Times where the idea that You Can't Fight Fate comes up in Literature.
- Stories with this trope are at least Older Than Feudalism. One of the best-known of these stories is from The Histories of Herodotus. While Herodotus has many stories of inevitable fates (reflecting the ancient Greek worldview), one story is still widely known 2500 years later. Herodotus reports that when Croesus, King of Lydia (a country in western Anatolia—now Turkey—which was one of the Great Powers of its day, and famous for its wealth) sent a massive convoy to the Oracle at Delphi carrying literal tons of gold, silver, and other luxuries to ask the Oracle a question: Should Croesus attack the Persians? And the Oracle famously answered: "If Croesus attacks the Persians, he will destroy a great empire." Croesus apparently read that to mean he would win, and proceeds to attack the Persians. Problem is, the Persians are led by this guy named Cyrus, and he beats the snot out of the Lydians, taking their whole empire and capturing Croesus (whom he makes an advisor). But the Oracle was right—Croesus did destroy a great empire, just not the one he was thinking of.
- The Anubis Gates plays with this. History does not change from what we know it as, but the paths that take it to the known destination are wildly different from what we expect, since they hinge on events and happenings that nobody bothered to write down or record. Most notably, the main character comes to expect he will die at a specific place and time due to taking the role of a historical figure whose death he knows... but ends up killing a magically-created clone of himself at that place and time instead.
- In Arabian Nights a young prince is prophesied to die at the hands of a man named Ajib son of Khasib. The prince is locked away in a secret palace on an island where only trusted servants can come to bring him what he needs, in the hopes he will never meet Ajib and make an enemy of him. However, Ajib is taking a sea voyage and happens to shipwreck on the prince's island. They quickly become friends, and Ajib swears he will do everything in his power to prevent the prophesy from happening. Unfortunately, because he doesn't leave the island, he still can't stop the prince's death, which happens when he trips with a knife in his hand and the knife hits the prince in the heart.
- In Before I Fall, after dying in a car crash while leaving a party, Samantha is forced to relive the last day of her life. No matter what, at 12:39 am, she always dies (or starts over on the same day), and she finds that Juliet Sykes always kills herself, until Samantha jumps in front of her, thus ending the "Groundhog Day" Loop.
- In David Eddings' The Belgariad, Ce'Nedra stubbornly refuses to accept the truth: that she is in love with Garion, whether she likes it or not, and that she has to go to Riva. It takes a god with a stare to die for to change her mind. The series makes a point of driving this home with a large hammer. Numerous times Polgara and Belgarath say that "Everything has already been decided." Which turns out to be true. Even minor, never to be seen again characters were born just for one particular purpose (such as the soldier heckling Ce'Nedra when she needs prodding to make an important speech).
- Possible lampshading in the related books Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress. In those books, the titular characters spend thousands of years on assorted errands to ensure that the prophecy will be fulfilled. For example, Belgarath and Polgara practically dictated a major treaty to a sovereign power at swordpoint to make sure that, 500 years later, Ce'Nedra would be sent to Riva.
- Definite lampshading in the former. The Prophecy's method of revealing information (concealing it in cryptic words until the right moment) is a necessary ploy to keep Belgarath (who hates the implications this trope) from doing things he's not supposed to.
- While the characters can't fight their fates, at the same time, the core of the plot actually concerns two competing prophecies. One prophecy triumphing ultimately means the other gets screwed.
- It's later revealed that it's possible to escape both fates. But it would make the universe go so far Off the Rails that the "third fate"'s outcome is unpredictable, and neither side is willing to risk that rather than accomplish the Prophecy that's good for them.
- Possible lampshading in the related books Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress. In those books, the titular characters spend thousands of years on assorted errands to ensure that the prophecy will be fulfilled. For example, Belgarath and Polgara practically dictated a major treaty to a sovereign power at swordpoint to make sure that, 500 years later, Ce'Nedra would be sent to Riva.
- Subverted in A Christmas Carol, when the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge shadows of things prophesied by the Ghost of Christmas Present, including Scrooge dying sooner than expected with his belongings being plundered by his maid, laundress and undertaker, as well as the impending death of Tiny Tim:Ghost of Christmas Present: I see a vacant seat in the poor chimney corner, and a crutch without an owner. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die... If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race will find him here.
- After seeing the vision, and pleading for a second chance, Scrooge makes good on his promise by buying a huge turkey for Bob Cratchit's family, promoting Bob to Scrooge's partner, donating generously to the charity solicitors, and finding physicians for Tiny Tim.
- Discworld:
- Comes up a few times. There's a plan for the world, and the world doesn't particularly care what the people think or even do. In Mort, Mort saves the life of a princess he was supposed to reap. That part goes fine, but the princess quickly discovers that everyone is still acting like she died, with mourning colors being raised in the halls and repeatedly forgetting about the princess even when she's standing right there. Even when she recruits a wizard (who can see her) as the "royal recognizer," it doesn't really help. In the end, Death talks to the gods, and they agree to change the plan because they're a bunch of romantic saps.
- Played straight and subverted in The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett
- Early in the book a psychic sees the future burning of Ankh-Morpork, and races off away only to be killed in an avalanche - proving that Death also has a sense of humour
- Later, Rincewind sees Death, who's surprised to meet the failed wizard, since he has an appointment with Rincewind the next day in another city. Death even offers to lend Rincewind a fast horse, but wisely he doesn't take up the offer. (This is Pratchett's take on an old Arab legend - see below under Myth & Folklore.)
- In Night Watch Discworld Vimes finds himself thrown back in time due to a magical accident, and takes the place of his old mentor John Keel. It's made explicit that he can't actually change what's happened during the events of the time. While he fails to prevent the short-lived People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road from being destroyed so history ultimately follows a nigh-identical course, he still manages to change history so they held out until the morning.
- Isaac Asimov's "Dreaming is a Private Thing": Dreamers, like Hillary, might try to stop working, but it can't last. It is their destiny to create stories and entertainment for other people to enjoy."This is our job, not our life. But not Sherman Hillary. Wherever he goes, whatever he does, he'll dream. While he lives, he must think; while he thinks, he must dream. We don't hold him prisoner, our contract isn't an iron wall for him. His own skull is his prisoner, Frank." — Jesse Weill.
- In H. Beam Piper's short story The Edge of the Knife, a history professor remembers flashes of the future as well as the past; what he doesn't always remember is "the edge of the knife" - the knife-blade moment of the present separating the two - and so he gets into trouble for things like looking for books in the university library that won't be written for several hundred years, because he wants to draw analogies between two different historical situations. He copes with all this by thinking of events being just as much historical facts if they happened yesterday or will happen in the future.
- The Empirium Trilogy: Eliana doesn't want to be the long awaited Sun Queen and all that that entails. However, she does want to end the Undying Empire for good and if embracing her powers is the only way to do it, then she will.
- In The Faerie Queene, the Fates themselves tell a grieving mother that they can't extend the short threads of life that belong to her sons because once determined, destiny absolutely cannot be changed."For what the Fates do once decree, / Not all the gods can chaunge, nor Ioue him self can free."
- Brought home in Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods when his mom contracts the plague; Gregor acknowledges mentally that there was no other way to ensure the prophecy would happen the way it needed to.
- However, the final book in the series, Gregor and the Code of Claw, subverts this with Ripred arguing that all the prophecies in the series are *self-fulfilling*, with people interpreting them after the fact to make them fit. In other words, fate is what you make it.
- This is one of the two overriding themes in all of Thomas Hardy's work, the other being From Bad to Worse. Hardy did believe in a philosophy called "fatalism", in which this trope is the central tenet.
- Stacey Godenir's two page story, "Death Rides A Pink Bicycle", published in the 2009 short horror anthology Half Minute Horrors is about a boy who loathes his annoying little sister and encounters a ghastly skeletal spectre riding a pink bicycle when they're walking home from school. It points at him before riding headlong into a passing garbage truck. When the boy gets home that day he sees his parents have bought his sister the same pink bike the monster was riding. He then realizes he really does love his sister and that he had a vision of her death on the pink bicycle. Desperate to save her, he tries to get rid of the bike by riding it away...right into the path of another garbage truck, because that wasn't his sister's death he witnessed- it was his.
- In Heralds of Valdemar, characters who swear up and down to "fight the winds of fate" (Vanyel, Kerowyn, and Elspeth being three) nevertheless end up where they need to be anyway. In most cases it's far from forced — what they end up doing is completely in line with their nature and goals and requires a nudge at most. The one person who truly seems railroaded is Lavan Firestorm, and he was so cursed with Power Incontinence that he clearly wasn't built to last — to say nothing of Doomed by Canon long before his book was even written.
- I Am Mordred: Morgan le Fay believes this, and explicitly warns Mordred that no matter what, he'll never be able to avert the prophecy about him. He tries anyway. In the end, he fails.
- Journey to Chaos: According to Wiol, the goddess of the Element Wind and Knowledge of the Future, there are certain things that are guaranteed to happen, but there are many ways in which they could happen. For instance, say there are two people who are destined to marry each other, they could either do just that, go Undercover as Lovers, engage in Courtly Love, jointly become parental substitutes for the same kid, etc. There is no possible future where something along the lines of "these two people marry each other" does not happen.
- The final book of the Left Behind series, Kingdom Come has the case of the Other Light, an organization of Luciferians dedicated to overthrowing Jesus and God and subverting the Biblical prophecies that preordain their ultimate defeat. The hopeless nature of their fight, and the rather unsympathetic nature of the Christian characters has caused some to view the Other Light as doomed moral victors or at worst ineffectual sympathetic villains rather than the forces of pure evil. This is in fact a central theme of the entire series. Not only is the whole sequence of events from beginning to end literally divinely pre-ordained, making every viewpoint character a total Pinball Protagonist who can do nothing but watch it all happen Because Destiny Says So, but the only people who even attempt to avert these events (which are the literal end of the world and the total extinction of human life, with everyone who doesn't pass God's very high and seemingly rather arbitrary standards being condemned to hell for eternity) are treated as antagonists.
- Legend of the Animal Healer: Grace told Martine's family that she would be The Chosen One, and they responded by taking her back to England to avoid this. Eleven years later, they were both killed and Martine was sent to South Africa.
- A major theme of The Licanius Trilogy. Due to the pre-destined nature of events, even seeing an Augur's vision of the future will not enable anyone to change what is destined to happen. It's a series-spanning debate whether this means life is meaningless or whether free will isn't required for meaning.
- This is a major theme of Dean Koontz's Lightning: It's very difficult to change the future, because "destiny struggles to reassert the pattern that was meant to be."
- The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has the Golden Age Prophecy, which predicts that two Sons of Adam (the Narnians' terms for a male human) and two Daughters of Eve (the Narnians' terms for a female human) will defeat the White Witch and restore peace in Narnia. It turns out that the Pevensie children are indeed the prophesied four. Although the White Witch tries to kill them to maintain her rule over Narnia, the siblings successfully defeat her and become the sworn protectors of Narnia.
- The Lord of the Rings:
- Ilúvatar (God) acts mostly through fate: Gandalf tells Frodo that "there are other forces at work in the world...one could say Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you were also meant to have it."
- The basic plot point of the story of Túrin Turambar, thanks to Morgoth's curse on Húrin's family. His attempts to fight it only lead to more misery, for him and everyone else. This leads to a really depressing conclusion.
- Also the point of the Doom of Mandos, which states that the Feanorians will never complete their oath.
- In the aftermath of Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Huor (Man) prophesied to Turgon (Elf) that new hope would spring from the two of them, saying "...from you and from me a new star will arise." This later proved to be true, for his son Tuor wedded Turgon's daughter Idril, and their son was Eärendil The Mariner, who sailed to Undying Lands to plead mercy for Two Kindreds. Eärendil himself was set to sail to the sky with Silmaril on his ship, thus becoming the Morningstar.
- This trope is actually part of the draw of Machine of Death. Many characters try to subvert their, or other people's, predictions out of fear or wanting to prove the machine wrong. You explicitly know they die of whatever their paper says anyway, but according to the comic that spawned the project
"part of the fun would be seeing how". - Matched by Ally Condie. Somewhat of a variation, actually; Cassia tries to go against the society, but they've seen it all before. No matter how hard Cassia tries, the society's data is always one step ahead.
- My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!:
- Subverted in the first episode, which animates the first two chapters of the novel. As the credits begin to roll, Catarina discovers to her horror that despite her efforts to prevent Keith from feeling lonely in the future (which indirectly leads to her death), Keith has instead forced himself into isolation for an entirely different reason. As the episode appears to conclude with the lesson that destiny can't be changed no matter what, Catarina takes a literal axe to that notion and chops down Keith's door, falls to her hands and knees and begs forgiveness for causing Keith pain. The episode then ends with the two becoming closer than ever and revealing its true premise: Catarina has already changed her fate, but she's too dense to realize it!
- Fate has it that Event Flags in Fortune Lover's continuity will play out no matter what: Catarina will always be exposed for her crimes against Maria, Mary's green thumb will always be complimented by Alan, Maria will always be bullied, and so on. However, what changes is the actors in each scene. Catarina often bumbles into saying things other characters were meant to say to someone important before they could, or doing things other characters were supposed to do. This ultimately ends up making it so that more negative scenes are changed in Catarina's favor, since she's often being a genuinely nice person to others, as opposed to the in-game version of Catarina, who was an ass.
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians and its sequel series has this in spades. In keeping with the heavy ties to Greek Mythology, all prophecies in the story come to pass in some form or another. Trying to avoid or fight off destiny only results in either nothing happening, or worse causing the prophecy to come true in the attempt to change it. That being said the prophecies themselves are very cryptic, and as a result are open to several, sometime positive, interpretations. (In fact, in the second series, Zeus refuses to accept the excuse of acting solely to help bring a prophecy to fulfillment as excuse, saying that there are always several ways to read them and for them to come true and actively trying to make sure they do happen in the way you think they will limits the possibilities.)
- In Powerless, Rowan uses this explanation, verbatim, when trying to convince Daniel not to try to find out what happens when the super kids turn 13 and lose their powers and memories. Daniel ignores this, and it turns out that you can fight fate...if fate turns out to be a power hungry old man covered in shadows, and not actually fate.
- In The Regressor And The Blind Saint, it is commonly accepted that everyone marked by a god will become a hero who does great things. The cynical street rat Vera was marked like this, and he took a sort of smug, masochistic pride in remaining a selfish criminal who never did anything good for anybody. But then he grew older and, on the brink of death, met someone who was also marked, a kind woman who made him truly love her, despite himself. She died horrifically, just before he did, and so he vowed that if he was reborn, he would dedicate his new life to protecting her. The gods granted his wish. And that was why Vera was marked.
- In The Saga of Arrow-Odd, a witch prophecies that Odd will live three hundred years, then be killed at the place where he grew up by the skull of the horse Faxi. Odd kills Faxi and becomes a viking, planning never to return home. When Odd is three hundred years old, he suddenly grows homesick and returns home, where he is killed by a viper nesting in the skull of Faxi.
- The Scholomance: The protagonist El Higgins is the great-great-granddaughter of the most powerful seer in the world, Deepthi Sharma. Knowing that, she actively wonders why Deepthi never warned El's father Arjun, her great-grandson, to stay away from her mother Gwen while they were both attending the Scholomance, as their romance led both to El's conception and Arjun's death, when he sacrificed his life to save a pregnant Gwen from the maw-mouth Patience. Being cynical, she eventually comes to the conclusion that Deepthi did give Arjun advice, and him, being a teenage boy, ignored it. It's actually because there is no timeline Deepthi saw where Arjun didn't fall in love with Gwen, or even survived. Either he gave his life to save Gwen and El, or he listened to whatever advice Deepthi gave him, survived long enough to graduate, and then was Driven to Suicide because his pregnant lover would've been taken in his stead. Deepthi eventually came to the conclusion that there was nothing she could do to save him, so she gave him no warning, let him go to his death, and honored his memory by protecting Gwen and El to the best of her ability.
- Discussed in Septimus Heap, where Septimus questions Marcellus Pye's intentions on creating a potion that gives eternal life along with eternal youth, since Marcellus has already taken the potion for eternal life already and Septimus saw him a withered old man 500 years later in Septimus's own time.
- Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five takes this to the extreme, with the protagonist hallucinating himself a theory about the non-existence of free will, involving Mental Time Travel and aliens. He does this in to make sense of what he saw during World War II.
- In Robert E. Howard's "The Slithering Shadow", Thalis urges this on Conan the Barbarian about the Living Shadow Thog."Be at ease," she advised. "If Thog wishes you, he will take you, wherever you are. That man you mentioned, who screamed and ran did you not hear him give one great cry, and then fall silent? In his frenzy, he must have run full into that which he sought to escape. No man can avoid his fate."
- Somewhither: This is what everyone in the Dark Tower generally believes, to the point where it serves to handicap them. For example, when the astrologers predict that a force attacking the heroes will fail and reinforcements will be necessary, they won't just strengthen the first force - because they're afraid that acting contrary to the stars' predictions will curse them. In another case, a wolf-headed woman leaves the protagonist be instead of fighting him, because she had no victories or losses predicted by the astrologers for that day.
- Cersei Lannister in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is haunted by a childhood prophecy that has successfully predicted several events of her life; this prophecy also predicts that she will outlive all her children, that she will be supplanted as queen by someone younger and more beautiful, and that her little brother will strangle her. All of her attempts to prevent these things from happening only serve to alienate those around her.
- Running tally: Cersei's children: Joffrey is dead, Tommen's fate is largely dependent on her own (outlook not good), and Myrcella is surrounded by people who, while they don't wish her harm, will use her to gain power. Possible contenders for the younger, more beautiful queen: Sansa Stark is being groomed for rulership by Littlefinger, Margaery Tyrell isn't dead yet, and Daenerys Targaryen is very powerful and not on Cersei's radar at all yet. And Cersei has begun to alienate Jaime—who is also her younger brother, if only by minutes—while Tyrion, the younger brother she's been focusing on, who hates her as much as she does him, yet lives.
- On the other hand, Daenerys and Drogo's son, who was to prophecized to be the Stallion Who Mounts the World, a warrior destined to become the greatest of kings and lead the Dothraki across the sea, was stillborn after being killed by Mirri Maz Duur's Equivalent Exchange spell. Unless the prophecy actually referred to Dany or her dragons, and the ones speaking got it wrong. Given that Melisandre's belief that the somewhat similar prophecy of Azor Ahai refers to Stannis Baratheon is apparently mistaken and seems more likely to actually be about Dany and/or Jon Snow, it's quite possible.
- Seems to be the case in Shaman of the Undead universe. If Ida foresees something, you can be sure that it will happen. If she foresees your death, no matter what you do, you'll still die, even if in the Prophecy Twist she'll be the one to kill you by accident.
- The Thebaid: Most of the gods are horrified to learn that the people of Thebes and Argos will be massacred in a great war and lobby to stop it. Most except Jupiter, who orders his lessers to carry out the decrees of Fate or suffer the wrath of his thunderbolt. Unable to challenge the king of the universe, all the unhappy gods can do is delay the inevitable:
- Juno is the most successful at fitting fate to her designs, since she leverages Jupiter's many adulteries to make him concede that Argos shouldn't be totally destroyed.
- Venus stops Mars from rousing the Argive army by breaking into tears in front of his chariot and waxing poetic about how Thebes' destruction will end the bloodline of their child Cadmus. Not wanting to upset his lover, Mars lets the men of Argos laze around for a week or two before Jupiter makes him stop procrastinating.
- Bacchus orders all his nymphs to dry up their rivers with the exception of one near Nemea. This forces King Adrastus to take his men their and sets up a chain of events that delays the war another few weeks.
- Phoebus knows a thing or two about fate, so he doesn't work against Jupiter and is content to give one of his doomed oracles a noble death.
- Diana almost rebels against Jupiter to save the life of one of her devotees, but her twin Phoebus makes sure she doesn't commit suicide like that. Instead, she gives her arrows to the boy who loves her, allowing him to end his life having killed many men in glorious battle.
- Star Wars:
- In the expanded universe novel Star Wars: Master and Apprentice Qui-Gon as a youngling was fascinated by the prophecies of the ancient Jedi mystics. Seeing how they were causing his Master Dooku to slide into darkness, he stopped reading them and believing in them. A vision during a mission to Pijal convinced Qui-Gon that the prophecies were all true and going to happen the way both he and the ancient mystics had foreseen them. This causes him to believe in the prophecies again, including one about a certain child from Tatooine being The Chosen One.
- The Tim Powers novel Three Days to Never has an interesting twist on this: one character, a Mossad agent, keeps having premonitions of things he will never do again (e.g. he hears a ringing phone and realizes that's the last time he will ever hear a ringing phone). The first time it happened — he touched something and received the premonition that he would never touch it again — he immediately tried to prove the premonition wrong, and not only failed but got his hand horribly disfigured instead. In the end, we're never actually shown why he has these premonitions, but they all come right when he dies.
- This is explicitly the case in Time Scout. You can act in the past, picking things up, talking to people, even killing people. However, if someone is crucial to some later act, he cannot be killed. YOU can, though, so you should be careful not to anger the wrong person. Paradox will be averted through a convenient coincidence.
- A major plot point in Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. Henry realizes there is absolutely nothing he can do to change the past, when he tried (and failed) numerous times to warn a mother that her child is about to be in an accident, and when he had to witness his mother's death over 50 times without being able to prevent it. The story doesn't delve into what would happen if any of the characters ever did try to change their fate - they simply accepted the fact that they couldn't.
- In the Warrior Cats novella Goosefeather's Curse, Goosefeather comes to accept this idea by the end of the book. He had known that he'd be attacked by a badger and nearly die, but even with expecting it to happen he was unable to do anything. He also had a vision of his Clanmates starving around him, and tried to prevent it by coming up with a strategy to "refrigerate" prey in the frozen ground, but the plan failed due to the weather and several of his Clanmates starved to death.
- Norman Spinrad's short story "The Weed of Time". The victim - er, narrator - remembered the entirety of his 110-year life from the moment of his birth. An expedition to another planet brought back the weed which caused the precognition effect and it had been released accidentally and grew wild. The experience drives him insane, because he cannot change any of the events he experiences.
- Explicitly the case in The Wheel of Time. Several events that occur, occur because they are in the Pattern woven by the Wheel. The Power Trio in particular cause people to take their fated roles in prophecy, and conversely have their own actions dictated by the Pattern at many points.
- This is a primary theme of the Wolfsangel cycle. The main characters are bound to play their roles in the birth and death of Odin and Fenris across many reincarnations. This is due to Odin, who is trying to fight/delay his fate by having his destiny play out on Earth; once the cycle of deaths is broken, the Norns will set Ragnarok in motion and end the era of the Norse gods for good. A Hope Spot appears in Lord of Slaughter with a way to break the cycle at last, but even with the Norns themselves pushing for it, things do not go as planned.
- The plot of Philip K. Dick's novel The World Jones Made is driven by the titular Floyd Jones, who has the power to see one year into the future. Unfortunately, after he sees the future, he loses the ability to change the decisions he makes in that future - possibly because he's actually sending his memories back through time to his younger self.
- Worm: This is what makes The Simurgh so dangerous. Anyone and everyone in close proximity to her can potentially be selected by her to become a Manchurian Agent, where their lives will fall apart, they'll break, and become another catalyst for the already shitty situation in this world. All you have to do is hear her singing. It doesn't matter what you do to try and counteract this happening, since she's already seen it happen and found a way to counteract it. Cities destroyed by her aren't rebuilt, but walled off and the inhabitants tattooed, sealed inside, and treated as pariahs for the rest of their lives because there's nothing else that can be done. And even then, not only does she put no real effort behind doing any of this (the song is literally just for dramatic effect), but even these quarantine procedures are incorporated into her plans too. She sees everything about every possible future.
