History DesignatedHero / Literature

* Theresa Sullivan, the main character of ''Empress Theresa'', is described as kind-hearted and virtuous, but her actions make her come across as self-centered and myopic. When a bunch of gold bullion owners sue her because she just made their gold worthless by materializing a bunch of the stuff, she curses the lawyer hired by the plaintiffs so that any motor vehicle they enter will refuse to start. She also eliminates winter and nighttime for all of Planet Earth just because she doesn't like them, not caring about the massive ecological consequences.
%%* Arguably Michael in Vikram Seth's novel ''Literature/AnEqualMusic''.

** Edward Cullen is an abusive boyfriend. He physically stops Bella from driving herself home so he can take her there; forces her to eat dinner with him; resorts to drastic measures to stop her seeing Jacob, such as having his sister kidnap her and sabotaging her truck; and when she gets pregnant with a half-vampire baby, he tries to get it aborted, and offers to let Jacob impregnate her instead, all without telling Bella anything. In the PerspectiveFlip ''Literature/MidnightSun2020'', he's definitely genocidal, casually mentioning wanting to [[MisplacedRetribution slaughter the Quilute tribe]] due to Jacob [[DisproportionateRetribution daring to speak to Bella and tell her the "cold ones" story]] (''technically'' speaking, yes, that is breaking the treaty, which is Edward's justification, but it's ridiculous to hold the Quileutes, who in the first book are still composed of 100% ordinary humans who no longer remember that story is true, to such a harsh standard) because as far as he knew they were defenseless. He also comes across as a school killer, plotting the murders of his entire class so he could get to Bella without witnesses, and later plots getting her at her home in a way that comes across as though he's planning a rape.

** Bella gives minimal thought to the innocent people being killed by vampires, [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality unless it's someone she knows]]. In ''New Moon'', she seriously considers withholding what she knows about vampires from the werewolves because telling them anything would feel like betrayal to the Cullens (even though she knows full well that the Cullens are in no danger from the wolves at all and that helping the wolves learn about the vampires will help them stop Victoria more quickly and thus keep more people from dying).

** Edward Cullen is an abusive boyfriend. He physically stops Bella from driving herself home so he can take her there; forces her to eat dinner with him; resorts to drastic measures to stop her seeing Jacob, such as having his sister kidnap her and sabotaging her truck; and when she gets pregnant with a half-vampire baby, he tries to get it aborted, and offers to let Jacob impregnate her instead, all without telling Bella anything. In the PerspectiveFlip ''Literature/MidnightSun2020'', he's definitely genocidal, casually mentioning wanting to [[MisplacedRetribution slaughter the Quilute tribe]] due to Jacob [[DisproportionateRetribution daring to speak to Bella]] because as far as he knew they were defenseless. He also comes across as a school killer, plotting the murders of his entire class so he could get to Bella without witnesses, and later plots getting her at her home in a way that comes across as though he's planning a rape.
** In ''Eclipse'', Jacob becomes just as emotionally manipulative of Bella as Edward is, threatening to go into battle and die at one point, unless she proves her love to him. When she kisses him to convince him not to kill himself, he orders her to "do better than that" or else he won't count it. At the end of the book, he's rude to Leah when she tries to talk to him about his feelings for Bella (granted she wasn't exactly gentle, but given that she too had been dumped by someone she loved, his taunting of her was pretty callous) and then abandons his father to go hide as a wolf for a while. In ''Breaking Dawn'', he throws a fit when he learns that Bella intends to sleep with Edward while she's still human. In the second part of the book, when he hears that Bella's sick, he immediately believes that Edward changed her and goes over to kill the Cullens over it (rather creepily dismantling the phone and ensuring that his wheelchair-bound father couldn't follow after and stop him). He seriously considers Edward's offer to talk her into an abortion in exchange for him knocking her up instead. He later tries to invoke an imprint by going to a park and creepily staring at random girls to force it to happen. When Bella gives birth to Renesmee and he thinks she's dead, he ''goes to kill the baby'' to avenge her (ignoring the fact that Bella made it clear she was willing to give her life for her child) and was only stopped by imprinting on her. In case you didn't know, "imprinting" is Stephanie Meyer's word for realizing that the person you are looking at is the only person you will ever feel sexually attracted to. This happened when he looked at a new-born baby. From then on, his imprint makes him do countless horrible things in the name of protecting Renesmee, including saying nothing while vampire allies stay in Forks and eat people outside of the town and ordering all of his pack (including ''newly-transformed young children'') to stay behind as cannon fodder while he and Renesmee abandon them all to escape the Volturi.

* Several of Creator/RafaelSabatini's protagonists fit this pretty well, tending to be rather ChaoticNeutral characters. For example, the main character of ''Literature/{{Scaramouche}}'' seeks revenge for the death of his friend by an [[AristocratsAreEvil evil aristocrat]] and ends up as a high ranking member of UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution government and uses this position to cut a swath through France's aristocracy despite the fact he couldn't give a damn about the ideals of the Revolution.

* The heroes of ''Literature/TheTurnerDiaries'' are a group of {{Western Terrorist|s}} neo-Nazis. Even when compared to their {{Straw|Character}}man enemies, they are horrible people, as they kill far more innocent civilians. The "hero" Earl Turner might just be one of the most unpleasant fictional characters of all time.

* ''Literature/ShipIt'' by Britta Lundin has Claire, who would be considered a LoonyFan in most other books. She's a fan who's allowed to travel with the crew from her favorite TV show, ''Demon Heart'', and decides to make her favorite ship canon. She reveals her girlfriend's fandom interests to her class without her consent and she hijacks the creator's twitter account. When one of the actors in the show reveals that his father beat him, she writes a slash fanfic that mentions that. While she does apologize, it doesn't justify her behavior.

** Perseus. Yay, he killed Medusa the horrible monster ... who had been a rape victim (in some versions) and was hiding in a cave in the middle of nowhere so she wouldn't hurt anyone and was asleep at the time. Mainly because the host of a party he went to dared him to. Then he goes around petrifying everyone who annoys him. Slightly mitigated in the versions that include the king threatening to forcibly marry Perseus' mother, but Perseus doesn't ask Athene or Hermes to assist with that matter.

* The unnamed protagonist of ''Gothic Violence'' is a sexist, racist fascist that commits several acts of terrorism. Considering the protagonist engages in many a long and detailed AuthorFilibuster regarding his views on race and how society should be run and the diet advice at the end from the author himself matching the protagonist's own prescriptions, it seems the author doesn't disagree with the protagonist's politically incorrect views.

* ''Literature/ATaleOfTwoCities'': Darnay is constantly characterized as a valiant, upstanding figure (and admittedly he's not a bad guy), but his attempts at heroism are not well thought out and wind up causing more problems than they solve. Inevitably, he needs the help of his family and friends to get him out of some quite serious trouble.

* D'Artagnon in ''Literature/TheThreeMusketeers'' is portrayed as a callow yet valorous young man out to prove his worth to the world and getting caught up in schemes of politics and love well over his head. And while some of his actions are certainly heroic, he tends to do some incredibly questionable and even villainous things. One of his first acts in the story is to attempt to murder a man who commented on his strange-looking horse. When he fails, d'Artagnon swears a vow to find him and slay him no matter how long it takes... over [[DisproportionateRetribution an innocuous comment about a horse]]. When his [[UnintentionallySympathetic landlord]] (to whom d'Artagnon is in great debt) comes to him for help, d'Artagnon participates in getting him arrested for a crime he didn't commit so that he can live rent free and hit on the landlord's wife. d'Artgagnon declares his undying love for the landlord's wife, then pursues and eventually [[KarmicRape rapes]] Milady de Winter (by fraud rather than force, but still), then moves on and denounces her as a villain when she discovers his deceit and becomes furious. d'Artagnon's companions (the titular three musketeers) are little better, and the four of them only obey the laws convenient to them, lie to and intimidate whoever they please to squeeze money out of them, abuse their lackeys, and turn their noses up at anyone they deem lesser than them. Their two greatest accomplishments in the story are protecting the reputation of the lying and cheating Queen of France and tracking down and beheading a lying and cheating lowborn woman. (She was a complete sociopath, but the execution was not at all legal.) Despite this, they are portrayed as goodhearted men struggling to make ends meet and maintain their honor in a difficult world.

* The heroes of ''Literature/TheTurnerDiaries'' are a group of {{Western Terrorist|s}} neo-Nazis. Even when compared to their {{Straw|Character}}man enemies, they are horrible people, as they kill far more innocent civillians. The "hero" Earl Turner might just be one of the most unpleasant fictional characters of all time.

A list of characters from {{Literature}} who are treated as heroes by the narrative, but are considered {{Designated Hero}}es}} by the readers.

* ''Literature/ShipIt'' by Britta Lundin has Claire, who would be considered a LoonyFan in most other books. She's a fan who's allowed to travel with the crew from her favorite TV show, ''Demon Heart'', and decides to make her favorite ship canon. She reveals her girlfriend's fandom interests to her class without her consent and she hijacks the creator's twitter account. When one of the actors in the show reveals that his father beat him, she writes a slash fanfic that mentions that. While she does apologize, it doesn't justify her behavior.

* ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'':
** Edward and the Cullens are... well, they don't eat humans. They let their vampire buddies eat humans, routinely show up the Muggles, use their awesome powers for pure personal gain most of the time, hunt endangered animals for fun, and screw up the lives of many a werewolf to get their way, but at least they don't eat humans. The first chapter of ''Eclipse'' explicitly describes the Cullens as protectors of human life, even.
** Bella gives minimal thought to the innocent people being killed by vampires, [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality unless it's someone she knows]]. In ''New Moon'', she seriously considers withholding what she knows about vampires from the werewolves because telling them anything would feel like betrayal to the Cullens (even though she knows full well that the Cullens are in no danger from the wolves at all and that helping the wolves learn about the vampires will help them stop Victoria more quickly and thus keep more people from dying).
** It's a lot harder to sympathize with Bree Tanner when she shows no remorse at all for committing multiple murders and seems under the impression that she is above laws as long as there is no one to hold her to them. There's also the matter of her and Diego suffering from a ''severe'' case of TooDumbToLive.
** Edward Cullen is an abusive boyfriend. He physically stops Bella from driving herself home so he can take her there; forces her to eat dinner with him; resorts to drastic measures to stop her seeing Jacob, such as having his sister kidnap her and sabotaging her truck; and when she gets pregnant with a half-vampire baby, he tries to get it aborted, and offers to let Jacob impregnate her instead, all without telling Bella anything. And in the unfinished manuscript for ''Literature/MidnightSun2020'', he's definitely genocidal, casually mentioning wanting to [[MisplacedRetribution slaughter the Quilute tribe]] due to Jacob [[DisproportionateRetribution daring to speak to Bella]] because as far as he knew they were defenseless. He also comes across as a school killer, plotting the murders of his entire class so he could get to Bella without witnesses, and later plots getting her at her home in a way that comes across as though he's planning a rape.
** In ''Eclipse'', Jacob becomes just as emotionally manipulative of Bella as Edward is, threatening to go into battle and die at one point, unless she proves her love to him. When she kisses him to convince him not to kill himself, he orders her to "do better than that" or else he won't count it. At the end of the book, he's rude to Leah when she tries to talk to him about his feelings for Bella (granted she wasn't exactly gentle, but given that she too had been dumped by someone she loved, his taunting of her was pretty callous) and then abandons his father to go hide as a wolf for a while. In ''Breaking Dawn'', he throws a fit when he learns that Bella intends to sleep with Edward while she's still human. In the second part of the book, when he hears that Bella's sick, he immediately believes that Edward changed her and goes over to kill the Cullens over it (rather creepily dismantling the phone and ensuring that his wheelchair-bound father couldn't follow after and stop him). He seriously considers Edward's offer to talk her into an abortion in exchange for him knocking her up instead. He later tries to invoke an imprint by going to a park and creepily staring at random girls to force it to happen. When Bella gives birth to Renesmee and he thinks she's dead, he ''goes to kill the baby'' to avenge her (ignoring the fact that Bella made it clear she was willing to give her life for her child) and was only stopped by imprinting on her. In case you didn't know, "imprinting" is Stephanie Meyer's word for realizing that the person you are looking at is the only person you will ever feel sexually attracted to. This happened when he looked at a new-born baby. From then on, his imprint makes him do countless horrible things in the name of protecting Renesmee, including saying nothing while vampire allies stay in Forks and eat people outside of the town and ordering all of his pack (including ''newly-transformed young children'') to stay behind as cannon fodder while he and Renesmee abandon them all to escape the Volturi.
* ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'': Richard almost immediately turns into this after being named Seeker, given his [[BloodKnight eagerness to slaughter]] all those who [[ConceptsAreCheap "choose death" rather than "life"]] in the later books, and even in the earlier books to a slightly lesser degree. Despite being an UnscrupulousHero at best and an outright SociopathicHero at worst, the narrative and the other characters refer to him as an [[IncorruptiblePurePureness incorruptibly pure]] [[TheHero hero]], mentioning his "winning manner" and that "he's the most gentle man I know" and displaying a general belief that Richard is always right. Kahlan is, if anything, even ''more'' bloodthirsty and willing to ShootTheDog, and that's saying something. Zedd also drifts in this direction in the [[SeasonalRot later books]] by a mixture of [[AuthorFilibuster lectures]] and [[AMillionIsAStatistic an extremely high kill count]].
** Zedd is something of a subversion, because while he's a big part of the epic world-saving quests and Richard certainly treats him as a heroic forebear and wise mentor, there are regular asides to remind the reader that he's NOT someone to be emulated or looked up to. Zedd is regularly characterized by all non-Richard characters as being far WORSE than the big bad of the first book (the war between the two being what broke the world prior to the series' birth), and among the characters expressing this opinion is Zed himself. In the Zed-focused short story Debt of Bones, it is heavily implied that his decision to retire to the non-magic portion of the continent had little to do with staying with his family and a lot to do with looking at the path he was on and predicting that it was a matter of a few years at best before he could talk himself into wiping out all life on the planet completely. For bonus points, this is one of the few story elements where Richard is actually presented as being unambiguously wrong about something, making Richard's hero-worship an in-setting example of the trope as well.
* Most Bronze Age (known in some regions as the Heroic Age) heroes lack traits that modern audiences would find heroic due to ValuesDissonance.
** Achilles is a well-known example, since most modern audiences side with the Trojans defending their home and have little sympathy for the pouting, slave-taking Achilles. Another interpretation is that the ''Iliad'' isn't attempting to portray Achilles as a hero (in the modern sense of the word), but is rather showing the tragedy that results from a man's unwillingness to compromise in the face of a perceived offense. Not only to modern readers: In the Middle Ages, Hector was generally a much more popular character than Achilles, largely because he was seen as someone who was defending his home and his people. One popular legend said that Durandal, the sword of Roland, a popular medieval folk hero (based on the very real Roland who was one of Charlemagne's dukes), had been the sword of Hector. In Myth/ArthurianLegend, Myth/KingArthur's adoptive father was named Sir Ector, an alternate spelling of Hector (technically, Hector is an alternate spelling of Ector, but whatever). British statesman Lord Chesterfield wrote in ''Literature/LettersToHisSon'' about Achilles: "I dare assert too, in defiance of the favorers of the ancients, that Creator/{{Homer}}'s hero, Achilles, was both a brute and a scoundrel, and consequently an improper character for the hero of an epic poem; he had so little regard for his country, that he would not act in defense of it, because he had quarreled with Agamemnon about a w⸺e; and then afterward, animated by private resentment only, he went about killing people basely, I will call it, because he knew himself invulnerable; and yet, invulnerable as he was, he wore the strongest armor in the world; which I humbly apprehend to be a blunder; for a horse-shoe clapped to his vulnerable heel would have been sufficient." (letter 64)
** Jason is another example, whose greatest accomplishments are actually performed by his mistress Medea, whom he promptly dumps when he's done with her. Jason becomes a FallenHero for his treachery at the end of his story. Even before he met Medea, Jason didn't really do anything badass. Prior to seducing her, most of the work was done by his much more BadassCrew, which consisted of some of the greatest heroes of Myth/GreekMythology. The only really decent thing he does in the story is to help an old lady across a river. This wasn't necessarily a ValuesDissonance thing. Euripides produced ''Theatre/{{Medea}}'' in 430 BCE -- that makes it clear this was how most of the Greeks felt about the character even a bare few centuries after the origin of the (presumed Homeric-era) legend. Whether the Bronze Age heroes were meant to be unironically heroic or whether modern audiences just missing the sarcasm of ancient Greek poetry is still sort of in question.
** Similarly, when Theatre/{{Oedipus|TheKing}} kills a crazy old man that he meets on the road to Thebes because the guy insulted him, modern readers are likely to consider this DisproportionateRetribution. As a result, the sense that Oedipus is the (mostly) innocent [[YouCantFightFate pawn of fate]] gets somewhat lost in translation when it later turns out that that crazy old man [[ItWasHisSled was his biological father, Laius]]. Though it depends according to the version of the myth as to whether or not Oedipus was being threatened, whether the King had the right of way, whether someone stepped on his foot, or if Oedipus really did just murder a bunch of guys on the road.
** Perseus. Yay, he killed Medusa the horrible monster ... who had been a rape victim (in some versions) and was hiding in a cave in the middle of nowhere so she wouldn't hurt anyone and was asleep at the time. Mainly because the host of a party he went to dared him to. Then he goes around petrifying everyone who annoys him. Slightly mitigated in the versions that include the king threatening to forcibly marry Perseus' mother, but Perseus doesn't ask Athene or Hermes to assist with that matter.
** [[Literature/TheEpicOfGilgamesh Gilgamesh]] is a tyrant who makes unreasonable demands of his subjects and sexually abuses young women in his kingdom. His behavior becomes so outrageous that the gods craft Enkidu to deal with him. Gilgamesh and Enkidu later become friends and kill the giant Humbaba for no other reason than glory. After Enkidu's death and Gilgamesh's failed search for immortality, he returns to his kingly duties [[EasilyForgiven with no further complaints from gods or mortals.]]
** The Canaanite gods Ba'al and Anat are ''not'' nice people by modern standards. Ba'al conquers multiple cities without batting an eyelash. Anat revels in bloodshed, threatens her father El when he is reluctant to give in to her demands, and generally behaves like a vicious spoiled brat.
** Joshua, from the Literature/BookOfJoshua in Literature/TheBible, slaughters the entire populations of 31 cities (an explicitly given number) down to the smallest child, essentially just for being in the way. He's little better to his own people, having entire families executed for crimes committed by one member. Much like with Oedipus, the narrative excuses his actions because he is acting in accordance with fate, as God had designated the land those cities were on to belong to the Israelites, which would've made sense to someone of the time, but to modern readers he comes across as a bloodthirsty invader no better, if not worse, than the people he's fighting against.
** Theseus, from the Greek myth of the Minotaur, abandons his lover Ariadne on an island, despite the fact that he would never have killed the Minotaur without her. His reasoning? His father and her father, both kings, are sworn enemies and thus their relationship becoming public would be extremely politically embarrassing. She's rescued by the gods in a rare PetTheDog moment from [[JerkassGods them]], but Theseus doesn't know that. This is arguably not even the worst thing he does; later he abducts Helen of Troy when she is still a child even by Ancient Greek standards (10 in some versions, 7 in others), with the intention of marrying her when she gets older. He does this almost purely because he feels entitled to have a divine wife as a child of the Olympians. This sparks a war between Sparta and Athens. He's never punished for this, although he is trapped in the underworld for a time as a result of the different but not unrelated crime of attempting to abduct Persephone.

** Rayford Steele fits this, too. First there's his stringing-along of Hattie Durham, but what ''really'' pushes him into Designated Hero territory is the fact that upon seeing a tarmac covered in crashed airplanes, rescue crews, and injured bodies, it never even occurs to him to help.
*** And the time when he, as the pilot of the Antichrist, knows that the Antichrist is going to nuke millions of people--including the entire population of the city where he currently is--as soon as the plane takes off and gets clear. A hero would face a dilemma in how to stop this: Try to crash the plane during takeoff, which might kill the Antichrist but might fail thanks to Antichrist powers, or secretly try to remain in range of the nukes, which definitely will kill the Antichrist but could be detected, and will result in millions dead but might be worth it. Or assassinate him, or broadcast what he's doing, or something.\\

* The two authors of ''Literature/LeftBehind'' didn't learn from their mistake when they wrote other novels, as these examples show:
** ''Literature/UndergroundZealot'': ''Soon'', by Jerry Jenkins, we get Paul Stepola. He starts out as a VillainProtagonist, working for the atheist OneWorldOrder's StateSec, he's responsible for the deaths of several unarmed civilians and treating his wife like crap. Once EasyEvangelism takes hold, he becomes a DefectorFromDecadence... and continues to treat his wife like crap while being responsible for the deaths of several ''thousand'' unarmed civilians.
** In ''Edge of Apocalypse'', co-written by Tim [=LaHaye=], we get Josh Jordan. A rich businessman who developed an anti-missile system for the U.S. government which doesn't destroy nuclear cruise missiles, but just redirects them and has them detonate there... and refuses to give control of it to the government because he ([[AuthorTract correctly]]) guesses that the Democratic politicians will give it to enemies of America. So he demands to have a weapon that can redirect America's own nukes if he decides to, and no one is supposed to notice that makes him look like a [[Film/JamesBond Bond]] villain.
* Creator/AynRand’s (deliberately) {{Anvilicious}} writing style means her works can fall victim to this even among staunch libertarians, and it’s nearly universal among non-libertarians. Her protagonists are written as larger-than-life archetypes to make sure [[BlackAndWhiteMorality the intended morals of her books are clear]], but the lack of humanizing doubts or quirks can make it very alienating to read their adventures, say, [[Literature/AtlasShrugged smugly ditching society rather than use their so-called 'irreplaceable importance' to their advantage and fixing things, knowingly abandoning their loved ones, loyal employees and potentially billions of other people to die]]. The books are also full of AuthorAppeal elements that include [[NotIfTheyEnjoyedItRationalization non-consensual sex]], homicidal jealousy, and pervasive (and fully intentional) racism toward Asians, Africans, and Native Americans, which most people would agree are [[KickTheDog huge problems]] completely separate from whatever they might think of her economic views.

* The ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' discusses this trope in pointing out that professional "heroes", the people who go around slaying the monsters and stuff, are typically just violent and rather dim. Hrun the Barbarian from ''The Colour of Magic'' is too dense to be properly afraid in the Temple of the Sender of Eight or on the Wyrmberg -properly used fear being useful to survival techniques such as following useful advice.
* Creator/MichaelCrichton's ''Literature/{{Timeline}}'' ends with the protagonists drugging the CorruptCorporateExecutive, and sending him to past to die of the Black Plague. While he was a fairly unpleasant individual and was more concerned about using TimeTravel to [[OnlyInItForTheMoney make money]] than actually giving a chance to learn about the past, he does actively work to prevent the tissue-damage caused to the people who do too many trips through the time-machine/teleporter by forbidding one person from doing too many trips, and all the problems result from those who disobeyed him. But since he's a douchebag, it's all right to murder him horribly. Notably, when TheFilmOfTheBook came out, his death and circumstances around it were substantially changed.
* Abdel Adrian from the ''Literature/BaldursGate'' novelisations by Philip Athans. The writer wants him to be everything positive, but he really can't pull it off. Adrian is treated as the hero even though without being specifically kicked to it he hasn't even the motivation to do anything but booze, womanise, kill random people and possibly [[KickTheDog kick puppies]].
* ''The Sheik'', from the [[Literature/TheSheik novel of the same name]]. He's an abusive rapist who is initially portrayed as negatively as he deserves, but once the protagonist falls in love with him the book suddenly expects us to think of him much more sympathetically.

* ''Literature/AnitaBlake'': Anita is a killer, rapist, and ephebophile, and performs the same actions she reviles in others but [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality it's okay when she does them]]. And apparently the reason all the evil comes to town is that it's attracted to her. In the early books the villains are usually interested in more generic "acts of evil" like [[ChildEater eating children]] and her acts of extreme savagery come off more as [[PragmaticHero the only choice]] but then she gets more powerful, and subsequently becomes a worse person. Better written it'd be [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity power corrupting]] but here it earns her designated hero status.
* In Creator/GeorgeEliot's "Literature/SillyNovelsByLadyNovelists", in the Evangelical novels,

* The heroes of ''Literature/TheTurnerDiaries'' are a group of {{Western Terrorist|s}} neo-Nazis. Even when compared to their {{Straw|Character}}man enemies, they are horrible people, as they kill far more innocent civillians. The "hero" Earl Turner might just be one of the most unpleasant fictional characters of all time.
* ''Literature/HunterWLPierce'' by the same author is about a neo-Nazi SerialKiller of interracial couples.
* Patch from ''Literature/HushHush'' is supposed to be a good guy, or at least an anti-hero we can cheer on. This is the same fellow who apparently uses the Abuser's Handbook as a guide for dating Nora and [[spoiler:at one point pins her to the bed and ''threatens to murder her'']].

* Gareth in ''The Rebel Prince''. He is told he has to rape the protagonist in order to gain control of her psychic powers, needed to overthrow the evil leaders of the planet. He gets drunk to overcome his reluctance and does so, and feels bad about it afterwards. This is supposed to lead to him finding redemption. Instead, after claiming he is sorry, he continues to insist she is his wife (because they were married against her will) and uses mind control and threats of violence to control her. As well as using mind control to force her to learn pleasurable sex (it's still rape even if she enjoys it). The worst part is [[spoiler:she winds up staying with him at the end because he "loves her"]].

* Bertie of ''Literature/TheatreIlluminataTrilogy''. The reader is treated to her causing a bunch trouble around the theatre with no provocation whatsoever yet it's viewed as a matter of [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality liberation and freedom]]. All of the noble and decent characters respect and admire her, or [[EasilyForgiven are at least willing to give her a second chance]], while the ones who rightfully object to this behaviour, namely [[UnintentionallySympathetic the stage manager]], are just misguided bores for being upset that their livelihood is under fire by some bratty teenager. She's responsible for half of the bad things that occur in the book, yet she gets away with blaming everyone else. In fact, her immediate response to the stage manager calling her out on all the trouble she's caused? [[DisproportionateRetribution Attack him with a sword]] (injuring him and drawing blood, no less) and threatening to cut off his ear. She's [[{{Jerkass}} rude and inconsiderate toward everyone]] yet somehow she's always in the right and remains the Golden Girl of the theatre.
* Patrick Hennessy/Patricio Carrera in ''Literature/CarrerasLegions''. An ex-military officer who uses his wife and children's murder as an excuse to gun down unarmed Muslim civilians (while they were [[AssholeVictim celebrating a pseudo 9/11 attack]], admittedly) and apparently take orgasmic pleasure in doing so, then establish a PMC that carries out extreme torture and ultimately nukes a city solely to kill the family of the terrorist ringleader who orchestrated the attack that killed ''his'' family. He also establishes a training regimen that gets hundreds of his recruits killed through things like faulty grenade training, use of poor-quality mortar ammunition, and extreme high-risk live-fire training that requires recruits to wear heavy vehicle-door-gunner armor, and responds to all of these deaths with sociopathic apathy. And since he's Tom Kratman's AuthorAvatar, Henessey/Carrera is [[CharacterShilling repeatedly and at length described as the most incredible strategist and tactician in history]], and every callous, sociopathic act of violence, negligence, and murder he engages is in is portrayed as saintly and righteous.
** The ''prologue'' of the book opens up with a man going by the nickname of "the Blue Djinn" who takes pleasure in being considered outright evil, is portrayed with a savage, demonic light, orders the mass execution of hundreds of his enemies via crucifixion, and sells the wives and teenage daughters of said prisoners into sexual slavery. It isn't until you read further into the book that you realize that the Blue Djinn is ''Hennessy/Carrera''.
%%* Arguably Michael in Vikram Seth's novel ''Literature/AnEqualMusic''.
* In ''Literature/FateOfTheJedi'', the New Jedi Order's complete and utter failure to use clearly available legal options to deal with Chief of State Natasi Daala is presented as a good thing. Instead of using the mounting public pressure on the legislature to remove her from power legally, something that had already worked to break the siege of the Jedi Temple and get the [[KangarooCourt Court of Jedi Affairs]] dissolved, [[spoiler:they mount a violent coup d'etat]]. [[StrawmanHasAPoint This is the exact sort of thing Daala was trying to prevent, albeit misguidedly,]] with her increasingly draconian anti-Jedi policies, although it could be argued that the Jedi felt they needed to [[spoiler:remove her from power]] as quickly as possible before she did even more damage, as public pressure wasn't having much of an effect on Daala at this point.
* The Clave from ''Literature/TheMortalInstruments'' is an entire group of designated heroes. With their FantasticRacism, [[KnightTemplar inventive cruelty]], and [[ItsAllAboutMe massive arrogance]], it's a wonder how we're supposed to root for them in the final battle. In later books, the author runs with this, using them primarily as antagonists and focusing on their bigotry, controlling rules, schisms between different factions, and numerous other flaws that impact the protagonists.
* Christian Grey of ''Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey'' is someone that we're supposed to sympathize with, despite him effectively raping the heroine on more than one occasion. After he meets Ana for the first time, he immediately orders a background check on her and receives her address, employment history, banking details, and social security number. He then proceeds to stalk her by showing up at her work, and later admits to tracking her cell phone. In chapter 21 of ''Fifty Shades Darker'', Ana asks Christian about photos of Christian's previous subs, and he admits that he has them for the purpose of blackmailing his ex-subs into silence in case they should want to tell anyone that he likes BDSM. ("Exposure", in Grey's mind, always, always involves the news media and publicity.)
--> "This is going to sound cold, but—they're an insurance policy," he whispers steeling himself for my response.
-->"Insurance policy?"
-->"Against exposure."
* The ONI characters of ''Franchise/{{Halo}}''[='s=] ''[[Literature/HaloGlasslands Kilo]]-[[Literature/HaloTheThursdayWar Five]]'' [[Literature/HaloMortalDictata trilogy]]. They're supposed to be painted as morally superior, especially compared to Dr. Halsey, who's portrayed as [[MadDoctor Mrs. Mengele]] for what she did in creating the Spartan-[=IIs=]. But their plan is to instigate a civil war among the Elites as a means to tip the scales in the UNSC's favor, essentially going behind humanity's only ally and weakening them. And in the long run all of their actions only cause more harm, as the rebel Elites will eventually become willing supporters of the Didact's mission to eliminate humanity.
** Thankfully this is averted in all subsequent media, where it's made clear that ONI was simply foisting their own substantial share of the blame for the SPARTAN-II Program onto Halsey, especially considering that she began the program ''on their orders''.
* Leon from ''Literature/PaganLover'' frequently makes unwelcome advances on the heroine, kidnaps her on the day of her wedding (to someone she would have been HappilyMarried to no less), repeatedly threatens to rape her, and later forces her to marry him. Yet for some reason, he's the romantic lead, and women are supposed to consider him a better lover than the other guy.
* The heroes of the ''Literature/WorldsOfTheCrystalMoon'' series, well, aren't. The male lead, for instance, is clearly intended to be a GeniusBruiser ScienceHero, but he acts more like an arrogant, selfish, sexist thug who bullies and belittles everyone he comes across, regardless of whether the situation actually calls for it, and doesn't think to share his advanced medical knowledge centuries ahead of the [[TrappedInAnotherWorld setting's time]] for the purposes of saving people's lives. Shalee, the female lead, gets off easier in the beginning by virtue of not really doing anything of her own accord, but loses the readers' sympathy once she starts using her time-stopping magic for the purposes of molesting people for absolutely no reason. [[hottip:*:Not there's every a good reason, but still...]] George gets off more easily, since you're clearly supposed to think he's a scumbag.
* Creator/RoaldDahl's ''Literature/EsioTrot'' from 1990 really suffers from this. Mr. Hoppy is treated as a sympathetic figure because he is a shy StalkerWithACrush, however he blatantly lies to Mrs. Silver about having the secret of getting her tortoise Alfie bigger. He then proceeds to kidnap Alfie and gradually replace him with bigger tortoises. Due to this Mrs. Silver ends up marrying him, never discovering that he lied to her. The 2015 BBC adaptation gives Mr. Hoppy AdaptationalHeroism, and while he still marries Mrs. Silver in the end, he is also caught and [[WhatTheHellHero called out for his actions]].
* Marcus Yallow from ''Literature/LittleBrother''. The book opens with him using his hacking skills to play hooky, including filling a JerkJock's phone with spam out of fear that he would tattle on him. He scapegoated his friend for stealing booze from his father to avoid getting in trouble. When his friends don't agree with his crusade, he disregards them. He often causes his own problems. He would have gotten out of his interrogation sooner if he complied with the BigBad's orders to hand her his phone, despite knowing there was nothing on it that would have gotten him sent to prison. He then [[NiceJobBreakingItHero causes the DHS to up security]] after causing a security glitch just to make a point to his father.
* In the ''Literature/TortallUniverse'', Nawat from the short story bearing his name. After his wife Aly gives birth to human-looking triplets, he acts like they're 100% crows and must be treated accordingly, ignoring the team of highly experienced midwives in lieu of his second-hand experience of crow chicks. This leads him to pitch a fit when Aly tries to stick to human methods. When she gets mad at him for holding their babies out of a second-story window rather than use a diaper (something which almost causes a diplomatic incident when the Copper Isles really needs international help) ''she'' is painted to be the one in the wrong for not suggesting a compromise that he was clearly unwilling to listen to. This is all before [[spoiler:he has to decide whether or not to follow crow law, which would involve him committing infanticide on his dwarf daughter--no, he doesn't consult Aly on this, even though Ochobu is ''her'' kid too]]. Oh, and he complains that Aly's Sight makes it hard to lie to her. Kind of hard to sympathize.
* The protagonist from ''A Call To Arms'' in Creator/AlanDeanFoster's ''The Damned Trilogy''. He's ''not'' a jerkass, and has humanity's best interests at heart. The problem? His idea of "humanity's best interests" involves sabotaging the Weave's efforts to get humankind to join them in the war against the Amplitur, a race who psychically, genetically and surgically MindRape every race they come across into enslavement to them, and who ''will'' at some point reach Earth. He wants humanity to become a peaceful race like all the other aliens, which is admirable. But his actions almost get humanity enslaved, results in millions of Human deaths when the Amplitur finally send a force to attack Earth preemptively, and ensures the war is prolonged for thousands of years. He is presented as a hero, when his actions make him ''the most evil person in the history of the galaxy''.
* ''Literature/TheChemicalGardenTrilogy'':
** Rhine is extremely rude and unsympathetic to Cecily, and generally seems pretty okay with the whole kidnapping and raping thing.
** Gabriel is just generally bland, but we should not be feeling sympathy for Linden even a ''little'' bit. He honestly believed a row of dirty, crying, scared looking girls had ''' ''chosen'' ''' to be brides? And what did he think those gun shots were?
* In ''Literature/TheGame2005'', Neil Strauss attempts to portray himself as the OnlySaneMan who gets caught up in the world of pickup artistry and submits to it completely, before he eventually realizes that his pursuits are hollow and he ends up settling down with the right woman. However, his explanations come off as {{Jerkass}}-ish as best and completely reprehensible at worst. He steals women from their boyfriends in the middle of clubs, openly carries on relationships with multiple women at once, uses his job (as a journalist) to seduce celebrities who put their trust in him and generally acts passively when people call him out on his self-destructive behavior (to the point that Katja, the so-called SpannerInTheWorks, is more heroic and justified in her actions than he is). Even the ending of the book (Neil finally settling down with Lisa) is rendered hollow, as real-life accounts published after the fact indicated that he cheated on her and caused a breakup.
* In [[Literature/JamesBond the original book version of]] ''Literature/FromRussiaWithLove'', James Bond's Turkish ally Kerim is intended to be a [[LovableRogue lovable]], [[LargeHam larger-than-life]] UnscrupulousHero, but it's hard to see him as anything other than a villain due to his backstory, in which he describes how as a drunken teenager he won a woman in a bet and when she refused to go with him, he beat her unconscious, stripped her naked, chained her up, fed her on table scraps and raped her until [[MindRape her mind broke]] and she said she liked it. But ''because'' [[NotIfTheyEnjoyedItRationalization she said she liked it,]] Kerim himself, Bond, and the narrator all treat it as okay. The only reason he isn't the most loathsome person in the book is that TheHeavy is a serial killer-turned-KGB legbreaker with a triple-digit bodycount to his name. None of this is present in [[Film/FromRussiaWithLove the film adaptation]], whose version of Kerim ''is'' genuinely lovable and is one of the most popular one-film characters.
* John Rumford from ''Literature/{{Victoria}}''. First, we meet him when he is discharged from the US Marine Corps after interrupting a ceremony remembering their war dead, because he didn't feel it appropriate for a woman Marine to participate. After failing as a farmer he becomes, in effect, a professional rabble-rouser, with his group, the Christian Marines, paying him to plan strategies for preserving conservative Christian culture. Towards this end, he blackmails and kidnaps officials, and leads a militia against federal troops, holding their prisoners as hostages against further government intervention. After states begin seceding from the Union, he employs the same hostage tactics on a grand scale, lynchings, torture, forced relocations, biowarfare, and nukes Atlanta when black rioters seize the city. Blacks are welcome in his state, but only if they refrain from raising families in a city and accept a swift trial and hanging for any substantial offense, non-Christians are outright banished, and heretics burned at the stake. Among the various Straw Liberal successor states, the only one treated as a credible threat and worthy opponent are the actual Nazis, to whom he objects primarily because they are efficiency-crazed modernists. Oh yes, and Rumford becomes fond of 'Retroculture' and sets out to restrict any technology more advanced than was commonly used in the 1930s. In essence, it's a modern rewrite of ''Literature/TheTurnerDiaries'' as viewed by a RightWingMilitiaFanatic.

* After spending so long in ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'' being extolled for her love, Beatrice spends her long-awaited introduction in ''Purgatorio'' coldly insulting Dante for missing his old mentor and openly admits that she wants to make him cry in sorrow for his mistakes after her death. The dissonance between expectation and reality is so strong that it is almost certainly an IntendedAudienceReaction meant to show how unpleasant repentance can be. With more context from ''Paradiso'', most readers come around to Beatrice.
* This gets discussed in ''Literature/GloryRoad'' after E.C. "Oscar" Gordan agrees to meet with a boy who wants to touch the hero's sword. Oscar gives him a quarter and tells him how the face on the one side is the father of his country and the bird on the other side is a majestic creature that represents freedom and courage, and even gives the boy a new middle name to bear with honor when the kid grows up to become a hero himself. After the boy leaves Oscar's companion Star absolutely gushes with adoration. "Noblesse Oblige can only be felt by those who are in fact noble. I have known many heroes who would have been fed in the kitchen, if their deeds did not merit them a place of honor at the main table. But you..."
* ''Literature/{{Adam}}'' by Ariel Schrag has the titular character. He is a cis heterosexual male who is mistaken for a transman because he's a minor that managed to sneak into gay clubs. When he meets a lesbian named Gillian, he decides to use this misunderstanding to his advantage so that he could sleep with her, and he succeeds, which falls under [[BedTrick Rape by Deception]]. Adding to the creepiness is that he's 17 while Gillian is over 18, so he also tricked an adult into committing statutory rape. Not only does he get away with it, he and Gillian keep dating even after he was exposed.
* [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] in-universe in Meagan Spooner's ''Hunted''. Yeva tells the tale of "Literature/TsarevitchIvanTheFireBirdAndTheGrayWolf" to the Beast and says that while the tale is supposed to have a happy ending, she doesn't see it as one because Ivan was extremely greedy and careless (constantly disobeying the wiser wolf's warnings to not take more than he came for) and was never punished for it. The Beast, who initially refused Yeva's suggestion that she call him Ivan because [[IAmAMonster he's not a hero]], changes his mind after hearing her opinion on Ivan and says that she ''can'' call him Ivan because Ivan wasn't really a hero. [[spoiler:Not only that, but it turns out that the Beast actually was Prince Ivan centuries ago -- or at least the prince that inspired the tale -- and most definitely did ''not'' get off scot-free for his greediness and carelessness.]]
* ''Literature/TheCanterburyTales'' has a lot of this, sometimes due to ValuesDissonance and sometimes due to StylisticSuck--where one begins and the other ends is one of the biggest topics of debate, as the story's framing device provides a lot of ambiguity. As a good case example, the Knight's Tale has Palamon and Arcite, who nearly beat each other to death in the woods in the name of fighting over a woman neither of them have met in person and who doesn't actually like either of them when they do meet.
%%* Folktales in general have a tendency to have Designated Heroes as often as not. Often, WhatMeasureIsANonHuman comes into play, as a folk hero will often go about antagonizing and usually killing a monster that may or may not even be hurting anyone, and even if it is, the hero’s actions are frequently more than the monster deserved.
* In ''Literature/ShadesOfMagic'', stealing is the ''least'' of Delilah Bard's crimes. Over the course of the first two books, she steals anything she can get her hands on despite having been offered honest work, holds a dangerous artifact hostage to force Kell to take her out of her own dimension because she wants an adventure, cheats her way into a tournament by first seriously injuring and then wrongfully imprisoning someone with whom she had no personal quarrel and who'd actually gotten in on merit, murders several people in cold blood for having caught her cheating, and repeatedly abuses magic she barely understands without any regard for the potential consequences to herself or others. She never suffers any consequences beyond an occasional light scolding [[DoubleStandard for actions that are severely punished when committed by any other character]], and is consistently treated as a hero throughout.

* A deliberate in-universe example is Pon the gardener-boy in ''Literature/TheScarecrowOfOz.'' He's the "romantic hero" of the story who somehow won the heart of Princess Gloria, but the other characters comment on what a useless drip he actually is, ''including Gloria herself,'' and he does nothing to contribute to the eventual defeat of the villains.
* Linden Rathan of Joanne Bertin's ''The Last Dragonlord'' and ''Dragon And Phoenix'' is repeatedly stated to be easygoing and "not an ass", but this is only evident when everything's going his way, and he's fussy and whiny in response to even minor problems. As soon as he's actually balked ItsAllAboutMe goes into full effect and he evinces a towering, poorly-managed temper which he takes out on servants. A near-immortal, he's gone six hundred years waiting for his [[OneTrueLove soultwin]] but this has not taught him patience; when he finally finds her, one of his fellow Dragonlords says he needs to take it slow for her safety and he tries to strangle the man. Only said soultwin and children are not targets for his rage, but he's deeply possessive of this woman and controlling, and screams at his friends and breaks things when they suggest she has to do plot things without him. Characters who know him frequently remark that this isn't like him, but he's so often portrayed as a throbbing nerve it's hard to believe them.
* Zoey, the main protagonist of ''Literature/TheHouseOfNight'', comes across as an awful person, constantly belittling other people in her narration, slut-shaming other women, and being extremely hypocritical (e.g. she derides other girls for 'acting like sluts' while cheating on her own boyfriend with at least two other men)). She has a habit of judging people as good or bad based more on [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality how she personally feels about them]] as opposed to their actual actions; for example, she views her former best friend as an asshole simply for dating her ex-boyfriend (when Zoey already had a new beau), while she is happy to overlook Kalona being a SerialRapist and thinks he's a good person deep down simply because he loved her in a past life and she still finds him attractive. She also tends to be a rather passive heroine, who achieves her goals or gains new skills thanks to divine intervention from Nyx more so than her own efforts.
* The unnamed protagonist of ''Gothic Violence'' is a sexist, racist fascist that commits several acts of terrorism. Considering the protagonist engages in many a long and detailed AuthorFilibuster regarding his views on race and how society should be run and the diet advice at the end from the author himself matching the protagonist's own prescriptions, it seems the author doesn't disagree with the protagonist's politically incorrect views.
* ''Literature/ATaleOfTwoCities'': Darnay is constantly characterized as a valiant, upstanding figure (and admittedly he's not a bad guy), but his attempts at heroism are not well thought out and wind up causing more problems than they solve. Inevitably, he needs the help of his family and friends to get him out of some quite serious trouble.
* ''Literature/TalesOfTheMagicLand'': Everyone in the Land reveres Strasheela (aka the Scarecrow) and praises his wisdom and kindness, yet most of his insights are painfully CaptainObvious material (such as "fire burns wood") and his strategies for dealing with villains are either HeelFaceBrainwashing or dubiously effective exile with no safeguards against future misdeeds. Of course, this is a children's book, but...
* ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfStefonRudel'': Stefón collaborates with old Nazis, joins the French Foreign Legion at eleven, lusts after thirteen-year-old triplets at six years, bombs a weapon factory for supplying black Africans and commits many other utterly atrocious acts. He is celebrated as an eleven-year-old kid hero anyway.
* Ben Kessler, one of the protagonists of ''Literature/November9'', especially after TheReveal. [[spoiler:After his mother killed herself (which is admittedly horribly traumatic), his response was to track down her lover Donovan, irrationally assuming (wrongly) he was somehow responsible for her death. In a fit of anger he set fire to Donovan's car as it was parked next to his house, causing the house fire that nearly killed Donovan and his daughter Fallon, with the latter being scarred for life (mentally and physically). Ben not only never actively takes any responsibility for this, he stalks Donovan and manipulates his way into Fallon's life, preaching to her about how should she feel regarding her scars, writing a book he intends to publish about her near-death experience and developing a romantic relationship with her without ever letting on what he did. Then when Fallon finds out and understandably wants nothing to do with him, he ends up stalking her and violating the restraining order against him to try and win her back]]. This isn't even going into his tendency to dictate how Fallon should dress and act, and him repeatedly pushing intimacy on her. We're supposed to view Ben as a tragic figure who made a mistake in a moment of grief and truly loves Fallon, but to many he instead comes off as an obsessive, manipulative and self-absorbed creep who never truly understands the gravity of his actions, nor faces repercussions for them.

* ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'':

* ''Literature/TalesOfTheMagicLand '': Everyone in the Land reveres Strasheela (aka the Scarecrow) and praises his wisdom and kindness, yet most of his insights are painfully CaptainObvious material (such as "fire burns wood") and his strategies for dealing with villains are either HeelFaceBrainwashing or dubiously effective exile with no safeguards against future misdeeds. Of course, this is a children's book, but...

* In [[Literature/JamesBond the original book version of]] ''Literature/FromRussiaWithLove'', James Bond's Turkish ally Kerim is intended to be a [[LovableRogue lovable]], [[LargeHam larger-than-life]] UnscrupulousHero, but it's hard to see him as anything other than a villain due to his backstory, in which he describes how as a drunken teenager he won a woman in a bet and when she refused to go with him, he beat her unconscious, stripped her naked, chained her up, fed her on table scraps and [[StockholmSyndrome raped her until her mind broke and she said she liked it]]. [[NotIfTheyEnjoyedItRationalization But BECAUSE she said she liked it, Kerim himself, Bond, and the narrator all treat it as okay]]. The only reason he isn't the most loathsome person in the book is that TheHeavy is a serial killer-turned-KGB legbreaker with a triple-digit bodycount to his name. None of this is present in [[Film/FromRussiaWithLove the film adaptation]], whose version of Kerim ''is'' genuinely lovable and is one of the most popular one-film characters.

* Creator/AynRand’s (deliberately) {{Anvilicious}} writing style means her works can fall victim to this even among staunch libertarians, and it’s nearly universal among non-libertarians. Her protagonists are written as larger-than-life archetypes to make sure [[BlackAndWhiteMorality the intended morals of her books are clear]], but the lack of humanizing doubts or quirks can make it very alienating to read their adventures, say, [[Literature/AtlasShrugged smugly ditching society rather than use their so-called 'irreplaceable importance' to their advantage and fixing things, knowingly abandoning their loved ones, loyal employees and potentially billions of other people to die]]. The books are also full of AuthorAppeal elements that include [[NotIfTheyEnjoyedItRationalization non-consensual sex]], homicidal jealousy, and pervasive (and fully intentional) racism toward Asians and Native Americans, which most people would agree are [[KickTheDog huge problems]] completely separate from whatever they might think of her economic views.

* Most Bronze Age heroes lack traits that modern audiences would find heroic due to ValuesDissonance.
** Achilles is a well-known example, since most modern audiences side with the Trojans defending their home and have little sympathy for the pouting, slave-taking Achilles. Another interpretation is that the ''Iliad'' isn't attempting to portray Achilles as a hero (in the modern sense of the word), but is rather showing the tragedy that results from a man's unwillingness to compromise in the face of a perceived offense. Not only to modern readers: in the Middle Ages, Hector was generally a much more popular character than Achilles, largely because he was seen as someone who was defending his home and his people. One popular legend said that Durandal, the sword of Roland, a popular medieval folk hero (based on the very real Roland who was one of Charlemagne's dukes), had been the sword of Hector. In Myth/ArthurianLegend, Myth/KingArthur's adoptive father was named Sir Ector, an alternate spelling of Hector (technically, Hector is an alternate spelling of Ector, but whatever). British statesman Lord Chesterfield wrote in ''Literature/LettersToHisSon'' about Achilles: "I dare assert too, in defiance of the favorers of the ancients, that Creator/{{Homer}}'s hero, Achilles, was both a brute and a scoundrel, and consequently an improper character for the hero of an epic poem; he had so little regard for his country, that he would not act in defense of it, because he had quarreled with Agamemnon about a w⸺e; and then afterward, animated by private resentment only, he went about killing people basely, I will call it, because he knew himself invulnerable; and yet, invulnerable as he was, he wore the strongest armor in the world; which I humbly apprehend to be a blunder; for a horse-shoe clapped to his vulnerable heel would have been sufficient." (letter 64)
** Jason is another example, whose greatest accomplishments are actually performed by his mistress Medea, whom he promptly dumps when he's done with her. Jason becomes a FallenHero for his treachery at the end of his story. Even before he met Medea, Jason didn't really do anything badass. Prior to seducing her, most of the work was done by his much more BadassCrew, which consisted of some of the greatest heroes of Myth/GreekMythology. The only really decent thing he does in the story is to help an old lady across a river. This wasn't necessarily a ValuesDissonance thing. Euripides produced ''Theatre/{{Medea}}'' in 430 BCE -- that makes it clear this was how most of the Greeks felt about the character even a bare few centuries after the origin of the (presumed Homeric) legend. Whether the bronze-age heroes were meant to be unironically heroic or whether modern audiences just missing the sarcasm of ancient Greek poetry is still sort of in question.

** Perseus. Yay, he killed Medusa the horrible monster ... that had been a rape victim (in some versions) and was hiding in a cave in the middle of nowhere so she wouldn't hurt anyone and was asleep at the time. Mainly because the host of a party he went to dared him to. Then he goes around petrifying everyone who annoys him. Slightly mitigated in the versions that include the king threatening to forcibly marry Perseus' mother, but Perseus doesn't ask Athene or Hermes to assist with that matter.

** The Canaanite gods Baal and Anat are ''not'' nice people by modern standards. Baal conquers multiple cities without batting an eyelash. Anat revels in bloodshed, threatens her father El when he is reluctant to give in to her demands, and generally behaves like a vicious spoiled brat.
** Joshua, from the Literature/BookOfJoshua in Literature/TheBible, slaughters the entire populations of thirty-one cities (an explicitly given number) down to the smallest child, essentially just for being in the way. He's little better to his own people, having entire families executed for crimes committed by one member. Much like with Oedipus, the narrative excuses his actions because he is acting in accordance with fate, as God had designated the land those cities were on to belong to the Israelites, which would've made sense to someone of the time, but to modern readers he comes across as a bloodthirsty invader no better, if not worse, than the people he's fighting against.
** Theseus, from the Greek myth of the Minotaur, abandons his lover Ariadne on an island, despite the fact that he would never have killed the Minotaur without her. His reasoning? His father and her father, both kings, are sworn enemies and thus their relationship becoming public would be extremely politically embarrassing. She's rescued by the gods in a rare PetTheDog moment from [[JerkassGods them]], but Theseus doesn't know that. This is arguably not even the worst thing he does, latter he abducts Helen of Troy when she is still a child even by Ancient Greek standards, (ten in some versions, seven in others) with the intention of marrying her when she gets older. He does this almost purely because he feels entitled to have a divine wife as a child of the Olympians. This sparks a war between Sparta and Athens. He's never punished for this, although he is trapped in the underworld for a time as a result of the different but not unrelated crime of attempting to abduct Persephone.

* Elizabeth Wakefield of the Literature/SweetValleyHigh series is constantly presented as the "good" twin - smart, level-headed, kind, etc. But she frequently proves herself to be a hypocrite. She blasts her sister Jessica for being promiscuous while she herself repeatedly cheats on her boyfriends, she goes on and on about how people deserve a second chance, but apparently thinks this only applies to ''her'' friends, not Jessica's, and she instantly makes judgments about people without getting to know them, while again criticizing Jessica and her clique for doing the same thing.

** Joshua, from the book named after him in Literature/TheBible, slaughters the entire populations of thirty-one cities (an explicitly given number) down to the smallest child, essentially just for being in the way. He's little better to his own people, having entire families executed for crimes committed by one member. Much like with Oedipus, the narrative excuses his actions because he is acting in accordance with fate, as God had designated the land those cities were on to belong to the Israelites, which would've made sense to someone of the time, but to modern readers he comes across as a bloodthirsty invader no better, if not worse, than the people he's fighting against.

* ''Literature/{{Adam}}'' by Ariel Schrag has the titular character. He is a cis heterosexual male who is mistaken for a transman because he's a minor that managed to sneak into gay clubs. When he meets a lesbian named Gillian, he decides to use this misunderstanding to his advantage so that he could sleep with her, and he succeeds, which falls under [[BedTrick Rape by Deception]]. Adding to the creepiness is that he's 17 while Gillian is over 18, so he also tricked an adult into committing statutory rape. Not only does he get away with it, he and Gillian get together even after he was exposed.