You Killed My Father / Literature

• 20 Years After: Villain Mordaunt apparently does everything he does just so he can avenge his mother, Milady de Winter.
• The 39 Clues: She doesn't get killed by them unfortunately, but Amy and Dan are pretty mad at Isabel Kabra for killing their parents. And in "The 39 Clues Into The Gauntlet", she does get sent to jail for life... unless she breaks out.
• In Animorphs, Andalite culture demands that Ax try to avenge the murder of his brother, Elfangor. Unfortunately, Elfangor was murdered by Visser Three, who is pretty much the most dangerous person possibly this side of Crayak. He tries in book #8 and almost succeeds, but the real, Yeerk Visser Three escapes from his host and disappears into a stream. After that the vendetta is more or less forgotten.
• Arn: The Knight Templar has a subversion towards the end.
  "Your father killed my grandfather. My father killed yours. Let it end there."
• Avengers of the Moon by Allen Steele is a homage Origin Story of Pulp Magazine hero Captain Future. Curt Newton wants to avenge the murder of his parents by politician Victor Corvos, who's involved in a conspiracy with his son, Martian crime boss Ul Quorn. When Curt is captured by Ul Quorn, he's surprised to find that Victor Corvos is also a prisoner. Turns out Quoron has long known that Victor murdered his mother to avoid the political scandal of fathering a child with a Martian woman, and so he offers Curt the opportunity to kill Victor as a We Can Rule Together ploy. Fortunately Curt doesn't put Revenge Before Reason.
• The Belgariad Belgariad: Garion gets some nice karmic vengeance on Asharak, the Grolim sorcerer who killed his parents when he was only an infant. Asharak burned them alive; Garion burns him alive in his first overt act as a sorcerer. In a possible subversion, he immediately regrets it.
• The Black Arrow: Subverted. Dick Shelton swears to kill Sir Daniel to avenge his father's murder; but by the end of the story, Dick feels too humbled by his own mistakes and accidental misdeeds to judge anybody. Hence, when he finds Sir Daniel alone, Dick decides to forgive and let him go.
  Dick Shelton: "Sir, my father fell when I was yet a child. It hath come to mine ears that he was foully done by. It hath come to mine ears—for I will not dissemble—that ye had a hand in his undoing."
• Victor Draconi of the Black Blade series killed the protagonist's father indirectly and her mother in person. The only reason Lila hasn't sought revenge (yet) is because she knows she can't take him alone.
• The Black Fox of Beckham: When Finn's father is killed in The Grand Hunt, he vows to get revenge on the humans who did it. At the end of the book, Finn feels dissatisfied because he has failed to get revenge. His mate Arabella points out that fox hunting has ended in Beckham partly due to his actions, which is a much better outcome than what he wanted.
• A Brother's Price:
  • Awareness of this trope leads to a very cold practice: if a family has committed treason, when they are executed so are all of their children. Right down to the infants. The only exceptions happen if the family is ruled to not be working together in concert as is proper, like the Whistler family was generations before the book's start. Several characters find this practice monstrous, but others are ruthlessly pragmatic.
    "Their mothers and father had been killed. Do you think you could take that hatred to suckle at your breast?"
    "They had done nothing wrong!"
    "If we had aunts that executed our mothers for fighting over a just cause, would we calmly accept them as our new mothers, or would we rebel?"
    "Merilee was just seven months old."
    "And Livi was seven, and Wren was seventeen. Which ones do you spare? Where do you draw the line?"
  • Things come to a head when the mothers of Ren's five-year-old "niece" Eldie Porter are found trying to kill the Queens and Princesses, and it's explicitly stated that if she's allowed to live, this trope will come into play. Fortunately, the Whistlers have a third option in mind.
  • Somewhat more literally, Jerin finds evidence that the same offenders were involved in the death of the princesses' father by poisoning. Keifer, who did the actual killing, was Hoist by His Own Petard because he was Too Dumb to Live. He didn't run in time to escape a bomb his family had planted. That explosion also killed much of the royal family.
• Isaac Asimov's C-Chute: Demetrios Polyorketes hates the Kloros because they killed his brother, Aristides, when they boarded the ship at the start of the story. The irony is that his brother panicked and ran out into the crossfire, so he could just as easily have been killed by a human defender.
• Circe: This is part of the setting's culture; it is expected for sons to rise up and avenge their fallen fathers. This is why Telemachus is exiled from Ithaca after Telegonus accidentally kills their father Odysseus — Telemachus knew it was an accident and did not prosecute him.
• Conqueror: Sansar in Wolf of the Plains hires the Tartars to kill Temujin's father. Temujin kills Sansar in a manner most ingenious, then unites the Mongols against the Tartars to massacre the lot of them. After all that, he becomes Genghis Khan.

• Cruel Illusions:
  • Before the book begins, Ava is hunting the vampire who killed her mother. Turns out the death was arranged by her father, Lucius, who becomes the new target of her payback.
  • Magician Lucius's grudge against the first vampire Numerius is due to Numerius killing Lucius's sister. He's never forgotten, even after centuries, and still hunts Numerius to avenge her.

• In Devil's Cape, the Behemoth's murder of her father, the previous Doctor Camelot, is Katie Brauer's main motivation to take up the Doctor Camelot mantle and bring the Cirque d'Obscurite to justice, although she never lets on that her predecessor was also her father when she confronts Behemoth.
• The Devil to Pay in the Backlands: Diadorim is on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to kill his father's assassin and betrayer, Hermógenes.
• In The Dresden Files, it's eventually revealed that Lord Raith, the White King, is the man who killed Harry Dresden's mother, Margaret LeFay Dresden. Raith used an entropy curse, so as to cause Margaret to die while giving birth to Harry. Upon learning of this fact, Harry sets about settling the score and taking him down.
• Father Brown: In story "The Sins of Prince Saradine", the titular character murdered a man and took his wife. The broken couple's son, who was a young boy at the time, immediately began training with the sword in order to avenge his father, and during the story proper he finally catches up with the Prince. The Prince manages to substitute his brother, who has been blackmailing him, and is rid of two problems in one stroke. Also, the avenger is hanged for murder.
• Franny K. Stein: Franny built three Franbots to take Bagpipe lessons, Soccer training, and Cooking classes in her place, but the Franbots run amok when she inadvertently obstructs their progress. Franny defeats the first two, and the third one is pissed at her for killing her sisters.
• Fraternity of the Stone by David Morrell. The protagonist is the orphaned son of diplomats, killed by a bomb in Japan. Realising that he's obsessed with revenge, a friend of his parents recruits him for a Heroes "R" Us group tasked with assassinating terrorists. After a Contract on the Hitman plot, the protagonist finally discovers his "friend" is behind events, and confronts him with what he's always suspected — that his friend planted the bomb in order to discredit those protesting against US bases in Japan. The friend denies it, but the protagonist decides that he's lying and kills him anyway.
• Yoko Akio in Free Fall by Fern Michaels had a mother. Her mother was taken into the USA by Hollywood actor Michael "Mick" Lyons, and was used as a slave, prostitute, and other terrible things. Fortunately, Yoko were taken away from this before she got subjected to the same fate. When she finally confronts Lyons, she pretty much tells him "You killed my mother!" He acknowledges that she died, but claims that he didn't kill her. Yoko points out that Lyons put her mother on the "sex circuit", and that he most certainly killed her.
• In The Goblin Emperor, Maia insists on confronting the man who murdered his father. However, having met his father about twice in his life, he is much more upset that the man killed, in cold blood, the whole crew of the airship that the emperor, prince, and archdukes were on.
• Subverted in Guardians of Ga'Hoole, where Soren was maybe intending to kill Kludd, but Twilight swooped in and stole his kill.
• Harry Potter:
  • Harry is the guy who gets Voldemort. Voldemort killed both of Harry's parents, who, astoundingly enough, are equally important.^note To Harry, that is. The plot, on the other hand, considers Lily to be far more important than James.
  • Subverted in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban — Sirius is established as a traitor who sold out Harry's parents to Voldemort, but once he and Harry meet he's revealed to be innocent.
  • Subverted again in Deathly Hallows. Although many expected Neville to kill Bellatrix Lestrange after what she did to his parents, it's actually Molly Weasley who finishes her off.
• In The Hunger Games series, Katniss understands that if the conditions were not so bad in the coal mines due to the decadent lifestyle in the Capitol and the corrupt government, her father would not have died in the mine accident. And in Mockingjay, President Coin has her little sister Prim killed.
• Hurog:
  • Averted in Dragon Bones: Ward's father is killed by a horse by way of throwing him in an unfortunate location. Ward gives the horse a pat on the back, and a bucket of oats. (His uncle wants to put the horse to death, but it is not for him to decide.) The father was abusive, and Ward doesn't mourn him at all.
  • In Dragon Blood, the cruel king Jakoven is killed by someone whose father he had killed. And not the only one either, as he also killed Erdrick in an attempt to assassinate Erdrick's twin brother Beckram. The people would have to stand in a line to claim dibs on killing him.
• Axel Mortmain from The Infernal Devices, supposedly has a grudge against Shadowhunters for the "unjustified" murder of his warlock parents.
• The Inheritance Cycle loves playing with this.
  • The entire motivation of the main character, Eragon, for leaving home is to kill the Ra'zac, a pair of monsters working as agents of the King, as revenge for their killing Eragon's uncle, Garrow. Garrow raised Eragon alongside his actual son, Roran, but made it very plain that he didn't see Eragon as a son. Joining Eragon on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge is Brom, a crazy old storyteller/mage also from Carvahall, who acts as a mentor of sorts for the dragon-rider-in-training. Eragon's rampage is brought to an end, or at least put on pause, when the Ra'zac ambush them and kill Brom.
  • Brisingr:
    • The book begins with Eragon and Roran teaming up to raid the Ra'zac's lair and succeeding in killing them, making Roran an example of this trope being played straight... Except Roran's main purpose for attacking them was to rescue his beloved, Katrina, who was being held in the Ra'zac's dungeons.
    • The end of the book gives Eragon the revelation that Brom was his father the whole time, meaning that Eragon avenged his father's death, without even realizing it.
  • Wanna get really deep into this trope? Murtagh almost suffered from this twice! He's the son of Morzan, the first and last of the foresworn, who was killed by Brom as revenge for killing Brom's dragon. However, father and son weren't that close. Additionally, Brom had been assigned to kill Murtagh's mom, but was Distracted by the Sexy. So instead he ends up banging her, and then she disappears for nine months, at the end of which Eragon's mom shows up in Carvahall and has him before taking off again, making Eragon and Murtagh half-brothers.
• Interesting Times gives us what is possibly the most polite yet tear-jerking instance of this trope, when mild-mannered insurance underwriter Twoflower confronts Lord Hong, who is already surrounded and defeated, and asks him if he remembers a small dispute Lord Hong had that resulted in a minor commotion in Bes Pelargic several years ago, but Hong doesn't even remember. Twoflower explains evenly that it made him rather upset, and he'd like to fight him. When his daughter tries to talk him out of it, he calmly says "He killed your mother" and that someone has to stand up to him. Luckily, Twoflower wins thanks to Chekhov's BOOM-erang.
• "El Inquisidor De Mexico": Jacobo takes revenge against Don Domingo because he had previously executed his brother Jaime Ribeiro and his wife Leonarda Nuñez.
• Jaine Austen Mysteries:
  • Or rather "my wife", in the case of Wells Dumont in Last Writes.
  • Doris believes this of Marybeth, who crashed into her husband Glenn and crippled him, slowly killing the man before the events of The PMS Murder.
  • Daphna Devane says this to the book's killer, Conrad, in Killing Bridezilla. In that case, it's more "You killed my daughter."
  • A variant on this in "The Dangers of Gingerbread Cookies". Dr. McCay performed an eye lift on a Pam Knight years prior. Unfortunately, he badly botched the operation and got off scot free. This drove the poor woman to hang herself. Years later, her daughter Ginny (who had found the body, by the way) found out the guy was moving to Florida and became his fiancé. She planned to take all of his money and ditch him at the altar, but not kill him. That plan doesn't work out due to the murder freezing Preston's assets, but thanks to her inheritance being much more valuable than it first appears, she does get something out of it.
  • Another variant in Killing Cupid, where it's a case of "you killed my cat".
  • Played straighter in Death of a Neighborhood Scrooge, where it's revealed that Dave Kellogg (AKA David Chambers) came into Scotty's house to get back at him for indirectly killing his father by causing stress on his bad heart when they worked together on a remake of A Christmas Carol.
• The titular protagonist of The Legend of Anne Bonny holds a personal hatred of Lieutenant Robert Maynard and the British Navy for hanging her beloved uncle Feargus. It turns into a more literal case after Feargus is revealed to have been her father, and Anne ultimately manages to avenge him by killing Maynard.
• Maximum Ride:
  Jeb: You killed your own brother!!
• Market Forces, by Richard K. Morgan. Chris Faulkner, who lives in a time when corporate executives fight road duels for Klingon Promotions, is headhunted by Shorn Industries after gaining his reputation by killing a senior executive in a duel. Halfway through the novel he admits to his friend Mike Bryant that his reputation as a ruthless up-and-comer is based on a fraud. He actually killed the executive for personal reasons, as he indirectly caused the death of Faulkner's father after shutting down the company he worked for. Bryant is in awe that someone would do a Best Served Cold avenging of his father just like in the movies.
• Subverted in The Mortal Instruments. Jace initially believes that Valentine killed his father, until a declaration of Luke, I Am Your Father. Double subverted when it's revealed that Jace is not Valentine's son and that he really did kill Jace's father, albeit not directly.
• In The Mouse Watch, what do Bernie and Jarvis have in common besides joining the Watch at the same time? It turns out It's Personal for both of them, because they both lost family members to R.A.T.S.. Bernie's brother was killed by Dr. Thornpaw, while Jarvis's parents were murdered by other R.A.T.S. agents. The first book ends with Bernie capturing and imprisoning Dr. Thornpaw.
• The Obsidian Chronicles: Arlian's entire family and everyone else who lived in his village were killed by dragons. He vowed revenge on them as a result.
• The Odessa File: Nearly 20 years after World War II, German reporter Peter Miller is working on a story involving a Holocaust survivor who committed suicide. After reading the old man's diary, he assists a group of Mossad agents in infiltrating a secret organization of Nazi war criminals intent on destroying the fledgling state of Israel. However, Miller isn't interested in Mossad's goal or exposing those who committed the Holocaust. His reason for joining the hunt is to track down and kill one of the leaders, a former SS officer who murdered his father, a Wehrmacht captain, during the war. The trope is subverted from its usual ending by Miller making a blatant error that allows the officer to escape and go back into hiding in Argentina, nearly getting himself killed in the process.
• Taizu in C. J. Cherryh's The Paladin seeks revenge on Lord Gitu for the slaughter of her family, her village, and her Lord. His actual death is an anticlimax; the hard part is getting there, not the quick work she makes of him.
• In C. S. Lewis's Prince Caspian, when Peter proposes that he challenge Miraz to single combat, Caspian wants to do it, because Miraz killed his father. Peter overrules him: Miraz would not take him seriously. Humorously, for the movie adaptation, Ben Barnes (Caspian) practiced his accent by watching The Princess Bride. He was highly amused when the line "you killed my father" came up as part of his script.
• Protector of the Small: In First Test'', Kel's yearmate Seaver has this reaction when fighting spidrens.
• The Radix: Double subverted. When Brynstone meets his father's murderer, the villain is tied to a bonfire and about to burn alive. He tells Brynstone what he did, trying to invoke this trope and provoke the hero into granting him a Mercy Kill. Brynstone doesn't kill him, instead leaving him to burn.
• Reaper (2016): Jex's father is killed in the Avalon bombing.
• Red Storm Rising: The Soviet Union uses this as an excuse when they stage a false flag bomb attack, kill a whole bunch of schoolchildren, and blame it on the Germans. You Killed Our Daughters, indeed. And then it comes around gloriously to bite the Politburo in the ass.
• Ringing Bell: Poor Chirin. His mother and flock are killed and eaten by a wolf named Woe. You can tell it's personal when a little lamb tries to kill a wolf! For extra tearjerker points, when he finally succeeds, he feels no real satisfaction since Woe had become a surrogate father to him by that point. The anime adaptation of the book makes things even worse for Chirin when he is disowned by his former flock since he's even scarier than Woe now.
• In Shadow of the Conqueror, everyone who lived during the days of Dawn Empire has at least one family member they lost to Dayless the Conqueror, due to the sheer scale of his crimes. For Ahrek, it was his entire family, killed during the Daybreak Massacre.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: As revealed in the First-Episode Twist ending of volume 1, Oliver Horn's secret motivation for attending Kimberly Magic Academy is to take revenge on the seven instructors who betrayed and murdered his mother Chloe Halford. In that scene, he ambushes and disables his first target, Darius Grenville, and then tortures him with a pain spell until he begs for death, before beheading him.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Arya Stark makes a hit list of those responsible for the deaths of her family members and friends. She is able to kill two people. Ironically, she ends up being with the man who is on her hit list later, but she leaves him to die before heading to Braavos.
  • Oberyn Martell's main reason for going to King's Landing is to avenge the deaths of his sister, niece, and nephew by facing off with the culprit, Gregor "The Mountain" Clegane.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • This is Xanatos's motive for wanting to kill Qui-Gon in the Jedi Apprentice series. He may want to wipe out the entire Jedi Order, but with his old Master, It's Personal. He doesn't succeed, obviously.
  • The Han Solo Trilogy: After he finds out that Jiliac is the one who had Aruk (his parent) killed, Durga challenges her to a duel. He manages to kill her, narrowly.
  • Comes up twice in Shadows of the Empire:
    • Prince Xizor hates Darth Vader for a variety of reasons, but a big one is an incident on Xizor's homeworld. A flesh-eating bacteria escaped from an Imperial hazard lab, and Vader ordered the city and its 200,000 inhabitants — including Xizor's mother, father, brother, two sisters, and three uncles — "sterilized" so the incurable contagion wouldn't spread. While Xizor is already scheming to get Vader killed or replaced as the Emperor's favorite, as soon as Xizor learns that the Rebel hero Luke Skywalker is Vader's son, he covertly tries to get some Revenge by Proxy. Unfortunately for Xizor, Vader finds out.
    • An assassin who tries to kill Xizor does it because Xizor ruined his father and drove him to suicide. Xizor calls him an idiot and snaps his neck.
  • This comes up in Wraith Squadron. Lieutenant Wes Janson, known for his love of pranks and sense of humor, has a dark past in that his first kill was another Rebel pilot: during a stealth attack, one of his squadmates cracked from the stress and was about to give away their position by breaking cover and flying away, so Janson was ordered to shoot him down. That pilot's son, Kell Tainer, eventually joins Wraith Squadron as the resident Demolitions Expert. Janson is leery of this trope kicking in, while Kell spends time both hating and fearing Janson as some murderously strict officer, until he sees Janson covering for a pilot going through a Heroic BSoD and realizes Janson's better than that. Eventually, the two are able to have a functional professional relationship, though they never become friends.
    Wedge: Wes, we really need Tainer... if we can persuade him to stay.
    Wes: Oh, wonderful. I killed his father. He hates me. He knows how to make bombs. Come on, Wedge, how does this story end?
  • Legacy of the Force has the rare "dead mother, living-but-badly-injured father" variant, with Ben Skywalker very nearly succeeding in killing his cousin Jacen while trying to avenge Mara's death. Of course, his father, being the Jedi he is, forces him away before he can finish the job, despite suffering after a nasty brawl with Jacen himself and being scared that Ben's Unstoppable Rage will lead to a Start of Darkness.
• Sword of Truth: At least part of the reason Richard goes on his quest in Wizard's First Rule is to get revenge for the death of his father, George Cypher. Then it turns out that George was his adopted father. Who was killed by his real father (and the Big Bad), Darken Rahl, whom Richard kills in the climax.
• "Talma Gordon": The man known as Simon Cameron killed Captain Gordon to avenge his father, a crew member of Gordon's who was killed by him after helping him bury his treasure to keep the location secret.
• In Rebecca Reisert's The Third Witch, a retelling of Macbeth, the goal of the protagonist, a girl named Gilly, is to kill Macbeth in revenge for him killing her father. Being the object of Macbeth's destruction becomes the sole meaning to her life, much to the frustration and concern of those around her. It's a Foregone Conclusion for those who know the play and thus know that Macduff kills Macbeth, so in the end Gilly doesn't accomplish her goal. She sulks for a while but then gains a positive outlook and begins to rebuild her life.
• The Toymaker's Apprentice: Inverted. When the mouse queen bit Stefan, causing him to turn into a wooden doll, the shock caused Stefan to fall over on top of her, crushing her to death in front of her seven-headed son(s). The sons then swore revenge against Stefan, intent on killing him to avenge their mother's death.
• Trapped on Draconica: Inverted as a villain (Taurok) wants kill a hero (Daniar) for this reason. He thinks Daniar killed him because they dueled just before he died. It was actually a Baalarian archer aiming for Daniar during said duel. Taurok's son took the blow for Daniar and Gothon pinned the blame on her.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • An important plot point in Dan Abnett's First & Only, with Gaunt seeking revenge on the man responsible for his father's death. Later, he finds himself on the other end of the trope, as that man's son comes seeking revenge on him.
  • In Anthony Reynolds's Word Bearers novels, Marduk killed Kol Badar's blood brother thousands of years ago. Kol Badar has hated him for it ever since, and would have killed Marduk long ago if not for their mutual master Jarulek staying his hand.
• Defied in the Dale Brown novel Warrior Class, where the Big Bad Pavel Kazakov says that the strike he orders against an Albanian town is definitely not because Albanian guerillas killed his father.
• Inverted in Wayside School: The kids trick their Sadistic Teacher, Mrs. Gorf, into turning herself into an apple, which then gets eaten by Louis. Later, Mrs. Gorf's son tries to avenge her by becoming the kids' substitute teacher, stealing their voices, and attempting to frame them for making hateful phone calls to their own mothers.
• The Well at the World's End: Ursula is captured by a slaver named Bull Nosy, but then Gandolf, the tyrannical Lord of Utterbol, murders him and takes Ursula for himself. Bull Nosy's brother, Bull Shockhead, vows revenge. He travels to Utterbol and kills Gandolf by cleaving his skull with a sword, the same way Gandolf killed Bull Nosy.
• In The Well of Moments, discovering the truth about her father's death drives Jasmine to seek revenge against the person responsible — who happens to be in town, doesn't know that Jasmine is his daughter, and has already arranged a deal with her. Jasmine also possesses a paranormal object with the power to draw in whomever she intends to kill.
• WIEDERGEBURT: Legend of the Reincarnated Warrior: Title character Eryk Vieger to the Great Overlord of the Seventh Realm in the Action Prologue. Paraphrased, "You killed my wife, and my daughter, and my friends, and my whole civilization..."
• Xandri Corelel: In Tone of Voice, the reporter Ashley Betancourt is the daughter of two well-regarded journalists who were murdered by Last Hope for Humanity terrorists. To get revenge, Betancourt faked evidence against the LHFH and was caught, ruining her career.
• Partially subverted in Mór Jókai's historical novel Zoltan Karpathy. The Big Bad hires an assassin duelist to challenge and kill the titular character and his mentor. He kills the mentor, but loses his arm to a challenger, who took on him in order to protect Zoltán. Needless to say, the poor kid is pretty disappointed.

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