History AssholeVictim / Literature

* In KerryGreenwood's ''PhryneFisher'' stories:

* Roughly half the victims in DorothyLSayers' ''LordPeterWimsey'' novels qualify. Most of the others are old and ill enough to have had a life expectancy measured in at most months even before they were murdered.

* You are meant to cheer for Tonya's father in ''Film/ATimeToKill'' when he kills her rapists. By the end of the trial almost everyone in the town is happy that he gets acquitted. Well, everyone but the Ku Klux Klan. It isn't certain that the KKK is an exception. An early scene in the book has the victims' families asking the KKK for help, and the KKK members are thinking, "We shouldn't let a black man get away with killing white people, but [[EvenEvilHasStandards frankly these guys had it coming]]."

* You are meant to cheer for Tonya's father in ''Film/ATimeToKill'' when he kills her rapists. By the end of the trial almost everyone in the town is happy that he gets acquitted. Well, everyone but the Ku Klux Klan. It isn't certain that the KKK is an exception. An early scene in the book has the victims' families asking the KKK for help, and the KKK members are thinking, "We shouldn't let a black man get away with killing white people, but [[EvenEvilHasStandards frankly these guys had it coming]]." When the ''KKK'' is disapproving of you, that's when you know you're an asshole.

* You are meant to cheer for Tonya's father in ''Film/ATimeToKill'' when he kills her rapists. By the end of the trial almost everyone in the town is happy that he gets acquitted. Well, everyone but the Ku Klux Klan. It isn't certain that the KKK is an exception. An early scene in the book has the victims' families asking the KKK for help, and the KKK members are thinking, "We shouldn't let a black man get away with killing white people, but [[EvenEvilHasStandards frankly these guys had it coming]]."

** Later, when Thomas Theisman has pulled off his coup and gained control over Haven, he captures Oscar St-Just, head of StateSec and current dictator, and instead of putting him on trial, [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim puts a round through his head]]. No one except some StateSec die-hards are particularly distressed over this.

** The two victims in "A Study in Scarlet" (1887) definitely qualify, being murderers themselves as well as rapists, misogynists, hedonists, and religious extremists who, in turn, abandoned said religion ([[AcceptableTargets Mormonism]]) the second it became inconvenient for them. In this case the reader is definitely expected to side with the murderer, especially when the second half of the book is devoted to retelling the background in which his girlfriend's father was killed by one of the victims and the other forced her to marry him, leading what was implied to be her suicide.

* ''Literature/PhryneFisher'':
** General Harbottle in "Overheard on a Balcony" in ''A Question of Death'': a blackmailing, wife-beating GeneralRipper who has no shortage of people willing to poison him.

* In ''Literature/CalebWilliams'', Falkland murders Tyrrel...but the narrator comes down on Falkland's side, as Tyrrel assaulted Falkland at a public meeting, arranged for his (Tyrrel's) cousin to be abducted and forced into marriage, and unjustly evicted some tenants from their home.

* In the ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' novel ''Literature/HaloTheColeProtocol'' Bonifacio was a member of the security council of the space station Rubble; he later betrayed Rubble by selling the coordinates of Earth to the Jackals, who gave it to the Covenant. When Rubble gets attacked by the Covenant he scrams in an escape pod and tries to call a Covenant ship for help, but he doesn't know about the Covenants policy of "KillAllHumans" and was vaporized by the vessel.

** In ''Literature/AFeastForCrows'' Sansa and Littlefinger frame the singer Marillion for a murder Littlefinger committed. It's hard for the reader to feel too bad since Marillion previously tried to rape Sansa..

** Later, then Thomas Theisman has pulled off his coup and gained control over Haven, he captures Oscar St-Just, head of StateSec and current dictator, and instead of putting him on trial, [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim puts a round through his head]]. No one except some StateSec die-hards are particularly distressed over this.

** In ''TheHonorOfTheQueen'' when Harrington finds out what had happened to the female prisoners taken by the Masadans (raped and murdered, with only two survivors), she's physically restrained at the last minute from cold-bloodedly executing the senior Masadan officer they've captured...not because anyone is particularly worried about having him dead, but because they don't want her to ruin her career over it.

* A.J. {{Raffles}} connives at killing a blackmailer [[spoiler: and when he finds that someone's beaten him to the victim, helps the real murderer escape justice.]] Later on in his career, he causes the deaths of [[spoiler: several members of the Italian Comorra, including the man who killed his true love.]]

* [[spoiler:Bilquis]] in ''Literature/AmericanGods'' is one of the first victims of the war between the Old Gods and the New, overlapping with [[DisposableSexWorker a certain other death trope.]] But the reader is unlikely to have much sympathy considering she murdered a man in cold blood in her very first scene.

* I''Literature/{{Holes}}'':

* ''Literature/TheSaint'': In the short story "Nassau: The Arrow of God", Simon Templar investigates the murder of a man given to publicly announcing other people's sins for his own amusement. Templar [[ConvictionByContradiction "solves"]] the crime by determining that only one of the suspects has a prior felony (selling fraudulent stock) to conceal. [[SarcasmMode Because nobody ever killed somebody for threatening to expose an extramarital affair or for claiming one's religion is fraudulent]]. Really, Simon's entire career consists of liberating a succession of asshole victims from (always) their money and (periodically) their lives.

* In the ''Franchise{{Halo}}'' novel ''Literature/HaloTheColeProtocol'' Bonifacio was a member of the security council of the space station Rubble; he later betrayed Rubble by selling the coordinates of Earth to the Jackals, who gave it to the Covenant. When Rubble gets attacked by the Covenant he scrams in an escape pod and tries to call a Covenant ship for help, but he doesn't know about the Covenants policy of "KillAllHumans" and was vaporized by the vessel.

** The two victims in "A Study in Scarlet" (1887) definitely qualify, being murderers themselves as well as rapists, misogynists, hedonists, and religious extremists who, in turn, abandoned said religion ([[AcceptableTargets Mormonism]]) the second it became inconvenient for them. In this case the reader is definitely expected to side with the murderer.

* [[spoiler:The Queen of Sheba]] in ''Literature/AmericanGods'' is one of the first victims of the war between the Old Gods and the New, overlapping with [[DisposableSexWorker a certain other death trope.]] But the reader is unlikely to have much sympathy considering she murdered a man in cold blood in her very first scene.

** Finn Grant, who is murdered in ''Restless in the Grave'', is a CorruptCorporateExecutive who dabbles in blackmail and runs a black market arms dealership.

* ''Literature/AThousandSplendidSuns'' has Rasheed, a foul-tempered, smug, and heartless man who marries a 15-year old girl before promptly raping her and tricks a 14-year old girl into marrying him after the girl's family died by rockets. He abuses his wives on a frequent basis, such as forcing one of them to eat pebbles, locking one up in a shed for trying to run away, and strangling and beating them. He also shows little sympathy for his deceased son, probably because of drunken neglect. Eventually, one of the wives has put up with his abuse and retaliates by using a shovel to kill him. Considering that he follows the rules of the Taliban, you're inclined to cheer for his death instead of mourning him.

* A number of DavidGemmell books give POV to a minor villain for just long enough that the hero(es) feeding him a length of their preferred weapon seems welcome. ''The Swords of Night And Day'', for example, has a few pages with a minor officer who's a douche to his subordinate and doesn't even bother to remember the names of his (admittedly inhuman) troops, joking around with a dying civilian, looting his house, and musing on how much fun it is to abuse his power to get sexual favours, before Skilgannon and Harad turn up and kill him.

* Usually not seen in ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'', where posthumous dialogue between victims and Death tends to paint all but the worst villains in a sympathetic light. Used straight with Homicidal Lord Winder from ''Discworld/NightWatch'', though: a paranoid former Patrician so universally despised that, when an ''undisguised'' assassin walked up to him in the midst of a grand ball, the majority of guests either allowed it to happen, or actively distracted Winder's few supporters. Partially averted, because the target's paranoia was so great that the assassin (a young Vetinari) didn't actually have to strike him down; rather, the stress of the confrontation caused the deranged Lord Winder to suffer a fatal heart attack. Although knowing Vetinari, that may well have been the intended method of assassination.

* A number of DavidGemmell books give POV to a minor villain for just long enough that the hero(es) feeding him a length of their preferred weapon seems welcome. ''The Swords of Night And Day'', for example, has a few pages with a minor officer who's a douche to his subordinate and doesn't even bother to remember the names of his (admittedly inhuman) troops, joking around with a dying civilian, looting his house, and musing on how much fun it is to abuse his power to get sexual favours, before Skilgannon and Harad turn up and kill him.

** Tyrion Lannister killing his father Tywin at the end of ''AStormOfSwords''. He kinda had it coming. Also Joffrey.

* [[PlayingWithATrope Zigzagged]] in "Dead Giveaway" (1976) by J. Vernon Shea, a short story set in the CthulhuMythos where practically everyone in town turns out to be one of these. The victims included a nice old man [[BullyHunter who stands up against bullies]] and is later revealed to be a ''Nazi'' that fed razorblades to children in their Halloween candy because they wouldn't get off his lawn, a poor mentally ill lady [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer that is the mockery of the town]] who is later revealed to have killed her little brother when she was young and was driven mad with guilt, and the neighborhood children... and KidsAreCruel and TeensAreMonsters. One character that seems to be a JerkAss from the offset, the "mean old lady," turns out to be just grieving for her dead son. [[RedemptionEqualsLife She is the only one who survives.]]

* In the [[StarTrekKlingonEmpire ''IKS Gorkon'']] novels from the current ''StarTrekNovelVerse'', there's the Elabrej. The Klingons are in Elabrej space on a mission of general conquest; Klingon Captain Klag and his crew are nonetheless the protagonists of the series. The Elabrej government is oppressive and they're close to societal collapse anyway, with their general CrapsackWorld status making it easier to get behind the Klingon attempts to stomp all over them.