former Navy SEAL and Tier One operator. He is the best fighter in Space Force, good-looking, and a gamer with millions of livestream followers.
• Asher in Someone Else's War is a walking, talking encyclopedia when it comes to exactly two topics: survival, and useless trivia.
• Song at Dawn: Dragonetz is a famous warrior, a popular lady's man, and as a troubador he's second to none. This makes an expert at everything the court thinks is important.
• Spy School:
  • Erica is the school’s best spy in training, is more competent in the field than most adults, and excels at everything besides skiing.
  • Jawa is mostly relegated to being one of Those Two Guys with Chip, but his earlier appearances emphasize his large number of skills and he tends to be well-respected and reliable.
• Professor John Kenner of the Michael Crichton novel State of Fear: graduated from an MIT engineering course and a Harvard Law course both at higher than average speed, became a professor at MIT at 25 and still manages to be a hot-shot federal agent. Oh, and he is apparently able to quote geological surveys from memory. The only thing keeping him from being absolutely perfect is him at one point confessing he isn't good at languages.
• Rostam is the first name that comes to mind in the 'The Shahnameh'. Esfandiar and many other heroes qualify as well, but especially Siavash who is at the same time strong, brave, athletic, virtuous, humble, considerate, intelligent, patriotic, charming, and on top of all that incredibly handsome.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Prince Rhaegar Targaryen. He is noted to have been an exceptional fighter, singer, and was gorgeous. Someone close to him later recounted that he had no interest in fighting, it was just his nature to be superb at everything he tried. Most of the learned individuals of his time believed him to be the Prince Who Was Promised as a result. Of course, none of that led to him opposing his father, Mad King Aerys, or saved him from having his chest caved in by Robert Baratheon.
  • Robert Baratheon was once considered this as a fighter. He never lost a duel, led his armies from the front, and he slew three worthy opponents in a single battle. Most men couldn't even lift his war hammer.
  • Prince Aemon the Dragonknight of the Kingsguard, who lived over a century before the books begin, is still considered the greatest Knight to have ever lived. He was a member of the Kingsguard, a brilliant swordsman, and Dogged Nice Guy. He ended up dying saving his brother King Aegon IV, even though he was a horrible monarch known as "The Unworthy", and after Aemon's death Aegon accused him of having an affair with Queen Naerys.
  • Ser Arthur Dayne, of King Aerys II's now legendary Kingsguard, is the one Knight held in the same breath as The Dragonknight. Referred to as the finest swordsmen and fighter ever seen by several worthy characters, mainly Jaime Lannister and Ned Stark. Catelyn Stark also called him "the deadliest of Aerys's seven Kingsguard," which is saying something. One does not simply earn the moniker "Sword of the Morning," by being a hack.
• In the Star Darlings franchise, Vega is the top student at Starling Academy.
• The Stormlight Archive: Kaladin is shockingly good at nearly everything he puts his hand to. He was training to be a surgeon as a child, and his incredible memory and swift learning impressed his much more experienced surgeon father. When due to a complicated series of events he ended up in the army instead, he quickly mastered spears, and became the youngest squadleader in the army in record time. Of course, everything since then has been one horrible thing after another, but even at his absolute worst, his abilities were still impressive. His spear skills, in particular, are repeatedly mentioned as being practically supernatural.
  Of all the recruits in his cohort, he had learned the quickest. How to hold the spear, how to stand to spar. He'd done it almost without instruction. That had shocked Tukks. But why should it have? You were not shocked when a child knew how to breathe. You were not shocked when a skyeel took flight for the first time. You should not be shocked when you hand Kaladin Stormblessed a spear and he knows how to use it.
• The Survivalist: John Rorke is pretty much instantly brilliant at everything, CIA trained in weapons and survival, a gifted surgeon and a pilot qualified to even fly F-111 bombers, qualifying ahead of or at the top of every class he ever takes. In one book his wife artist wife asks him to draw something and is amazed at his natural artistic talent, concluding that he was good at everything he tries to do.
• Sword Art Online:
  • Kirito, the protagonist, definitely fits this trope. He's probably the best of the 10,000 SAO players, and only loses duels when he isn't really trying... or his foe is a Game Master. And even then, he sometimes wins. Even after dying, he still wins. The leader of the Blood Knights is also an Ace; his health has never dropped below about 70%, and he beats Kirito in a duel. Subverted, since he's the Game Master mentioned above and has God Mode on.
  • Asuna counts too, at least in the first arc. In the subsequent arcs, she weakens a bit as a result of being Demoted to Satellite Love Interest.
  • There's also Yuuki from the Mother's Rosario arc. Kirito even admits that she's a better swordsman than him, pointing that she can't have been one of the SAO victims because, if she was, she would have gotten the Dual Wielding special skill instead of him.
• Tortall Universe
  • After Song of the Lioness, Alanna of Trebond is widely recognized as such (except by those who don't think women should be knights). She's an expert swordswoman who can fight effectively with both hands, a powerful mage who helped exorcise a demon city, saved the prince a Mystical Plague, neutralized an evil sword by combining it and its magic with her own blade, and brought the powerful Dominion Jewel to Tortall as a prize for the coronation of that prince as king. She's widely known as Alanna the Lioness and was appointed to be the King's Champion. This does have its downsides, as Alanna later notes herself, because it's harder for her to inspire girls to follow her example when she's a Living Legend. (That task falls to Keladry of Mindelan in Protector of the Small, who is a Badass Normal through-and-through.)
  • Lord Wyldon of Cavall is one of the most respected knights of his generation and was appointed by the king to be training master of the pages because he needed a competent and respected conservative to placate the rest. He saved the royal children from a monster attack. He's courageous, utterly devoted to his duty, and despite being a staunch chauvinist who tells Alanna to her face that women aren't meant to be knights, his sense of knightly honor is actually strong enough to defeat his own prejudice and allow Keladry to keep the place she'd earned (the same cannot be said for many others). He's also the realm's best jouster; doing well against him doesn't mean winning, it means you stay on your horse after he slams into you.
• Slapshots: Alexia and Trent, the Stars' co-captains, are both phenomenal hockey players who are great at blocking, scoring, and putting rough opponents in their place. Alexia has some of the best stats of any player after just a few games and Trent has the record for most goals scored in a game. Trent's record gets broken in the third book, but as a consolation prize, he sets a new record for scoring at least one goal per game in a hundred straight games.
• in Even in a world of mythological superhumans of Virtuous Sons: A Greco-Roman Xianxia, some stand above their peers.
  • There is only one rule: Damon Aetos is better than you. He ascended to the Heroic realm still in his youth, and the Tyrannic realm not long after that. He swept through the Free Mediterranean with such force and vigor that twenty years later people still invoke his name with caution. He rules as kyrios of the Rosy Dawn cult of greater mystery and undisputed lord of the Scarlet City Alikos.

  • Griffon, even at his current low power level, is just impossibly good at everything he attempts and invariably finds a way to turn contests into something he can win.
  • Sol has, throughout the story, managed to do the following things: fool most of Olympia to think that he is a Tyrant in disguise, throw two Heroic cultivators through a building while he was a first-rank Sophist, and make an alliance of four Tyrants to act in his favor, and in that way influence the brewing civil war over the Indigo Throne of Olympia and the Raging Heaven cult. He also brewed nectar, the drink of the gods.

  • The late kyrios of the Raging Heaven cult of greater mystery, the Tyrant Riot Bakkhos made a habit of collecting other Tyrants to establish dominance.

• Jeff Raven of Anne McCaffrey's Tower and the Hive series: A "Wild Talent"^note A human with Psychic Powers and no formal training from a boondocks colony no one had ever heard of until aliens attacked it. He first shows up — as a mental presence in the middle of The Rowan. By the end of the book, not only are he and the title character a couple (with a child), he's on the fast track to take over as head of Federated Teleport & Telepath — a position The Rowan had been considered for.
• The Red Knight from The Traitor Son Cycle is a charismatic leader, brilliant tactician, educated scholar and one of the most powerful sorcerers of his generation. He's also very aware of all this, though the events of the series impact his self-confidence somewhat.
• Truth in Advertising: At the end of a chapter introducing the cast and relaying everyone's thoughts about the advertising industry, narrator Finbar Dolan introduces himself in a crossed-out paragraph as able to bench-press four times his body weight, read all the world's different languages except four, a poet, a marksman, and so on, before starting over and asking how one does describe oneself and just writing what he actually thinks of himself.
• Lionblaze from Warrior Cats. He's an awesome at fighting, hunting, and everything else the Clans care about. Of course, it all comes from his secret invincibility powers. Whether or not he is ashamed about this varies depending on what point is his character development the series is at.
• Doppelle of What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, as a result of the universe resulting from a science fiction editor's musing of how a young fan of his, Joe Doppelberg, might conceive of the world working.
• Tycho Celchu, an Ace Pilot of the X-Wing Series. He's a fairly major character, but never the main one, which is just as well since he could very easily become a Canon Sue, at least in the novels — in the comics he's one pilot out of twelve and mostly distinguishable because of his origin, his original hair-trigger temper, and his romance with Winter. He's an insanely good pilot, as a Force-Sensitive protagonist finds — so good that flying against him is apparently the hardest thing Corran has ever done, and he'd fought a Sith Lord not that long before — and gets a lot of praise from the people on his side, to the point where everyone on his side who doesn't think he's a double agent loves him. He's also a bit of a woobie in-universe and very, very popular out of it. This exchange, taken entirely out of context:
  Celchu: "I've been reviewing engineering records and damage statistics."
  Janson: "While we've been maneuvering?"
  Celchu: "Restraining myself so you could keep up with me left me plenty of time for intellectual pursuits. I also composed a symphony and drafted a plan to bring peace to the galaxy."

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