Doomed By Canon / Literature

Characters and events that are Doomed by Canon in Literature.

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By Author:

• The last book in most V. C. Andrews series are prequels told by the heroine's mother or grandmother, fleshing out how the drama and doom said heroine endures comes about. Thanks, Mom.

By Title:

• Animal Farm has to end with Napoleon winning and the pigs becoming indistinguishable from the humans, since it was explicitly modeled on the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union, which, when the novel was written during World War II, was under Stalin's iron rule.
• In the two prequels to David Eddings' The Belgariad, written after the series and its sequel, readers know that the duchy of Vo Wacune and (almost) the entire population of Maragor are gonna eat it at some point since Vo Wacune no longer exists in the main series and Maragor is filled with the ghosts of the dead.
• The BioShock novelization details the attempts of Bill McDonagh and Roland Wallace to deal with/kill Ryan and escape Rapture with his family. As we find McDonagh's corpse during the game, and hear an Audio Diary of Wallace's death, we already know that this isn't going to work.
• A Day of Fallen Night is a prequel to The Priory of the Orange Tree and one of its central characters is Glorian III of Inys, who is known in history as Shieldheart for defending her kingdom during the Grief of Ages after her parents' untimely death. The story opens the year before, when she is fifteen, so we know that something terrible is going to happen to Queen Sabran and King Bardholt during the story. The map also contains a few countries that were not on the map for Priory, which implies that they aren't long for the world either. Carmentum is burned to the ground when the wyrms begin to hatch.
• In the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases, a spinoff novel of the manga Death Note, we know from the beginning that Naomi and L will solve the case thanks to a comment made in the original series.
• The titular character of Whortle's Hope, a prequel to the Deptford Mice trilogy, is one of the fieldmice who ended up murdered in The Crystal Prison, the second of those books. As anyone reading Whortle's Hope likely has already read the main trilogy, they know full well that soon he'll be dead.
• Pretty much any Doctor Who Expanded Universe media featuring a past Doctor is constrained by this. Lawrence Miles did attempt to change this with his book Interference, which had the Third Doctor die in a completely different way thanks to the meddling of Faction Paradox, a Temporal Paradox-obsessed cult. It was Miles' hope that other writers would follow his example and no longer hold the Doctor's past sacrosanct. However the alternate timeline was never explored (by editorial decree; it's not known if any writers aside from Miles had intended to write books set in it).
• Dune: In The Great Schools of Dune trilogy (taking place eight decades after the Butlerian Jihad), the main conflict is between the rabid anti-technology fanatics, whose movement was started by Rayna Butler during the Jihad and continued by her successor Manford Torondo, and the Corrupt Corporate Executive Josef Venport, whose MegaCorp Venport Holdings is striving to restore its monopoly on foldspace travel, as well as to ensure eternal technological and economic progress by eliminating any rival, including the Butlerian fanatics. Both sides are seen as extremes by Imperium at large and House Corrino and are too powerful to be eliminated by the Emperor without consequences. However, since the Imperium has neither completely abandoned all technology nor become a cyber-paradise by the time the original Dune takes place ten millennia later, it can be surmised that neither side emerges victorious. Indeed, both extreme factions end up crippling one another, allowing Emperor Roderick to mop up the remains.
  • In addition, an important faction in the Legends of Dune are the Sorceresses of Rossak, who possess psychic powers well in advance of what the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood will have thousands of years later. Something has to happen to get rid of the Sorceresses and allow the Sisterhood to rise in its place. Indeed, the plague spread by Omnius ends up hitting Rossak especially hard, killing many Sorceresses, and many also perform Heroic Sacrifices during the Butlerian Jihad to kill cymeks (sending out psychic blasts that fry any living brain within a particular area, including their own). With birth rates already low, the Sorceresses are pretty much doomed to extinction by the time the Jihad ends. By the time of the The Great School of Dune, only a few are left and they train the Sisters as their replacement (despite different powers). When the Emperor appears to shut down the the school and orders his men to shoot several Sorceresses in reprisal, the rest attack the Emperor in anguish and are quickly cut down by soldiers.
  • Also, any attempt by Vorian Atreides to put an end to the Atreides-Harkonnon feud is doomed to fail, since they're still at it millennia later.
• Everything's Better With Elves: Adrav has to die, because it was established in the first book that Sal only has one living sister.
• Fate/Zero goes the "everyone who wasn't in the original is likely to die" route. The only surprise was an inversion Waver Velvet survived.
• Sergey Lukyanenko's Dances on the Snow takes place about 100 prior to the events of Genome. While none of the characters from the prequel are present in the first novel (the stories are simply set in the same 'verse), the main event that defines the prequel is an attempt by a coalition of planets to take over The Empire from within, and it appears to be succeeding rather well by brainwashing entire planetary populations. Since the Empire is alive and well in Genome, it is easy to figure out that the Big Bad's plan will fail. Additionally, the main character's childhood female friend laments that Faster-Than-Light Travel is lethal to women who are not in a Human Popsicle state. This is never mentioned in Genome, which is all about genetic engineering, meaning the problem will be resolved by the end of the prequel via gene therapy.
• In the first chapters of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi, it is established that Wei Wuxian becomes a demonic cultivator and a pariah of the cultivation world, he causes the death of nearly all of the Jiang Sect, who raised him as one of them; he possesed an evil weapon called the Yin Tiger Seal, and is killed by destroying it. We also know that Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan do get married and have a kid, only to die because of Wei Wuxian's fault, which makes Jiang Chen hate Wei Ying; Wen Ning dies and is resurrected as a fierce corpse; and all of the Wen, including the innocent Dafan branch, die with the exception of little Wen Yuan.
• Outside of Grent's Fall, it's written that Osbert Grent's "dynasty" lasts all of seven years. The story takes place seven years after Osbert Grent's reign started.
• The outcome of the novel Guild Wars: Edge of Destiny. The protagonists plan to take down one of the Elder Dragons. But before the release of the books it was already stated that Guild Wars 2 (chronologically one year after the events of the book) will focus around killing the Elder Dragons, including the one they planned to attack. It leads to a Downer Ending.
• Mauve Shirt Andrej of the novel Helsreach subverts the trope. While it's Common Knowledge in the Warhammer lore that Grimaldus is the Sole Survivor of the final battle, Andrej ultimately manages to make it through the entire thing and is picked out of the rubble (along with a handful of other random survivors) alongside him. Andrej himself hangs somewhat of a lampshade on the situation; it's not actually that Grimaldus was the only survivor, it's that he was the only notable survivor and thus the only one people remember. The storm trooper is more than happy to keep quiet and let Grimaldus have his fame.
• In the Heralds of Valdemar series, the Last Herald-Mage trilogy tells the story of Herald-Mage Vanyel, and Brightly Burning tells the story of Lavan Firestorm. The deaths of both characters were first described in the very first book of the entire series, well before the books featuring them were published. (Additionally, the title "Last Herald-Mage" made the fate of all the other Herald-Mages in Vanyel's story pretty clear.)
  • Similarly, in the Mage Wars trilogy, we already know that the Cataclysm happens, and to a certain extent why. We know that the Kaled'a'in split off into the Shin'a'in and Tayledras. If you've read Mage Winds, you also know the fate of Big Good Urtho and Big Bad Ma'ar.
• Saving Charlie is not going to work out the way Hiro wants, as anyone who has seen the end of the Heroes episodes it's based on can tell you that Sylar kills her. A few seasons later, Hiro manages to save her from both Sylar and her blood clot, but then loses her again when a fellow time-traveler drops her off in the 40s and she decides taking The Slow Path isn't for her and starts a family with a WWII vet.
• Honor Harrington:
  • The primary plot — before it goes Off the Rails, anyway — is Horatio Hornblower IN SPACE!. There's several characters whose names are rather blatantly based on the real-life people of whom the characters in question are expies, especially Rob S. Pierre, who is, of course, an expy of Robespierre. Anyone who knows their history can see how the Havenite side of the plot is going to progress — up until somebody nukes Napoleon and the entire plot veers rather startlingly Off the Rails.
  • A new Doomed By Canon is forming around Oyster Bay, the in-universe equivalent of Pearl Harbor, despite side stories that promise the potential to stop it. All these plots fail because Oyster Bay is the catalyst for — well, basically everything that's going to happen in the remainder of the series.
• One Midshipman story in Horatio Hornblower has him involved in the Battle of Quiberon, a push by Royalist French exiles to restore the monarchy. The expedition was a total failure and resulted in most of the Royalist troops being slaughtered.
• In the Magic: The Gathering novel Bloodlines, Davvol is given immortality and appointed as evincar of Rath. However, we know he won't survive the book because it's a prequel to Rath and Storm, in which Rath has another ruler.
• Odtaa is set during a revolution in the fictional republic of Santa Barbara, and is a prequel to another novel which already established the outcome of the rebellion and the fates of the dictator, the rebel leader, the rebel leader's fiancée, and so on. However, the protagonist of Odtaa is a new character, and so is his love interest, so there is room for dramatic tension regarding how things will turn out for them personally.
• In the Redwall book Martin the Warrior, the titular character's love interest Rose has to die by the end because he is traveling alone in Mossflower, which takes place later. It's also established, in Mariel of Redwall, that Martin left no descendants. So, even if he and Rose had met after the events of Mossflower, his line would still have died out within a couple of generations.
• Donna Tartt's The Secret History opens with the murder of one of the characters, then proceeds to show how they got there.
• Any reader of Irvine Welsh's Skagboys who's already read Trainspotting will already know that Matty and Tommy both will die of AIDS, and Mark's older brother Billy will be killed in an IRA ambush while serving with the British Army in Northern Ireland.
• Space Academy is set roughly eight hundred years before the events of Lucifer's Star where humanity lives in a Crapsack Universe. At some point in a few hundred years, Earth will be destroyed and humanity will enter a hundred year Dark Age due to its jumpspace systems being destroyed. AI will also be outlawed and bioroids will be reduced to the status of slaves. Interestingly, Vance is made aware of this and unsure if its possible to avert this future.
• From the Star Trek: Enterprise Relaunch: The TV Series included Coridan as a member of the fledgling Coalition of Planets. However, it had previously confirmed that the United Federation of Planets which grew out of the Coalition was founded by Humans, Vulcans, Andorians and Tellarites - no Coridanites. Hence, while the first novel in the relaunch has Coridan as part of the alliance, it also has them withdraw before the Coalition Compact is signed. This of course is no surprise to readers familiar with Trek lore. The Rigellians and Denobulans were also part of the initial Coalition talks, but their absence is explained as their having been frightened off by Terra Prime in the series' penultimate episode.
  • To underline just how doomed Coridan's membership was, the very episode that introduced the Andorians and Tellarites to Star Trek centred around a conference about admitting Coridan to the Federation, with Coridan established as underpopulated. That episode took place over a century after the events of Enterprise.
• In Star Trek: Stargazer, the Ubarrak Primacy is shown as a powerful rival to the Federation and Cardassians (at least in one particular sector). However, their lack of appearance in Star Trek: The Next Generation or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine means they obviously can't become the major power they're aiming to be.
• One Star Trek: The Next Generation novel has an Alternate Universe Jack Crusher discover that he is the only him in the multiverse, as he bites it in every other timeline. He doesn't take it well.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Prince Xizor plots to kill Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker during his first appearance in Shadows of the Empire. Little is he aware that both characters are slated to appear in Return of the Jedi, which occurs in the future. In this instance, Prince Xizor was doomed by canonicity to failure. It was inevitable.
  • The Thrawn Trilogy, first epic of the original Star Wars EU and taking place five years after Return of the Jedi, established several hundred things, including that the Empire's capital planet was called Imperial Center, then got captured by the New Republic and restored to its Old Republic name, Coruscant. The first books of the X-Wing Series, set three or four years after the movie, detail the New Republic's efforts to capture the Empire's capital world. Unexpected things certainly happen, of course, some of them very dramatic, but we know how it ends. Similarly, Aaron Allston's run on that series deals with the New Republic's fight against Warlord Zsinj, who dies in The Courtship of Princess Leia. And Courtship itself was largely about Han competing with someone in wooing Leia, when from the Thrawn Trilogy we know that not only did Han and Leia marry, they had twins.
  • Similarly, Outbound Flight is a prequel to the Thrawn Trilogy, fleshing out events of Thrawn's first contact with the Old Republic and the future Emperor. It was already established elsewhere that the titular ship will be lost and the mission will fail. Thrawn will also leave the Chiss and serve the Emperor, becoming even more ruthless. Jorj Car'das will become a merciless criminal, before eventually dying and getting cloned. The book was also released two years after Survivor's Quest, which had future Luke and Mara piecing together what happened from the wreck (although half the fun of Outbound Flight is finding out how much they got wrong).
  • The Han Solo Trilogy has this in spades. About fifty pages away from the big finish, Han Solo has an (adoptive) son, an old girlfriend he reconnects with and a great reputation. It appears that this was the point where the author re-watched A New Hope, sighed and got the character scythe out of the tool shed.
  • Darth Plagueis, while exploring the Sith Lord's life, was informed by the only things know about him from Revenge of the Sith; he was a Sith, he had an apprentice, Palpatine was his apprentice, and said apprentice murdered Plagueis in his sleep. Guess how the story ends.
• A Tale of...:
  • A Tale of The Beast Within tells the background of the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, expanding on how he was cursed. He initially has a relationship with Circe, who turns out to be the Enchantress who placed the curse on him, which is automatically doomed to fail and lead to him being cursed. When he later enters an engagement with princess Tulip, the reader again knows that nothing will come from it, as it is after he is cursed and Tulip is not Belle.
  • In A Tale of the Wicked Queen, the Queen has a wonderful husband, but he's never mentioned in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It's thus unsurprising that he dies in war partway through Snow White's childhood. Likewise, the Queen has a faithful lady-in-waiting that she treats like a sister. Verona is banished from the land when the Queen grows jealous of her beauty near the end.
  • Gothel never mentioned siblings in Tangled but she's a set of very close triplets in A Tale of the Old Witch. Primrose and Hazel die of illness partway through the book, sending their remaining sister into a dark downward spiral.
• Fiona Patton's Tales of the Branion Realm is a historical fantasy series written in reverse chronological order; each book is set over a century before the previous one. This leads to some obvious foregone conclusions (historical events alluded to in previous books actually occurring) and some more subtle ones (Noble families clearly named for major characters in later books, a character vowing to uphold his faith but the previous book revealing his daughter converted).
• In Stephenie Meyer's Twilight novella The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, Bree has to stay with the vampire army, fight the Cullens at the end, and die by the hands of the Volturi. Although it's arguable as to whether or not it counts as canonical, she also has to fall in love and lose said love interest, since Meyer said before the book was published that Bree "found and lost love".
• The fifth volume of The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign is centered around Kyousuke's past with the White Queen. The basic outline of this was already revealed in the very first volume - Kyousuke summoned the White Queen into the world, she fell in love with him, and later killed countless people. It's therefore clear from the start that everyone who isn't Kyousuke, the White Queen or Biondetta (another character known to survive) is going to die.
• Those familiar with the comic know that Penny in The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor is set to become a zombie.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The whole of the Horus Heresy series, with the Back Story of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
    • In Graham McNeill's False Gods, Magnus the Red is not going to persuade Horus not to betray the Emperor.
    • In Ben Counter's Galaxy In Flames, the loyalist Space Marines are not going to survive.
  • Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel The Armour of Contempt takes place centuries before the "current day". As a consequence, we know that the Inquisition is not going to find the treatment against Chaos they think might be on Gereon: it would have changed history and acted as a Game-Breaker.
  • Similarly, Abnett's Eisenhorn has to end with Eisenhorn and Cherubael alive, although mostly the question is whether Eisenhorn will slip into heresy, rather than die. And it's only "whether" because it doesn't have to happen in this prequel. (Or in the Ravenor one, either. But it's coming, we know, because it's in the Gaunt's Ghosts series.)
  • As several books of Space Marine Battles are retellings of stories established in Warhammer 40,000 canonicity, some of this is bound to happen.
    • Sergeant Namaan doesn't get out of Siege of Kallidus alive.
    • The Ultramarines eventually leave the Damnos to the Necron - it's even right in the title of Fall of Damnos.
    • The Crimson Fists losing their Fortress Monastery to a faulty missile battery and nearly losing their home planet to the Orks has been part of their characterization nearly since their first appearance.
    • The Astral Knights sacrifice their entire Chapter to destroy the World Engine - the World Engine crisis is, in fact, the only time the Astral Knights are mentioned in canonicity.
• Warrior Cats:
  • In the prequels, we never heard about characters like Snowfur, so they have to die.
  • The leaders have to die so they can be replaced.
  • Willowbreeze, a cat who the author explained would appear, be in an Official Couple with a main character, and then die.
• Wicked:
  • Elphaba has to melt at the end of Wicked. This isn't the case in the musical adaptation, where she fakes her death.
  • As Elphaba's sister, Nessarose is destined to get hit by a house.
• Young Sherlock Holmes: Anyone who has read Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories knows that nothing lasting can come of the relationship between Sherlock and Virginia.

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