History DesignatedHero / Literature

* 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 eliminating humanity.

* The ONI characters of ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' ''Kilo-Five'' trilogy. They're supposed to be painted as morally superior and paint Dr Halsey as [[MadDoctor Mrs Mengel]] for what she did in creating the SPARTAN II's. 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 Sangheili soon become willing supporters to the Didacts mission in eliminating humanity.

* Arthur Dimmesdale in ''Literature/TheScarletLetter'' seduced and impregnated Hester (she was a married woman, but his husband was disappeared), left her to assume all the blame and humiliation, participated among the people who shamed her and left her with the responsability of her child. However, he has the sympathy of Hester, the people of Boston and Creator/NathanielHawthorne. He does redeem himself, but in the end.

** In ''Soon'', by Jerry Jenkins, we get Paul Stepola. He starts out as a VillainProtagonist, working for the atheist NewWorldOrder'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.

Rayford, on the other hand, delays the plane so his wife can leave the city before he takes off. Then he takes off so the Antichrist can proceed. This is not after some long internal conflict, or for the sake of staying undercover, or because he thinks stopping the nukes will fail. It's just because flying the airplane is his ''job''. Our hero, everyone: An accessory to murdering millions of people.
** Both Buck and Rayford, by working very closely with the Antichrist, helping him constantly, refusing to inform anyone of who he really is, and not doing a thing to stop him, are well past 'Designated Hero' and into 'Designated Not-TheDragon', which they would be in almost any story.

* The two authors of LeftBehind didn't learn from their mistake

** 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 Bond villain.

* Apparently Patch of ''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''.]]

* 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]] before she did even more damage, as public pressure wasn't having much of an effect on Daala at this point.

* 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.

* 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. Being an AlternateUniverseFic of {{Twilight}} he has all the stalker tendencies of Edward. 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 are 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.)

* 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. In chapter 21 of ''Fifty Shades Darker'', Ana asks Christian about photos are 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.)

** Not to mention the fact that 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.
** Which all makes sense since Fifty Shades is an AlternateUniverseFic of {{Twilight}}. Edward minus vampires plus wealth and BDSM = Christian. See the section on Edward's own creepy stalker tendencies under Twilight above.

* The heroes of the 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.

* ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'': Richard can certainly come across this way, given his [[BloodKnight eagerness to slaughter]] all those who [[ConceptsAreCheap "choose death" rather than "life"]] in the later books. Despite being an UnscrupulousHero and an outright SociopathicHero, the narrative and the other characters refer to him as an [[IncorruptiblePurePureness incorruptibly pure]] [[TheHero hero]]. 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]].

--> “This is going to sound cold, but—they’re an insurance policy,” he whispers steeling himself for my response.

** Which all makes sense since Fifty Shades is an AlternateUniverseFic of {{Twilight}}. See the section on Edward's creepy stalker tendencies under Twilight above.

*** 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.
*** Rayford, on the other hand, delays the plane so his wife can leave the city before he takes off. Then he takes off so the Antichrist can proceed. This is not after some long internal conflict, or for the sake of staying undercover, or because he thinks stopping the nukes will fail. It's just because flying the airplane is his ''job''. Our hero, everyone: An accessory to murdering millions of people.

* The Silver Horde from Literature/{{Discworld}} personify this trope, as explicitly lampshaded by the Patrician in ''Discworld/TheLastHero''.
** Better [[Discworld/InterestingTimes Cohen than Lord Hong]]. Also, they aren't meant to be 'heroes', just protagonists.
** Cohen is actually titled Cohen ''the Barbarian''. They are meant to be 'heroes' but only in the same way Conan was.
** Done with Granny Weatherwax. While she's [[{{Jerkass}} not exactly]] [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold the]] ''[[JerkWithAHeartOfGold nicest]]'' [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold person around]], [[GoodIsNotNice she's definitely a hero]] and [[ShootTheDog the Disc is much the better for her nastiness]]. Unfortunately, she's also a twin, and the TheoryOfNarrativeCausality holds that [[CainAndAbel twins must be opposites]]: one good, one [[EvilTwin evil]]. Granny Weatherwax [[EvilIsCool wanted to be the evil one]], and was horrified that her sister instead chose to be an insane KnightTemplar, forcing her to take the "good" role. ("Evil" witches are usually just sadistic [[KarmicTrickster tricksters]], and have as much contempt for [[ThouShaltNotKill killing]] and [[SorcerousOverlord conquering]] as the "good" ones.)

** 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 callus) and then abandons his father to go hide as a wolf for awhile. 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 realising 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 canon fodder while he and Renesmee abandon them all to escape the Volturi.

*** 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.\\
\\
Rayford, on the other hand, delays the plane so his wife can leave the city before he takes off. Then he takes off so the Antichrist can proceed. This is not after some long internal conflict, or for the sake of staying undercover, or because he thinks stopping the nukes will fail. It's just because flying the airplane is his ''job''. Our hero, everyone: An accessory to murdering millions of people.

* Christian Grey of ''Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey'' is someone that we're supposed to symphathize with, despite him effectively raping the heroine on more than one occasion. In chapter 21 of ''Fifty Shades Darker'', Ana asks Christian about photos are 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.)

* The protagonist from ''A Call To Arms'' in [[AlanDeanFoster Alan Dean Foster'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 pre-emptively, 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''.

* 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]]. Kind of hard to sympathize.

** 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 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.

* ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'': Richard can certainly come across this way, given his [[BloodKnight eagerness to slaughter]] all those who [[ConceptsAreCheap "choose death" rather than "life"]] in the later books. The only thing keeping him from being an UnscrupulousHero or even an outright SociopathicHero is the narrative and the other characters referring to him as an [[IncorruptiblePurePureness incorruptibly pure]] [[TheHero hero]]. 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]].

** 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 callus) and then abandons his father to go hide as a wolf for awhile. 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. 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 canon fodder while he and Renesmee abandon them all to escape the Volturi.

** Edward and the Cullens are the good guys because ... 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.

** Edward Cullen at times acts like 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/MidnightSun'', 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 like he's planning a rape.